Rain City Shred Chronicles: The VHS Tapes

[PoisonTaffy]

ugh, 'blocked in your country on copyright grounds'

[bustinjustin]

FIXED!

Here's the Vimeo Link

[MathieuGM]

Nice!
I really enjoyed the part where you set the worlds record .
I'm also a big fan of Ricky game... I think i could watch him play 10 hours in a row haha!
Funky effect on the 2nd part. Was it because it was easier to see the bag that way ?!?
Mat

[DubleDex]

There is just too much awesome in this thread for me to take in. Thanks for taking the time to post the videos and to write up a little bit about the video and the experience. I was never a major player and never really got that good, but a bunch of the CSS footage features all the guys I idolized at the time and got to kick with at a few Funtastiks and such. So it's great to see some stuff I hadn't seen and read a few more stories about it.

Definitely NOT a thread I should've stumbled upon while at work. I sense not much getting done today...

[bustinjustin]

Sorry guys, tired from kicking Hempfest all weekend. Video out tomorrow night.

[bustinjustin]

Ricky and I were always very into BSOS. You'll notice just about everything we do is BSOS. We basically felt if it wasn't BSOS it wasn't worth it or a good string. Again here, you get to see our club sessions and atmosphere. Usually Ricky and I would battle for most of the session and then I would spend the latter half of the session working with our other players.
In these two video's you see a lot of Ricky mimicking my style but with spins. If I hit Alpine Whirly Gig Ricky would hit Montage. If I was doing blurry torque Ricky would be doing Marius. A lot of what Ricky was doing during this time was establishing himself against my game. I set a high bar, as seen in the previous vids like Las Vegas and Portland. So Ricky was pushed to one up everything I did. I would be hitting a 7, Ricky would hit a 7 into string. I had Gauntlet, Ricky got alpine Marius. We had a lot of fun during these times, but Ricky eventually took over. He got into fearless much faster and easier than I did, and he was really into linking his vortex's and mobius's. Most of that stuff happened right after these sessions and went onto the missing VHS. For me, I always liked shredding, thus my long strings with not much content. I actually hit my first 50 contact string this session but took it out because it was really boring. I also hit 5 moves of rubber man 2 this session just couldn't seal it. I think that would have put me as the 3rd or 4th person to hit it at this time. I've never gone back to get it.
Ricky still has some of the best spinning I have ever seen. So fast, and such little movement. I was late to the spinning game since I had my dreads for my first 2 years of playing and spinning was really hard with all that hair weight on my head pulling me off balance. Once I cut it, I tried to catch up on learning it quickly, but it just looked bad for a long time. After Ricky quit I felt obligated to improve my spinning and carry out some of Ricky's style and combos. Many of my runs when I spin are inspired from him, lots of spins and osis's, but still, Ricky was one of a kind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAFUqPjQ ... el&list=UL

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAFUqPjQ ... C_kibLg1Ow[/youtube]

Vimeo link:

Gripe time...anyone else having trouble with the Youtube link feature? It doesn't work as long as I pull the link while logged into YT. I don't seem to be able to watch the video with out it being in a playlist, so I have to wait for YT to catalog the video so I can grab the actual single page link. Also, I often find myself having to upload to Vimeo several times before I get link that doesn't crash.
Also, the worst part of doing these is coming up with music. All these vids are cut and I spend most my time just trying to figure out a decent song to apply. If any of you have suggestions please let me know. Just PM me some song ideas, I'm run out. Thanks

I think I am going to take a break this next Sunday since I will be in Portland for USO. The next video is my favorite of the series.

p.s. Oh, and Mathieu, the effect on the last video was done on the camera at the time it was shot, not in my editing. I thought it would be cool back then.
p.s.s. I know the bag fell out of my last stepping barrage, which is why I sulk away at the end of that shot.

[bustinjustin]

I'm back with a good one this week. Lots of unseen footage from this event, The Vancouver Open. It features Ricky Moran, Noah & Savanna Jay-Bonn, Brian Johnson, and myself. This event was really fun and had a lot of new players. This is the first part of the day where us up and comers started a circle, before Red and Allen joined in.

