The Commons

Jake Randazzo’s new project “Soak It In” is jam packed with heavy hitting tricks and NBD’s. Egg (@klickstein) spoke with Jake (@jacr3w) to chat about the project, parkour traveling, college diving, and more. Enjoy!

Egg: To start things off I’d love to here about the origins of this project. What first got you filming for it?

Jake: I’ve been wanting to do a solo project for a long time. I kept trying to start and save clips, but I was never super happy with any of the clips I got. I kept writing down notes of what I wanted the video to be like, and then changing it. I never had a clear idea. And then at Discourse jam 2022 we went to the UCLA spot, and I did the kong front pre. I was like, “Okay, now I have a clip. Now I can start going.” So that was what kicked it off.

Egg: So it had been on your mind for a while, but it really took that one clip for you to really feel like it was time?  

Jake Randazzo Self Portrait

Jake: Yeah, I had been getting clips, but hadn’t really felt like I had done anything worth saving. That one definitely felt worth keeping. 

Egg: Touching on the theme a bit, what would say this video is about other than it being a collection of hard ass clips?

Jake: I mean, I kind of got the theme from starting college. I started filming at the end of my freshman year, and I felt like I was growing up way too fast. So the theme was about enjoying the moment while it’s here. I feel like the clips don’t portray that as well as I would like, but I see it in the travel stuff, it’s all good times. 

Egg: I was gonna ask specifically about the traveling, because I think to me that felt like a pretty core element of the video. What feels different about training and filming while traveling?

Jake: Traveling for events and stuff is like a mini version of the general filming process of the video. You’re trying to fit as much stuff in the trip as you can, and it feels like it’s all going by so fast. The nice thing about traveling is you’re with a whole bunch of new people, you have a whole bunch of new spots, you feel super motivated. It’s so easy to get the ball rolling on clips. It feels so satisfying coming away from a trip with like, six good clips. 

Egg: Do you feel like you carried that energy with you to when you’d return home?

Jake: Yeah, I feel like traveling and training with so many different people, it’s so inspiring. You keep that energy with you for a while, keep that inspiration. You want to keep it going. So especially when you’re looking back at it and going through all your old footage, it’s such a nice feeling that helps so much. When you’re grinding for stuff and you haven’t gotten a good clip in a while, it keeps you going. 

Egg: I think for me, it helps me escape my kind of tunnel vision around having specific goals. Fresh spots you’ve never seen, fresh inspiration. 

Jake: Probably half of my clips are travel clips. The majority of them aren’t like, “Okay, I have this idea I’m gonna go hit at a spot near me.” Most of it’s like, on the fly with new people. I had a whole list of things I wanted to do for the video. Most of it I didn’t do. Most of it was just spontaneous ideas and stuff, which I’m really happy about.

Egg: If I were to guess, I would say that maybe the Gaet dub full was one of the things on that list. Is that true? 

Jake: The gate dub full was definitely one of the things on that list I went to. I tried to find a spot for that trick for so long. For some reason it’s so difficult even though you just need a corner and some height, but I couldn’t find a good spot for that. I found one in Southern California that was kind of okay, and I got close. And then when I went to Sweden, we went to Elis’s parkour park, and I was trying it there and I fucked up my knee really bad right before going to Kipa. Luckily it didn’t affect my training too much, but it super demotivating, because I tried probably 20 times that day. And then when I was getting close to wrapping up the video we had a family trip to Mexico. I randomly found a spot at the hotel that was perfect for it. I prepped one and then hit it like second try. It felt so good to finally get it, and then I did like three more after because I wanted to get a good angle.

Egg:  It’s always such a good feeling to accomplish a goal and enjoy it so much that you want to just keep doing it.

Jake: That trick was such a grind, so many sessions training and drilling it, trying to get it lower, and then finally finding the perfect place to get it.

Egg:What were some other ones that were on that list?

Jake: Quad cork was on there. Quad full was on there. Trip cork flat, I had it in mind but I didn’t really plan on doing it, I just felt really good one day and eventually managed to land it. The other one, that was the main one that I looked at before going to Sweden, was the kong pre to kong gainer., I wanted to hit that combo so bad. It was so terrifying. And then Ellis prepped the kong gainer and made it look so easy. I was like “if he can do it first try and make it look that easy, then maybe I could do it.” And then I broke my rib on the bail, and three tries later I landed it. 

Egg: Was it on the one where you clipped your feet? 

Jake: No, my hips were just way too high so I couldn’t rotate. 

Egg: Did you think you had fucked up something that bad in the moment? Super wild to break a rib and then keep trying until you stomp it. 

Jake: I knew that I fucked something up because I landed so high on my arm, I thought I had messed something up with my collarbone or my shoulder or something like that. I wasn’t going to be back in the states for another three weeks after that. So I was like “it doesn’t feel the worst. I’ll go figure out later.”  I did the cast full down maybe a week after I broke my rib, so it wasn’t bothering me that bad. Once I finally got back homeI got an x-ray just make sure it was fine. The doctor was like, “yeah, so you broke your rib, but it’s healing. When you break a rip that high that the worry is that it punctures an organ, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. So I was like “sweet, I’m alive.” 

Egg: Getting a little more into the movement, I’m really interested in what motivates you’re taste in trick selection. I feel like you have a pretty unique set of tricks. Some of it feels somewhat dodo inspired, hard tricks done clean. Then some of your movement is a lot more creative. It’s still definitely building off of that hard trick foundation, but I think there’s a little more emphasis on placing them in compelling spots. It feels like you have a wide range of things that seem to grab your interest. How would you describe what excites you in movement?

Jake: Most of my like, my creativity I think comes from pretty basic vertical trick variations. So like, full up, full down, safety, stuff like that. That’s what I like best. That stuff is super interesting to me, and super fun to tack on to new skills. I think it’s mostly just some power with a little bit of variation that you wouldn’t typically see. I think there’s a lot of creative room when it comes to taking big tricks and altering them. A lot of people will have some basic tricks and then go super creative with those, and a lot of people have some super hard tricks and just get harder and harder with those. But I really like tricks in the pretty hard range where I have the trick easy enough to start messing with it. I think those tricks are super interesting to me. 

Egg: Yeah, I definitely see that in your movement. One that really stuck out to me was the touchdown a twist, touchdown twist at Hart Park, The focus there is more technical than trying to do, like, a touchdown triple or something like that. It also has a little bit more emphasis on space, with the dimensions of a specific spot playing more into a trick.

Jake: I feel like a lot of people with my skill set wouldn’t usually jump at the opportunity to use that specific part of the spot. I feel like there’s a lot of people who have super creative flowy styles who would see that slant and get super excited about that, and they’d have super different ideas than me. I can’t really punch rod three on something like that, but I can do the vertical tricks, for sure. 

Egg: Was that a trick you’ve had in mind for a while? 

Jake: I had done that trick on different setups before. I just I really like gyros and touchdown twists and stuff like that. Those are super fun to me. I was trying to figure something out with that little slant. The spacing just felt perfect for a touchdown twist so I got super excited.

Egg: I’d love to hear a bit about your line building process. In the longer line compositions that are in the video, you kind of consistently never have extra steps. That seems like a pretty foundational thing for you. You seem to fill up the negative space in a spot particularly well, like with the round off Arabian to lazy side. 

Jake: Whenever it comes to any line building, if it’s competition lines or street lines or whatever, I try to focus on having either no steps or as few steps as possible. I think it really works sometimes, but I I also find that it can be limiting my mindset while building a line. I’ll have some cool movements in mind, but I can’t get from here to there without taking two extra steps, so I won’t do it. So I’m trying to break that habit a little bit. But I think definitely, when you can execute it, it makes for such a more interesting and cohesive line. 

Egg: So you’d say for you a lot of the time you’ve got the key features of your line and then the second step is figuring out how to fill the space between?

Jake: Yeah, usually I start with something that I find interesting, or maybe two things that I find interesting and I’ll fill in movements that can be done from that landing position. “Okay, where can I go from here? What’s comfortable to do from here that will get me set up for something else?” For example with the lazy gainer to safety line, I wanted to hop back up on the ledge, but it felt weird just konging up from the safety. So I added the scoot to a twist thing, then pop up. It just felt more fluid.

Egg: I have a pretty hard time discerning how difficult certain clips are for you. Watching this video I’d kind of just judge it off of how stoked you seemed. I’m curious what the standout moments were for you. What were the hardest pushes?

Jake: There’s some things that were harder pushes than I expected them to be. Like the touchdown a twist, touchdown twist for some reason took a lot of tries. I kept over rotating the flip or kept under rotating the twist. But once I figured it out I could do it over and over. Also the line on the steps at the very beginning is a pretty chill line, but it just took attempt after attempt for me. Some days are just like that. Probably the hardest thing, effort wise, was the kong pre kong gainer and the gate double full. Those are two that were super hard. 

Egg: I’m thinking more about what you said earlier about your interest in variating more conventional difficult tricks, and it has me curious about wether sometimes the hardest part is just finding the right spot for some of your ideas? Like is there sometimes a big gap for you between learning a trick in the gym and finding somewhere to do it?

Jake: It’s so different than being able to build a set up in a gym and figuring the trick out. I had the same issue with the outward 270 popcast side thing that I did at Kipa. I had been doing that trick for months at that point in gyms every once in a while, and it wasn’t that hard, but I just couldn’t find a ledge that felt comfortable for it. There’s a lot of that where it’s like, “okay, I have the idea. I can do the idea. I just don’t have somewhere to do the idea.” That’s why a lot of the tricks that were still on my list didn’t end up getting done, just because I didn’t have somewhere to do them. I don’t know if you have seen this on Instagram, but I did like touchdown a twist two hand touchdown popcast a long time ago, and I really wanted to find the spot to do that as my Ender. But there was nowhere that was like the right distance and the right height. So that’s another one that is still on the list.

Jake hitting a dive wallspin

Egg: I definitely relate to that. Especially with crafting setups in the gym. I feel like the setup isn’t that unique, like, but once I try to find a spot I realize that slight changes in dimension can make it so much harder than it needs to be. Do you have a notes app list of a bunch of tricks to try? 

Jake: Yeah, I have multiple notes app lists. One of tricks I’ve never tried and want to try, one that’s tricks that I’ve done in the gym and I need a spot for, and then one that’s tricks that I could do outside and have a spot for, but just haven’t done. Like kong to suicide roll. There’s a spot in San Francisco that’s perfect for it, but I’ve just been procrastinating going and doing it.

Egg: I kind of figured that was the case. Your movement style made me feel like you’ve got an extensive notes app.

Jake: That part is one of the most fun parts of moving for me. Figuring out the ideas and making them work. Once you do that process in the gym, it’s like a whole other process to bring it outside at the right place. No one really likes the gym videos as much anymore. So you kind of have to do it outside.

Egg: Pretty random question, but there’s this clip in the video where you’re sitting and you’re kind of acting out the motions of the trick you’re about to do. Is that something you do frequently as a part of your prep process?

Jake: Yeah, I definitely do that a lot. Kind of miming through the motions. Another thing that I do, that I don’t think anybody else does, is that I do sound effects for lines or tricks with specific timing. I’m sure if you had the audio from right before the clips that I did, it would just be me making all these little noises playing through the rhythm. 

Egg: Super interesting. I’ve seen a lot of pre-movement tics of like like adjusting your shirt but I feel like what you’re describing feels a little more like an actual prep. I feel like having that kind of auditory rhythm going sounds helpful. 

Jake: Yeah, I also think it like comes from my dance background because that’s how they would like sound out the movements when I was learning a routine. I think I just brought it over from that.

