Bucky Lasek
Thrasher has named Ishod Wair as Skater of the Year. I was looking over the list of those included in this years selection as contenders. Impressive top five. Ishod, Sandoval, Burman, Westgate, Huston. I’m unsure as to what criteria they use and it really doesn’t matter. For those of us who love pools and bowls, these top five are barely a glitch on the radar. I’m betting that there are more than a few pool aficionados who have never even seen any of these top five contenders skate. I saw Bob Burnquist and Ben Raybourn on the original list as well. Bob just dropped a crazy video part that will be just as impressive in a decade as it is right now. Other world skateboarding. Ben Raybourn oozes style, talent and is a standout in every session. It must be difficult to choose one guy… I don’t envy Thrasher. Everyone has a favorite skater. Everyone could choose their own skater of the year. The factors in a specific choice are impossible to calculate. Do you base a decision on video footage, style, contest placings, technical difficulty displayed? Do you just choose the gnarliest guy?
I was wondering about Bucky Lasek. This year, Bucky had turned forty years old. Two of his major sponsors -Vans and Element- had walked away from him. At Dew Tour, X Games and Bondi, there were the unending comments about Bucky being, “…the oldest guy out here competing.” Bucky would shrug it off. “What does age have to do with any of this?” I saw Bucky do what hasn’t been done before. He won all of the major vert and bowl contests he entered. He did so at forty years of age. In any other sport, people would be lauding this as, “… a milestone.” In skateboarding, it was just another day. I’ve known Bucky for a long time. I’ve always admired his consistency, work ethic, style and love of skateboarding. He gives back. I’ve decided to make Bucky Lasek the Blue Tile Obsession’s ‘Skater of the Year’. - Ozzie
“Bucky has brought bowl skating to an entirely new level. He is already an unstoppable force on vert, creating impossibly difficult tricks that nobody else can do. He has now taken that technical wizardry and brought it to the concrete realm, mixing old and new like no other.” - Tony Hawk
“What more can be said? Forty years old and forty times better than everyone else. My favorite skater of all time.” - Brad McClain
“I think one of the coolest things about Bucky is that he’s one of us. He fucking loves skateboarding… it’s part of him. Even after all the ups and downs over the years he just has a good time skating. That’s where the similarities with the rest of us end though. Once he’s on his board he has a focus and a natural ability unlike anyone I have ever met. I saw it twenty some years ago when he was just a kid, it still burns in him today and no doubt will make him a winning rally racer in the future. As far as skateboarding goes, I’d have to say Bucky is up there in the top ten best skateboarders ever and 2013 proved that. He steam-rolled through all the major vert contests as well as the Vans Pool party and a second at the Dew Tour Bowl event. He progressed with tricks like his stalefish boneless, and no-handed boneless plus the stuff he threw down on the bar of death he put up in his bowl. He wasn’t filming a video part for months on end throwing out all the bails for one make on film, he was putting it all on the line, live and when it counted.” - Paul Wisniewski
“Bucky is by far the most technical concrete transition skater the world has ever known. The thing I appreciate is that his focus isn’t just hard tricks on big open walls, it’s putting it all together into astounding combinations and use of the terrain in interesting and original ways. Plus he’s one of the nicest, coolest, most real humans ever. As for skater of the year… I vote yes on Bucky!” - Chris Miller
“No one goes as big as the Chuckster aka Bucky Lasek. It is proven by his actions.” - Tony Alva
“Longevity. Ability. Steadfastness. Evolving. Kindness.” - Lance Mountain
“He’s a beautiful man with a beautiful family and a beautiful Andrecht. Ha! He’s one hell of a good skateboarder and one of the sweetest guys I know.” - Jeff Grosso
“Having seen Bucky go from being a little amateur kid from Baltimore to one of the best skaters of all time, who moved to California and to boot, built one of the best pools in the world in his backyard, I feel fortunate to count myself as one his brothers. Now I’ve seen a lot of kids become very successful at skating and move to California and more often than not, something is lost along the way. There’s a lot for reason’s to ride a skateboard. I like to succinctly sum it up as fun, fame and fortune. But there’s another reason to skate; the kick back skate session with your bro’s. The beautiful thing about skateboarding is that you don’t have to skate with people that are at your level. You just skate with your brothers. Dudes whom you enjoy spending an afternoon with, whether it is at Buck’s world-class facility or a home-made quarter pipe in someone’s driveway. Through my rather lengthy career in skateboarding, the local session has been one of the things I’ll remember the most about skating. That is one thing that Bucky didn’t lose along the way. To you, he is a world champion skateboarder. To us, he’s one of the boys that we ride with. That makes Bucky Lasek a 100% skateboarder.” - Tony Magnussen
