Where Do We Go From Here? Watching ‘Baker 4’

By Mike Munzenrider

The shot is a close-up of a now grown, still-teenaged Kader Sylla, who opens Baker 4 with a part that features two versions of himself, the younger and then the slightly older. Cut in between that brace-faced, Supreme-backed Kader-of-now is the Kader Skater of our memories, the little dude riding around in Andrew Reynold’s backseat, the old pro’s protege and foil. I realized: This is going to be the sentimental Baker Skateboards video.

Can you blame them? A surprising 14 years removed from Baker 3 and two decades from the company’s founding, Baker 4 is as much about aging and parenthood as it is about skateboarding and its possibilities. As much was not lost on Tony Hawk, who posted a photo of himself with son/Baker pro Riley Hawk and Reynolds, at the movie’s first showing Nov. 21 in Hollywood. Hawk The Elder notes that in 1992 he started Birdhouse, sponsoring the guy who’d become “The Boss”; his son was born later that same year. “Andrew and Riley both have stellar skating parts in this landmark video,” he writes in the photo’s caption. “I watch as a fan and proud father, while still actively skating and maintaining the Birdhouse brand 27 years later. The future is unwritten. What a wild ride.”

Hawk’s version of a wild ride is likely different than that of Reynolds’ and Co., whose Piss Drunx antics — “Hi-jinx” — were well chronicled in Baker’s early videos. That Reynolds and brand co-founder Jim Greco, among others but not all, came out sober after years of alcoholism and drug use is also well known. Reynold’s gratitude for just being here, noted recently by Kyle Beachy , was evident in Emerica’s 2010 release, Stay Gold. Closing out the decade as a still-relevant 41-year-old pro skater, still belonging and still mentoring, he’s still grateful, evident in his company’s latest release as kids and adults alike grow up, old friends reunite and everybody keeps skating.

Baker 4 sprawls at more than 75 minutes long — much is accumulated in 20 years — and Reynolds is scattered throughout, a supporting cast member in others’ parts whose own section I welcomed with a sense of relief. If Kader’s opening is treated with some tenderness (he rips, obviously), Tristan Funkhouser’s footage is given the classic “Baker-Baker-Baker” treatment, Beastie Boys backing and assumed delinquency. He fits. Former child stars Kevin “Spanky” Long and Brian Herman are standouts, both for continuing to produce and how they’ve gotten to be where they are. It wasn’t that long ago that Spanky was without a pro model, but he skated his way back into one and doesn’t lack for obvious gratitude, either. Herman, eternal yet entire skate careers past anchoring Baker 3 with a top-50 part, is graying in beard and recently off Emerica. Still, he’s bouncy and loose, forever looking poised to kickflip nose wheelie off into the sunset.

Later in the vid I’d wholly forgotten about Theotis Beasley, 28, who starred in Baker’s last video barely a teen. Now a relatively old head, he eschews steps and Hubbas, content like some of us to know his limits while doing difficult manuals. The skaters in their primes, Hawk The Younger, Rowan Zorilla and Justin “Figgy” Figueroa, skate well, as they should. Sammy Baca, delightfully a father of three, on the other hand, is the unexpected hero of Baker 4. He pulls off a three-song part with casual gnarliness and skill, apparently never having speed wobbled in his life.

Though I’d settled on the slightly pejorative “sentimental” reading of Baker 4 based on that Kader sequence, I was moved again later in the video, to tears this time, by a sunny clip of Stella Reynolds, Andrew’s 14-year-old daughter. My wife walked in just at that moment during my first viewing and I explained my heightened emotions — about how I’ve always been taken by Reynolds’ affection for young people, his child or not, and how someday I’d like to share something that special with our own 3-year-old daughter. On second viewing I better noticed another piece of that Stella clip, how it cuts straight to Elissa Steamer, Baker’s pro addition from last year, whose skateboarding has and will make way for generations of women skaters. Steamer goes on to rip alongside her old friends from more irresponsible times, Shane Heyl and Erik Ellington, the three squarely in their 40s.

What’s it like watching Baker 4 not as a 37-year-old father and skater of two dozen years? Perhaps the Jacopos and Zach Allens are more a part of the story, Dustin Dollin more dwelled upon. I do know that a brand less confident in its identity couldn’t make what Reynolds and Co. just did: a video that portrays so well the richness of skateboarding, a social pursuit that could improve you as a person, make you appreciate youth as well as right now, so long as you stay involved. Tony Hawk was right: There’s more to come.

—Mike Munzenrider lives in Minneapolis.