Egg: I didn’t know you had a dance background. What style of dance did you do? 

Jake: I started with hip hop and break dancing when I was like eight or something, and then did that probably until freshman year of high school. Then I transferred over to parkour. I learned front flip and back flip for breakdancing, and I was like “this is sick. I’m just gonna keep doing this”

Egg: On the note of other interests, I’m pretty curious about what it’s like juggling parkour training with being a college diver. 

Jake: I don’t train as much in season as I would like, but since I’m still training flips and lifting, I get stronger during my diving season. When I get back to parkour, my body feels good. It just takes me a minute to adjust and get back in the groove, but it definitely feels good. It doesn’t feel like it slows my training at all. It just a quick pause. A little bit of cross training, and we’re back. 

Egg: Do you feel like these two activities satisfy a similar thing for you, or do you get different things out of diving or parkour?

Jake: I think diving lacks the creative aspect for me that I get in parkour. But I put so much more pressure on myself for parkour than for diving. Like it’s a much more relaxed time for me, especially because it’s no impact. It’s just sitting in the sun that, hoping in the pool. 

Egg: Something I find interesting about that is that with college diving you’re a part of a team, and in theory there’s more riding on your performance than going out and trying to get a clip. That doesn’t get to you in the same way?

Jake: Not really. I feel like diving competitions feel the same as parkour competitions where you’re all just trying to do your best, and you’re all just cheering each other on. Like its just one big family in a way. Everyone just wants you to hit your dives. Nobody is super competitive about it especially in d3 because nothing’s really riding on it. We’re all doing it for fun.

Egg: You were describing it as feeling like a bit of a break, kind of relaxing. Do you feel like a it can be kind of helpful coming back to training with a bit of a mental reset?

One of Jake's photos from his travels

Jake: Yeah definitely. There’s also a tricking gym near me, so I’ll go just train on the air track and stuff. I’m not worried about line building and stuff, which is where I usually put my emphasis in my brain. I feel like I need to make good lines, because that’s what I’m good at, but during my season I don’t have to worry about all that. I can just train tricks in mats and water and when I’m back to parkour I feel strong and have some new tricks. I think its really helpful to variate from the thing you’re focusing on, and move into a totally different aspect. It will help your parkour training and increase your athleticism. I think that’s what kept me going parkour for so long. When I can’t do a trick I’m like, “Okay, I don’t need to do the trick. I’ll do a different trick.” 

Egg: That’s huge. I feel like that’s another thing that makes your movement kind of stand out to me compared to other people who have a hard trick dominant style. I see a lot of people who move that way get pretty hyper fixated on linear progression. I think it is really crucial to be able to just move on to something else.

Jake: Yeah, I’m sure that approach works and is rewarding for some people, but when im struggling with a trick I’ll just leave it for later, and I’ll come back to it someday when I’m closer to it. I still get the skill. It just takes a little while. I got quad eventually. Even though I trained it super intermittently for like four years, I got around to it. 

Egg: I only have one last question for about the project. I’d love to hear a bit about the animations. I just thought that was a really nice touch. It added a lot of character to the video. I noticed in the credits that there’s a name listed that I’m like, assuming is your your sibling,

Jake: Yeah Sophie’s my little sister. She’s five years younger than me, and she draws every now and then. She’s pretty good at it. I’m not good at drawing whatsoever. I feel like I can animate because I can trace and move stuff around, but when it comes to drawing from scratch, I’m just super bad at that. So I just had her do like six or eight different logo designs for the Soak It In logo. That was all her. I just made the thing squiggly. 

Egg: Hell, yeah. I really liked some of the ones placed within clips.

Jake: I’m happy. I took an animation class in high school, and I thought it would be a fun addition to the video. 

Egg: Was there any other things you want to note about the video before we close off?

Jake: I don’t think so. I’m just happy it’s finally going to be out. There’s a few clips that I know are world’s firsts, so I’ve just been praying that no one else lands it before it releases.