Gilbert Crockett Week Day 4: Acosta's Angle's

The relationship between a skater and his photographer and filmer is a unique one and it can make or break a career. Many times the best tricks have been discounted because of shitty angles, with no fault to the skater. At Vans we’re lucky to have two of the best in the business in filmer Greg Hunt and photographer Anthony Acosta helping us show you all the great skating our guys are doing for this upcoming Vans video.
For the fourth day of Gilbert Crockett Week we dug through Anthony Acosta's archives for some of his favorite photos of Gilbert through the years.

ACOSTA’S ANGLES OF GILBERT CROCKETT

This is in the Inland Empire in California on one of the trips that Gilbert came out here for. We were skating this bump to ledge and he backtailed it a bunch of times and then he started getting into kickflip backtails. I shot it long lens from the other side and it looked kind of rad and then I remember my flashes started dying because we were out all day shooting. I only had a couple flashes left so I was trying to think what I could do and I went from the back and I thought I’d try and get something artsy. I ended up trying to place the flash exactly behind him and get a rimlight. It took 3 or 4 tries to aim it directly behind him. I had to keep running back and putting it in a different spot. This is the actual one he made and it worked perfect. I was psyched. It’s cool when you can do something different with a skate photo rather than your standard procedure.



Got to love Vegas! Many ditches, very hot. This was early in the morning. Not early. 10am. It’s funny in our job anything before noon is considered early. As a dad early is when it’s still dark out. “I got four hours of sleep last night. It’s 4:45am and I can’t go back to sleep…”
This was a Phoenix Am trip that we took. It was one of my first trips with Gilbert. I was always a fan of Gilbert even when he was on Mystery. I always thought he had a different perspective on skateboarding whether it be a sequence or a photo of a really rad kickflip so I was really excited to see him skate in person and when he got on Vans I was stoked. Now he’s one of my favorite skateboarders. I just like his approach to things, it’s very calculated and precise and he’s super confident in what he does. He knows when and what he wants to do. He’s like, “Ok. You ready?” And when he says that, he’s going to go for it no matter what. He’s ready. All systems go. And he’s efficient when he tells you it’s go time. It’s that try or the next try, every time. When he’s ready, he’s ready. It’s going down. He’s that good. It’s pretty insane. He’s definitely one of my favorites and I think he’s one of the best skateboarders right now out there.



He’s ollieing onto that wooden plank down at the bottom. Look at thing; it’s plywood. This was at a barracks in the San Pedro harbor. We were doing a photo shoot for an apparel catalog and usually those things are a full day of driving around looking for cool places to take pictures of the dudes. Nothing usually goes down skate-wise. But we were at this spot and he was eyeballing that thing. I know a lot of people have looked at it but no one has ever ollied it. He was like, “I think I want to ollie this.” And we’re like, “Cool, we’ll come back.” But he said, “I leave tomorrow to go back home. Let’s just do it now.” He went and changed whatever summer clothes he was wearing into skate clothes and rolled up to it maybe five times. It’s pretty gnarly because you don’t know if you’re gonna land and stick because the wood is kind of soggy. I think he stuck it every time, got pitched two or three times, and then rolled away perfect and it was back to catalog time. He’s just that dude. If he’s on the trip you have ten photos of him, five sequences every time. He’s one of the go-to guys. He’s just always looking for stuff. He’s hungry. He’s always looking for something weird to skate, looking how to skate something different. He’s the man.



We were waiting for the vans at the airport on that Phoenix trip and the guys were just doing flatground, every trick possible, head high. I was just sitting there with my bag trying to get artsy. I was like, ‘There’s a cute silhouette right there.’ I asked him to get a couple kickflips. Look at that kickflip form; bow-legged, son!
He’s down for taking photos like this. He knows the aesthetics, what looks good, what he should do and also what he shouldn’t do.





