“What if, I mean to say, Greg Hunt succeeded?” asks the author Kyle Beachy. “Suppose Hunt managed to make a movie that conveyed Dylan Rieder as he was. Suppose that, by knowing his friend so well, and going out shooting with him and editing that footage and presenting it as he did, Hunt achieved that most impossible thing—gave us a way of knowing another person without ever meeting him. Suppose he successfully captured style, and suppose that style was, as Cocteau had it, his soul.”

In a heartfelt essay on the life and legacy of Dylan Rieder, Kyle Beachy looks at style, skateboarding and how skateboarders get to know those they spend so much time watching and admiring from a distance.

Edited and produced by Farran Golding

A version of this story was originally published as ‘The Dylan Period’ (2020) excerpted from the book The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches From A Skateboard Life (© 2021 by Kyle Beachy), reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing, all rights reserved

Portrait of Dylan Rieder by Anthony Acosta. Read the written version of this story which features Acosta’s archives of Rieder at https://skatebylines.com/2025/05/26/dylan-rieder-style-was-his-soul/

Timestamps:

00:00 — Introduction
1:51 — I: Above and Beneath the Rest
10:15 — II: Signature
15:20 — III: Essence
20:43 — IV: Better Days
28:00 — V: A League of His Own
36:15 — VI: Style Was His Soul
42:26 — VII: Time Does Not Heal All Wounds