Wow those pictures are fucking amazing, especially the backside flip one
to me it was the crispness of some of the lines. perfect regular and switch flip tricks back to back on any terrain
out of morbid curiosity, how big was the ramp those pictures are from?
iirc it was 6 ft
the ramp was 6ft high and maybe 16 wide, but made of metal and portable so it was moving about all over the place, and the side netting was hanging over the flat. and his hat was basically covering his eyes (it was more or less pulled over his whole head) and he was fucked. and he had a leather jacket - as he skated it was like he was weightless and he just floated up into the air or for instance bs tailslid the whole width of the ramp with no apparent effort at all. - literally less effort than a kickturn and he stopped the slide an inch from the edge of the ramp and somehow didnt get tangled up in the netting which would have happened to anyone else.
have never seen anything like it since then - really the only thing that compares was seeing him skate at radlands in 95 and 96. i think a word that anon used a few times to describe him was ‘transcendental’ - he was on another realm of reality.
and some things he did like the meanwhile nollie flip i dont think have been done by anyone else even 20+ years later.
one other story is the year after this i was at the munster comp in germany and he was there (just chillin with no board) i was near him on the course up on one the roll in ramps/platforms and he was standing with his back to the crowd with probably a 10-15 ft gap from where the crowd were sitting. someone else had snapped their board and thrown the two bits (with trucks still attached) into the crowd and someone threw one of the halves back really hard and had colin mckay not intercepted it and caught it - a few inches before impact, it would have smashed tom straight in the back of the head and certainly knocked him out, if not worse. he was totally oblivious and didnt even turn round…
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I remember the switch fs 360 flip, the leather jacket, the boots, little else. He was completely fucked, mostly all over the place, but not as bad as that St Albans comp.
I wonder if there’s an alternate timeline where Tom Penny didn’t take up drugs
He’d suck.
I always thought he a stoner who liked to dabble with psychedelics. Get the sense from this thread the drug use was maybe a big more extensive?
Heard some really dark stories, Barca days
Thankfully they seem to have disappeared but there used to be some Barca era videos on YouTube of Tom in some absolute states. Post Sorry/Really Sorry - it seemed to be the era that’s done him a bit of damage
Think there was one in Amsterdam or possibly Rotterdam where he seemed a bit worse for wear.
I’d love to believe that too but let’s be honest about it, that’s total bullshit.
I don’t know, is it possible to be that nonchalant when sober?
So here it is, Penny at SB this Saturday.
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Lol at the cheeky look. Dunno if he was injured or something a while ago but more recent videos he looks much more like himself (if that makes any sense)
It does make sense and yes, he did look like himself.
He was skating for fun, mellowly, not doing a demo at all, did nothing super special on the block technically speaking but no one will ever do that the way he did it. So unique. It blew my mind.
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Rad. Penny seems to be back in the U.K a lot these days.
I’m sure Muska said that he blew out his ankle or knee on the Supra Oz tour not long a go?
Also, Penny’s new supra shoe
Shoe isn’t bad looking, not my cup of tea though
Said at the beginning of this thread that I get stoked on his skating regardless but definitely cheers me up that he’s looking less rigid and more chilled
Penny’s show coming out next month. But I thought Supra were going out of business? Confusing.
