The Beyond Sun - New York I May 2013

Released in early 2014, The Beyond Sun was a project that consisted of a skate video and a newspaper-inspired magazine. The aesthetics of a newspaper played a heavy role when brainstorming the name for the project, and we even had three microfilms produced of the magazine.

The Beyond Sun was filmed across several cities in Finland, as well as abroad in Barcelona, New York, and Copenhagen. In May 2013, exactly 13 years ago, we took a filming trip to New York. For many of us, it was our first time in the United States, which gave the trip its own special, great vibe. The crew consisted of Olli, Ville, Pekka, and Samuli. By coincidence, Samu happened to be on vacation in New York at the same time and joined our group.

We stayed on 116th Street in Spanish Harlem, located in the northern part of Manhattan. For the first few days, the neighborhood felt a bit intense for us Finnish boys from small towns, but the tension quickly faded, and the area even started to feel a bit cozy.

During the trip, we realized that Manhattan’s Street–Avenue grid map is a remarkably clear and ingenious system. Ahead of the trip, we had tried our best to scout out spot locations. Ville had used Google Street View and satellite imagery to do some research, spending a good chunk of time exploring the streets of New York even before we arrived. This prep work paid off big time, and we managed to find pretty much every spot we wanted to visit.

Getting to some of the spots required traveling for several hours using various modes of New York's public transit. Most of the filmed footage ended up in The Beyond Sun video, but we also made a separate edit from the trip called "Dollarin Pizza." The video was named after our diet during the filming trip. "Dollarin Pizza" even made it into the legendary Quartersnacks Best New York Clips of the Year feature. The Beyond Sun video also gained international recognition when it was featured in the news by Hypebeast.

Beyond Store - 20 years of keepin' it O.K.