Gilby Snacks is actually a term we use for that guy. I don’t know who named him but he is a snack fanatic. That’s him, just so psyched in the aisle with the Pop Tarts, pretzels, Oreos. He will load up and probably spend 20 bucks every time we stop at a convenience store. It’s insane. He buys healthy snacks too but I know he likes some sugar. Every trip, every stop, it never ceases to amaze me how many snacks he buys. He always has a plastic bag of goods and is always like, “Hey, guys, want some?” I think he stashes them around the van for himself to find later, like an Easter Egg Hunt.
But he’s kind of crazy when he eats in general. I have so many photos of him eating. He eats like a bird. You could sit and watch him and trip out on how he eats. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m sure Greg has video of him in HD slow-mo eating crazy. He seriously pecks. He’ll have five things to eat and he’ll pick to the left then he’ll pick to the right then he’ll pick forward then back then back to the left. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. He dissects what he’s eating and experiments with it. It’s not normal by any means but I guess that’s what it takes to be as good as he is. He could probably write a book on his whole new way of eating, The Crockett Way.



This was used for the Stage 4 ad and it looked like a wanted poster. This was outside of our hotel in Shanghai. I remember Gilbert found it while he was looking for some coffee one day. He goes about his time like that: he wakes up early and searches out the snack spots. I remember he was like, “Dude! I found this spot!” And we get there and it’s not a spot. It’s a bump to chest high metal electrical box. The dude just starts hucking nosegrinds on it and five minutes later he gets it, of course, and that ends up being the ad. But no one was even messing with this thing. It’s not a spot. I don’t think anybody thought he could get up on it at first because it’s high and it’s short; you can’t really stand on it. You almost have to aim at it and stab it, which is sometimes harder. And this is not trick photography; this thing is high! Super high. I’m stoked they used that for the ad, it’s something different.



This was my first trip with him. That was in Miami in 2009. We went down to South Beach to skate some hubbas. We were with Dylan Reider, Andrew Allen and Gilbert. This skate spot is probably like a half hour away from Miami. It’s probably the best skate spot I’ve ever been to. It was 3 in the morning when we got there and you didn’t even need to hop a fence. It was in a super nice community. There were groups of sessions going on throughout the entire school. One dude was lighting up the rail then you’d go 20 feet and some dude was shooting a manual sequence, there were two dudes shooting lines on these other ledges. We were like, “This place is like a skatepark!” Then there were these curved ledges under the cafeteria and we skated there for a few hours. He was front crooking them all day. I remember that trip he taught me how to front crooks. He taught me the secret: he said it’s all in the front toe and how you aim it. He was showing me and he kept doing front crooks for me to learn. And it worked. Every time I do a front crooks I aim for the front toe and how to poke it down. Thanks, Gilbert.




This was the Stage 4 photo shoot in Downtown LA. This spot used to be a super bust because it’s directly in front of the Staple Center. Then one day somebody said they were skateable so we went down there and every ledge was super waxed and it was the best skate spot ever. The security was being cool with it because they were going to tear it all out because apparently LA is going to get a football stadium right there. So they made that spot super good for a few months and now they’re all gone. I like how you see Downtown and Staple Center in that backlip photo.
It was sick seeing those dudes test out the shoes. They all backlipped it in a row, I think it was in the video. You can see in the photo each dude individually is his own dude with their own style but collectively the video was so rad that they’re all on the same page for one rad thing. This one video was more of a homies getting together vibe and doing what we do but I feel like with the Vans video each dude’s part is going to be an individual piece which I think will be rad because Geoff has ideas, AVE has ideas, Greg Hunt has ideas. Gilbert is stacking some rad East Coast stuff. And Chima has been crushing it. I think it’s going to be one of the best videos to come out because it has some of the raddest dudes. I know this is a Gilbert Week but honestly, the stuff Chima has been doing lately…it’s psycho. I wouldn’t believe it if I just heard it and didn’t see the footage. I got a bunch of things for the interview we’re working and I’m telling you…NEXT LEVEL. Gnarly tricks! He’s just on it.



