Ah, the Japanese skate scene. Despite being a destination de rigeur for the past few years and despite the rise of social media bringing Marshall McLuhan’s global village one step closer to a reality, it still seems to throw up skaterboarders whom you’ve never heard of, but are absolutely fucking incredible. Shor West is a case in point – despite hearing plenty about The Evisen Video over the past few months I hadn’t managed to see it, so this section from the video appearing in my inbox was a definite dose of adrenalin/serotonin on a damp Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately everything I would normally project that skate hype on to is currently being pissed on by the sky gods, but this is definitely one worthy of a few rewatches before a session!

According to the email we received from Laurence Keefe, “Shor is a half Japanese, half British 20 year-old from Kanazawa, Western Japan.

He’s a part-time plumber and when he’s not trying to roll in on the worst looking hellrides of doom, he’s fixing cars and driving around the countryside in a Volkswagen camper van.”

The hellride Laurence speaks of does indeed look grim, bookending the section with slams at one end and the make plus more slams at the other (sorry for the spoiler alert, but if you didn’t guess that it would be returned to then there’s not much we can do for you), with the skateboarding in between coming across just as raw and aggressive without sacrificing style. Even when skating tight looking pools, awkwardly placed ledges that most wouldn’t notice or spots with literal gravel landings, steez remains paramount throughout this one! Press play, enjoy two minutes of very good skateboarding then hit up Nick at The Palomino to grab hold of the video in physical form and see what else these nutters have been up to…