We played all day and toward the end Ricky hit that sweet spot between exhaustion and ability and just went off. He started doing monster strings with lots of mobius's. It was one of his best sessions, probably inspired from kicking with Allen, but it was so late in the day no one had any cameras on. You also see him smoking a cigarette in circle during the final string. He was such a punk ass around this time (I mean that endearingly), as seen by his blocking Noah's string and grabbing his ass. The little bit of competition from this footage is on Part 2. This event was most notable for Ricky getting frustrated with drops during his routine and spent the second half of it flipping off the audience. It was one of his very first routines. Ah, those were the times.

There was a camera crew from the local news station. I got a funny story from my dad that he was working out and he saw some footbag on the news. He said he thought the kid in the news looked like me and sure enough, he was like, "that is my son." The piece had gotten picked up by some more major news stations.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwPhEZnec9c[/youtube]

[g00d33]

Really appreciating all the videos! Keep em coming as long as possible!

[PoisonTaffy]

I know it's kind of a funny request, but can you put "footbag" on the tags list of the videos?

[bustinjustin]

Is that not happening? The first two tags I put on every video are Seattle & Footbag.

[bustinjustin]

Good evening, time for the next chapter in our RCS series. Here is the second half of the day of the Vancouver Open. Allan and Red join the circle and tear it up. I have left the audio track in the video background because there is a lot of dialogue that I enjoy. Particularly Ricky asking what the fuck Allan thinks he is doing mid string while my face is melting off from how heinous Allan is shredding. This was still early for Ricky and I and it was a treat kicking with BAP players.
After a long day of shred and competing horribly (there wasn't much competition footage out of this event), Ricky and I circled up again while Allan went to work on some trials. While Allan rocked some crazy stuff, Ricky, after playing all day, kicking with Allan and doing horrible in competition set out to prove something. That last 30 minutes was some great stuff from him. I believe my tripod broke at this event after toppling over while filming this video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArlOZFbUTHQ[/youtube]

[C-Fan]

Thanks for all of these. How many more do you have left?

[bustinjustin]

Not sure, 4 maybe 5?
Also, Roy-I realize you were asking me to tag the Vimeo videos, which I don't tag. I'll take care of that and do those tags in the future.
Let me know if any of you ever can't see a YT video and I'll throw it on Vimeo. I've switched to using hip-hop instrumentals so I can get around the copyright bs.

[bustinjustin]

Worked all weekend. New video Monday or Tuesday.

[bustinjustin]

I realized a couple videos ago this point was coming...
Well, this week is a little sad. This marks the turning point in this series. Ricky is gone, the Mount Lake crew no longer kicks, Sam is in training. I'm kicking with Scott and fringe players often and were no longer kicking in the YMCA. The club has been shaken up and I find myself rebuilding. The thing missed most is Ricky. A player that shined so bright, yet never really got a chance to shine at all. He seemed to be easily good at anything he put his mind to whether it was basketball, poker, or footbag. I was very close to him, he had so much potential and I helped him as much as I could, but also had a lot of baggage (he had a younger brother die) and some demons that got the better of him in the end. *single tear for my homie

I understand that I have been the hardest thing to watch in this series. My form has been awful and my strings are boring. The bad news is much of the rest of this series is just me. The good news is I start improving.

From here on its a lot of footage of myself and my progression. I no longer have Ricky pushing me and I start refining my game. Here you see very early attempts on blurry flurry and nemesis. I hit these moves a lot this year and continued to clean them up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXs7gOnJ ... e=youtu.be

[C-Fan]

Enjoying the narratives of these videos almost as much as the videos themselves. Thanks for sharing.

