Zaturdays: Bread N' Butter Article at Skatepark of Tampa

Zaturdays: Bread N' Butter

Posted on Friday, December 4, 2015 by Paul

Different tricks come easier to different people, for whatever reason. And that one trick that comes the absolute easiest? The one you can take to any spot at any time and throw down with little to no effort at all? That’s your Bread ‘n Butter. It’s as if each of us was born to do a certain trick, or a couple of them if we’re lucky. For me it was the fakie flip, for you it might be the Caballerial, the nollie hardflip or the late shove. You’re stoked if your B ‘n B is highly regarded and in sync with the tastes of the times (kickflips, switch flips, hard flips, etc.), but it’s way more interesting when a person’s go-to is some road-less-traveled type trick like a frontside boneless hand flip, a front foot impossible, or a fakie frontside Bruce Jenner.
At one point I was so proficient at fakie flips that they had me doing one on a Del Taco cup. Free refills for days.

The part of the whole B ‘n B phenomenon that I’d like to know more about is the reason why we’ll get so good at a certain trick, while, despite all of our best efforts we remain grossly unable to accomplish even sorry attempts of other tricks, even those that are supposedly “easier.” How about this one: I can’t do a proper nollie flip to save my life. I’ve been trying them for 100 years and only manage to land a Donkey Kong version of one every now and then. But as I mentioned, the fakie flip for me always just worked, I learned them in like one try, and aren’t fakie flips and nollie flips the same exact trick? So why one and not the other? I’ve always had a theory that the discrepancy between your No-Can-Do Tricks and your Bread ‘n Butter can be attributed to our structural composition, genetic makeup, physiology, or whatever it is that goes in to how each of us is put together. Like, because you’re pigeon toed you’ve never been able to kickflip, but you’re an absolute master of the heelflip. But it can’t be all nature. How much of a role does nurture play? I could probably go ahead and suggest that the real reason you’re such a heelflip master is due to the Lindsey Robertson infatuation you had as a kid, because, you know, Zero was your favorite company and you both wore glasses with sports straps on them. So naturally you were inclined to focus on flicks of the heel variety. I just lost my train of thought, but whatever it is, nature/ nurture or something else entirely, please chime in below with you or your favorite pro’s Bread ‘n Butter.

Famous Bread and Butter

Even Google knows the V Heel is Hoffart’s Bread ‘n Butter.
Yes, Penny could do every other trick too, but his frontside flip inspired generations like any good B ‘n B should.
Yeah he ollied the Water Tower gap, but Jeremy Wray’s Bread ‘n Butter was the FS 360 ollie.
Greg Lutzka 270 Lipslid every rail at the Berrics, but only after doing it on every rail in the Continental United States and Europe. That’s how far a good B ‘n B will take you when done right.
You know it’s Bread ‘n Butter when a trick gets renamed because of you. Here we have Lee Yankou doing what used to be a frontside yanker, now called the frontside Yankou.
Whether he was grabbing tail, sailing over a hip, or landing in a noseblunt slide, Ed Templeton Buttered his Bread for over two decades via the world’s most impeccable impossibles.
One of the few vert tricks that the Birdman didn’t invent, he still mastered the McTwist better than everyone else on the planet: any ramp, any time, and usually in front of a crowd of at least 100,000.
Not quite as wacky as a frontside boneless hand flip, but still, Sewa’s nollie front foot flip B ‘n B is a pretty solid example of the road-less-traveled thing I was talking about.
My guess is that Yoshi couldn’t ollie the Boulala 25. But there’s no doubt he could laser them.
You don’t need to tell me that Daewon can do every manual in the world. I already know. But when you can bomb hills by way of a fakie manual I’m pretty sure that meets the criteria for Bread ‘n Butter.
- Paul Zitzer

Comments

Subscribe to the SPoT What's Up Blog

Enter your email: