Yesterday Forum’s Team Bus rolled into London bringing a whole crowd of the brand’s pros to the premiere of their latest film, Fuck It (or F*** It as they like to call it). As a crowd of shred-heads and industry types assembled in Brixton’s Grand Union Bar, the excitement was palpable – not least from the riders who had the first chance to really get out and stretch their legs in 27 hours! The long journey from Barcelona had obviously given them plenty of time to prepare, cos when they arrived they hit the bar hard, and with the start of the film pushed back to 9 o’clock, a lot of people were in an ‘appreciative’ state by the time it got going.
Forum’s Team Manager Kevin Keller hit the stage, offering a brand new Scallywag board to “The first man to rip off John Jackson’s shirt!” You’d usually have to be feeling particularly brave to tackle the man-mountain with his matted mane of dreadlocks, but thanks to Forum’s generosity with the free beers there was enough dutch courage in the crowd for people to pounce on John J and steal the shirt off his back.
The film itself was the classic Forum combination of progressive riding insterspersed with silly piss-about interludes. There were super-tech rail tricks form the likes of Nic Sauve and Nico Cioffi and some rad powder riding from Jake Welch. Unfortunately both Andreas Wiig and Pat Moore injured themselves seriously at the start of last season, and so their only contributions were filmed in a brief summer session in New Zealand, but the Youngbloods stepped up to fill the gap in serious style, with Austin Sweetin’ looking particularly impressive.
And then there was John Jackson’s closing part. Like last year, it was a two-song ender, stuffed with the most insane backcountry freestyle riding we’ve ever seen. Literally. Double corks were thrown down left, right and centre, and cliffs that only the likes of Devun would usually dream of dropping were used to stomp insanely tech rotations. There are very few riders in the world today that you can legitimately say compete with Travis Rice for technical, balls-out, big-mountain freestyle, but John Jackson is one of them. A serious contender for Transworld’s ‘Part of the Year’ award. Again.
As the credits rolled and the whooping started, the Drunken Masters – a pair of German jesters from Munich – hit the decks. Spinning an eclectic mix of hip-hop and electro with an occasional smattering of dubstep they got a sweet party going on that continued til the early hours.