That’s a benihana. It was a joke but look how serious dude looks about his joking. I think those are the first stage of the Stage 4 shoes, the first day they got them, they went straight to the ramp and shredded them up. This was when Andrew was frontside kickflipping in the video. Gilbert was just cruising up and doing every weird trick he can do. He has a serious sense of humor and you’re really going to see it tomorrow when his 6-minute Favorite Fives video comes out. No one knows how weird he is. He’s a funny dude. He has a different outlook on what’s fun and what’s not. He doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, not at all. What was his first tattoo? A cellphone and it says, ‘Cell Out.’ Some other dude would get a skull and dagger with some flames and maybe some crazy dragon but not Gilbert.



You know how there’s the 7 Wonders of the World? This is one of the 7 Skate Spots of The World that you have to go to. It’s made for rollerskaters and it’s like a downhill racecourse. It’s the smoothest, cleanest concrete and it has bumps and hips everywhere. There’s flat bars that go around the whole thing. You don’t get kicked out and if you go pretty early in the day there’s hardly anyone there. It’s the funnest. You can go as fast as you want and blast the biggest ollies. It was the first spot when we went to China and we were just so stoked. We were there for four hours. The spot has been killed but it’s not one of those spots where it matters. You get there and you’re stoked. Gilbert was crushing it, he was doing so many tricks. He’s a flatbar guy so he was grinding up and down and across, backsmithing the whole thing. That overcrooks is a pretty gnarly trick on that thing. If you’re in Hong Kong you got to go there.



This is a German speed bump. Anfang? What does that mean? Stop? This was like a German swap meet and we went there on a Monday morning and it was shut down. I know what a Mexican swap meet looks like, so I can just imagine what a German swap meet looks like. So I was stoked no one was around.
Nollie inward heelflip over the bump to bar. Nollies off bumps don’t work usually but being a precision skateboarder like Gilbert he somehow made it flop over into an inward heelflip and landed it. I think the photo is kind of whatevs. No one used it. I liked it. But I just like the Anfang sign the most. But it’s amateur hour, you can see my flash right next to the A in the sign.
Gilbert also ollied over the rail to lipslide on that Jersey Barrier on the right side.



This was at the world’s biggest McDonald’s in Orlando, Florida. We went there on a trip before they shut the Vans park down. On this trip it was Alex Perelson and Gilbert, my wife and my kid. We were just hanging out at the world’s biggest McDonalds waiting to go skate. You can tell by the sighting in the background that we’re at a McDonalds. Only in America.
We skated and the dudes flew home that night. I went to DisneyWorld with my family the next day. The flight home was pretty much the gnarliest flight I’ve ever had in my life. My kid has allergies to pretty much everything. Somehow he got a hold of some peanut butter on the plane, midflight. He starts turning into a little balloon in front of my eyes. I take him to the bathroom and he’s swollen and screaming. It was sketchy. I didn’t know what to do. The stewardesses were asking if I was ok and I came out of the bathroom and said, “No. We’re not ok. We don’t know what he ate but he’s having an allergic reaction to something.” They start freaking out because he’s screaming. My wife comes back and she starts screaming and it’s just chaos. They ask over the loudspeaker if there were any doctors on the airplane, just like in the movies. Dude, there were nine doctors on board! And six of them were world famous pediatricians because there was a convention going on in Orlando. We had all these doctors from Australia, London, all over, top dudes, rush to the back. Everyone was freaking out, one of the stewardesses was crying. No one is stoked to see a kid go into an allergic reaction; it’s scary for everyone. They were about to land the plane but luckily my wife had a shot of Epinephrine and we had top doctors aboard. We gave him the shot and that saved him. Six of the doctors stayed in the back with us, where they fix the drinks, for two hours for the remainder of the flight. You can’t buy that kind of service. Once he was ok the stewardesses opened a bunch of bottles of wine for everyone. We were all sitting in the back drinking, sitting around my kid, making sure he was good. But for two minutes that was scariest time of my life. I almost felt like I was outside myself watching the situation, in shock, thinking, ‘This dude could die right now and there’s nothing that I can do about it.’ Thank God everything worked out. The stewardess said there are times when there’s not one doctor on board, I couldn’t believe there were nine.