Ryan Sheckler at the Orlando stop of the 2005 Dew Tour. © 2005 Bo Bridges

Shecklair

• Highly technical skateboard tricks and highly unscientific street slang have gone hand in hand since the Dogtown days of Bertleman slides: To understand what’s so great about a Ryan Sheckler run, you’re going to need a glossary.

Lat34 breaks down the science behind the Shecklair and other signature skateboard moves seen in this summer’s skate contests:

• Shecklair
  
• Ryan Sheckler’s a smart-ass teen – which explains why he was smirking when he came down to disaster-prone
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• Florida at the end of hurricane season and broke out both a Disaster (180 boardslide) and a Hurricane (180 to fakie feeble grind, 180 out) in his Finals runs at the
• PlayStation Pro. He’s also known for his signature trick, the Shecklair, in which he boosts a huge Indy kickflip over a 45 degree hip, grabbing the toe-side of his board across the front of his body and stretching his legs straight out in front of him like he’s doing some kind of yoga. Smart-ass. 
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• Caballaerial
• Sheckler’s paying respect to Steve Caballero every time he throws a fakie 360 or fakie 180 (half-Cab) in one of his runs, and even competed against the legend himself in the Toyota Challenge Prelims in San Jose. At PlayStation Pro, Sheckler mixed it up by throwing a boardslide into the middle of the dizzy mix.
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• K-Grind
• Eric Koston gets naming rights on this one, part nose slide and part front-truck grind, also known as a Crooked Grind.
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• Willy Grind
• Wipe that dirty, painful thought from your mind – though this off-kilter front-truck grind made famous by Willy Santos rides a fine line on the rail between highlight reel and slam section showpiece.
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• McTwist
• Mike McGill set the gold standard back in 1984, spinning the first inverted 540s – one and a half rotations – on a vert ramp. Still a feature of nearly every winning run in pro vert skateboarding, even in the era of 720s and 900s. The 900 is sometimes called a McHawk, honoring both McGill and a certain somebody who added an extra 360 to his McTwist in 1999.
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• Lien Air
• That’s Neil spelled backwards, after Neil Blender, the first man to counter-intuitively combine a frontside air and a backside grab.
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• Christ Air
• An oldie but a goody, especially when performed in an inverted position. Named for Christian Hosoi and some other famous dude, this air features the rider yanking his board out and holding a crucifixion position in mid-air. Danny Way reached for the heavens at X Games 11, launching a Christ air more than 25 feet above the Mega Ramp as Hosoi looked on and tried not to be blinded by the sun.
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• Burntwist
• When Bob Burnquist is on the ramp, it can sometimes be hard to tell what’s happening – was that a one-footed grind? – even with slo-mo replays. Burnquist’s signature move is an Eggplant revert, meaning he does a 180 to one-handed invert on the coping, planting his front hand and grabbing the toe-side edge of his board with his rear hand, then, just as the board makes contact with the ramp, he spins another 180 (a revert) as he reenters.
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• Gnar Jar
• This one should probably be called the Sandro Stomp, because Sandro Dias is the only man alive spinning 540s to tail, a trick that literally jars his body and makes a loud cracking sound as he interrupts his spin by slapping the tail of his skateboard on the metal coping just before he reenters the ramp.
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• Lasek Surgery
• Okay, we admit it. We just made this name up. We got tired of saying “heelflip frontside gay twist” every time Bucky Lasek pulls this signature move. The root of this trick is similar to a Caballaerial, only Steve Caballero never grabbed his board when he spun fakie 360s. The grab makes this trick somehow less heterosexual, apparently.
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• Whitewash – When Shaun White finally lands his 1080, he can call it anything he wants. For now, it’s a wash.