Skate Update: Here, There and Down Under

Lau Willems' rise to skate stardom has been undeniably meteoric. First coming to prominence with exceptionally stylish (and difficult!) manny combos at her local park, sponsorship from There Skateboards and adidas soon followed, with viral moments regularly peppering our Instagram feeds.

And while the park clips she regularly drops are more than worthy of the celebration they receive, it's great to see her putting out another traditional part of legit street; there really is something all the more satisfying about watching tricks on obstacles that were never meant to be skated in the first place.

Hosted by Thrasher for There, this is an intercontinental affair that showcases the deft balancing we've come to expect, alongside a host of gnarlier manoeuvres that complement her trademark manuals and ledge tech. And the ender? My goodness. If that doesn't have you picking your jaw up off the floor, we don't know what will!

Whilst we all wait for the inevitable European Running Numbers edit to drop (and trust us, we are waiting, having filmed poached angles of more than one trick we'd really like to share!), New Balance have kept our appetite whetted with the release of Southerly, featuring their squad of legends on a recent Antipodean outing.

The thing is, everyone knows what to expect when you see the roll call of Foy, Reynolds, Aimu et al. These skaters are rightly held up as among the greatest in the world, so you're fully aware the skating is going to be exceptional. And with Kyle Camarillo behind the lens? Of course the edit is every bit as perfect. So what are we wittering on about when you could ignore all this and just click play? We honestly don't know!

But there's an inevitable expectation of three paragraphs of hype-building commentary, so we're dutifully ticking that box as we type (and getting rather meta with it, we might add). And at this point, we reckon we've done just about enough, so we invite you to stop reading this incessant ramble and do what you should have been doing all along: go watch the clip!

When Mike Arnold's Alfresco part for Skate Cafe dropped in the summer of 2015, the skate world sat up and took notice. This gentle giant from Bristol brought a lightness of touch that seemed almost unfathomably incongruous with his imposing stature, yet his natural ability was undeniable. This was a lad who was going places.

Fast-forward a decade and, through countless Atlantic Drift appearances and a short stint on Harmony Korine's much-maligned EDGLRD, his career has gone from strength to strength – despite a few years where an almost unhealthy obsession with hippy jumps threatened to derail that early promise!

Joined by the ever-magnificent Pocket Skate Mag for the latest instalment of their Followed series, we get to spend a day in Mike's company as he talks us through his latest shoe, wallies a ski at Lloyds and performs multiple dives into the beautiful Henleaze Lake. What better way to while away a Bristolian summer's day than that?