Watch: Brixton’s New ‘50WT Monument Valley’
For a few years now, Brixton has taken their team - who happen to be pretty good friends of ours - on a thousand-mile motor/skate/surf trip.
50wt Monument Valley is the newest in Brixton’s 50wt film series wherein roadtrips are documented. But not just any roadtrip, a very special kind of road trip. In this iteration, a journey over more than a thousand of Arizona and Monument Valley’s miles were traversed by skaters, surfers, friends and artists, not on horseback or skate deck, but on motorcycle and all sorts of antique vehicle. It is a beautiful trek made even more so by the dazzling filmmaking and cinematic approach to a documentary narrative, and a fascinating film made even more so by the personalities of those who made the journey. Among them, Scotty Stopnik, Matty Matheson (love me some alliteration), Ryan Townley, Bobby Forrest, Max Schaff, Colin Provost, and so many more. Days and days of riding, skating, hanging, and everything in between. 50 Weight Monument Valley, a film by Mark Kirkland is finally here.
Who knew Arizona had good spots? Well, everyone knows they have good spots. If you skate, you look at Arizona the way that Arizonan skaters look at New York or LA; grass is always greener. I guess not really in Arizona, though, because they don’t have much grass. More sand and soil, some snakes, some spiders, and the entire Brixton team. Alright let me give this another try. Who knew Arizona had surfing? I sure as shit did not, and seeing them rip up a wave pool in the middle of an arid dessert was not something that I was prepared for. Watching Austin Heilman do tricks over a motorcycle: yeah I saw that coming. Watching an unknown number of Stopnik brothers do cut backs and nose rides juxtaposed with 16mm shots of native cacti: no, that one caught me by pleasant surprise.
As Matty Matheson put it in the film when his tire was blown out somewhere in Sedona, ‘it’s not about how nice your knife is, it’s how you handle it.’ We couldn’t agree more. Brixton’s knife (the team and the vintage pieces they come storming through town on) are not the sleek types that Vin Diesel might ride in on in what I’m sure is an impending Fast and Furious 12: Family Ties, but it is handled with such grace, love, and precision, that it gets the job done. And if I can mix that metaphor even further, I put forth that Mark Kirkland took the dirt and grime and antlers and heat and dust and turned it all into something amazing - something beautiful, and a pleasure of a picture to watch.
Every tour video since 411v back in 1890 or whenever VHS-home-subscriptions began has come with some shitty sales copy that reads something like, ‘it makes you wish you were there on tour with them!’ and like, yeah, man, duh. Of course I wish I were on tour with the Bones team staying at lavish hotels and eating prime rib at the buffet someone else’ dime. The beauty of 50wt Monument Valley, and all of the 50wt series for that matter, is that they are sleeping in the trunks of their cars and fixing broken down tires and coughing out road dust - the ancient and cosmic debris of some of Earth’s most inhospitable and alluring terrain - and it makes me wish I were there. It makes me wish I were out there getting stung by scorpions and laughing about it with friends who know me, and whom will gladly pull that stinger out so we can get back on the fucking road. A beautiful sight. A beautiful feeling. Please, please invite me on the next one.