[bustinjustin]

Wow, this is the 20th RCS Chronicles and the 10th video of this VHS series. This is my 54th video and I forgot to mention the milestone of hitting 50. I also just passed 10,000 views on my YouTube channel. Thanks for all the views you guys!
This video features Ben Schmaltz and I kicking in the basement of one of my grow houses from back in the day. It had started raining and we couldn't kick outside after paying a visit to the house so we just kicked there. It was a very short session and I used the actual song we were kicking to as the song laid over the footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlqdZ9iG ... e=youtu.be

There is a skip on the last run of the video, but it's all one string. Vimeo link on the way as well.

[bustinjustin]

Time for another installment. Hurray!
Around this time I was kicking with Sam Potter a lot and we were playing at various community centers and class rooms at UW. Sam is definitely the star of this video although he only has one string. This is also the only string he has for the VHS series. You can see even at this early stage his form is very advanced. Something that really helped me was his motivation to perfect his form. It was contagious and helpful to see his insights on upper body form, something I had never thought about. Around this time he was talking with David Clavens and Stephen Barnes a lot. We almost got Stephen to move here at one point but his motivation for shred dropped off along with his interest of moving here. He would have been an exciting addition. I am hoping I have more footage of Potter on other tapes. We kicked extensively in the parking garage of his building for a year, those were my favorite sessions at the time. I know I taped some of them, I just hope I didn't tape over them. I think there is a session where I hit blurriest swirl bs that I saved. Potter was rocking gyro whirling swirl a lot and was at the top of his game. I would really like to get more footage of him out, but he always requested that I not post his stuff because he never felt his form was good enough, as you can see, it's great.
Lastly I want to point out Ben's little addition to this video which is a weird open (pixie) set done behind his back. I have this on the very first RCS Chronicles video as well. I always thought it was a cool concept that no one has ever established. Anyway, it's a thing, and kind of cool.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_yC1hjw9pg[/youtube]

I know the first move on this video is 'the,' as are many of my moves. But watching them helped to clean them up, and in keeping the integrity of how these were captured and watched I keep including these moves in these videos.

[bustinjustin]

This is a video I've already published. This is the next video in line of my progression and it's nice to revisit. I spent this winter very focused on 5's and try to get over the 10 fearless hump. I was still not able to get 10 fearless for more than 2 years after this video in spite of looking promising. This video I'm working out various 5's combinations to see what works. I also got matador>blurry whirl for the first time and hit ps whirl out of it into a decent string. I was starting to catch up where I had been left behind.
Shooting has always been a bit of an issue for me. I enjoyed it when I started out but then got trolled for it being 'the.' Which I agreed and 'the' shooting is a bit of an issue in the community. But it can be done clean. I really wanted to prove it could be done clean and used regularly. I continued to clean it up but have always been reluctant to use it since it doesn't get any respect. Vasek did one in Montreal and it was cool to see, I felt like it finally set a standard and his looked like how I had been doing them. So after I hit my first matador> blurry whirl I hit shooting down>blurry whirl so I could compare the shooting and see where I've gotten with the set. I feel pretty confident about when I get it clean. I still put attempts on shooting every now and again.
This was a fun year with the Quantum 2's. Really helped my style and opened up my toe game. Open ducking seemed a lot easier after Quantums.
I've been blessed to continually have shred partners. Sam Potter had quit at this point and Sam Colclough had started living with me. We were kicking often, he even set up a shred room in his bedroom for a little bit.
Scott Behmer initially started a deal with the gym to get us in and I picked it up after joining. To this day it is still a fringe benefit of my gym that during the winters they let me bring in the club in on Sundays to shred. The gym had had many owners and they all just say okay when I tell them what we are doing. We kicked here a lot, the hot tub made for great motivation. Sometimes we would hot tub longer than we kicked.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S6iClpYZJ8[/youtube]

[C-Fan]

Just wanted to pop in and say I've watched all of these, and it's been cool seeing the progression over time. It's been cool seeing your form change, and also seeing trick selections come and go. I'll sometimes watch an old video of mine and be struck by the same things. It's doubly cool reading your recollections of these times as well.

I feel like I make the same comment every time...but I do want you to know that people are watching and enjoying, even if we don't comment after each one.