Auby Taylor’s Hollywood 16 Switch Heelflip Battle
Ilja Maran, the filmer for the 2013 winning YOUnited Nations Ground Control crew, recently unearthed a nine-year-old treasure trove of raw, unseen Auby Taylor clips. Long before he embraced vert skating, Taylor made a name for himself by cranking out NBDs at the most intimidating (and notorious) spots, and in 2011 the Hollywood 16 was about as high-profile and intimidating as you could get. With the set located right on super-busy Highland Ave., you were guaranteed a lot of distractions in your line of sight, which also made this spot a total bust. The school had started actually padlocking a chain to prevent any clip-seekers from hitting paydirt during this era, so a skater had to be uniquely dedicated to get any work done.
When Taylor focused on switch heeling this beast, “It was decided that a 6:00am early morning sesh on a school day would be the best chance we could get,” Maran says. “A 5:00am wake-up call, a few hearty tries later, and a little squabble with the groundskeeper, Auby finally got away with the make.”
This is a superb example of the kind of persistence that made Taylor a force to be reckoned with over the years—from street to transition—and for years to come. Thanks To Maran for letting us premiere this piece of history!
Five years later, Dashawn Jordan put his on stamp on this stair set for his ‘Radar’ part. Watch the ‘Process’ episode behind his front-three lipslide, below: