frozen in carbonite

we have moved.

2009-11-15T19:29:00.003-05:00

On March 28, 1984, in the middle of the night, the Colts bolted snowy Baltimore for greener pastures in Indianapolis. (Lloyd Pearson - AP)

http://frozenincarbonite.wordpress.com

ps. this site will continue to exist

you see, pimpin' is big business

2009-11-14T22:13:00.013-05:00

and it's been going on since the beginning of time
and it's gonna continue straight ahead
until somebody out there turns out the lights on this small planet

I found the above in the library the other day. Trip the fuck out. It basically functions as an addendum or corollary to my previous post about the World box set. Clyde brings to light some of the same points, especially with regard to Rocco. However, I do have a couple [Popeye's chicken] bones to pick here. First, not including The Creeper among the list of elite Nineties graphic design dudes.
Come on now.
In addition, including the almost universally-maligned Lick in any list of elite Nineties videos surprised the fuck out of me, but if he's co-signing the XYZ vid and Uno it kind of makes sense from the persective of Mr. Singleton's un-edited mindstate. However, when combined with listing Alphonzo Rawls as one of the elite talents of the whole decade, that seemingly left-field choice caused me to draw the following conclusion: Alphonzo Rawls is underrated as fuck. I would also go so far as to say the following:
Alphonzo Rawls was The Black Danny Way.
The dude was one of five or so people in the whole world that could pull legitimately cool, progressive shit on both vert and street. Alf, however, displayed a much more palatable delivery than Way's trademark "mechanized Aryan super-soldier" style.

Maybe an "In Defense of Lick" post lurks somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind. That might be too challenging of a thesis, though. Here's my deal: Lick will always have mad personal nostalgia value because it was the first video that my friend acquired after we all started "going hard" at skating. Consequently, we hung out at curbs all day in the middle of the summer and tried to find as many 2 cm ledges down stairs as possible. This was before kids started using the term "hubba," so I think we called them "jibs" or some shit. However, much to my dismay, Lick's ponderous length, cliche security guard encounters, preponderance of helmet footage (mostly filmed at a Mezozoic-era version of the Berrics known as the Powell SkateZone), not-very-memorable skating, and questionable music supervision* have relegated it to the shitcan of history--even moreso that its philosophical counterparts Da Deal is Dead and Whatever. Indeed, if I remember correctly, the dudes in Lick sported a pastel-colored pant for each of the pastel-colored test pattern bars on the box cover. I could probably write a dissertation solely about the pants of Lick. Consider, if you will, Misha Gundman; in addition to skating to some kind of wacky Swedish rock 'n roll (I thought Sweden only produced death metal?!), one could probably fabricate two additional garments from the cuffs of his pants alone. All this didn't matter to us, though, because, in essence, we were just fuckin' psyched on how exponentially beyond what we were doing the skating was.

Like Alf's part. Funny thing--in the Next days, he was essentially on the same level as both Way and his bro Koston. Unfortunately, by the end of the decade he had become just another 16-stair f/s boardslide dude. Back then, however, It seemed like Alf and Koston were both spawned in some grassland Southern California commune where all those wacky H-Street multi-spine Frankenstein ramps popped up. At least, that was how they existed in the ol' Theatre of the Mind. Furthermore, Alf's pro models sported some of the coolest album-cover rip-off graphics ever:

hard as fuck

And this--well this is really just too cute (image from skateandannoy.com):

His part in Lick, in addition to containing a line at that indoor basketball court ledge that went around in a complete circle (bro) and a caballerial back-foot flip and that Marc Johnson trick from that Chocolate commercial sixteen years ago on vert, features an early Nineties hip-hop classic from Positive K that may or may not have been ghost-written by Grand Puba or Big Daddy Kane or one of those fuckin' guys.

Skate videos and hip-hop videos from this era had a lot in common (click to enlarge below Venn diagram). I spent countless hours watching both. They both were intensely intimidating, yet simultaneously attractive as fuck, portraying a world I would have given my left arm to have been a part of. Looking back, though, they both seem more than a little goofy--just some bros filming their bros on some bro-cam shit.**

The tune, "Night Shift," is a gripping tale of how a gentleman--in this case, Positive K himself--uses his interpersonal skills to persuade young ladies to join the ranks of the world's oldest profession. Not only does he persuade them to make this vocational decision, but, as you can see from the video, they deliver to him their gross earnings on a handsome wooden table. Said table is indeed a fine piece of furniture, despite being fabricated by someone other than Anthony Popparlardo. Seriously, I also like how all the girls in this video, and in videos in the early Nineties in general, dressed like they were going to an interview at a law firm or some shit. That's class, baby.

Another classy, timeless, transcendent element to "Night Shift" is the following life lesson from Big Daddy Kane:

Man, you got to work your women by the scale
I mean, if she skinny, make her bring you home a good penny
And if she fat, make her pay like she weight.

Seriously, if Lick was The Outsiders, then that would be the Robert Frost poem right there.

*notable exception: "Releasing Hypotical Gasses" by Organized Konfusion, which I only realized was cool when I became a college radio hip-hop backpacker years later. And the Tribute version of "I Don't Know" at least five months before VR (I seriously just now realized that. I don't know why that didn't register the first time I saw VR; perhaps that particular facet of my skate nerdery had not yet developed). And "Don't Stop "Til You Get Enough." Come to think of it, the music supervision wasn't that bad. Alice in Chains was kind of an inspired choice, but I would have chosen something from Jar of Flies. In all honesty, I am shocked that no one has used "I Stay Away in a video part yet. You wanna talk about a record that transports one on a journey through time and space? Fuck. New AIC record is decent btw

**which makes Hype Willams the Ty Evans of hip-hop videography

Greed is Good. Greed Works.

2009-10-10T22:46:00.009-04:00

The end of summer. A time for reflection. A time to break down to its essential components that which is truly important. A time to pull out one's favorite sweater on the first day that it's cold enough to wear a sweater and not be looked at as some kind of weirdo.As usual, much of my reflection centered around pre-2000 World Industries. Two very specific events precipitated this: First, the release of Disposable: A Skateboard Bible. Subsequent to that, my long-awaited purchase of and immersion in the World Industries Complete Video Collection 1989-1996. I did not, alas, purchase Disposable 2. I pulled that move where you read the book in three minutes in Barnes and Noble. One night my friend Sam read a whole Bukowski book there. How the fuck do they stay in business. ANYWAY, Disposable 2 focuses on more 1960's/1970's decks this time around, without much of the narrative that made Disposable 1 so critical. However, it does feature about three pages of world/blind/plan b/101 decks that were absent from the first book, including this "Kareemsicle" graphic, a piece that holds particular meaning for me because I specifically remember asking the guy at my local shop if there were any controversial World boards in the back. I seriously doubt that is what I said verbatim, but you know what I mean. In addition, the gentleman also brought out a Henry Sanchez board with a Daniel Dunphee graphic that looked very similar to this:

I ended up setting up the Sanchez board, taking it to Israel and skating the Tel Aviv park. I think I simply kicked it down to my friend when it wore down to the nub. As one would imagine, this graphics retains a great deal of sentimental value, elevating it to "holy grail" status. I'll look on eBay every few months, but I've pretty much given up hope of every tracking it down on the "NOS" circuit. I was reminded of this during the bonus footage in the world box set, in which York, Karl Watson, and Shamil skate some marble benches in and around some BART station with crisp new world/blind boards--the Rudy Johnson "sparkplug graphic, for example-- that they undoubtedly focused or sold to some french tourist after skating it for three days or some shit.
Disposable, indeed.

I felt a certain apprehension taking the above photo of the kareemsicle board in B&N--kind of like that scene in Wall Street in which Charlie Sheen pretends to be a maintenance dude and scans a shitload of inside information with that "hand scanner" device--

--a peripheral that probably cost something like 3K back then in the late Eighties. Speaking of Wall Street, a particular piece of news about said film also punctuated the end of this summer: a possible sequel that allegedly will do to hedge fund managers who live in Darien, Connecticut what the original did for insider trading corporate raider motherfuckers that summer in the Hamptons. This is usually when I would descend into some elaborate Gekko/Rocco analogy, but I don't think it apt this time around. Granted, both displayed an astounding level of unorthodox business acumen and were vilified by colleagues for said practices, but Gekko's mind lacked an actual philosophy besides "greed is good." Rocco didn't buy out Foundation and liquidate Tod Swank's office equipment or some shit like that; he simply acquired his most valuable, most progressive am and published a hilarious ad about said acquisition. Along with a gallery of equally ridiculous ads, the Rocco philosophy is encapsulated on three video discs in the World box set. As for the commentary, Rocco himself and Rodney Mullen do the honors for Rubbish Heap, mainly giggling to themselves and muttering "What the fuck happened to that guy?"

Clyde Singleton, however, hits a home run with his commentary on 20 Shot Sequence. In true trip-the-fuck-out fashion, this career highlight reminded me of another end-of-summer ritual: COLLEGE. First year, I happened to meet the only young lady in my class who, for lack of a more effective term, was "down" with the skate scene and all that entailed at the time. If I recall, she had kicked it with Ethan Fowler and the Menace dudes (not at the same time, that would have been a crazy one though) the previous summer. One evening, we went to some hip-hop club on Canal St.; the only song I can recall them playing was this. I think they played it for like half an hour straight. ANYWAY, at one point she tapped me on the shoulder:
"You see that guy right there?"
"Yeah."
"That's that dude Clyde Singleton."
Trip the fuck out. As I recall, he was shorter than I thought he would be. I later ran into him at Astor Place, where he attempted to acquire cigarettes and aggressively sell product, as was the norm.

So once again, life moves in fuckin' circles, bro--14 years later, I sit down on my coach and trip out on Mr. Singleton's uproarious yet concise and insightful commentary regarding Henry Sanchez ("the Mexican Terrell Owens"), Lavar ("well on his way to smoking too much weed and ruining his career"), and Maurice Key ("hustling before dudes even knew what a hustle was").

In his reflection on Gino and Kareem's parts, though, Singleton deconstructs the mid-Nineties aesthetic down to its lifeblood: looking cool on a skateboard. What else is there? That's what it's all about, right? "It should be against the law to look that cool on a skateboard," he proclaims as Gino b/s nollie fakie nose manuals at Wallenberg. As Kareem's ("Don Cornelius on a skateboard") part kicks off, Singleton lets us know we are in for "some cool shit." For all Kareem's sketchy business dealings, his part in 20 Shot embodies what made the Nineties so fucking cool. A certain way of doing things. Procedural knowledge. But from where does this knowledge originate?

Maybe it all boils down to influences. I remember some Tim O'Connor interview where he states that "kids today" are how they are, style-wise, because of the influences that they have. It is what it is, nosegrind tailgrabs and b/s nollie bigspins* and all. Indeed, the dudes that one looks up to when one starts skating are one's most essential stylistic influences; to this day I can't for the life of me shed that almost-falling-off straight-legged style that Kareem and Clyde utilized. Stripes on a tiger.

Along those lines, Kareem and the other LA dudes became what they became because they learned, through practice and osmosis, from the coolest possible influences. When they started, everyone idolized Hosoi and the Venice dudes. Those fine gentlemen invented looking cool on a skateboard and synergized skating with the "fast life" of clubs, women, and everything that entails. When Shiloh and Kareem and the eventual roster of World/Blind/101 first started killing it, who was killing it the most? Jason Lee, the dude that made street skating look cool while concurrently progressing hard as fuck. The best possible influences. World/Menace/Blind/101 as a Nineties hip-hop-influenced Hosoi.

Shiloh himself, along with Richard Mulder, provides commentary to Love Child and New World Order. and also elucidates one of the critical components of the Rocco philosophy. During the Love Child credits, when Jovantae's fakie 360 flip manual revert comes up in slow motion, Socrates mentions that, in the process of filming it, he was unaware that Turner was going to 180 out. Shiloh then cites said seemingly unconscious move as an example of the "fluid," improvisational nature of skating. Taking a fuckup and turning it into something cool through some kind of nebulous unconscious process.

On some Steve Vai type shit. A dude like Steve Vai doesn't plan a solo; he just does it. Along those lines, Clyde also specifically goes into his process during one of his improvised lines in 20 Shot--the process of not knowing what one is going to do next. That is one facet of what makes this genre of skating so much fun.**

Even though former Rocco employees Jason Lee and Pastras created an organization with the mission statement [insert Dennis Hopper voice] "Skating is like JAZZ, MAN!! It's FREE-FORM!!", Stereo was more about appropriating the Blue Note album cover aesthetic than applying Coltranian principles to skating. Rocco facilitated actual free-form improvisation.

*I concur; in general, it's kind of a half-assed trick. Can be cool on transition though, or if your name is Mark Appleyard. For the most part, though, b/s nollie bigspins are to nollie bigspin heels as varial flips are to 360 flips.

**The "making of a line" bonus feature, documenting Daewon's 15-trick line at the beginning of his Love Child part, convinced me that Daewon is AT LEAST in the conversation of best skater ever. If he were a guitar player he would be Steve Vai--a dude with an encyclopedic body of work that's been so ahead of everyone for so long that everyone takes it for granted. Not sure who Clyde would be; at first I thought Vernon Reid but that's too obvious. The dude from 24-7 Spyz? Help me out here...

A Short Interview with Jason Dill

2009-08-20T00:17:00.013-04:00

interview conducted 8/18/09 at approximately 6:50 PM

You referenced Henry's part in Tim and Henry's as inspiration for your part in Mosaic-- You're referring to the part with all those lines--
Yeah.
That was in a recent interview. I was kinda just thinking out loud. It wasn't the main reason why I did it; I just remembered that Henry's part in Pack o' Lies just seemed so flowy, and the way he did lines--he would do such long lines. I liked that--to watch someone taking the time to go around a trash can.
I think in that same interview you referenced Ziggy from The Wire as your favorite actor--
That was a joke. That's my friend P.J. who lives with me. He's on the show.
Are you a fan of that show?
I love that show. I would watch that show even if James or Leo Fitzpatrick weren't on it. So into it. I would like it even if my friend's weren't on it. Actually, I wish my friends weren't on it so I could like it even more.
Who was your favorite character on [The Wire]?
I'd have to say [pauses] McNulty. He was always fuckin.'
Do you remember your first graphic on 101?
Yeah--Winnie the Pooh.Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin [unintelligible]
Berrics vs. the World park--which is better?
World park. Jesus--are you kidding me?
Were you at Lockwood when Keenan switch flipped over the table?
I'm in the background. You see me run and throw my board down in the background.
What were your impressions of that moment?
I was hyped for Keenan. Then he turned around, and he almost switch heelflipped it.
My final question is about Gino--a dude that has a cult following, I guess you could say--
Fuck yeah he does.
What do you think is so iconic or transcendent about him or his skating?
Gino? You watch the guy push down the fucking street, and it's entertaining; it's beautiful. Nobody skates like that. Nobody looks like that on a skateboard at all anymore. All these kids are fuckin' jumpin' at shit and doing all this...
It would be insane to skate like Gino. No one skates like him. He's like a...like an ice skater.
Well, that's all I got; thanks for your time [reaches for post-it note to write down URL of site]
Nah that's okay I don't really use the internet that much. I'm sure I'll hear about it, though.

Whatever Needs to be Set Up for a Caine Gayle/Lennie Kirk MMA Bout...

2009-08-13T19:02:00.005-04:00

Set.

That.

Shit.

Up.

But seriously, I don't even know why I am writing about MMA now. Maybe it's the fact that two Nineties luminaries have chosen its discipline as a post-skating vocation. Maybe it's that banner ad that was at the top of the SLAP board for a minute. Maybe it's the fact that an MMA "dojo" appeared next door to one of my local shop's locations. The shop moved. Oh, it's doing fine now, but the dojo remains.

Truth be told, for the record I do not perceive Muy Thai, Brazillian Jui Jitsu, or any of the various permutations and combinations of martial arts that have come to be known as MMA as kooky activities at all. One of my closest friends from way back does Brazilian Jui Jitsu, and it seems cool and everything. I prefer good old-fashioned boxing--"the sweet science." Truth be told, though, I also sometimes like to drive my Lamborghini around downtown Philadelphia late at night--just to clear my head, you know?

ANYWAY, like everything else, I suppose, the recent MMA explosion has its legit and kooky permutations. As far as taking it up post-pro skating, the way I see it, choosing a discipline to which one is a complete novice and mastering is is definitely cooler than taking a position as FKD Bearings (what ABEC are they again?!) team manager or whatever the fuck. Although, I find it interesting that in most of these "where are they now?" pieces in Skateboarder or whatever, most dudes have some kind of "cool guy" job like firefighter or, in the case of Adam McNatt, tattoo artist. You really don't see too many washed-up pro office managers or CPA's. I might be wrong, though (Lib Layraman? You out there?). BY THE WAY, McNatt's interview is also notable for his admission that Titan Trucks were forged from the rare molecular compound known as "legitness." Unfortunately for the human race, said molecular formula has been lost to the sands of time. Fuck. This, I'm afraid, is not even close:

Maybe I am writing about MMA because it somehow gets lumped in with skating in the category of ne'er-do-well activities that are relevant to the interests of gentlemen in the 13-35 age range. Indeed, if industry rabbis are searching for a cause of the industry's lack of profitability, it's probably the across-the-board proliferation of such ne'er do well activities, including new shit like text messaging, Call of Duty, and social networking. No one's busting out the launch ramp, or even the prefabricated "ramptech" box, and setting it up in the cul de sac anymore. The thing about skating is that, out of all the "cool guy" activities like surfing, snowboarding, wakeboarding (You're on a boat. Once you get a chick on your boat, it's basically a wrap), dirtbike riding, etc., it is the least "cool" in the popular imagination. "You're riding around on a little piece of wood on plastic wheels, what the fuck is cool about that?" I've heard the naysayers say. Granted, skating reflects a certain elan in urban areas like NY, LA, and possibly PHILA, but in the rest of the country, for the most part, it's a joke. And for your average 13-year-old, the ability to effectively text message or socially network is more valuable than the ability to do b/s tail bigspin outs or whatever the fuck.

ANYWAY, Speaking of Gayle and Kirk, a surprising amount of the discourse in the ol' print media this month centered around the apartment complex in which the Alien dudes lived in Carlsbad or wherever the fuck in the San Diego area during the mid-Nineties. I never thought of that area as a Nexus for epic shit in the vein of Mike and Greg Carroll's apartment or the Lockwood/menace_tech Los Angeles "fast life" scene, but 15 years later, I suppose it was. Trip the fuck out.

Who all lived there again? Alien dudes, Clyde, Pre-TMZ Muska? Tom Penny maybe? Fuck, dude. It was like Melrose Place without that one redhead, Tiffani Amber-Theissen, that short-haired blonde, or Locklear.

mad underrated

First, Jamie Thomas relates the tale of how he took a young Kalis under his wing ("eagle-swoop" pun intended) in the aforementioned San Diego-area community, only to have the dude quit TM to apply for a job at Real. That is, until Dyrdek recruited him into the Sect. I gotta tell ya, though, from an "alternate universe" perspective, Kalis under the tutelage of pre-Twitter Thiebaud,** Hufnagel, and Drake Jones is kind of mindblowing. Who knows, though; it would be hard for his career to have been any "better," you know what I mean? Then Lennie Kirk, at the outset of an epic behind-bars interview, recalls the partying ways of the Alien dudes and references taping Stretch and Bob, as was the wont of Nineties backpacker hip-hop folk. How did he pick up WKCR in San Diego, though? Maybe he and Drake mailordered tapes from Fat Beats, sandbox, or some shit like that. Ah, the Nineties, when, in order to obtain a mix tape, one had to send a postal money order via the postal service, and wait to receive a magnetic cassette tape via said postal service.

Fuck it though, all the aforementioned shit is apocryphal. Pros could pretty much do whatever the fuck they wanted back then. They didn't _really_ have to film that much, and the internet was mostly academic (besides USENET of course), so if a dude did something WACKY and regrettable, the whole world didn't know about it instantaneously. The only fuel for the ol' theater of the mind was whatever inside jokes made it into the Big Brother "news" column. Our sole point of reference, however, is the 411 "Roomates" segment with Pupecki, Gino, and Keenan, which is probably the best thing 411 Productions ever produced (the Jess McReney WOF is up there). I might be wrong, though; I kind of lost track when they did that whole "re-numbering" thing. ANYWAY. where to begin with the Pupecki/Milton/Iannucci piece-- Pupecki skating a brand new crisp City Stars board? Keenan smoking and playing Playstation 1 simultaneously? Gavin the three-point specialist? The most awesome part, I think, is random girl sitting on the couch while Gino and Keenan battle in NHL 2000 (you think Gino always played as the Islanders?).

I mean, who is this girl? What is she doing there? The world will never know. I do, however, think it's funny that, because blackberries were not yet invented, she's just kind of staring at her hand.

That's enough for now; I could probably write a while dissertation about that 411 segment. Or maybe a television series--A group of young, transcendentally talented skaters, some industry hangers-on, and a few scandalous bitches try to make it in a Los Angeles condominium complex during the pre-9/11 boom years. Here's my two-second pitch: it's like Melrose meets The Hills meets Street Dreams! Quick! Someone get Aaron Spelling on the horn!!!!

What?

*I'm trying to recall if Tiffani Amber-Thiessen was on Melrose Place, 90210 1.0, or both. It turns out, both.

**The recent banter between Thiebaud and "The Ringer" re: Twitter is really just too cute...

The Count of Tuscany

2009-08-02T23:20:00.002-04:00

disposable 2: in stores now

The other day, I was pleased to see that Sean Cliver had finally gotten around to publishing a sequel to the epic tome Disposable. In addition to functioning as one of the classic "research laboratory" books of all time, it serves as a narrative of the rise of World Industries and its zeitgeist as expressed through the graphics of Cliver and McKee, primarily. Hand in hand with that, of course, goes the parallel narrative of Cliver's inevitable departure from Powell and the subsequent "war" between Powell and Rocco. Oddly enough, this summer Blind and Powell entrenched themselves and declared war once more--the video wars, that is. It would be a lot more dramatic if videos "mattered" moreso than whatever is on the berrics on any given day. It should be noted that it is 2009. Steve Berra and Nike control the industry. Once again, this in irrefutable proof that we live in some kind of crazy Futureworld.

ANYWAY, first, a little prologue. A few weeks ago, I went skating after work when one of those epic early summer thunderstorms struck the spot. If you are unfamiliar with mid-Atlantic regional weather patterns, there are two of them 'round this time of the year:

1. hot and humid as fuck

2. raining

So, I paid a visit to the shop. Down the block, the video premier for the latest Powell video offering was letting out--the same theater as the Fallen premier and the Mind Field premier about which I did not write.

The title of the video itself encapsulates just one of the reasons why I hate this company. It just seems kind of disingenuous, and also suspiciously like a shot aimed at Ty:

"Hey, we used to be this big shitty generic corporate company. NOT ANYMORE! WE'RE ALL ABOUT HAVING FUN SKATING! Not like those other dudes with their big super serious video productions! No ART here! Art isn't fun =(. Jumping down stuff is fun!! Powell are the fun dudes now! The shoe is on the other foot!! FUN. You know--like jumping down stuff.

As sometimes happens with this kind of event, attendees received stickers--1 ft.-in-diameter stickers with the Powell logo. You know, this thing:

I threw up a little in my mouth. As we all know, kids love stickers. However, they did not have the same violent reaction to Powell promotional material as I did. I saw some bros and they asked me "Hey, did you go to the video premier?"

"Nah I hate that company." They laughed, but I was dead fucking serious. I hated, and still hate Powell.**

By all accounts, their video is "sick," contains decent enough skating, and the ender ender is one of the more "extreme" frontside tailslides ever executed by a human being on this planet. However, I will never watch said video in its entirety, and most certainly will never by psyched on it. Why? For the same reason a Red Sox fan will always hate the Yankees. Even though World is, in essence, a shoe company now, I still retain allegiance to dwindle, and, by extension, blind and almost. It's still fuckin' Daewon, Rodney, plus the evolutionary Henry Sanchez*:

However, while Powell is still corporate and generic, so is World, or whatever corporate entity it has become. Twenty years after functioning as a canvas for Mark Gonzales' artistic "weirdness," and 15 years after having the sickest lineup(Creager, Milton, McBride, Sanchez) of any company ever, blind has somehow transmogrified into Digital Skateboarding: The Board Company.

To the kids at the aforementioned video premier, Powell is just another company with dudes that are good. No different from blind. Why do I retain a world view that is twenty years old?

I think it's because, just like the Red Sox and Yankees have changed, once one is a fan, according to Bill Simmons' rules of being a fan (which are somewhere out there on the internet) you can never switch. Even though the team 100% changes from the badass quality that made you dig them in the first place. Let's continue this analogy via baseball. Even though I am a Met fan, I will use the Red Sox as an example because I backed them hard as fuck in their battles against the Yankees in the first half of this decade. The Red Sox up uptil 2005 exhibited a badassness that was never more apparent than this epic battle that occured during the 2003 ALCS. I think I listened to most of it on WFAN. This was one of those events that, as one watches it unfold, one mentally repeats to onesself "I can't fucking believe this is happening and how fucking awesome it is." Kind of like the Pistons/Pacers thing.

Usually, though, the end of whatever made the team cool begins when one dude (Johnny Damon) moves on for more money. Then they bring in another dude that is super fucking good but doesn't really fit in, but the dudes kind of accept it because he's super fucking good (Matsuzaka). Pretty soon almost all of the original dudes are gone. However, you can't stop backing them, because sometimes they show that spark of why you were fucking psyched on them in the first place.

Creager does that. The next time a summer afternoon thunderstorm throws a monkey wrench in your plans, spend an evening revisiting his body of work: Cocktails. Superconductor Supercollider. 20 Shot. RvD1. RvD2. Memikmati. What If. I think that's everything; I might have omitted Gullwing: Revival. And this summer's offering, the creatively titled The Blind Video. I guess they decided against Blind - The Video: filmed on Earth - The Planet. Before we get to Creager's part, specifically, as a whole, I stand by my contention that The Blind Video harkens back to Trilogy with its sometimes shitty filming (think Clyde f/s heel over table), haphazard 80's-centric music supervision, loose clothing, and tech-for-tech's sake ethos (think Maurice Darshien Key sw f/s heel t/s). Danny Cerezini skates like an amalgamation of Photosynthesis-era Appleyard and Paul Rodriguez. Okay, if that's too hyperbolic, maybe Rodriguez with more creative trick selection. For example, you think he's going to go nollie n/s down that one hubba but he goes nollie bluntslide. By the way, Cerezini also maintains a blog, which is kind of interesting. I guess he didn't get the industry-wide memo re: self-promotion via "twitter." If I was into that sort of thing and set my mind to following some shit, I would follow kelch, york, nick t., whoever the fuck else...it would be just like hanging out under the wave. Trip the fuck out.

ANYWAY, Laitiala cuts down on the happy feet from that Digital part when he skated to "Blue Monday" (again--fucking amazing music supervision) and switch hardflips that big-ass set of stairs in Barcelona with the urgency of a Finnish commando defending the border against Soviet invaders. James Craig is, like, "one of us" so it's always sick to see what he comes up with. However, for my money, it's all about Creager and how he, by skating local spots in, I presume, Arizona, continues the pattern he established in 1992 by existing outside of time, which is kind of what this site is all about. Either ahead of, behind, or beyond, as shown by this unscientific chart:

Even though, by setting up shop in Arizona, Creager seems to have eschewed the industry in general, he has pursued other avenues to keep his shit out there. Specifically, his youtube channel shows that he's smart enough to know that "kids today" don't go to actual retail facilities to purchase and watch videos--they pretty much just watch what's out there. It's also a good destination if you need that extra "push over the cliff" to land that b/s tail double flip out or whatever the fuck. This particular video, however, captured my imagination, documenting Creager's construction of some kind of miniramp with a ledge in the middle. It also inspired the "retirement community" comment in the previous post. Truth be told, once I put in my 30, i would certainly agree to ride out my golden years in such an abode. Also of note: Creager, the small-wheel, skinny-board, fakie-360-flip-manual dude, wields power tools more effectively than a certain mute-grabbing, wall-planting, vintage trans-am driving, breaking-all-the-rules former resident of Edison, NJ and fellow former Rocco employee.

Draw your own conclusions.

*as astutely noted by some dude on SLAP

**that Mark Suciu kid is good as shit, though--he should be on a better company.

ps. if Creager ever created music, it would probably sound like this. or Dream Theater.

The Brotherhood of the Tactical Pants

2009-07-17T15:14:00.010-04:00

made in China

Hey, remember last summer when all those rad internet promos came out?
That was awesome.
The Traffic promo, in which Jack Sabback's part fuckin' powered the rest of the summer, lingers in my mind's eye most prominently. Pandemic, too. Haven't watched that one in a while. The fact that someone actually made a skate video based on The Wire still kind of blows my mind.
ANYWAY, the Expedition internet promo Hello Hello Hello performs the same function circa 2009--at least until Matt Beach's part in This Summer's Transworld Video becomes viewable by the general public. An acquaintance of mine who attended the premiere confirmed my suspicion that it is a possible life-changer.

Even though I have expressed disdain for cynical China filming trips in the past, Expedition's philosophy--which basically has not changed trajectory since 1998--and the personalities attached (WELSH, Enrique, the dude from Laguna Beach, the dude whose graphic is a Jameson*bottle, the Ottowan) make this promo of so-called "throwaway" footage appointment viewing. IF, that is, one backs this subgenre of loose-clothing tech ledge refinement. If so, one will surely appreciate the vibe therein--not to mention the most non-illusion switch 180 flip ever.** Even if the music supervision sounds like the dude just turned on Sirus XMU and picked the first five songs that came on.

BY THE WAY, the illusion flip backlash may have gone too far when dudes are doing kickflip late nose pivots on flat. Just an observation.

Let's revert to Welsh, though. As psyche-defining as the Free Your Mind and Aesthetics video parts might be, Welsh might have entered Gino territory--a zone where any footage should be viewed contextually with the entire monumental career arc in perspective. However, I envision Welsh following Creager*** into some kind of skater retirement community in the AZ sunset with mellow ditch spots and a miniramp in every backyard.

* "Bushmills? That's protestant whiskey."

**If Beaubeau from Staten Island took action on BATB, I would bet this week's grocery money on Kelly Hart Sunday morning. Bet everything you own on it.

***Creager-related post coming soon

final thoughts re: mariano EL

2009-06-20T22:56:00.002-04:00

Aside from apocryphal vVdeo Days footage, Lockwood revisited, and Van Engelen's encapsulation what it must be like to watch the dude skate, the one revelation that devastated the most in the 10 episodes of Mariano Epicly Later'd was the fact that most of the "LA" dudes ended up with substance abuse issues --with varying degrees of severity.
I'm not going to attempt to get into "why" here, but one time when I was at a party, a dude and I were discussing drinking as a passtime, and he said the following:
"It helps fill spaces in time."
Think about that--if one is a pro skater, unless one is on a Ty Evans filming trip, there is very little structure, unless one chooses to create it. What's the most one can skate in a day--three, four hours? Money combined with no structure, combined with an age at which one traditionally pushes the limits of acceptable behavior, substance-related and otherwise, can sometimes lead to individuals not making the best choices.

Ironically, I recall some Big Brother interview in the late Nineties in which they asked Guy about his personal finances. He replied that, basically, his mom was his accountant and she looked out for his interests in that respect. But, like Dave Eleffson said in the Megadeth BTM, "If you're spending $500 on coke and heroin, you're going to have money problems." That reminded me of what Bill Simmons refers to as "The Coke Era" of the NBA--approximately '78 to '84, when a whole bunch of talented dudes, like David Thompson and Micheal Ray Richardson, blew out their careers due to prolonged affairs with the White Lady.

The '84 draft pulled the league out of that malaise, but Stern, in his infinite wisdom, establised a rookie orientation program to proactively address these issues and help dudes who were getting drafted right out of high school develop tools to deal with suddenly having access to millions of dollars and a limitless supply of scandalous bitches and associated accoutrements.

The Rocco '92 to '95 era was skating's version of the aforementioned Era. Dudes got unprecedented salaries and fringe benefits, with little to no mentoring. It was almost as if Rocco conducted some kind of sociological experiment--what happens when one gives adolescents unprecedented amounts of money and impunity? I also discussed this policy in my review of The Man Who Souled the World, so I will not discuss further.

What I'm getting at here is another one of those "alternate universe" scenarios of which we are so fond around here. And it goes a little something like this:

One of the only comments of note on the VBS site lamented how Peralta "blew it" by not repping the LA dudes harder circa Public Domain.

Let's say Peralta breaks free from George Powell due to creative differences. He adopts a foward-thinking mindset, realizes that the Steve Saiz's of the world are driftwood in the imminent "street skating" tsunami, and sets up permanent shop in the LA office. Starts a new company with the L.A. dudes, plus Pat Fucking Brennan, Bertino possibly, so now you're looking at a proto-blind with Mariano, Johnson, Diaz, Rodriguez, Pat Fucking Brennan, possibly Bertino, also McNatt, perhaps. Sick, no? Maybe a talented young graphic designer by the name of Sean Cliver follows him on his way out the door. He also adopts more of a mentor role, like he did with the Animal Chin dudes.

Who knows how the 90's would have played out...

On the other hand, if one believes Disposable, the union of Rocco and Cliver was decreed by the fates--like one of those freeze-frame scenes in a Scorsese film.

ps. according to Megedeth BTM, Dave Mustaine went to rehab 15 times.

pps. To my dismay, Guy did not elaborate on that one time he went to a "C&C Music Factory" video shoot with Billy Valdez..

summer movie commentary

2009-06-09T00:07:00.001-04:00

Some kind of web 4.0 harmonic convergence ocurred today.
First, Francis Ford Coppola appeared on Stern to promote his new film, the trailer for which you can theoretically view above. Epic, epic Stern; everyone was in awe of him, as you would expect from a cast that references Godfather every two to three days. I wanted to call in to ask if he and Spike are still cool, but I had almost arrived at work; I don't think they were taking calls anyway.The most poignant piece of the interview, from my perspective at least, was when he emphasized that he always told his kids that artist was, like, the best career. That's huge. He even name-dropped his nephew Jason Schwartzman, who, later on in the day, appeared in this video on the 'Tap.
Trip the fuck out.

While I have, for the time being, moved on from the Girl/Choc hardgoods (when Watson brought to light their heat transfer graphics it activated the ol' obsessive compulsion), they are still the best company, in a way, due to their ability to move through these seemingly disparate worlds. Not that they're the best company because they fuck with Hollywood fucks and skaters equally. Nor am I saying that they are somehow associated with FFC so that makes them better than, say, the sk8 waste management consultants. Or maybe it does. It's that whole LA vibe that made me want to localize my local schoolyard in the first place. Surface-wise, everything gleams, design and art are valued, yet there remains an underlying, um, Menace (!?)....

Note: trailers were not there in the Nineties.

HOT LAVA!!!

2009-04-22T23:11:00.002-04:00

Attn: Scott Johnston--better be on your shit. Watch your q's and be on your p's, my friend; as you can clearly see, I kill it at shoe design. Picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Watson, I threw together a Koston 1 select Hot Lava colorway in about three minutes using some markers and a silver crayon. Along the way, I decided to forego paying homage to the red and black Nike Air Tech Challenge II in favor of the blue and orange; although, come to think of it, a white shoe with a black sole and a big red "E" would be Nineties as fuck.

A couple notes on the design: the silver heel collar (?!) would be constructed of that mesh stuff, and the lava on the heel goes all the way around to the other side.

While I was hard at work, I pondered why the fuck I am so psyched on this colorway; the nostalgic forces that surround it are powerful. The kids that wore Air Tech Challenge II's and Bo Jacksons were always just a little ahead of the curve when it came to important shit like seeing naked ladies. For example, they always had the SI swimsuit issue whenever it hit the stands around mid-February. It's hard to verbalize the gravitas the release of the swimsuit issue commanded at that time. Keep in mind that, at the time, the internet was used primarily for academic types to communicate with each other. Consequently, it was virtually impossible to see [mostly] naked ladies unless one had some kind of hookup like Cinemax or an older brother. Presumably, the swimsuit issue was intended to raise the spirits of demoralized dudes in the deadest dead of winter, in the negative zone between the Superbowl and the NBA All-Star Game. So opiate-like was their siren-like power, the young ladies therein became H-list celebs, after a fashion.

They also inspired a cult of sorts, depicted and immortalized by Michael Rapaport's character in Beautiful Girls. Note: although I am not psyched on "The Hundreds," if they re-reissued the shirt featuring this famous monologue I would definitely fuck with it.

*note: Brooklyn Projects is not actually located in Brooklyn.

**note 2: The Fountains of Wayne no longer live in Wayne.

Javier Nunez Is a Bulletproof Tiger with the Mind of a Fuckin' Scientist

2009-04-05T16:20:00.017-04:00

alternate post title: Javier Nunez can land a fucking guitar.

Has Tampa supplanted California as the locus of the American Dream? I postulated
this theory after the harmonic convergence of the final ep. of Eastbound and Down
and the Tampa pro finals. Like many dudes that weekend, Kenny Fucking Powers
rode off into the sunset headed for Tampa, leaving a "gaping hole of need" of a
woman at a suburban North Carolina gas station. The mission: one last shot
at redemption.
[insert Active Erica / April Buchanan commentary here]

The location: Tampa Pro, which year after year provides entertainment value,
of late centering less and less around the contest itself, with its increasingly
cynical winning runs by that dude with the triple-collab hat. Alas, in 2009, a
Matt Beach moral victory was not to be. However, I could not have been more
proud of Mr. Nunez, who reprised his guest spot in Stevie's part in the DC
video to the tune of 3K and a Dean (Darrell Abbott's final guitar sponsor) Flying
V-type guitar. Throwing in that "wheedle-wheedle" George Lynch shred action
was rad too. Note to Mr. Nunez: if you are indeed left-handed,and intend on
learning the instrument, i highly recommend learning to play the guitar
right-handed. It just gives one so many more options, you know? Plus, I
know for a fact ESP does not manufacture a left-handed George Lynch pro
model. However, I can think of at least one left-handed dude that took
advantage of the symmetry of the Flying V design:

Back to Mr. Nunez. My congratulatory sentiments are somewhat conflicted; as
everyone knows, it's not very menace tech to try in contests. Years past, dudes
might have flung a couple fakie inside heel attempts on the flat bank before
blowing per diems at Mons Venus. Not this year, though. Maybe Javier is
starting to actualize his potential, fourteen fucking years after getting on
Menace. As it is, he's already one of the premier nollie h/f dudes ever--up
there with Charles Lamb. I have no idea what it is, but that particular part of
the world produces the best switch heel dudes par excellence. Maybe the
catalyst is some chemical compound in the Arthur Kill that wafts over to
Bayonne, back over to SI and then down to the Raritan Bay where it infects
Wenning and Durante, or some shit like that.

Now, If I were Bill Simmons I would compose some elaborate 20,000 word
extravanza relating Powerisms to shit that went down at Tampa, but I'm not.
So, all you get is a cheap story from the Nineties.
And it goes a little something like this:
I once ran into Kareem, Javier, and Cales at the pizzeria down the block from
Supreme. Kareem related that his master plan for Javier was "the next Guy
Mariano." I'm not sure if dudes who
have been dubbed assuch have fared
as poorly as dudes who have been
dubbed "the next Michael Jordan."
Maybe worse.

As for Nunez' board sponsor, it's by all
accounts "sick,"but their existence
reminds me of that episode in
Season 2 of The Wire in which Stringer
Bell askshis econ professor how to make
a profit in an oversaturated market. His
answer, in a nutshell?
Change the name. The theory
postulates that the juice created by
the "newness" of a new brand alone
will increase sales.

And if you think about it, in a market as
oversaturated as "hardgoods," every
time a new brand appears there's that one group
of kids that are all about it--Deca, Deathwish, whatever.
I am unsure, however, that this particular phenomenon
took place for Shut. I have yet to see one of their boards
anywhere. I suspect that they are one of those operations that is "big in
Japan." Their graphics are legit, but the team lacks cohesiveness and identity
to a certain extent.Felix doesn't help (see recent youwillsoon post). Derek
Fukahara blew doors with one of the most talked-about tricks (varial heel ng
on a handrail) in one of the most memorable parts in one underrated videos
(Filmbot Files) of the past decade, then vanished.
Back to the actual Shut product-- I think they utilize Chapman wood, making
that manufacturer and its various clientele, specifically Zoo and Cliche, the
only boards my local shop carries that are manufactured in our fine republic.
And the last time I had a Chapman/Number 9 board in my posession, I traded
it for a green 101 shirt and Whatever, including the box.
This was possibly the most one-sided trade in the history of product trading.
I found this out the other day when I went to get a board, and it came down to
a limited-edition Tex Gibson guest board and a Dill. Note: realized that I just
mentioned Dill. I'm not trying to fight you, bro; I fucking purchased your pro
model! If you insist on fisticuffs, though, I'm at the foundation spot almost
every weekend.I could never actually skate any kind of signed and/or numbered
deck, so the Dill it was. I was surprised to see, however, the following
counter-litigation (NOTE: there has never been a successful skateboard liability
suit in this country -- I did a rudimentary LexisNexis search) device:

Bummer, because up until then, one of the main things Burton Skateboards
had going for it was the Paul Shmidt connect. I wouldn't be suprised if they
were still availing themselves of his services, or phasing them out, or a
combination of the two. Who the fuck knows, man.
All I know is that if I ever gripped a board and forgot to remove the "warning"
(or in the case of crailtap products, size) sticker, I would die of obsessive
compulsion alone.

No Geographic Solution to a Spiritual Problem

2009-03-03T17:06:00.017-05:00

My friend refuses to watch any British videos, such as the much-lauded Blueprint video Lost and Found. "Too dreary," he laments, and indeed, especially in Paul Shier's part, the Bob James music, cobblestone sidewalks, and bleak skies only exacerbate one's seasonal depression. And, like my therapist said, "depression is not attractive."

The flipside to that coin is that videos can function as an escape from Old Man Winter, who smacked me and the collective East Coast in the mouth this week . I believe it was in that sketchy early Nineties magazine Warp that Miki Vuckovich or some dude wrote that videos are like those cartoons with the coyote and the roadrunner --someone somewhere you wish you could be, doing something you wish you could do.

Skating is the one of the few vocation that provides its professionals with the impunity to do just that--to move anywhere in the world to do their thing. Think about it--not even NBA dudes have that capability. As long as you keep pumping out footage, shit's cool. Curiously, only a select few have taken advantage of this--Kalis comes to mind first, having set up shop just about everywhere except LA, and Dill perhaps, and Appleyard, who has transformed into more of an all-terrain destroying world traveller. That's cool and all, but I'm referring to setting up shop in an entirely new city; you know, renting/purchasing a residence, buying furniture, that kind of shit. Where would you go? Barca is an obvious choice. In a career-defining move, Lee Smith plugged into the rejuvenation machine by moving over there. It's like when Kobe's dad went to play in Italy. These dudes probably look at a Henry Sanches like Mick, Kieth, and Brian Jones perceived Muddy Waters or one of those fucks--a master that got fucked by the system. Also, why more people haven't moved to Prague mystifies me. Granted, the weather may blow, but Stalin, situated on the top of a hill overlooking the city, with smooth ground, ledges, that manual thing, looks like Love's crazy European cousin (see any footage of Petr "Euro Wenning" Horvat). Come to think of it, I haven't seen any footage of it for a minute, so it might be blown out. In any event, Prague itself, based on secondhand accounts, Harsh Euro Barge, Beware the Flare, and most of all, the INXS "Never Tear Us Apart" video, seems imbued with a magical vibe of sorts...

Enter Euro. While Euro videos ,particularly those from England, and Germany, display some of the bleakest, easter-bloc terrains around, some contain mindblowingly beautiful scenery. You know how some videos use "crusty spots" as a selling point? I am of the opposite persuasion -- the more pristine and affluent the spot, the more I am into it. I came to this conclusion while, on a late-night quest for OnDemand entertainment, I discovered the Alis video Who Cares. Remember that Monte Carlo tour feature in that one On Video (the Love Park "issue"? Kevin Long, Pete Eldrige and them skate all these ridiculously ornate hotel ledges and stairs and shit? That is my favorite "tour" article of all time. I mean, hardflipping down a set of stairs at some nondescript Southern California school is one thing, but hardflipping down a pristine alabaster double set that leads onto a pier that extends seemingly infinitely into the cerulean Aegean Sea (as in Willow's part in the aforementioned Alis video) is quite another, in terms of, yes, theater of the mind.

Enter Spain.

For a time, I considered seeking employment at this place. A different, more laid-back way of life, including siestas, people who value art, and all those seemingly mindblowing spots. Then I concluded that I would still have to get car insurance, fuck with the cable company and gas company, finagle with real estate fucks, and handle all the mundane shit one deals with on a daily basis that doesn't really pass over one's mind when fakie ollie switch crooked grinding a ledge alongside a beach filled with topless women.
There is no escape from the everyday dealing-with-people shit. However, regardless of locale or employment status, skating has a strange power. Like Guy said in the FF doc, in the moment when one is actually doing a trick, all that shit fades away, whether one is fakie ollie switch crooked grinding a ledge alongside a beach filled with topless women or "Pupecki" grinding the local high-arrest-potential marble bench.

The former, of course, is the lifestyle potrayed in your average Euro video, like the newer offerings from Alai and Nomad. In stark contrast to the minions of Burton that pounce six minutes after someone uploads Dyrdeks park onto youtube, these fine companies seem to just want you to see their fucking video-- any way, anyhow. TAKE OUR VIDEO, PLEASE!

The Nomad video is mostly notable for b/s 180 fakie 5/0 specialist Raul Navarro and Jose "poor man's Jesus Fernandez" De La Rosa. Enter Alai, another Spanish board manufacturer. Again, in stark contrast to the directives of executive producer Jake Burton, they offer the video for anyone who wants to watch it on the very front page of their site. Go there--or simply click below--to watch the most effective example of the different, better way of life to which I previously alluded: Daniel Lebron's opening part in Alaikit, my favorite video part of 2008.

ALAIKIT
by alaiskateboards

Once one gets past the somewhat annoying intro, one navigates into a world where skating isn't a stunt or recreational activity. It is art. As opposed to the U.S., where skating is relegated to municipally converted, caged-in tennis courts, middle-of-nowhere abandoned foundations, or deserted, undercover-of-the-night corporate edifices, Lebron's four-minute part paints a picture of a highly advanced society where skating coexists with other art forms, such as cooking, sculpture, the visual arts, and seducing a woman.

Furthermore, the sheer Nineties-ness of Lebron's attack appeals to my narcissism because, like, that's how I would skate if I could. Who the fuck else locks into and pops out of switch heelflip frontside crooked grinds like that, or could, even? Capaldi, perhaps Rodriguez. It's as if there was a fork in the road around 2000-2001 and he kept going one way and everyone else went the other. While doing so, he elevated fakie ollie switch crooked grinds to an art form--maybe even a new religion. I know that the industry is far from a meritocracy, but dammit, I guestimate that there are twelve NBD's in this part. Not Aaron Kyro NBD, but legit fakie ollie switch crooked grind variations never before done by a human being. I believe that also takes into account Sarmiento's guest appearance. Both of these dudes' baffling underratedness is perhaps a topic for another post. In any event, SPRING FUCKING BREAK is right around the corner. Cozumel? Maybe not this year...

The Art of Profiling in Air Max 95's

2009-02-19T21:53:00.005-05:00

coming soon...

According to the 'Tap today, a Guy EL is in the can, or at least in the works. Although I don't believe in expectations, life-changer potential remains high. Therefore, depending on how long the other thing I'm working on takes to complete, I will hold off on the aforementioned Guy-related project until O'Dell releases the shit. Thanks, bro...

ON Video: a BTO x FIC collab

2009-02-01T04:18:00.002-05:00

"this [waiting-in-line-for-shit] culture..."

On And Off Again: A Video Magazine’s Tale

"Tex [Winter], who is definitely no Buddhist, has a saying that I've grown to love: 'You are only a success at the moment that you do a successful act.' You can't be a success the next moment because you have already moved onto someays told my players the glorification comes from the journey, not the outcome."
-Phil Jackson, from The Last Season

See that? That's people waiting in line for our collab. There's not that many because we didn't hype it. We just dropped it, kind of like Hokus Pokus, 411 #2, or the first Girl ad. But anyway, pilot light approached me about doing a point/counterpoint a couple months ago and I was like "let's do this." It took a while, though, most of which was carving out chunks of time to watch as much ON Video as I could find. Shockingly, my local shop still had one in stock, and Unicron still has a few as well, so who knows. But, that was my process--watch all the "behind the music"-type ON video segments (I didn't fuck with any of the other segments, for reasons delineated below) and take notes.

And as you might have inferred if you read this site regularly, I am a big fan of process over product. I also obsess over pop culture minutae. Remember that show Behind the Music? Seen every one up until (yes, and including) Matchbox 20. Specifically, I think I have seen the Ratt episode seven or eight times. Ever seen one of those "classic albums" shows on VH1 Classic, with some graybeard describing the laborious process by which he multitracked the guitars on Hysteria, or some shit? I I come across it I have to watch the whole thing. Along those lines, I suppose I lapsed because I haven't seen Clyde's commentary to the World box set, nor Guy/Mike/Rick's commentary in the Girl box set. As you might have guessed, I am currently working on rationalizations--most involving my recent conclusion that my higher power was speaking to me through Guy's part--for shelling out whatever they decide to charge for the Final Flare. Although, the recent Epicly Later'd's have given us a glimpse into the process of the evans/frederico/jonze creative machine. I was also recently able to view the "making of" doc from FF, in which the autocratic lengths to which Evans went to get footage kind of blew my mind. I wonder what dudes will do when all the spots in China are blown out. By the way, do you think, if there were pro skaters in the 1930's, that they would have gone on filming expeditions to Nazi Germany if there were lots of marble ledges there, like at the Luftwaffe headquarters or whatever?

But ANYWAY, therein lies the value of ON video: insight into the process behind the epic individuals, places, and videos of our time. Like Nikki Sixx's harrowing tale of the time he mainlined Jack Daniels, without this bastardized child of 411, these stories might be lost to the sands of time forever. The credits for Video Days were done using a piece of paper? Critical. Rocco wanted to call 101 101 Dalmatians? I needed to know that. I will get further into the specific examples later on...

However, first let's examine the inconceivable thought process that gave birth to ON video. I suppose 411 was raking in so much dough that, in classic this-is-going-to-last-forever fashion, the powers that be at Giant decided to produce an adult contemporary version of 411, aimed at older dudes with more developed attention spans. Can you picture it? It's late 2000. You get home from your lucrative dot-com job, like at pets.com or something, and pop in a VHS of the new ON video, soundtracked by non-descript indie rock ("the new adult contemporary") and watch some nostalgic footage of Ed Templeton impossibling something or other interspersed between dudes slow-mo k/f boardsliding hubbas in Koston 3's and yellow shirts. It seemed like most of the montage and tour stuff was 411 throwaways; and shit, another tour feature! I'm telling you, there was a time when 411 was new and exciting. I remember going into my local shop and asking myself "411? What the hell..." and it was sick, even the video-grab box cover design was sick. Why? because, like regular videos, it was shit you couldn't see anywhere else. Back then, it was like parachuting into an average day at Santa Monica Courthouse.

BUT ANYWAY, Ironically, the years following ON videos demise saw an explosion in the skate documentary cottage industry, including, with varying results, the Gator documentary (creepy and effective...the scene where he's playing that Psychedelic Furs song in his basement on acoustic guitar still creeps me the fuck out), the Hosoi documentary (epic as fuck), the Dogtown documentary (pretty good, although I think they stole the wooden, robotic narrator dude from ON video), the EMB documentary (hopefully still a work in progress), the NYC documentary (DVD?), and the Rocco Documentary. However, Epicly Later'd is arguably the most effective antecendent, especially given it's historical-to-current outlook and especially it's division into easily consumable 6-minute segments. Like I've probably said before, EL's one major downfall is it's unrepenrant worship of it's subjects. But, what the fuck, it's Lakai, you know? I mean, come on--fuckin' Lakai!!!!

Along those lines, the most frustrating element of ON Video was that it purported to be a more mature 411 but still, in that milquetoast 411 kind of way, was terrified of mature subject matter. For example, how could one tell the story of LOVE without getting into the whole board-jacking rep, blunt-smoking, etc. This is where, particularly in the Carroll series, O'Dell ventures into transcendent life-changing territory. Back then, the "skate life" was represented as a free-for-all of money, weed, and Honda Civics. Once one gets beyond Carroll admitting to smoking crack, which I had no idea was so popular amongst Nineties dudes, the saga of how him and his brother forged a life out of the chaos of living with addiction is a much more organic representation of recovery than, say, Dr. Drew's Celebrity Sober House (which is fucking awesome in it's own right). If you didn't think Carroll wasn't the best dude ever before...

On Video, however, still holds its own in a few respects. The long format facilitated more philosophical depth than your average "Wheels of Fortune." Specifically, The "Importance of Style" piece is probably the most elucidative of them all--if I were to attempt to convey to someone--like, perhaps, a NYT reporter--what skating is like I would probably show them that. How else are you going to learn Rodney Mullen's computational system for learning tricks, which kind of reminds me of derivatives in calculus? Does that make sense? Now I know why he used the matrix theme song--it's as if he sees the binary code behind everything. And don't even get me started on how fucking awesome, in the most sincerely nerdy way possible, it is to see Kevin Bacon's dad explaining how Love Park was his thesis project from Cornell in 1932.

1932 Cornell Masters Thesis Project

It doesn't get much more nerdy than dudes in white shirts and black ties making architectural models for some gleaming, futuristic civic ideal of Philadelphia. By the way, does anyone else think it's slightly odd that Kerry Getz, after ollieing over Edmund Bacon, four years later chooses to ollie over....fuck it, I don't know where I'm going with this.
In conclusion, the tsunami of video available to the average dude doomed ON Video, in addition to the consequent average attention span. I mean, unless you are a full-time skate nerd you might have already forgotten about, say, that one promo that was hyped for like a year and a half. Who knows, though; however unlikely, maybe some dudes out there might see Natas 180 sw crooked grinding in 1988 and get some kind of creative spark going. But, I doubt it. The fact that the average kid can view Tim and Henry's or Snuff with no effort it doesn't mean they will. I mean, there's a chance that an astute individual might see Gino's part in Snuff and get psyched to try something new, but I don't really get the vibe that there are a lot of kids out there that think like that. It's not their shit. It's like when I used to find all these wacked-out Seventies Miles Davis records in my dad's old collection of vinyl. I'd listen to them and maybe think to myself "oh that's cool," but I didn't really internalize it. It wasn't my shit .
You can't have nostalgia for something you never experienced in the first place.

ps. If Guy smoked crack then pass the pipe.

pps. J/K!!!

My Dreams Are Mad Visual

2009-01-16T05:00:00.011-05:00

I am the biggest Nineties nostalgist you will probably ever meet. I listen to every obscure alterna-rock band from said decade like Superdrag, That Dog, and Seven Mary Three. I attended the first Texas is the Reason show (they opened for Quicksand). I used to tape Stretch and Bob every Thursday nite on a magnetic tape and listen to it on a portable magnetic cassette tape-playback device. However, one piece of Nineties nostalgia frenzy by which I was not
captivated was the recent bio-pic hysteria over Notorious. It just seemed too cheeseball, not to mention the fact that, by all accounts, it should have been titles The Sean Combs Story featuring Chris Wallace, or some shit...
That got me thinking: who in our crazy little world warrants a biopic? Or, rather, whose biopic could possibly be interesting? Lennie Kirk? Tom Penny? Shef?
The story of S. Williams has most of the classic story elements -- rags-to-riches, a Steinbeckian cross-country journey, death, birth, half-cabs with extra tongues. He interests us because his body of work, dating back to Fine Artists, is so relentlessly transcendent, yet some of his moves, seemingly made two steps ahead like a chess grand master or some shit, seem 100% mercenary, cynical, and sometimes baffling. A recurring dichotomy, for sure.
People forget that Stevie basically had to re-learn skating in the mid-Nineties. I would often see him randomly at the Cube (the epicenter of random lurking) on some "hey, can I skate your board?" shit. He would then proceed to kickflip nosemanual the whole island. I believe 5:06 was filmed under similar circumstances. Granted, it wasn't to the same higher-power extent as Guy's recent comeback, but to go from learning sw back tails and relearning heelflips to world-beating ender status in 2-3 years certainly warrants mentioning.
Most recently, he opened a questionably-named shop in Atlanta across the street from the more established local shop, at perhaps the worst possible time since the Great Depression to launch a retail operation. Presumably, this move is inspired by Atlanta's current status as the nexus of some kind of post-millenial African American cultural renaissance. Positioning DGK in this context places skating in general in a different sociocultural realm than it has ever been. How this plays out, however, remains to be seen, as does the end product of any musical ventures like the Skate Property mixtape, from the same school of titling stuff as Get Tricks or Die Trying,,,
Indeed, amidst the frenzy of year-end retrospection over the past six or so weeks, the one piece that was completely overlooked was the DGK loft video that was removed from the internet after two days, presumably due to haranguing and buffoonish ridicule on SLAP. In general, though, DGK affiliates (pun intended) literally setting up shop in Atlanta is one of the most interested and overlooked subplots in the whole industry, which, in general, is boring as fuck.
What may have been lost on many is the self-depricating humor of S. Williams. To the undiscriminating observer, he may have appeared mesmerized by back to back Lambos, but, I mean, come on now, a fridge with half a 2L bottle of sprite and frozen biscuits made from scratch (reference to an obscure Hardee's commercial), and the quintissential empty product box. Plus the bed where Mr. Williams' neural synapses fire indiscriminately and visually. Once again, Mr. Williams is smarter than you think--metacognitively being aware of how his brain functions has enabled him to visualize and execute shit like sw heel fakie hardflip out and the line in that one Chocolate commercial.

(Who has auditory dreams, anyway? Besides Keith Richards when he came up with "Satisfaction." Although, come to think of it, I used to have extremely vivid dreams in which I played guitar for Bon Jovi, and some in which I thought up these crazy Dragonforce-style power metal anthems....)

Unfortunately, based on recent entries on the DGK "blog" or whatever that may be, ATL has met DGK dudes not with open arms but with FRUSTRATION, except for the chess board spot, which yielded perhaps the most mind-numbing sequence of 2008. Taking a throaway trick from the Virtual credits and banging it out on a knee-high ledge is the kind of move one would expect in the post-FF era, but not with such classic form in such a unique setting.

Unfortunately, this is the only evidence of production (video coming soon? Dwyane Fagundes?) from the DGK relocation. Also, based on the Expedition site, Stevie appears to be on the mandatory China filming trip with Kayo peeps, so hopes of a North America (yes, I would accept Van plaza footage at this point) Williams part this year remain in jeopardy. Maybe, for all the post-millenial cultural renaissance shit going on in Atlanta, perhaps other locations would prove more productive. Raleigh, NC perhaps? Isn't some kind of plaza taking shape there? Maybe even my fair city, which one could consider a slightly-economically-disadvantaged persons Atlanta-- historically African-American learning institutions and all.

ps. With regard to the current dearth of hassle-free spots in Atlanta, I noted a potential foundation spot to the Northwest of the world-famous Blue Flame:
View Larger Map One could probably scrounge up, just from digging in the couch cushions in that place, enough cash to build some decent ledges and a bank .

pps. Yuck.

The Hunter

2008-12-30T22:11:00.006-05:00

"I'm the hunter
Searching for love on these lonely streets--again
I'm the hunter
Searching for the things that I might never find--again!
-Don Dokken, 1985

This one kid at my work, in addition to being legit at skating, also hunts. This, to me, is awesome--in a Cardielian sense, as Phelps would attest. Both of these things comprise part of being an outdoorsman and conceptualizing onesself as a self-reliant American male. One should be able to tie a tie, change a tire, operate a grill, order wine at a restaraunt, cook eggs more than two different ways, drive stick, open a beer with a lighter or Venture truck, and grip/set up a board anywhere.
In addition to serving as a metaphor for bassist Jeff Pilson's quest for meaning in an among the dive bars of LA, hunting is an effective metaphor for skating. One is outside, doing something. That's 90% of the equation. Getting away from stuff. I, myself, have never hunted, so I am unable to compare skating to taking the life of an animal. However, in both endeavors, one uses a lovingly constructed instrument of wood and metal (and plastic... are Glocks plastic? No, they 're ceramic...). And similar to like gambling, one pays for the experience; the end result, or whatever product is obtained, is secondary to the moment-to-moment process. Well, maybe product is critical if one happens to be executing a filming mission. That requires a different mindset entirely--the Ty Evans approach of skaters as team of travelling contractors, the filmer as foreman.
While the Ted Nugents of the world value hunting on some primeval communicating-with-the-spirits-of-nature shit, tapping into the same parts of the brain that once drove use to drive woolly mammoths off cliffs using only a flaming stick and club bitches over the head and drag them back to one's cave by their hair, at the average foundation spot such as the one depicted above, one can feel a definite vibe of a different, creepier sort. Hundreds of people used to go there to work every day. They got hired. They got fired or quit. Supervisors compensated them for their time. They took deliveries at the loading dock. Millions of dollars changed hands, security dudes scoped out every hot girl that walked in, and now only the concrete foundation, some twisted metal, and the once-pristine marble floor, shards of which now only serve as ammunition for lurkers to hurl into the abyss of the parking lot, remain.

How To Feel Epic: A Print Media Review of the Final Issue of SLAP of All Time

2008-12-19T05:58:00.013-05:00

One cold and rainy November Sunday, there was no skating going on. Unfortunately, no one has decided to open an indoor park here for like 8 years; from what I hear, they're not exactly licenses to print money. Although, there are always kids who mention that "We're opening a warehouse, dude!" but they seem to always be super sketchy, occupying spaces like the offices and back rooms of abandoned gas stations. I don't know where they are anyway, so fuck it. I went to the shop, got the final issue of SLAP, then went to the gym.
Usually when it rains I swim laps then hang out in the sauna for like fifteen minutes. Swimming makes one feel fucking awesome; I think it's the same thing as what is commonly referred to as "runner's high." Although it is parallel to running (doesn't Reese Forbes jog 5 miles every day or some shit?) in many ways, I don't think I will be winning said gentleman's "high ollie challenge" in the near future. As far as saunaing goes, I do not know if it helps one at all medicinally, but if Arto does it it must be cool, right? That dude doesn't age. I was thinking of a way to explain its benefits, and I think it's good for your joints or some shit, and while I have not, unfortunately, b/s lipslid any kinked rails lately, I really can't verbalize it any better than Arto himself did in the March 2008 Thrasher:

For the Scandanavians, the Seandos, a sauna is something very holy and kept with a high spirit in Finland, the Scando-land that it comes from. It has a long history of spirits and cleaning and meditation--all those things that people used to use a sauna for--calming down, giving birth, and just feeling epic. It's basically a small wooden room with a stove with hot rocks in it. You heat the rocks up and then throw water on it and it makes a very hot ...

To clarify, I am definitely not Scandanavian--indeed, I am a big Jew. However,the Scandinavian people did extend a helping hand to the Jewish people during WW2, so Scandanavians totally hate Jews just a little less than everyone else in the world. More importantly, "feeling epic" is, of course, what I'm all about. Just like any other social realm, however, there are rules to the sauna. You don't want to be like this "Little Carmine" type dude that always hangs in there, munching on Fritos or some shit, drinking water, pouring water over his head "to stay fuckin' hydrated," reading the Wall St. Journal--it's not a good look. Also, never bring your mp3 player or, heaven forbid, your blackberry into a sauna because it will malfunction. First, though, how did I get to this point? Why am I reading the final (print) issue of a skateboarding periodical in a sauna with a bunch of naked jewish dudes?

***
Back in the early Nineties, every Saturday I would ride my bike to the mom and pop shop and get whatever new mag or promo VHS tape was there. At this time, it was the only skate shop in town, besides 17th St., which was half-assed at best. Now there are four. Maybe five. The offspring of this mom and pop was actually one year ahead of me in middle school; we were always just a little jealous of him because he had all the freshest skate rags and shit like that. So one November I went down there and picked up SLAP #8:

It was sick--in effect, a conduit to a better place with limitless horizons. One thing about SLAP--it never relinquished its earnestnest about how, like awesome and amazing skating was/is. While Big Brother was trailblazing humor, irony, and epic road trips, SLAP documented the physical and mental intersection between skating, art, and random layout. If anything, it veered more into to the artistic side when skating became less hip-hop oriented; that void was never filled--well, maybe by Strength...

Furthermore, the early issues, especially those few early "large" format ones, reminded me of some graf zine with the low-budget, black and white ads, and printing on which one could actually see the dots if one looked close enough. One of my favorite articles from the early years was the Pep interview that Andy Stone recorded on some obscure antiquated magnetic tape cassette format. According to the interview, when he sent it in to the mag, they had no way of transcribing it. That was it--no interview, his words lost to the sands of time. Although this was a logistical error that was never corrected, it drives home the point that absence of content can be just as effective as presence.

This whole way of looking at shit has been on my mind since I recently completed watching Sopranos seasons 3-6 on the OnDemand. Once you deduce that the screen going black indicates Tony's murder, the aftermath--blood, skull fragments and brain matter in the onion rings, Meadow seeing her father's head explode--is a million times more horrific than anything the cast and crew of a television program could have staged. This, after a fashion, is the cumulative effect of the early issues of SLAP: a handful of black and white photographs can impact the psyche (3:18) more powerfully than--oh, I don't know-- some dude's "private" skatepark broadcasting a s.k.a.t.e. "tournament" amongst your favorite pros via the interweb, an idea that would have blown my mind in 1992.

ps. If you can still find one, the last SLAP is worth getting if only for the two-page spread of every single cover...
pps. I started mentally formulating a circa-1992 BATB bracket, but I didn't get any further than Jovantae, Damon Byrd, Alf...
ppps. Active Erica lifestyle coverage on p. 106

STREETWEAR NEWS FLASH!

2008-12-06T13:00:00.007-05:00

Look out, hypebeast! Major streetwear news here! My favorite streetwear--I mean...um, small-scale casual (?)--clothing company, Fucking Awesome, is back. First, some background:
Truth be told, the last time I happened by my local small-scale casual clothing shoppe, they had this placard or sandwich board out front advertising all the brands they carry. Lo and behold, "F'ING AWESOME" was on there. So I asked the dude if they had any of their shirts or anything because, although, gun to my head, I couldn't describe for you any of their shirts besides "gangster situations," I remember them being more amusing than your average Paris album cover rip-off or what have you. Unfortunately, they did not, and we kind of knowingly shrugged, as if to say, "What are you gonna do--it's Dill. He probably just got obsessed with something else and forgot about it." Fast forward to last month, when fuckingawesome.net reappeared. The best thing about the new site is, of course, Dill's partner taking shots at the whole small-scale casual clothing "culture," portraying them as loser pieces of shit, basically. In any event, the shirt with Keith Richards, James Brown, and Artie Lange is kind of funny. Indeed, I would give my next paycheck to have been a fly on the wall at that party.
Which leaves me asking myself, does anything in this world warrant waiting in line? Yeah yeah yeah, I know--voting. With regard to the whole "streetwear" thing, though, I suppose the silly thing about obsessing over clothing or shoe items is elevating them to art status. Then one gets into the "what is art?" debate.

"You know--paintings and stuff."

Dill's partner mentions also his work-in-progess--a documentary about Ozzy Osbourne. This reminded my of the last time I, myself waited in a ridiculously long line for something--A Black Sabbath in-store in 1998.

In a decision that speaks volumes about my mindstate at the time, I decided it would be a good idea to hang out in front of the Virgin "Megastore" in Times Square all nite with a bunch of metal dudes from Old Bridge, NJ listening to Screaming for Vengeance (note, this was nine years before FF!) on a boom box.
Although I am less all about it now than I was at the time, truth be told, I still rock out to the "stoner" metal from time to time--nothing wrong with a little Kyuss or even Monster Magnet every once in a while. However, I pretty much never listen to Sabbath anymore. The best way to explain it is that it's just in my mental DNA, like Virtual or Reign in Blood. Like what was the last time you actually listened to Slayer, you know?
ANYWAY, after hanging out in Time Square all night they started the shit. Sharon was there, supervising. The one thing I remember is how deliberately Ozzy was when he signed my copy of Volume 4, like he was concentrating super hard. Indeed, his autograph is supresingly legible:

But yeah, waiting in line for a super-limited article of clothing is horseshit, alright.

ps. I was going to title this post "Don't Stand In Line," but I decided that that would be too obscure an Ian MacKaye side project reference.

Literature Corner: Scott Bourne

2008-11-07T21:17:00.011-05:00

“we wear black...and when they invent something darker than black we’ll wear that too, dammit…”

Back in the fall of 1993, I went skating at my local school on a brisk satuday morning. Because it was brisk, I wore my semi-new Carhartt sweatshirt. At the time, I was heavily influenced by Rap City, and most of the videos on there were set in some kind of post-apocalyptic underground water treatment facility. And of course, everyone wore hoodies—either Carhartt hoodies or that one kind that promoted historically African-American learning institutions. As it happened, though the sands of time cloud my memory, I remember taking off said sweatshirt, placing it on the bench I was skating, and then going to skate somewhere else. When I returned, it was gone. Bummer. I got a new yellow sweatshirt shortly therafter.

Fifteen years later, the Carhartt brand of “streetwear” (workwear?) resurfaces as the publisher/distributor of a volume of poems by Scott Bourne—you know, the “black-arm” dude from Big Brother. Gun to my head, I couldn't tell you one trick this dude did, what videos he was in, or any of that shit. But when I'm in an assisted living community, say the words "black arm" to me and I will respond "oh, that Scott Bourne dude...". As you probably have surmised, his particular genre of skating is not in my wheelhouse. However, for whatever reason, Todd Bratrud created for him some of the best graphics ever—like this:

...and this, in particular:

The poem reads thusly:

Captains’ Log

October 30

Broken Compass

Overcast Sky

Navigate by heart

Or die

Regardless of whoever wrote it, that’s fucking awesome. ANYWAY, this publication is notable for the following reasons. First, as far as I know, it marks the first time a pro/former pro has published a work of literature No, the Hawk and Mullen "autobiographies" are not applicable. I think Vallely might have come out with something or other, but I'm not even going to attempt to unravel that enigma here. I think he might have just stuck to the spoken word performances, though. Secondly, as far I I know, this marks the first time in the modern era that a dude has gotten sponsored for writing, or some shit. Maybe calling it a collaboration between an author and a "streetwear" operation would be more apt, but I give myself secondhand embarassment just typing the word "streetwear." It is what it is, though. Who knows--maybe this will be the next level shit in publishing.*

Then again…

ANYWAY, back to S.H. Bourne’s poetry. I gotta tell ya, even though I have yet to read it, several red flags appear. Any book whose primary selling point as being written on a typewriter screams “hey.! my art is authentic because it was created using outmoded technology!” I mean, why not just use a Mac SE, you know?

In addition, here’s the deal with the whole “tortured artist” point of view—every time I read or hear someone in that vein, it reminds me of the Louis C.K. bit about how people without kids have nothing to complain about. Take Rollins, for example: while some of his verse is compelling, a great deal of it self-indulgently complains about how much it sucks to get driven around in a tour bus and play music for a living. Let's be real here--if your job is being driven around in a tour bus--a bus, not a van--and playing music for people, you have basically won at life. I would also go so far as to say that if you have finagled a way to eek out a living skating around Europe and typing on a typewriter, you're not doing so shitty either, big picture-wise. However, if one is going to explore the “tortured white dude” subgenre, it doesn’t get much better than this excerpt from See A Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die, which I just finished:

Last longer, move faster, with more clarity. I will go until my body quits. Panicked and charged with blind fury, the bull sees the gate come up and he stomps and bellows in the arena full of strangers. It was always simple combat, one against all. One never relenting, knowing no other way to go but until collapse. 1992 dies.

Now, I do not profess to be some kind of prose expert, but that's kind of badass. Judging by a few standard writing criteria--voice, imagery, figurative language, sentence variety-it kills. I contrast that with Bourne's excerpt on the "spacejunk" site, which I would have linked to had it not been recently removed. I assure you, though, there's not much to grab onto there. Of course, that was just one sample--I would need to review the entire collection before delivering a definitive review. How much is 18 Euros again? In all honesty, if someone sends me a copy I will review it in all objectivity and sincerity. I won't, in case you were wondering, critique Mr. Bourne nearly as brutally as the instructor herein:

ps. I just realized this a couple weeks ago, but you might recognize the professor from that clip as....

wait for it...

Colvin from The Wire! Trip the fuck out. . .

*attn: Nick Tershay: let's do this

The Mythology of Long Island

2008-10-03T23:28:00.015-04:00

"The dudes in Poison were famous, but they still lived like jobless guys who never made it out of Pennsylvania. Booze is the greatest of all equalizers. Rich drunks and poor drunks both pass out the same way."

-Chuck Klosterman

(Note: this post is somewhat of a sequel to this post from a few months ago.)

When I started skating the city around 1995-1997, most of the dudes I skated with came out from Long Island. For the most part, I met them through this one kid who--fuck, I can't remember how I met him at first. Probably at the cube. I seem to recall that we were the only two kids that skated downtown on a regular basis that also fucked with, for lack of a better term, nyXhc. So every Friday, one of us repeated the mantra "You skating today?" and we'd meet up at Supreme or the banks and do the whole circuit. We would often randomly go on midtown missions with other dudes from Long Island, who tended to roll deep, usually to Time/Life, Huf Ledge, or--I can't remember what this spot was called--the loading dock bump that Keenan fakie flipped off of in Paco.
This, combined with semi-religiously listening to Stern, inducted me into the mythology of Long Island.
* * *
As it happens, when skating in an urban areas there is significant downtime--minutes spent on the train, walking up hills, or dining. Therefore, stories get told. The Long Island dudes regaled me with stories of skating the humps, of SUNY Stonybrook, of Keenan and Huf vibing them on the LIRR. They also related tales of driving past Dee Snyder's house while singing "We're Not Gonna Take It" as loud as possible. Snyder would allegedly come out and shake his fist, his pink jeep in the driveway and "hot" (as also recently confirmed by Howard Stern) wife behind him. One dude I used to skate with also used to drive past Gino's house.
"There's Gino's house," he would comment. That was it. I'm not sure if Gino's and Dee Snyder's residences were close, or if it was a "thing," as if there was a circuit of semi-famous dudes' houses on Long Island that dudes drove by--maybe the dudes from Dream Theater or Blue Oyster Cult.
Based on those two stories, I concluded that Long Island was a typical breeding ground for suburban malaise.

I could not have been more wrong.

For whatever reason, Long Island has, over the last fifty years or so, developed a mythology and artistic energy all its own. Did you know that Stern, Public Enemy, Eddie Murphy, and Julius Erving all went to the same high school in Roosevelt--eight miles from Poets? This, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated facts ever. What could possibly account for such a volcanic explosion of creativity in a burgh of about 15,000 citizens? Who the fuck knows. I will, however, purport that it taps into the existential, by definition, practice of making meaning out of the meaningless. This is the universal prism through which Stern and the other artistic forces of Long Island view their world.
For example, many of Stern's detractors claim that his show's popularity derives from its salacious nature. However, the segments with assorted females of flexible moral standing, whom he attempts to cajole into disrobing, are without fail the least interesting. Stern's show is magic because he displays an advanced understanding of what is funny. He is able, through nothing more than the force of his own wit, to create four hours of improvisational comedy per day. To do this, he mines the comedy in seemingly mundane situations and turns it into radio gold. No one would think that the jealous rage (directed at another show employee who has infinitely more success with the ladies) of a public-speaking-challenged intern would be endlessly entertaining, but it is. No one would assume that a one-armed alcoholic from Albany who lives in his mother's trailer would be endlessly entertaining, but he is.
Similarly, throughout his body of work, Iannucci has displayed an advanced understanding of what looks good on a skateboard and the processes that make it so. Just like Stern's X-Factor is his wit and ability to just say funny shit, Gino's X-Factor and source of charisma is his style, which several dudes including that tattoo artist dude attempt to qualify in the recent Epicly Later'd feature--the main topic of this post.

* * *

So, enter the Gino Epicly Later'd episode. First of all, I would like to extend accolades to Mr. O'Dell for actually practicing skateboard journalism. Secondly, while it does not emit the epic plot structure of the Cardiel or the demoralizing emotional impact of that WESC video, it mines skate nerd gold in other areas, mainly in video and insight into the halcyon days of the late '90's.
For students of the "acid-washed jeans, plain white t-shirt" era, Gino's commentary on his process while filming his transcendent part in Snuff is priceless. Indeed, that Brian Lotti/World/Dave Schlossbach company he mentioned is one of the great "What If?" scenarios of all time. Also, the circa-93 video (b/s double-flip over Los Feliz hip) is outstanding.
Most evocative, though, is the "last Keenan footage" at that municipal park, where Gino, after coming agonizingly close to landing one of the biggest b/s nollie heels over a hip of all time, flings his board into the foggy Long Island night.
From the beginning, Gino's story appears to be intertwined with Keenan's. The scenario of Keenan moving back East and getting his shit together reminds one of Hendrix's unfulfilled 1970's agenda, like working with Miles Davis and John McLaughlin and shit.
The third major personality force in the piece is Guy, who seems to hover over the ascendance of Gino and Keenan, observing the whole thing like the Watcher from Marvel Comics. By the way, how awesome Guy's fireplace? It's obvious that the dude does not live in a skouse. Furthermore, how awesome is it that Guy and Gino correspond by letter? Does Gino sit down at his cherry oak Edgar Allen Poe writing desk--a furniture piece that would match the rest of the decor in his shop-- in the back office of Poets and respond to correspondence? That would be fucking awesome. ANYWAY, what I am getting at is that Keenan and Guy play as critical a role in this story as Gino himself. One way to look at it is, to borrow a paradigm from Catholicism, the following: Guy, Gino and Keenan are like the father, son, and holy ghost of "dope" skating. *

Guy created the whole paradigm. Gino is the human, all too human manifestation in the material world. Keenan's spirit still inhabits the world and dwells inside all who choose to follow alongside his footsteps.
ANYWAY, the one piece whose absence was most glaring was the whole "addiction/recovery" thing. Maybe Gino just didn't want to fuckin' talk about it. That's cool. Maybe he feared Gino would say "fuck this" and shitcan the whole deal.
Maybe so. All I know is that the Thanksgiving story is probably the most Less Than Zero-esque story ever told in the history of skate documentation.
Along those lines, when Guy told about going to rehab in his 48 Blocks interview, it added an entirely new dimension to his saga. By the way, by using the term "program," in one of the final segments, Guy further corroborated my theory that he is an active 12-stepper (he also referenced the slogan "Keep it Simple" in the aforementioned Block interview).
And let's be clear--these are indeed epic sagas--as epic as any of the twentieth century. It kind if bums me out how, if you take a glance at the "sports" section at your local Barnes and Noble, that every C-list ballplayer, no matter how milquetoast, has a ghostwritten autobiography. Even Jeter--Jeter's a fucking decent player and everything, but there are like 10 books about and or "written" by him. Is this warranted? Don't even get me started on the literally fifty or so books about the 2004 Red Sox. Wouldn't you rather read a book about, like, the Santa Monica Courthouse? I know I would.
However, if Odell is going to continue to aspire to capture these epic stories, it would behoove him, as the de facto representative of the skate nerd population, to attempt to get the whole story. Even if it blows up in one's face. That's the difference between journalism and promotional devices.

*disclaimer: I in no way, shape, or form intend to disparage, minimize, or belittle the Catholic faith. I am simply using the concept of the trinity as an analogy for rhetorical purposes.

ps. Mazal Tov, Howard.

Video Review - 48 Blocks/Western Edition: Pandemic

2008-09-01T15:45:00.015-04:00

It's hard to put into words how psyched I was when I saw the promo for this video. Truth be told, a Wire-themed skate video could not be more in my proverbial wheelhouse. The two foremost things I love to deconstruct and overanalyze, in one Tim and Henry -sized bindle, if you will.

I've discussed the show here at lengh previously. However, just like a drug addict who, in effect, savors the ritualistic aspects of addiction, my viewing of seasons four and five took on similar dimensions. Waiting until 12:01 every Sunday night for the new episodes to come up on the OnDemand became a quasi-religious experience. I fuckin' needed that shit to get me through the week. Through whatever process, narrative like this, in effect, "turned down" the rest of the world in a Fight Club kind of way. Skating is parallel; oh, what's that you say? You're mad because so-and-so wore jeans on a non-casual-Friday day and didn't get reprimanded? You don't say! Can't print? Got a big presentation? Guess what: I just slammed my feet into wood, concrete, and iron for three hours. That's what I do to relax.
Pandemic sets the stage with a clearly-defined thesis: that skating operates as another component of The Game--of the ways and means of doing things utilized in American cities on a daily basis. I was going to say "urban culture" but that sounded like something off of hypebeast or some shit. You know what I mean. So, let's see how they go about proving it.
BY THE WAY, I promised myself that after Bill Simmons used one too many Wire metaphors a while back that I would refrain from using the show as a rhetorical device. However, fuck it. I feel that it's apt here--it's not like I'm arbitrarily comparing Teddy Bruschi to Avon Barksdale or some shit. So with that in mind, I will review Pandemic by way of comparing the dudes with full parts (Thayer, Johnson, Lavar, and Keegan) to characters from the show. By the way, if you have access to HBO and you didn't watch Generation Kill (masterminded by Wire dudes) this summer, you lapsed. Unless you are some kind of BBC news junkie, it's doubtful you have seen or will see as brutal a portrayal of the Iraq War anywhere.

OVERVIEW

Since its inception Western Edition has occupied a space somewhere between mid-Nineties Stereo and Girl/Choc . Drawing upon the Spirit of San Francisco, their three previous video offerings have kept the spirit of soul-soundtracked ledge/line skating alive throughout the current decade. Pandemic, however, sets out on a much more ambitious mission. The promo is edited, in effect, exactly like a 10-minute episode of The Wire--with opening song, opening montage, closing song, and credits. I would have chosen the Tom Waits song from Season 2 ("the forgotten season") but that's just me. Each section also includes a meaningful audio quote from the series. I gotta tell ya, the only video I can recall that intertwined film clips like this was those clips from The Man With One Red Shoe that were, for some reason, included randomly in Whatever. Or Da Deal is Dead--I can't quite recall. Only Josh Friedberg knows for sure...

THAYER

Who's a dude that's been in the game for a minute, not overly demonstrative but still effective as fuck?
Bodie.
Shorter than his part in WE3; however, effortless hardflippage on all kinds of different shit more than compensates. Ventures into the Jean-Baptise realm with an overturned noseblunt to switch b/s 5/0 on a bank, or "street transition," as they say. What does that even mean?

"THE BLOCK" Montage

That "Unfriendly Game" track reinforces the thesis, drawing parallels between The Game and The Industry.

JOHNSON

That smirk? After his ender? That's 150% McNulty. By the way, whatever happened to that dude Sean McNulty that was on Sugar Skateboards? They should have found him for this project, if only for a line or single.
McNulty is the best. I wish I had a job where it was politic to curse and yell at people.
DAMMIT McNULTY!!!
ANYWAY, Catalyst rep Joey Johnson encorporates tech (on and into actual streets, which is imperative) with flowing downhill type shit not seen every day. Reminiscent of Curtin, after a fashion. Looking forward to seeing what this dude comes up with in the future.

THE WESTERN (district)

In addition to Brad “Carcetti” Johnson, Toeda non-illusion sw hardflips and interprets western culture into switchstance backside tailslides on waist-high ledges. However, in my opinion, Dwayne Galloway came up the most in this part with some ledge/manual creativity interspersed with blasted f/s flips and lien airs.
NEWS FLASH: dudes are skating the fountain gap again.
I repeat: Dudes are skating the fountain gap again. That simple fact psyched me up as much as anything else in the vid.

LAVAR McBRIDE

An assassin coming back from the brink of death. Yup, it's....

Brother Mouzone, one of the most underrated dudes in the whole saga. The way I look at it, he was at least as badass as Omar. Who else says "good day to you sir" after shooting a dude in broad daylight? I kept waiting for another comeback in season five, but to no avail. However, if you blinked you probably missed Nicky from Season 2 getting arrested.

"No need to prolong this."
"Nah, we got time..."
ANYWAY,
While not as messianic as Guy’s comeback, Lavar seems to have picked up right where he left off a decade ago. Yes, the “almost-falling-off-the-board” style (See any Harold Hunter footage for another example) still prevails—an increasingly rare attribute in a world inhabited by bolts landers like Capaldi and Malto. Anyway, it’s Lavar—like an old friend/DYUTSW (dude you used to skate with) that you see at some spot or park after a fucking decade.
Hard to believe this dude, for a two-year period, was arguably top five in the world. Equally as hard to believe is the fact that, the blind lineup in 1994 was Keenan, Lavar, Sanchez, and Creager. In terms of pure mind-numbing technicality, one could argue that that particular group was ahead of Girl at the time. In terms of Lavar in specifically, he had that vibe that there was no trick he could not do – similar to the space Trapasso occupies today. If my memory is functioning correctly, his east coast sidekick Mike Wright once told me that he was fucking with switch kickflip b/s ng at the pier in, like, '97. It was as if only physical space confined his ability to film hard-as-fuck lines, as seen in the end of 20 Shot. In fact, that part and his encyclopedic part in Trilogy, in which his “ender” line is probably still going on in some alternate universe, spawned the following theory in my mind, a theory that has not been put forth in the written word until now:

THE LAVAR McBRIDE THEORY:

Lavar’s part in Trilogy was so linear that it caused a backlash and paradigm shift in video editing that emphasized quicker cuts, shorter parts, more slow-motion, and fewer lines. Combined with advances in video technology, this resulted in parts like Appleyard’s in Photosynthesis, where one saw single tricks like nollie heel crooked with some computer animation layered on top of it and only one three trick line. The endgame had to have been Luzka’s soul-crushing part in the Almost video ; I have yet to see a more cynical M60-like rail attack editing style.

ANYWAY, Lavar is back, and Nineties nostalgists will be proud. In particular, the switchstance 360 kickflip off the bump into traffic looks like something off the 20 Shot cutting room floor. And, as many of you have undoubtedly seen, the nollie bigspin kickflip over the library gap indicates that Lavar still has that progressive spark in his mind. Hopefully this sets the stage for Affiliate to make moves in the upcoming fiscal year.

KEEGAN

A young gun that kills in the East, kills in the West. Had to be Marlo.

"My name is my name."

Indeed, the first East Coaster besides Igei on the WE squad nailguns the video shut with a how-to demonstration of techniques at an assortment of Boston, NY, and some SF spots. In particular, that spot that looks like the Museum of Natural History benches, running alongside a river or lake, is particularly scenic. You might remember this dude from the RAW promo, another example of the recent crop of sick “internet only”-type promos. I would go so far as to say that the ten-to-fifteen-minute promo is the perfect format—there’s a reason why Tim and Henry’s and Snuff are in most dudes’ top five. It’s not brain surgery. Kids that rip, decent music, short enough to watch before skating.
In terms of the East Coast mentality displayed, there's this misconception floating around that once you cross the Mississippi that the only spots are cellar doors, pole jams, and esoteric wallrides. There may be some of that, but kids fucking rip everywhere in a million different ways. Every park, spot, or little zone has that one dude that can do anything. However, the seasons and differences in urban/suburban terrain force one to adapt to survive and foster a certain subtle difference in swag.

Regarding the aforementioned bench spot, the sw b/s tailslide shoveit hearkens back to Stevie’s in the FIT video, which is just about the highest compliment one can give a sw b/s tailslide shoveit. However, like someone said on the SLAP board, it seems like he isn’t really trying, which is a productive mental place to inhabit. He’s still in the “golf club” stage, trying to be a gentleman about it. But one thing he does is show a propensity for combining tech with naturalistic “skating down the street” style. Not quite at the same level as that one part by that other dude from Boston, but it’s early yet. What happens next is up to him, on a day to day basis. There really is no nostalgia; kids don’t care if you were top four in the world at any point. All there is is what happens in the game on a day to day basis. Every day is its own odyssey.

this video is going VIRAL, BABY!!!

2008-08-22T22:11:00.004-04:00

I did a big time 00's thing and uploaded a video to youtube--the montage from Sixth Sense with the Welsh sw 360 flip at the end -- second-to-last trick actually. Truth be told, I'm not the biggest fan of embedded video; it usually falls under the "hey dudes, look what I found on the internets" category. However, it's been floating across my mind's eye ever since the chrome ball dude posted this. Maybe it's a combination of skating through the banks that day and how completely out of left field it was at the time; I mean, the only dude who sw 360 flipped over stuff was...you know who. Note: apparently, it is one of the TOP 10 SWITCH 360 FLIPS EVER. Truth be told, I cannot recall if that was a SLAP topic or magazine article first--a moot point if there ever was one.
ANYWAY, there's some interesting stuff in there in addition to Welsh, like pre-cellar door Puleo, Brad Hayes (slightly ahead of his time), Jerry Fowler, and random footage of whoever was in NYC that spring, i.e. Nikhil Thayer at courthouse. Oh yeah--Dan "2 Fish" Rogers.

Ride the Sky Premiere Report including Gilbert Crockett mini-interview

2008-08-17T21:42:00.007-04:00

dateline: Richmond, VA 8/16/08

"You're gay."
That's what my brother said when I called him and explained that I was at a skateboard video premiere. He lives in a house with a bunch of dudes about a block away from the cinema you see above, where the premiere occurred. The centerpiece of the house is a HD television mounted above the fireplace. Presumably, this will function as the locus of activity and excitement during NFL time. That's a few weeks away, though--summer still has 2 more weekends. As you might have surmised, my brother is diametrically opposite from me--total frat dude. Allegedly, he even has pictures on "facebook" of his girlfriend partaking of a beer bong, the end of it down by his junk. To his credit, he is slightly more advanced than I in that particular realm.
I always heard about dudes getting into skating because of an older brother. However, I think that wasn't in the cards because he's 10 years younger than I, which is a little too big of a disconnect to be influenced in that way, you know? But what the fuck do I know...
Anyway, maybe he's right--what the fuck am I doing with my life that on, a Saturday in the second-to-last weekend of the summer, I choose to watch a skateboard video with 400 12-year olds? The thing is, I still don't have the slightest idea what the average 30-year-old single dude does on an average weekend day. Play XboX? Tweak the fantasy football roster? I couldn't go to the gym because it's a JCC that opens at 1:30 on Saturdays. At the end of the day, as with most things that human beings are passionate about, there's some that "get it" and some that will never "get it."
It would take about 7 hours to explain to someone the import and gravitas of watching a video for the first time, and even then there's only about a 1% chance that they would "get it." So it's not even worth trying to explain--not even to my own brother.

ANYWAY...

***WARNING--SOME MUSIC SPOILERS AHEAD***

As one might expect, the soundtrack primarily focuses on Seventies hard rock of the "classic metal" variety, most effectively in the opening montage. Wait, what's that I hear--a flugelhorn playing the "AH AH AHHHHHHHHHH AH" from "Immigrant Song"? A call to arms for the masses of Black Box disciples? Perhaps...
Also of note, James Hardy skates to Skynyrd, the floodgates for which were opened by Chet Childress in that Nike video. If you would have told me fourteen years ago that it would be acceptable to use Skynyrd and obscure German proto-metal with flugelhorns in a skate video, I would have eaten my hat. Who knows what the next ten years will bring? Maybe Unquestionable, when it comes out in 2019, will have a soundtrack comprised of Dire Straits and Genesis. There are no rules--not anymore.
As for the skating itself, I'm not really going to deconstruct anything because, truth be told, this is not my genre of choice. Gilbert Crockett did the most flip-in/flip outs, which was more in my wheelhouse than the other dudes. Chris Cole, however, is on some Rodney Mullen Jedi master shit where there is no disconnect between board and mind.
His second song of a two-song part was "Diamonds and Rust" by Priest--the Unleashed in the East version; gotta love that mandatory fake crowd noise--see every other live record from 1970-1985 for more examples. Excellent choice though--kudos overall to the music supervisor, whoever you are.

GILBERT CROCKETT MINI-INTERVIEW

Describe the process of filming for the video; was it stressful or...
Nah this video wasn't that stressful because we went on a lot of fun trips; it was more relaxed than the Mystery video, so it was more fun.
Describe what it's like for you to be here at a premiere like this, with your family and friends, etc.
It's more exciting than the first premiere, because at the first premiere I didn't really know everybody there. It's like, it was in San Diego, I'm from Richmond, so this is when my family gets to come and everything.
What was the coolest place you traveled to during filming?
Probably Paris or Berlin.
Any goals for the future?
Nah, just trying to keep doing what I'm doing.
Whose part was the best, in your opinion?
My favorite part is probably Harmony.

Menace [under construction--critical update 8.31.08]

2008-07-08T00:29:00.014-04:00

Allow me to direct your attention to the device around which the four gentlemen in the above photograph are gathered. If you are not familiar with this device, it is what was once known as a "pay phone"-- a mechanical device into which one inserted metal currency to enable the user to place a telephone call. Have you seen one around lately? Perhaps, but their numbers are dwindling (pun intended). Digital mobile communication devices have rendered them incomprehensibly obsolete.
The entity, or, to some, state of being, philosophy, whatever you want to call it, known as Menace baffles some in a similar manner. Whenever I would mention Menace, or, especially in the halcyon time or 1997, when I would skate only Menace boards and rock the classic Menace backpack around the city, i would be met with derision of the "Menace? Those dudes suck" variety. MENACE TECH became a semi-sarcastic battle cry of urban skateboard elitism as the promise at the end of the Trilogy section remained unfulfilled, as elusive as the faint aroma of weed smoke wafting through the banks. Indeed, "video coming soon" became a focal point for Menace's seeming ineptitude.
Indeed, one could easily, as Mackenzie Eisenhour did in his 2006 piece in Transworld Skateboarding, characterize Menace as "gangsta skateboarding." However, not only would that be factually untrue (the only gang activity in Rhode Island is, I believe, those inbred hitmen fucks from The Sopranos), it would oversimplify the part Menace played in the end-of-the-century milieu that engulfed the city of Los Angeles. That is the main purpose of this piece--to gain perspective on Menace/AC/CS by examining the context in which it existed, and, by doing so, ponder the meaning of menace tech on a journey of self-discovery--a vision quest, if you will.
At first, I intended to structure this post as a Powerpoint presentation posted as .jpg's. However, that would inconvenience those of you who read this and other "blogs" via Google Reader, so maybe if I run out of ideas at some point I'll just reconfigure it as a .ppt and make it available for download or some shit. So, what I'm going to divide it into a series of exhibits in chronological order, kind of like that one scene in Pee Wee's Big Adventure (exhibit Q!).

Exhibit A: The Conquest of Mexico by Cortes - 1519-21

The takeover of the Aztec empire by the Spanish conquistadors resulted in a synergy of the Spanish-European and Mayan-Aztec cultures and peoples. As a result, what we now know as contemporary Mexican culture was made possible, as well as a distinct melding of socio-religious imagery, which would influence the history of California hundreds of years later.

Exhibit B: Mexican Independence from Spain - 1810-1823

People tend to think of the present day as a time of unencumbered freedom and impunity. Well, that ain't shit compared to the 1800's. Based on my rudimentary Wikipedia research (the source of the facts in this article so far), it was easy as fuck to either invade another country and declare yourself or one of your relatives emperor, take over part of another country because, hey, they weren't doing anything productive with it, or start your own army with the goal of staging a coup of these United States. A gentleman by the name of Aaron Burr almost accomplished the latter, after shooting the Vice President and fleeing to a house in Perth Amboy, about 100 feet from the site of the last few tricks in this Fred Gall video part. Indeed. truth be told, one could start or take over some or all of a country with the ease with which modern day peoples can, if they choose, locate nine different versions of "Slide it In" by Whitesnake on Youtube--"Rock in Rio" '85 with John Sykes? Steve Vai's inspired rendition from his brief, yet lucrative, tenure (my personal favorite)? Or even a cheap-as-fuck edit of the song to some equally-cheap-as-fuck Playboy softcore video from 1989? It's up to you.
That's what it was like.
Mexicans seized the opportunity to take advantage of the situation--specifically, Naoleon's brother's systematic declawing of the Spanish military--to revolt against Spanish rule, eventually establishing the United Mexican States.
Felix Fernandez, the new republic's first president, adopted a new name (wouldn't it be fucking awesome if our presendents just, like, invented a newer, more fucking awesome name for themselves after they took office?) :
Guadalupe Victoria--the Victoria indicative of Victory, and the Guadalupe in tribute for the protection afforded by Our Lady of Guadalupe, a potent socioreligious image to this day:

Exhibit C: The Spanish-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - 1846-1848

As I previously mentioned, the 1800's were a wacky time for national sovereignty. When the inhabitants of Texas just "felt like" seceding from Mexico in 1836, they proved that they were indeed not to be fucked with by routing the forces led by the infamous Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna. However, their independence was short-lived, as just 10 years later they "felt like" joining the United States of America. Mexico took umbrage, resulting in the Mexican-American War. We fucked them up, resulting in the above treaty. As one of its provisions, we were able to acquire the barren, uninhabited northern territories of Mexico--territories that would later become California, Nevada, and Utah--for $15,000,000. Oddly enough, if current trends continue, Mexico will be able to buy it back--perhaps for even less!

EXHIBIT D: Los Angeles - founded 1781

It would be impossible to deconstruct Menace without exploring its primary operating location. If one is to expand menace tech beyond a skateboard brand into a way of acting, a way of being, a way of talking, a way of thinking, one must consider the City of Los Angeles as as major a player as any. Indeed, the central paradox of Los Angeles mirrors the central paradox of Menace itself--the “menace” lurking beneath the surface of a seemingly idyllic town. Along those lines, Los Angeles, based on my brief visit there ten years ago, is simultaneously the most explosive and most boring city in the world. For example, one could be walking down the street and be literally the only person walking down the street. However, there was shit going on, you could tell. It was just beneath the surface, like "hot lava." The zeitgeist of this city has been depicted hundreds of times in, just off the top of my head, L.A. Confidential, Heat, Bukowski’s run-down flophouse barroom Venice of the Sixties and Seventies, the slew of ‘hood films of the early Nineties (more on that later), and my favorite scene of all time.

The power to corrupt is a central facet of this—the power exuded by the intoxicating amalgamation of money, drugs, sex, and perpetually perfect weather.

Like many dudes born in the mid-seventies, this power kicked down the door of my subconscious through something called Appetite for Destruction. I’m not going to spend that much time analyzing it, as it has been done effectively by others such as Danny Sugarman in the highly recommended Appetite for Destruction and, of course Klosterman, who, in Fargo Rock City, depicted the opening of the massively influential "Welcome to the Jungle" video thusly:

The first fifteen seconds of that vid explain everything we need to know: Axl gets off a bus in downtown L.A. with a piece of friggin hay in his mouth (and evidently, he didn’t do much chewing during the twenty-six-hour bus ride from Indiana, because it still looks pretty fresh)…I realized that Axl wasn’t welcoming me to the jungle, people were welcoming him. Suddenly, the whole album made a lot more sense: Axl Rose was screaming because he was scared.

Sex, violence, materialism—somehow, prolonged exposure to this trinity, first in a motel with Steven Adler, then, in that electric chair or whatever the fuck, metamorphosizes Axl into the shamanistic ubermensch we all know and love.

Of course, the now-defunct companies Hollywood and Hellrose appropriated this image more literally than Menace did--Kareen et. al utilized Los Angeles moreso as a metaphor for life. I missed that whole "hammers" era, but one Hollywood ad warrants mentioning--in the narrative of this ad, a young lady, a lady of the evening perhaps, or maybe the protagonist in the "Fallen Angel" song/video, has spelled out "Hollywood" in cocaine on her glass coffee table. Simply one of the most devastating ads in the history of the industry, and it would have indeed been an effective Menace ad in 1994-5.

Of course, the above transformation did not occur across the board – Enrique Lorenzo and the Lebron/Fernandez connection turned out okay. More on them later. By the way, did you know Slash went to Fairfax High (1:10 here – note shirt)? Trip the fuck out.

Exhibit E: California Gold Rush: 1848

Although this primarily affected San Francisco and Norcal, the Gold Rush set the precedent for the West Coast as a mecca for viral, exponential hypercapitalism, violence, vigilanteism, and sprawling population growth. Oh yeah, it also made that dude to the left possible. Who knows what the 49'ers would be called if ther had not, truth be told, been "gold in them thar' hills"--the SF Seals perhaps? That reminds me of the time I saw Joe Montana outside Supreme in the mid-Nineties. I can't remember what I said, maybe something like "Hey! It's Joe Montana!" He replied "Yeah yeah yeah" in a dickish way, probably thinking I was fucking with him.
Interestingly, similarly to menace tech, the Gold Rush attracted enterprising individuals from France and other European nation-states, driven in part by the cycle of revolutions that had just ripped through the continent. However, in the Nineteenth Century there would be no ironic reverse migration similar to the one that attracted Menace dudes to Europe in the mid-00's due to A) fertile spots and B)fertile bitches.Like my friend Ernesto always said, "you gotta go where the food is."

Exhibit F: Compulsory Education - 1852

Unless your name is Holden Caulfield or George W. Bush, you probably went to a public school. That's because, in this country, it's compulsory to go to school until they let you drop out or you graduate. Because of compulsory education, which was implemented initially in Massachussetts in 1852 and gradually spread across the country, it became the responsibility of the state to educate its populace. Despite the criticisms of Gatto, et al, who claim that compulsory education is, in essence, a tool used to maintain the hegemony of the ruling economic class, it resulted in a much wider dispersion of school construction. And where there are school, there are schoolyards. The proliferation of schoolyards in urban areas, particularly in the Los Angeles area, facilitated the development of menace tech.

Besides, have you ever tried to skate at Choate, Peddie, Exeter, or even Harvard-Westlake? Come to think of it, the Harvard-Westlake administration would probably let you skate there--I went to college with a bunch of dudes (and one chick who is now a B-list actress) who graduated from there, and it seemed like an ex-hippie Hollywood kind of institution. You know, the kind where you call the teachers by their first names and they encourage the kind of free-thinking cognitive-social development skating provides. Truth be told, I would fucking love to work there.

Exhibit G: Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society - 1964

Once upon a time, governments had this "crazy" idea that their main purpose should be to enhance the quality of life of those whom they govern. LBJ was of this opinion, and he took action when he implemented a series of programs along those lines that fell under the umbrella moniker "The Great Society." The title originating from a speech he delivered in Ann Arbor Michigan in 1964:

“We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.”

In terms of education, specifically, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 got the ball rolling by providing previously unavailable federal aid to the most destitute public schools for materials (including, presumably, PVC picnic tables) and exceptional education. Who knows how many picnic tables and benches were subsidized by this legislation? One could even make the argument that LBJ's Great Society resulted in the Los Angeles Unified School District eventually having the means to purchase the parcel of land that would become Lockwood Elementary School--as noted in Joey Suriel's essential 48 Blocks interview.

Postscript: Truth be told, my friend "mnctech101" once made inquiries into purchasing a PVC picnic table, but found the cost prohibitive--between $500 and $1000. Knowing what I do now, that cost isn't really justified, especially when that could buy you an entire array of cinderblock ledgery/quickcrete Barcelona banks.

Still, it would be rad to have a picnic table.

Career Corner: Skate Industry Lawyer

2008-07-03T13:11:00.003-04:00

In the summer of 1998, I worked at the Columbia Law Library as a book-shelver media assistant type dude. It was a decent enough job, I suppose; I got off around four, so I could go down to the banks/Newport (wooden bench spot here) and skate. I was afforded a chance to use the dewey decimal system. Also, working in a library, surrounded by all that knowledge and shit, was perfect for a pseudointellectual such as myself. In addition, all the female law students were hot as fuck. I was told, however, that they were all engaged--no doubt to hedge fund managers from Darien, Connecticut or some shit.
At the time, I viewed lawyers with the same disdain with which I looked at investment bankers, stockbrokers, and other such professionals--as dudes that don't actually do or produce anything of value. They just move money from one place to another. Or, in the case of lawyers, specifically, capitalize on people's misfortune. Plus I wasn't interested in taking another big fucking exam, and being surrounded by Tort all day highlighted the ponderousness of the whole law school/bar exam process. Moreover, for the most part, I'd rather be boiled in oil than argue with someone--anyone--and isn't that what lawyers do, anyway?

That was before I knew how much lawyers make per hour. Besides, there are many different routes one can take with law degree. One can go the Meadow Soprano route and provide pro bono representation to people who can't afford $5000 retainers. One can practice business/real estate law (don't know exactly what goes on there). One can also practice entertainment law, and litigate the use of music and other intellectual property in films, television, and video games. My experience in that particular sub-field of law led to the genesis of this post.
In hindsight, I should have thrown my hat in the ring and become the world's first skate industry lawyer. I would have been fucking awesome. Yes, I hate to argue. However, I am indeed Jewish. Furthermore, as documented on this site, I am adept at overanalyzing shit. Not to mention lawyers get to use the coolest office supplies, like yellow legal pads and those folders in which one can, after hole-punching, store the critical information recorded on said pads.
My thought process is as follows: entertainment lawyers seek to maximize the value of their clients. They compose and look over contracts to ensure their clients aren't getting fucked. Would this not be a useful service to provide to dudes in the industry, especially with all the contracts they sign with multi-billion-dollar publicly traded corporations? This might already be a "thing"--that is to say, there might already be a firm or group of dudes that specializes in this sub-field. But if there isn't, it simply stands to reason that wherever there are contracts and hundreds of thousand of dollars, there should be lawyers.
Fucking tons of lawyers.
So if you're looking for a career, or feel like busting out of whatever unfulfilling dead-end job you currently hold down (i.e. bitter shop guy) and starting a second career, consider skate industry lawyer. What the fuck, right?

A Big Brother "Trading" card.

2008-06-29T16:19:00.006-04:00

I found this in a book when I was reorganizing my personal library. I don't know what happened to the other ones. I also used to have the tape from issue #9 with the Shiloh interview and prank calls to Grosso, but that too flew away with the sands of time.

East Coast Industry?

2008-06-28T14:57:00.004-04:00

East Coast Industry? (after the jump)

research

2008-06-19T10:08:00.002-04:00

"...coming soon..."

"An expectation is a premeditated resentment"

2008-06-17T05:56:00.004-04:00

I read that quote in some 12-step literature the other night. I suppose whoever wrote it was referring to living with an addict, but it applies to skating as well. You will have a much better time, I've found, if you approach skating, or any venture, with no or super low expectations. If you expect to land stuff, even something you thought you had wired yesterday, you're setting yourself up for resentment:
resenting yourself
too much wax
needs wax
shoes too new--need to be broken in
shoes too old--blown out
trucks too tight
trucks too loose
did I just crack my board?
It's like gambling--if you go to AC expecting to win, you're fucked. If you win? Bonus. You pay for the experience, wherein lies the value. Expecting the worst-case scenario is like the converse of this, and fucks with one's head equally as fiendishly, if not moreso.
That's not to preclude visualization--a crucial technique in any creative realm.

ps. this also applies to women

school's out

2008-06-14T15:23:00.002-04:00

Therefore, I don't have to go to work for like two and a half months. Consequently, this site will be updated much more frequently.

There are a lot of shitty things about my job; however, one thing the payroll department does is kind of rad: They space out my salary over the whole year, so that I get checks over the summer.

This must be what it's like to be pro.

Dude, I'm totally milking it.

So, Maury--do I have a fucking case here?

2008-06-13T02:56:00.004-04:00

Exhibit A: post from 2005. author: myself.

Exhibit B: Viacom press release - 2008.

Looks like it's time to hit the law library:

This is the only photo of it I could find in a rudimentary internet search. Truth be told, It isn't as skateable as it appears. That statue thing that Puleo and Razzo skate in Static 2 (3?) is in another library across the plaza or whatever.

therapy. [obscure Infectious Grooves reference]

2008-06-09T22:45:00.009-04:00

Truth be told, I have suffered from writers block of late. Like Jack Black once said, one cannot manufacture inspirato.
However, the good ol' SLAP board never fails to supply topics from the well of the modern skateboarding Marketplace of Ideas (tm). Specifically, one thread reminded me of a specific topic on which I had thought about posting but got lost in my mind somehow....

The new Plan B vs. the "old" Plan B.

More specifically, the idea that the new Plan B is a manufactured corporate creation, the riders "bought" by Way, presumably, under the shadowy auspices of "D.N.A."

Firstly, the old. It is my understanding that Plan B was the brainchild of Ternasky, who hand-picked the riders to form an uber-team. Ternasky then employed his micro-management motivational style, the result being Questionable, Virtual, sketchy editing practices, and the beginning of Jason Lee's part in Video Days, allegedly a dig at said management style. The thing is, most of those dudes were already on Ternasky-affiliated companies, with the notable exceptions of Howard and McKay and Rodney Mullen 2.0. Danny Way, however, embodied both the past of Ternaskyism and its radically progressive future, molding the street not-giving-a-fuck-ism and vert majesty of H-Street into a new genre that only he and a select handful of dudes have ever fucked with.

NOTE: This is where the psychological shit begins. By all accounts, Way spent his "childhood" on a compound of sorts in the San Diego area, skating an assortment of ramps, shooting guns, riding dirtbikes on an assortment of dirt fabrications--basically externalizing the Id to the fullest extent. By the way, a variation of this topic was previously covered very effectively herein. Ternasky functioned as the Super-Ego--through his influence, directly and indirectly, synergizing the moral-philosophical aspects of Plan B--a more elite version of H-Street/Life populism-- with raw, inventive, insane, unconscious talent (read id) the likes of which will probably never be seen again. Specifically, it is doubtful that without Ternasky, Way is switch tre-flipping over vert channels in 2004. Note: the above is all speculative.

Enter the rebirth of Plan B. First, the main thing I cannot reconcile mentally, irrational or not, is the fact that it's basically a reconfiguration of Zorlac, which will never be cool. Another notable difference is that Plan B, under the auspices of the World brain trust, by osmosis perhaps, assimilated the creative joie de vivre that characterized the art direction of the time. However, one must be careful lest nostalgia cloud one's judgement here. Many dudes lament the modern-day direction of "billboard" graphics; however, if I recall, most of the Plan B graphics were corporate ripoffs of some kind--as was the trend of the time. I might be wrong here, but I don't recall any of the Plan B graphics or ads taking on the socio-political dimension of, say, some of the LIFE graphics--the Sheffey "by all means necessary" board being the most notable example.

Therein lies another moral dilemma surrounding the "new" Plan B: its image is somewhat antithetical to the Ternaskian legacy--specifically, the austere populism of H-Street that was perfected in LIFE's brief but unimaginably influential tenure. As opposed to the Hensley garage setup, one is privy to dudes driving 300M's to late-night private sessions at private TF's. As opposed to the Civic, the utilitarian, fuel-efficient vehicle best suited for commuting from spot to spot, one sees dudes in Range Rovers with generators in the back, driving to late-night filming missions at some secret location.

However, let us still not let nostalgia cloud our judgment; comparing skating and/or filming now to 90/91 is like comparing...fuck, I don't know. Maybe comparing the 1920's to the Great Depression. Dudes do whatever they have to do to film. My point is that the new Plan B is all id and ego--there is no super-ego. There is organization--a central domicile, ads are clean and innovative trick-wise, yet there is no conscience. There is no overarching philosophy. All is engineered for maximum profit--here's the skater, here's the trick, here's the board with his name and corporate logo real big. If you are a student of The Wire, this should come as no surprise. Data drives everything in 2008-9. Feelings? Humanism? Expression? fuck that shit. Where are the fucking quarterly profit statements/crime statistics/standardized test scores?

ps. Truth be told, I am a fan of Wenning (since he was the dirtiest kid at the banks) Ladd (still one of the most progressive) and Rodriguez (still fucks with shit that no one else is really fucking with, like sw f/s heel 5/0, etc).

pps. when was the last time austere populism flourished? a recession.

2008-05-30T22:09:00.003-04:00

Research In Menace

Menace: A Sociological History - "coming soon"

ps. I would like to also take this opportunity to thank Crailtap management for the link.

The Deferred Dream of an East Coast Industry

2008-05-26T22:10:00.023-04:00

Mike Agnew was trying to establish an East Coast industry. He failed somehow.
-Sean Mullendore, 2008

The twentieth century is littered with the wreckage of failed industrialists: Studebaker. Lee Iacocca. DeLorean. Mike Agnew.
If you read this site, you probably also read the insanely prolific 48 Blocks. Perhaps, like myself, you were mesmerized by the Hemingwayan prose of the recent Sean Mullendore interview. Specifically, The mention of Mike Agnew reminded me of Nicotine/Capital/Silverstar/First Division and that whole era (1995-2000) of skating in the mid-Atlantic region. What happened to that dude? Unfortunately, that brand of hard-hitting investigative journalism is beyond the meager capabilities of this site. It could possibly, however, make for an effective two-paragraph piece in TWS Business. In any event, the purpose of this post is three-fold.

A. to sketch an abstract of the history of the “East Coast Industry” concept

B. to briefly elucidate some memories from the aforementioned era

C. to peer into a crystal ball to predict the [bleak] future of the “East Coast Industry” concept

PART A:

First there was Shut. Then Zoo crept up onto the scene in ’94 or so. Oddly enough, the first time I saw a Zoo board was in Intensity Skates in Jessup, Maryland in 1994 (more on that location later). Subsequently about a year later the whole “Stereo East” semi-controversy exploded, fueled partly by the blunt-fueled histrionics of Rick Oyola. Then ADI exploded, then imploded. There was always Zoo, but there was something shitty about the Chapman wood and shapes. For a while, though, ADI was best thing going. The whole reasoning behind Deluxe pulling the plug on ADI and Metropolitan, two brands most renowned for their ad concepts and designs, will forever by shrouded in mystery. Or, allegedly, Metropolitan outsold Spitfire, and, like, that’s a faux pas.

Nicotine had been going for a while, but Capital capitalized on the two superstars of the time—Pep and Andy. I think Pep had hurt his ankle, though, around the time that whole shit started. I think the Newport-inspired Nicotine graphics influenced my choice of Newport cigarettes when I started smoking in 1997. I quit in 2001.The thing about Capital was that the boards were closer to the Prime wood concepts—especially that one with the Nervous Records logo. The main thing that baffled my about Capital was that they never produced a video. I mean, Andy Stone had probably the most prolific year video-part-wise ever from April 1993 to April 1994 (Falling Down, Snuff, Fine Artists). Perhaps after EE3, such a production would have proven superflous? Who knows. Subsequently, and I don't know exactly how this occurred, but Silverstar switched from Zoo to ECU.

I almost forgot about Infamous. I'll never forget--I walked into my friend's birthday party, and---

"Ryan Hickey's starting a new company. It's called The Infamous. "

Truth be told, it would have been a lot cooler if the name had remained The Infamous. Unlike bands, the whole "the" thing never caught on with companies. The main thing I remember about Infamous is the very first night they got boards, most of the dudes were selling them at Astor. That and their extremely consistent ad layout. In addition, they later picked up Ian for a minute. That particular gentleman deserved his own post at some point in time, without a doubt.

Around the turn of the century shit became kind of surreal--the main tipping point being Zoo being taken over by Ecko, leading to a hostile takeover of Aesthetics, and consequently Zoosthetics with Sal as TM. That tripped me out. This led to, of course, Zoo York Footwear and:

Zoo york Surf! To clarify, I would like to state that surfing is fucking rad, and is a lifestyle that, in a way, I aspire to. I know that there are surf spots on LI and in NJ, which kind of makes sense, but establishing a Zoo surf brand reeks of late-00's cynical ASR bottom-line-ism. In any event, I'm sure Snake Plissken, given the choice, would patronize the Zoo York Surf brand.

Zoo York...hmmm....reminds me of that other shithole I escaped from.

Part B:

"Where the bitches at?"
-Maurice Key
Beltsville, MD 1996

Back in 85-86, when my dad drove me to DC to catch a plane to go visit my grandparents in Cleveland, he remarked "D.C. - there's an aura of power in this town." Few things compare to that two-hour drive, the intensity increasing exponentially. The drive from Richmond has a biorhythm all it's own. You start out in woods. Nothing but woods. Could be anywhere. Then you crest the hill of Fredericksburg, one of those towns with KFC signs towering 200 ft. in the air. Beyond Fredericksburg is basicallly the DC area. Once the HOV lanes appear, you're in a different time and space. Then you go over the curve of the highway over Crystal City--an oddly mystical name for an amalgamation of office buildings-- then you have arrived. 14th St.

Northeast of there, though, Intensity Skates hosted some of the most epic World demos of that time. Definitely worth driving 2 hr for. The first one I went to was a blind/world/prime (including Lavar and Caine Gayle, pre-MMA) production in 1996 that my friend and myself scheduled at the start of an epic EAST COAST ROADTRIP. Maurice Key did like four consecutive nollie b/s heels on the bank--definitely an iconic point in b/s nollie heeldom. The Intensity World demo 1996 also, and I have no idea why I remember this, is notable for the first nollie b/s n/g I ever witnessed, in person or on video, by Gary Smith, one of the most underrated East Coast dudes ever. Anyway, Maurice recognized me from Astor or whatever and quite sincerely asked "where the bitches at?" If I knew then what I know now, I would have directed him to the University of Maryland, just a couple miles away. Indeed, there's this one road that goes past U of M and heads straight for the heart of DC--specifically, MLK (RIP). I only skated that spot once--after the World demo the following year. Anyway, the EPIC EAST COAST ROAD TRIP continued north to the city of Baltimore. Because The Wire had not yet been produced, I did not know to head to the West side of town to purchase drugs! J/K. In any event, we had a place to stay so we headed to the most logical place for shit to skate—downtown/inner harbor area. We found that brick fabrication that Jack Sabback nose manualed in Static II , in addition to some Pier 7-type ledges directly adjacent to the harbor itself. In that area, we skated past some yuppie bar and some dude says “Hey! Skaters... ...alright—do you know Mike Agnew?” Trip the fuck out.
The next day we proceded to NJ for the last show. The girl who said we could crash at her house was nowhere to be found, so we said "fuck it" and just drove to PHILA and slept in the vehicle--an 89 Suburban--on some fuckin' sidestreet. I do not recommend this.
We skated a skeletal version of FDR before proceding to LOVE, a pilgrimage of sorts to a place and time the likes of which will probably never materialize again. A short list of individuals in attendance that one day were: Stevie, Oyola, Gall, KT. Barley and Reese Forbes appeared at dusk. One of my rationalizations for my position that Forbes' coverage has been lackluster of late is his status as one of the most hellacious skaters ever--somewhat of a precursor to Van Engelen's current philosophy of skating ledges as if one is brutally making love to a woman. I recall t/s to fakie at mach 10 on the main ledge, and, just like at Pulaski, a neck-high stage, which he ollied up, stood at the other end near the ledge-over-stairs. By the way, what did they use these stages for? Did they produces plays? Stage protests? Our Town?

Part C:

"Owner Mike Agnew says that diminishing sales forced him to reconsider his priorities."

-TWS Business, February 2000

So, the question remains—Is anyone insane enough to attempt to establish an East Coast industry ever again? Presently, Traffic is doing things, Catalyst is doing things—those dudes rip. But here’s the thing—based on my observations, roughly 90% of dudes ride shop boards. The other 10% includes dudes such as myself with irrational nostalgia-based brand loyalties. In addition, the structure of skating has mutated. In the past, there was a kind of secret network that started at the curb at your local elementary school and spread outwards, yet inwards at the same time—perhaps to the local office building with an obtuse brick “hubba”, to the local college with a smattering of ledges, to the DOWNTOWN AREA, to DC, to NY, to SF. Now, most kids just skate whatever box creation in their driveway or local cul-de-sac or low traffic area, maybe get their parents to drive them to the local park, and watch whatever videos appear on the internet. I'm probably wrong, though. The new futureworld has facilitated a lot of shit, but it's also created a situation where one can insulate oneself from everything--if one chooses to do so.

Both Teams Played Hard.

2008-05-18T21:04:00.004-04:00

Allow me to throw my 2 cents into the deafening chorus of disapproval surrounding the new Lakai product line.
Presumably, the "racing" series taps into the same aesthetic that gave birth to this opus.
Truth be told, I am loathe to wear clothing with tons of logos. I even rarely wear clothing with writing on it, period.
However, NASCAR is fucking rad. For example, this one female co-worker of mine attended a NASCAR racing event a few weeks ago and "drank a lot." This, in my opinion, is tremendously attractive. Why? Because it's about as un-hipster as you can get. Maybe this series will gain popularity if hipsters begin ironically wearing NASCAR attire.
In addition to the above IRL-themed Mariano 2, I am partial to moderately tech shoes like any Howard shoe, or the recent Carroll incarnations. I fail to comprehend how dudes skate in shoes like low-top "old-school" Vans. Skating, by definition, kills one's feet. Therefore, does it not warrant footwear that provides a modicum of protection? You don't see Chris Paul wearing Chuck Taylors or Pro Keds, praising their superior "court feel" or some shit. That might not be an apt comparison. However, I've observed Rasheed Wallace sporting high-top AF1's for a few years now. Who knows what rationale he conceived for that particular footwear decision, though.

where the fuck is Bora Bora, anyway?

2008-05-11T16:26:00.003-04:00

As apt now as it was then--perhaps moreso. Except for, however, the part about the calling card. I think I used to have one of those...

Greetings from Asbury Park.

2008-05-03T00:06:00.003-04:00

Review of Inhabitants now complete. Approximate word count: 3,372.

2008-05-02T22:09:00.001-04:00

The third-best Bay Area Thrash band...

2008-04-29T22:14:00.002-04:00

...according to Meza, released their first record in 9 years today--with the fucking original lineup (except for Paul Bostaph from Forbidden/Slayer on drums). From what I heard on the Sirius it seems to be a more modern interpolation of the Bay Area Thrash sound, with none of the death metal vocals of the mid-to-late Nineties releases. They will assault North America this summer with Priest, Sabbath w/Dio (who call themselves Heaven and Hell for legal reasons, I suppose), and fucking Motorhead. Holy crap.

Skouse interior decorating tip #4,080

2008-04-26T20:55:00.004-04:00

Do you live in a skouse? Does the decor in said skate house scream "I do not live with a woman?" If so, or even if this is not the case, here is a fun project you can do with one of the most common skouse design elements: the pile of old, shredded-all-to-fuck decks in the corner.
First, some background: When we moved here we got some shit from Pottery Barn Kids for our kids' rooms, so I have been receiving the catalog in the mail ever since. So today, I laughed when I saw this spread therein. The funniest part is the description for the deck-shaped chalkboards.
"Fuckin' skate kids--always "tagging" everything!!"
This shelving unit, though, seems like it would be a cool idea if fabricated with actual decks--you know, not the kind from bizarro world that have the (main) graphic on the top. I guess one could get some cheapo shelves from wherever, un-grip the decks, and just drill holes through the decks before one mounts the shelves. Or one could place 2x4's or some shit behind the decks so one could mount the unit on the skouse wall graphics-out.
Fuck, I might actually do this over the summer when I don't have to work.

ps. Just to clarify, if any of my kids get into skating, I will not redecorate with a "skate" theme. I will, though, encourage the classic "wall collage"--the only thing mags are good for now.

The Smaller the Text, The Closer to G-d.

2008-04-21T23:58:00.005-04:00

" 'definitly' considered the 'Nerds' of skateboarding."
Look at how small the text is in that "timeline." It has to be what, like 2 point? Unbelievable.

Living on the Edge of Time: The Lighthouse Keeper

2008-04-13T22:29:00.008-04:00

If you went to high school in this country, you read The Great Gatsby. In that book, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock is a symbol for Gastby wanting to fuck her, thus recapturing the past. The year I read the aforementioned work was the year that Snuff came out. Books, like video parts, metamorphosize over time. The meanings change. For example, when I read Catcher in the Rye in high school, my main reaction was “that’s fucking awesome—he ran away from school and went to nyc and stayed in a hotel by himself and did all this shit.” When I reread/taught it a couple years ago, my impressions were, of course, slightly more nuanced.

Video parts are the same way. Over time, dudes skate slower. Ledges shrink. Pants get bigger, wheels get smaller. More importantly, the psychological connections to spots and individuals change. Snuff, Trilogy, the switch flip over the table, Lockwood, the Cube, the small banks, the passage of time mutates all these places, people, and images.

The other day, while performing a rudimentary search for an illegal copy of Gino’s part in the Nike video (which shares the title with an epistolary YA novel), I found this. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. Who is the documentarian? What is he documenting? Why? In any event, it’s the most mystifying, perplexing, completely fucking devastating internet video I have seen in quite some time. Then I took a step back and viewed it through the prism which helps dudes like me give meaning to the meaningless: literature. Pro skaters are for, us at least, mythological figures in a Joseph Campbell sense. However, This internet film, for myself at least, transforms Gino into a literary figure.

Although Montauk is on the Eastern, not Northern shore of LI, and the lighthouse is an actual lighthouse, not a fucking green light at the end of a dock, the symbolism and characterization are strikingly similar to Gatsby. This is when Gino become a Fitzgeraldian character. Driving around LI, playing hockey, drinking beers, having some kind of existential crisis. Then there is the lighthouse, which Iannucci notes is on the Easternmost edge of New York. Iannucci feels as if he a passenger on a galleon, constantly teetering on the edge of the world. “How many days can I keep this up?”

A more productive literary prism through which to view this conundrum might be To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Truth be told, I don’t remember much of this from college. However, in a rudimentary internet search for literary criticism, I found the following quote:

“the lighthouse is an instance of the way in which we provide (or project) a sense of order, meaning and purpose to the contingent, provisional and inchoate nature of 'Life' itself: Mr Ramsay's final journey to the lighthouse provides shape, order and significance to his life at that moment.”

www.newi.ac.uk/rdover/lightho.html

At that moment in time, the lighthouse occupied whatever psychic space Iannucci need it to. And it will occupy a new space and perform a new symbolic function in the future. As I'm sure they told Iannucci in rehab, "One day at a time."

Of course, Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American life. Did Guy disprove this?

In conclusion, oddly enough, the only Iannucci deck I ever had:

I literally sold for a beer.

Trip the fuck out.

ps. I am shocked that no one has used the above Islanders logo as a graphic. Apparently, the team only used it for one year (96-97) because it was so g-ddamn offensive. I don't know why--what could be more badass than an angry fisherman with a hockey stick? Another reason to back the Islanders: a few years ago when they had just acquired Alexei Yashin and Michael Peca to become a legit team after a few years of shit, Meadow Soprano sang the national anthem at the home opener. epic.

Sound Advice

2008-04-12T07:38:00.002-04:00

"Carroll had Stanford winning the whole thing."

2008-04-05T14:32:00.012-04:00

A bold pick. Did anyone else see the Lopez twins' creepy mom in the crowd, with that clipboard or legal pad? Actually, truth be told, if my twins ever ended up on the same Division I basketball team in the NCAA tournament, I would probably be out there with a fucking laptop and shit.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know police informer posted a Jovantae thing yesterday. I could post something else, but I have a theme here--MARCH MADNESS, BABY! I was going to title this post "March Radness" but I think that has probably been used to death--it sounds vaguely familiar.
By the way, does anyone else find Dick Vitale creepy as fuck--specifically, the way he gets super fucking excited about a bunch of college dudes? This dude also looks and sounds exactly the same as he did when I was in 7th grade. Anyway, just like Bird, Georgetown losing to Davidson blew my bracket all to hell. However, I have another one with UCLA winning the whole shit. And when it comes to the enjoyable workplace diversion of MARCH MADNESS, there are three main schools of thought:
First, there are the people that try to be scientific and do hours of internet research and watch all those "bracketology" shows on ESPN. A former co-worker of mine, who knew nothing about basketball, was like this. This never works because college basketball is the hardest sport to handicap. Why? because it's just a bunch of fucking kids!
Then there is the dude that picks strictly according to seeding. That guy is a dick. Don't be that guy.
Finally, there is the "gut instinct" strategy. "Georgetown has that badass image, and I think they have a seven-footer...that's it! they're going all the way, baby!" A corollary to this is that "whitey" teams like Bucknell always lose.
The most important thing to remember is that there is no skill or acumen involved here. There's nothing worse that dudes that brag about how awesome they are about picking NCAA/NFL games, or how fucking amazing they are at fantasy football. That brings me to another thing that vexes me about modern life--that's it's acceptable for 30-40-50 year-old dudes to get SUPER FUCKING INTO fantasy sports, yet skating is infantile. Also, it's somehow acceptable, with the advent of Sunday Ticket, for dudes to lock themselves in a room every Sunday during NFL season with a cooler of Coors Light and a laptop and internet gamble. Skateboarding, though? infantile.
However, I must admit that gambling makes just about anything more interesting. Without it, I would legitimately not give a shit about this evening's games. I am, though, fucking amped about the impending all-out bloodbath in the NBA playoffs--particularly in the West--a tournament about which Bill Simmons made this particularly hilarious comment:

With $100 million-plus in advertising profits at stake if there's a Celtics-Lakers or Celtics-Suns Finals, it will be interesting to see if the Spurs get a single borderline call in May or June. My guess is that somebody on the Suns or Lakers could use a chainsaw and nunchaku to stop Duncan in a Game 7 and the refs wouldn't call it.

Also, it unfortunately appears that the Warriors are going to get left out, unless the Mavericks further implode. That sucks because they're the semi-official team of these dudes:

Don't stop believing.

A Tribute to Jordan Richter:

2008-03-31T21:40:00.005-04:00

the second-best Jewish skater of all time.

I think that was his only ad for Blind. I really wish I still had his Pro Spotlight from Feb. '93. He did shit like "opposite-footed" backside tailslide on a blank board with a Star of David on the bottom.
Was that him at the end of Salman's part in The Real Video?

"Bob said we could skate here": A review of Inhabitants by Habitat

2008-03-26T21:12:00.053-04:00

At this point, one pretty much knows what to expect with a Habitat video: Some kind of environmentalist theme. homemade, organic animation for dudes to trip the fuck out on when they smoke a bowl and watch the vid. I appreciate that. Some tech, some semi-gnar skartist skating, and some Sixties "garage"-type music--you know, the genre they focus on here. Except this time around, Castrucci, or whoever performed Music Supervisor duties, included 2.5 Stones songs. "Can't You Hear Me Knockin' " in Kalis in Mono was inspired, but using almost three songs by the same artist is somewhat of a skate vid faux pas--like too many Kanye West songs in the Kayo vid. I mean, I can't drive to work without hearing at least 4 songs that I haven't heard before that make me think "that song would be fuckin' dope in a vid," if you see what I'm driving at. The only dude in any medium that can get away with using multiple Stones songs is Scorsese.
So, do you think Castrucci is amped about this film?
Truth be told, I, myself, am not. The reasons, based on the trailer, are the following:
1. The set list is predictable, yet baffling. "She Was Hot?" Are you fucking kidding me? Why not just fucking play "Undercover of the Night?" Actually, come to think of it, that song is fucking awesome.
2. The "special guests" are horrendous. The only entertaining element of the film seems to be when Mick calls Scorsese "Marty" the whole time--just like James Lipton. That reminds me--did anyone else ever skate the ledge at DeNiro's restaurant? It's your average foot-high black loading dock ledge. The thing is, it's fucking at DeNiro's restaurant, dude. One time the host or whoever kicked us out and we (jokingly, of course) said "Bob said we could skate here." We left, of course. Although, truth be told, it would have been funny if Mr. DeNiro came out and asked "Do we have a problem here?" or something to that effect. Good times--good times skating the DeNiro ledge.

BAXTER-NEIL

Trees--the great Northwest. I get it. I make the connection. It's all starting to come together. Anyway, this dude does some mind-numbing shit here that is also aesthetically decent. For example, he has the two best tricks one can do, b/s tails on handrails and b/s noseblunts, wired. B/s nb slide on the pyramid ledges deserves particular wonderment because there's extremely minimal run-up. If one can do tre flips and those two tricks to death, no one can say you're not a good skater. To elaborate, when one starts skating, you try like every trick just for the sake of having in one's repertoire. Now, I realize that it's both more effective and fun to just wire a handful or tricks that feel good. That's just one perspective, though.
That's not to say Mr. Baxter-Neil does not display adeptness at an extremely wide variety of tricks. Truth be told, although I am not a huge fan of the wallride genre, the wallride-to-jump-over-the pipe thing tripped me the fuck out, as did his dual enders, which I will discuss in reverse order:
1) The fakie tre flip over that one Barcelona street gap--so much can go wrong there--like what if it flips 1.5 times and you land on the trucks instead of the bolts? What if it almost morphs into a 540 flip, but not quite, so you eat shit? However, my friends, we do not live in a world of "what if"'s.
2) the kickflip over the goddamn swiftly-flowing river is particularly evocative--good job, Mr. Castucci. The camera angle makes it seem like Baxter-Neil is flying into the sun like Icarus himself.

Now the transition into the artsy environmental film--and the theme statement:"inhabitants of a world in decline." I think it's safe to say that this environmentalist theme was previously covered in Now 'n Later, albeit in a more cut-and-paste late-80's video style. Which segues into

GARCIA

Hey--remember when this dude nollieflip n/s'd Hubba in Vita Natas's? Truth be told, that might be the most insane trick performed on that thing. Subsequently, he banged out arguably the best part in Mosaic, one that still rates up there on the "get amped to skate"-meter. The critical question here, though, is has the dude regressed or simply refined his shit? On one hand, you're not going to find any tre flip noseslides or nollie heel f/s nose on handrails. On the other hand, you would be hard-pressed to find a more casually executed nollie inside heel manual nollie heel out, or a more perfectly Californian line at the Hernandez ledges. Also, in a couple lines he seems to be actually skating "streets" in a naturalistic manner usually reserved for "GRITTY, RAW EAST COAST SKATING." This is a notable improvement over his previous two parts.

But fuck all that shit. Since Tim O'Connor, in his top fives in which he makes fun of dudes (such as his teammates) that pose with cameras and guitars to look all deep and shit, claimed Garcia is actually good at guitar, I wondered:

Does technical skating=technical guitar playing?

That is to say, because Garcia aspires to a certain degree of technicality in his skating, does the same aspiration apply to guitar? For example, when I was super into getting super good at guitar, I had a practice routine that went something like this:
1. warm-up exercises
2. pentatonic scales
3. diatonic scales
4. whatever mode I was trying to get good at at the time (i.e. phrygian, lydian, harmonic minor, etc.)
5. learn whatever song I was into at the time
6. jam along with records
I reiterate-this is only an example and should not be construed as the only way to become adept at the guitar. However, I think the most critical element is jamming along with records for hours on end.
Anyway, do technical skaters aspire to technical guitar playing, or is it cool enough to learn some 9th and major 7th chords and jam out on them on some flamenco shit? I will say, though, that tech skating and guitar playing share the following component: discipline. Although it's the lamest fucking word ever, there is no other word (besides Cardielian Mental Power) for the particular quality that facilitates trying a ledge trick over and over and over again until one wires it.

GALL
I would like to preface this section of the review by stating the following:

New Jersey is a nice place to live.

I reiterate: New Jersey is a nice place to live.

New Jersey has some of the best public schools in the world. It is not just one gigantic oil refinery. One is never more than an hour away from Phila.,NYC, the beach, or some natural mountain-type shit. There exists food and beverage besides beer, pizza, and pork roll, egg, and cheese sandwiches (although that's all you fucking need anyway). Every young lady is not an escort, stripper, or go-go dancer. Although, at my old job in Perth Amboy, my co-worker's girlfriend was, indeed, a dancer at this place called "Breathless" in Rahway. She was this super-hot blonde, Eastern European type--you know, the kind of girl that looks like she bleeds vodka. Kind of like a younger version of Mika Brzuznski from MSNBC. However, like most hot girls, she was also fucking crazy. For example, they would go out to lunch from time to time, and they would inevitably get in these huge blowout fights and she would strand him at Bennigans on Rt. 9 or wherever, then he'd be like 2.5 hours late getting back from lunch, which fucked everyone else at the job.

So one day, this Puerto Rican dude Joel, who at the time was "the new guy," comes in and says "bro, your girlfriend totally gave me a lapdance last night, bro." This dude was the kind of dude that listens to Jay-Z non-stop and quotes him incessantly because he thinks he's some kind of hustler or some shit. However, it turned out that she did, indeed, perform the service known as a "table dance" for this gentleman the night before. My friend didn't go beserk; he just fumed about it for a few days. Truth be told, he ended up getting fired for making too many mistakes, joined the Navy, and got shipped out to the Persian Gulf. I thought about that job when, after the recent police informer post, I watched this old Fred Gall part. See that pavilion at the end? I was shocked to recognize it from the Marina in Perth Amboy.
Circles, man--life fucking moves in circles.
So in terms of New Jersey, similar to how Springsteen gives life to his own personal vision of the place through the imagery in his songs, so does Gall through his video parts and other assorted coverage. One of the best things about about the old World vids was how they created their own universe where all those infamous spots--Beryl, Ramona, Lockwood, the World Park, Santa Monica ledges/sand gaps--coexisted seemingly around the corner from each other. Similarly, in Gall's New Jersey, around every corner lurks a bombed-out, abandoned factory/hotel with some crazy bank/ledge setup, next to a bank-to-wall, right next to an abandoned pool in the fuckin' woods.
I often (well, not that often) wonder what caused Gall's paradigm shift from the shockingly-ahead-of-its-time gorilla on ledgeism of the Sub Zero video to his current subgenre. Indeed, if one consolidates that part his footage from Eastern Exposure 2, and his 411 Wheels of Fortune from #11, one has the blueprint for East Coast tech that was in place pretty much until the tight pants era. It's almost as if there was nowhere else for him to go, nothing else for him to accomplish in that particular realm. No one was really fucking with anything on that level besides the elite Pulaski dudes (and some New York dudes such as Keith Harrison). The thing about that footage is that, when one watches it now, skating was so seemingly dead that there was pretty much no one in the background at Love/City Hall except for the same five dudes. Oddly enough, I thought about going up there back then but with Pulaski so seemingly close, it was like "why bother?" Looking back, it seems insane that we just accepted these epic, perfect spots as if they would always be there.
Like someone else from NJ told me once, "Spots come and go, life moves on."

ps. Oddly enough, no one has yet mined the Sabbath Dio years for skate vid soundtrack material

GILLETTE

"The kid's good." I'm not going to include a lengthy dissertation here--just a dude from California with good style. On Royal so he must not be a kook.
Oh yeah--beautiful backside 360 off the FF bump; feet do not leave board.

KHALSA

The kid's bad--as in fucking badass. Is he related to that dude that was in Lurkers 2? In any event, what we have here is a new interpretation of the Tom Penny sleepy style, with some mid-Nineties Anthony Correa influence--perhaps by osmosis. The one trick that stuck out in my mind was the overturned b/s noeblunt revert--or is that a "farside" bs ng-- on that bank. Remember when "farside" tricks were supposed to be, like, the future? This started approximately the time of the Peter Smolik ad featuring the first recorded b/s 180 to sw f/s crooked grind.

O'CONNOR

"Ladies and gentlemen, it's skateboarding's funnyman, Tim O'Connor!"
Although, I , for one, prefer the dry, subtle humor of a Sal Barbier, some of the shit O'Connor says is admittedly humorous. It's like baseball - three out of ten and you're a superstar. Besides, most dudes that get "interviewed" are about as charismatic and engaging as cigar store Indians.
And now, the skateboarding part of this review installment. Truth be told, I intentionally ignored the Element saga of O'Connor's career. Do I even have to say why? The way I see it, he appears to have internalized the right influences (Carroll, Lotti--especially in the fakie bigspin flip herein) and comes out with some semi-progressive shit but somehow never sets the world on fire. Those shove-it 5/0 variations he does are sick, though--no one's really fucking with those except Jean-Baptiste. However, the pressure flip manual should have been relegated to the cutting room floor, leaving the nollie cab flip over that hip (the same one that Charles Lamb nollie cab heeled over like 5 years ago) as the ender. What's wrong with that?

HOWEVER,,,

Shortly after that one Skateboarder cover:

, I went on a secret spy mission to the spot and tripped the fuck out at how rough it is.

The masonry is nowhere near the quality of the small banks. In addition, it's impossible to hit it head-on a la said banks; one must carve down the teeth-rattling hill and hit it on the upswing, so to speak.Along those lines, how fucking skilled were the masons that created the Brooklyn banks? You couldn't fit piece of notebook paper between those shits.
This spot, however, feels like someone built a 19th century cobblestoone street onto the side of a hill. This makes the truck executed on the above cover (thank you, Source Interlink Companies, Inc.! ) all the more incomprehensible. One of the local rippers insisted that a moped assisted in this. Some large, soft wheels might not have hurt, either.
My point to all this is that sometimes a video part, imcluding the editing decisions made therein, is not an accurate reflection of how sick a dude is.

SELEGO

Generic white dude. Wait--that's unfair. He does have a beard in some of this part, so I guess he's not that generic after all. NOTE TO WHITE DUDES: if you ever want to be less generic, grow a beard. It will make you a spiritual dude, like a Rabbi pondering the mystical wisdom of the Torah. Skating: the sw 180 heel over the Russian gold rail is impressive, although not as intense as Maurice's in 20 Shot. The dude is also fucking with the Gino trick (270 nollie to sw bs tail) to regular, which I haven't seen before. Then again, I'm not one of these dudes that sees every frame of every vid that comes out, so it might be being fucked with on a much larger scale than I'm aware of.

DURANTE

If the hype is real, this dude and Jake Johnson are the next wave of East Coast Jedis, most definitely. Best trippy environmental intro and best part. The manufacturing jobs might have fled New Jersey for China and Mexico decades ago, but whatever toxins remained and seeped into the water supply have mutated to create the most dominant strain of East Coast Tech-ism. Think Wenning with MORE POWER and slightly better posture. If one consolidates his part in Static III and this part, one has perhaps one of the most devastating debuts since ...well...Wenning's blitzkrieg in Photosynthesis. Sw heel f/s bluntslide will haunt the mind's eye for quite some time. WARNING: all those fakie crooked and fakie b/s 5/0 variations can bruise the fuck out of your foot if you fuck up.

GETZ

Another dude that never switched, ever since the Faiman's section in 411 #?. Although there is some Barcelona, Getz seems to be skating PHILA street shit for the most part, as if to bitterly mutter under his breath "fuck this place, I'll just skate whatever's here until I fucking die. I refuse to travel beyond a 20 mile radius of my home." This is an admirable stance, and preferable to flying to China to skate some pristine marble ledge. And despite my previous statements about the usage of Stones songs, "Monkey Man" is extremely effective here, especially the edit with the frontside 360 and that "Messianic...Satanic" line.

MOLINAR

This dude Burton that used to be on Zoo once told the tale, allegedly related to him by Dill, of an "industry handbook" of sorts that advised dudes to be super cognizant of what they wore when getting coverage. Maybe this would account for the fact that, if you put a gun to my head, I could not tell the difference, in my minds eye nor in a police lineup, between Raymond Molinar, Omar Salazar, and Dylan Reider. This dude is sick, though. Super fucking good kf fs tail. I spent the majority of my first viewing trying to determine when he was skating switch and when reg., and it used up a lot of brain power.

JANOSKI
I get the vibe that a lot of dudes are psyched on this dude. Indeed, he seems to have upped the "cruising down the street" factor from the Mosaic part, while still focusing on the core material of sw flip and sw nosegrind, branching outward and upward. However, I know music isn’t that much of a big deal, but the twee Kinks song detracts from the epicness of this part. The furor over the FF soundtrack, in my opinion, was overblown. Skate vid music supervision should be a zen thing, like whatever is in the atmosphere. If that happens to be the contents of Ty Evans iPod, so be it. However, musical selection can affect a part's standing on the psyched-to-skate quantitative scale, as illustrated on the below Powerpoint slide:

Anyway, despite said tweeness, the epicness doth flow: fast as hell, effortless sw backside flip over an SF channel, butterknifed nollie 180 sw ng revert, and ledge nbd in 1920’s flapper hat.
Wait, is that the famous white walls of my hometown? Nah must be somewhere else.
To reuse the guitar metaphor, I would compare this dude to a John Petrucci--technically mind-numbing, yet goofy in the best, nerdiest kind of way (note: the solo at 7:23 of that clip is my favorite solo by him ever). Mind-numbing ender meets contemporary standards of ender mind-numbingness.

CONCLUSION:
Hopefully the fallout from the recent buyout won't affect Habitat detrimentally. Although, their latest ad was of the "here are all our decks!" variety, which was disheartening. When it started, as an East Coast offshoot of Workshop, Habitat had an understood statement of purpose: "This is our Habitat: The East Coast of North America." Indeed, while not being a life-changer, Inhabitants retains the stoner company ethos while proving its thesis. Hopefully the aforementioned inhabitants (especially Durante) can avoid cannibalization by the declining world they inhabit.

ps. During the composition of this review, Sirius featured an all-Rolling Stones channel, presumably to coincide with the release of Shine a Light. And I must admit, I listened to it quite frequently, especially while going skating. It felt like I was in a fucking Scorsese-directed Habitat video.

Beverage Marketing Techniques part 2

2008-03-22T00:42:00.003-04:00

In Norse mythology, Valkyries like this bitch right here would scoop your dead body up from the field of battle and give you a ride to Valhalla, where they would hook you up with a hornful of mead. This is the role played in today’s world by the Red Bull girls. They can’t just be doing this in Richmond, can they? Do the Red Bull girls visit skate spots all over the world, promoting an “energy drink” owned by some mysterious Austrian dude?
This is how it happened—I was actually having a decent day of skating. Landing shit. kids were ripping, when someone yelled “RED BULL” and everyone ran into the parking lot. There, two young ladies pulled up in one of these

and gave everyone Red Bull. It was fucking weird---It pushed an already decent day to the point where I felt like this dude from Woodstock:

I assumed that this was one of there regular stops, because one of the locals asked them “where’s Roxanne?”

I see—first-name basis.

Then I did some half-assed internet research and I saw that the Red Bull corporation does a shitload of shit with skating. Like that “seek and destroy” shit from a couple years ago that is always on Comcast OnDemand. Canadians might remember that deal when they drove some skaters around Montreal in limos. Oddly enough, the whole Red Bull marketing campaign is reminiscent of olde-tyme ads for Coca-Cola, etc.—in the good olde days when it still contained cocaine:

The ad copy is basically the same. I believe very strongly that if there were olde tyme skaters in the 1880’s, they would have pounded “coca wine” before jumping down that wooden set of stairs at the olde town hall. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

However, they sponsor Joey Brzynski, who is one of the most progressive dudes out there. They also apparently throw garbage bags filled with $100 bills at anything skating-related, like that deal where dudes rode around Montreal in limos and that “Red Bull Seek & Destroy” thing from few years ago that pops up on Comcast OnDemand every now and then. My extremely rudimentary internet research including the official Red Bull Skateboarding Web Site, which I couldn’t tolerate for long. Not only do I prefer Nineties skating and music, I like Nineties web site design as well--very basic html, with plain text—preferably Times New Roman.

So anyway, the Red Bull girls succeeded in getting me to drink their beverage. They were both attractive, but one was seriously a 10. If I were to apply the Beautiful Girls three-point rubric of body/face/personality, she would rate a 10/9/?. I didn’t get to pick her brain. She was definitely attractive enough to be a pharmaceutical sales rep. Truth be told, pharmaceutical sales reps are probably, on average, hotter than strippers. I wonder if this young lady really dug skaters or was just climbing the “sales” ladder until she got to be a pharmaceutical sales rep.

Of course, the group of kooks at the park that stand around, smoke cigs, and drink energy drinks all day were psyched. It’s weird. I still don’t know how I feel about some kooky beverage company owned by some weird Austrian dude dumping dump trucks full of cash into everything related to skating. Then I started to wonder, why don’t skaters just fucking start getting sponsored by beer companies? I don't think I would be remiss in stating that skaters like to drink alcoholic beverages now and then. The answer, I subsequently figured, relates to demographics. The target consumers of NASCAR, for example, are older dudes and redneck sluts. These gentlemen and ladies guzzle beer morning, noon, and night. What is the target consumer of both energy drink retailing and action sports retailing? Dudes age 11-16. See how it’s all connected? Like this dude

would say, "That's some cynical politics right there."

World Industries: The Thinking Man's Skateboard Company

2008-03-16T20:27:00.001-04:00

Nice Airwalk backpack.

shoe/dvd review: Carroll select/EMB LE

2008-03-12T21:47:00.007-04:00

In all honesty, I have about 5% the shoe knowledge and expertise as this guy. I have never used the word "colorway" in actual conversation. However, if ever a shoe warranted a dissertation on this site or any other, it is this one, especially considering it comes with a dvd of archival EMB/SF footage.

First, the shoe itself. It is reminiscent of a half cab or a vans Carroll, with the "vulcan" sole that all the kids are into these days. I gotta tell ya, I was never a big half-cab loyalist. They always felt like the soles were like 1/8" thick. I was always more partial to soles that approximated the zig-zag pattern of the adidas superstar, like in the first e's Muska or whatever the fuck. The "all-over print" video grab deal is printed on this shiny full-grain leather type stuff. Like the box, I will probably trip out on it when I'm drunk. Truth be told, this is the only "all-over print" item in my entire wardrobe. The other residents of my house, on the other hand, have a shitload:
sample of the all-over print craze. note handmade all-over print Thomas the Tank Engine quilt.
. And now the dvd.

dedication

The dvd is divided into 4 sections: "1990-2", "Daly City to EMB", "Paul's Ramp", and "The Anatomy of a Line" (I think). The "Daly City to EMB" section is probably the most interesting, because it breaks down in an hour-by-hour basis, not unlike Ulysses, a typical day of skating in 90-91, including almost getting in fights with old dudes in 1977 Cutlass Supremes. The commentary is typical self-depricating Carroll fare, including matter-of-fact discussion of the first time he did ecstasy. NOTE: it seems like the goofiest drug ever now, but at the time it was kind of progressive.
(By the way:does anyone even do ecstasy anymore? It seems like it has been overtaken in popularity by Oxycontin, vic's and percs. Coke, on the other hand, is as popular as ever. Very consistent drug, in terms of popularity, if you don't count the late 80's crack craze. It never switched. )
In terms of the skating herein, you get evidence of how insanely progressive Carroll was without really thinking about it. Case in point: fakie tre over a double-sided curb in 1990 and a trick that Lee Smith performed in an ad like 2 months ago. Oh yeah, he also admits that the ns nollie heel out in Questionable was not, in actuality, a legit nollie heel, but rather a bastardized pressure flip kinda thing. If that kind of admission trips you out, you might possibly appreciate this shoe/dvd.

"Finally..."

2008-03-07T04:00:00.002-05:00

I finished the review of Fully Flared. word count--approximately 6,350.

Fully Flared: An Extensive Review

the most technical trick I have ever seen in person:

2008-03-05T20:28:00.002-05:00

Happened a couple days ago at the park--kf bs tail, bs flip out by the local hero.
"The kid's good," as they say.
Even though it's not my favored genre of skating, I am amped to see the Fallen video if only to see which Seventies classic rock/hard rock songs are included in the soundtrack. You know, the kind of shit they play here.
I was thinking, what was the previous most technical trick I have ever seen in person? Maybe Torres nollieflip crooked grind 10 years ago, or f/s ng nollieflip out around the same time. I was in another zone of the banks when Kalis sw bs heeled over the wall--missed that one. I heard it though--heard dudes freaking out. That's when you know you're adept your profession--when you make dudes lose their shit.

That doesn't really happen in other professions--like lawyers in the same firm don't bro out and shit when one of them fucking nails a cross-examination, do they? I wouldn't know; maybe some lawyers do. That would be rad.

"dude--you totally fucking nailed that pre-trial motion!!"

text

2008-02-28T06:06:00.002-05:00

sociopaths.

2008-02-28T04:42:00.003-05:00

mnctech101 (9:33:57 PM): what kind of girl would cling to the skate industry for an identity?

stringrbarksdale (9:34:04 PM): a sociopath.

mnctech101 (9:34:07 PM): "i'm down with baker..."

mnctech101 (9:34:08 PM): ha

stringrbarksdale (9:34:12 PM): i'm serious

mnctech101 (9:34:27 PM): how do you figure?

stringrbarksdale (9:34:59 PM): any girl who needs attention from socially retarded skate dudes is sociopathic

mnctech101 (9:35:08 PM): a fair assessment

mnctech101 (9:35:19 PM): do you feel like skating retarded you socially?

stringrbarksdale (9:35:40 PM): in a way, also accelerated in a way

mnctech101 (9:35:53 PM): yeah i was talking to my girl about this a while ago

stringrbarksdale (9:35:59 PM): because you meet so many people from different areas

mnctech101 (9:36:02 PM): i came to the same conclusion

mnctech101 (9:36:07 PM): yeah

mnctech101 (9:36:22 PM): but you also tend to associate with people who don't do too much

stringrbarksdale (9:36:33 PM): mostly

stringrbarksdale (9:36:44 PM): skaters are mostly more interesting that regular people anyway

mnctech101 (9:37:05 PM): so long as they're not completely immersed in skating

mnctech101 (9:37:34 PM): i met lots of people early on, like when i was 12, that i'd have never known without skating

mnctech101 (9:37:39 PM): put me on to lots of things early

stringrbarksdale (9:37:41 PM): yeah totally

stringrbarksdale (9:38:13 PM): i have completely lost contact with everyone i hung out with in high school

stringrbarksdale (9:38:19 PM): besides dudes i used to skate with

mnctech101 (9:39:29 PM): yeah

mnctech101 (9:39:30 PM): me too

mnctech101 (9:40:13 PM): i lost regular contact with pretty much everyone i knew before i was 18, 19

mnctech101 (9:40:16 PM): they all quit skating

stringrbarksdale (9:57:04 PM): slap is on a shit server

mnctech101 (9:57:20 PM): i hate the new msg board, that fucking flannel motif

stringrbarksdale (9:57:25 PM): all the message board posting is pushing it into CRITICAL OVERLOAD

mnctech101 (9:57:37 PM): heh

mnctech101 (9:57:48 PM): transfer the msg board to usenet

stringrbarksdale (9:57:49 PM): "she's gonna blow!!!!!"

mnctech101 (9:57:53 PM): ha

mnctech101 (9:57:58 PM): like one dude posts something

mnctech101 (9:58:18 PM): "andrew reynolds said that greco's wack now"

mnctech101 (9:58:22 PM): *kablam*

stringrbarksdale (9:58:27 PM): yes, transfer to usenet

stringrbarksdale (9:58:32 PM): text only

mnctech101 (9:58:36 PM): binaries

stringrbarksdale (9:58:38 PM): heh

stringrbarksdale (9:58:45 PM): never figured that shit out

mnctech101 (9:58:51 PM): yeah

mnctech101 (9:59:35 PM): i remember when i discovered usenet, my news reader couldn't display binaries, so i'd just see them as blocks of text. i spent a couple of minutes looking at one, expecting a magic eye-like effect.

stringrbarksdale (9:59:44 PM): yeah me too

stringrbarksdale (9:59:54 PM): i read it in Unix

mnctech101 (10:00:02 PM): how did you find usenet anyway?

stringrbarksdale (10:00:26 PM): it was a function of the Columbia email program--CUnix

mnctech101 (10:00:43 PM): yeah i found it through netcom, my isp at the time

mnctech101 (10:00:57 PM): "message boards, eh. wonder if there's a skate one"

mnctech101 (10:01:35 PM): i think google owns usenet now

stringrbarksdale (10:01:47 PM): how did that work

mnctech101 (10:01:55 PM): they bought all the content

stringrbarksdale (10:01:59 PM): i thought it was like...a noncommercial entity

mnctech101 (10:02:03 PM): priceless posts

stringrbarksdale (10:02:19 PM): rmhh was funny too

mnctech101 (10:02:25 PM): yeah i have no idea

mnctech101 (10:02:29 PM): oh yeah

mnctech101 (10:02:35 PM): steve 'flash' juon

stringrbarksdale (10:02:45 PM): well, ohhla is still a valuable resource

mnctech101 (10:02:55 PM): who posts those lyrics?

stringrbarksdale (10:03:01 PM): random dudes

mnctech101 (10:03:09 PM): sounds like a good use of time

stringrbarksdale (10:03:26 PM): it's crazy, every song ever is on that shit

mnctech101 (10:03:53 PM): that dude matt barone writes for rap magazines now

stringrbarksdale (10:04:09 PM): "a growth industry, for sure"

mnctech101 (10:07:49 PM): these people in my classes asked me about writing for skate mags

mnctech101 (10:07:54 PM): "how can i get in?"

mnctech101 (10:07:59 PM): "uuhh, shoot photos"

mnctech101 (10:08:39 PM): "don't ask for money"

stringrbarksdale (10:08:53 PM): yes, don't ask for money

stringrbarksdale (10:09:02 PM): don't expect to be compensated for work

mnctech101 (10:09:10 PM): not from skate mags

mnctech101 (10:09:15 PM): maybe you'll get a hoodie or something

stringrbarksdale (10:09:27 PM): i would settle for a sheet of grip

mnctech101 (10:09:34 PM): grip's expensive

stringrbarksdale (10:09:37 PM): no shit!

mnctech101 (10:09:41 PM): a roll costs shops like $65

stringrbarksdale (10:10:11 PM): back later

mnctech101 (10:10:14 PM): yup

Philip Anselmo: an American classic

2008-02-22T04:59:00.006-05:00

"Never underestimate the kid--you're fuckin' crazy if you do!
And oh, by the way, I'm the kid."
-Phil Anselmo
I went to see Down last Friday night--paid for a babysitter and everything. In 1992, Down originated as a Pantera side project including Anselmo, two dudes from C.O.C. and two dudes from Crowbar. Their debut recording, considered by many a cornerstone of the Southern Metal subgenre, came out in 1995. Truth be told, it was probably my favorite thing to listen to in the late 90's.
An integral part of Down, however, is singer Phil Anselmo and his wacky stage banter. I had not experienced this since Feb. 1999, when i witnessed Pantera open for Sabbath at the Nassau Coliseum, Long Island.
Pantera opened with this song, and I tripped the fuck out.
As you might imagine, Long Island's finest citizens came out for this performance. If you live in the city or Brooklyn, I highly recommend taking the train/bus out there for an Islanders game or some shit--good times. Truth be told, Anselmo did, in fact, advocate smoking weed at the 1999 show, as he did Friday night. He also repeatedly exclaimed "Let's rock!" before the band went into a "breakdown" part. At another point, he prevented a fight by addressing a fan and doing that "eye contact" thing where you point to your eyes and then at the person, saying "Look here, brother, anger is just one fuckin' moment in your life--let it pass!"
Sage advice, indeed.
Sometimes I wonder of Anselmo's stage persona is really how he is or if it's just an act--like a pro wrestler. In any event, he is one of the most entertaining dudes out there. For example, at the Long Island show, he asked the crowd "Who here is on acid?" When a few individuals applauded, he replied "You're full of shit!" Subsequently, Pantera covered "Cat Scratch Fever" and immediately went into the beginning of "Raining Blood," with Dimebag handing his guitar to Anselmo, who nailed the intro solo. Good times--good times, indeed.

CRITICAL UPDATE!

2008-02-10T21:19:00.000-05:00

I have implemented a few critical updates here, if you happen to be interested and have not been scrolling down.
Thanks for reading.
I should be done by the end of the week, depending on babysitter status for the Down concert Friday nite.
I'm going to put a lot of thought into the Mariano part, but it is warranted, I think...

L'Chaim!

2008-02-08T22:14:00.000-05:00

Even though this graphic is ironic, it still might have to go on my wall. Maybe my parents would have been more psyched on skating if this board had come out like 14 years ago.

All hail the sovereign sect.

2008-02-07T19:58:00.000-05:00

1991-2008 a.d.

EURO TECH

2008-02-04T21:04:00.000-05:00

My kids' grandfather sent the five-year-old a fifth birthday present in a box by this company. Then my brain started working..."Eurotech."
"Sounds like Menace Tech."
SICK."

Truth be told, There are shitload of companies called "Euro Tech."
For illustrated examples, See the Lordz video or that one contest vid on youtube of Munster, except there's no one in the audience and some kid in one of those winter coats with a fuzzy hood keeps trying bigspin heels until he finally makes one and hugs Bastien Salabanzi.

EURO TECH TOP 5 (OF DUDES NOT IN FF BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE TOO OBVIOUS)
1. Petr Horvat
2. Marfaing
3. that asian dude in the Lordz video that was ridiculously good
4. Eero Antilla
5. (whatever happened to...) Marco Romero

2008-02-04T20:43:00.000-05:00

Another brainchild of Andy Howell--a funny song parody of "Pinball Wizard."
Note: in 1991, referring to "pimps" and "ho's" was still kind of edgy-- I'm Gonna Git You Sucka had only been released like 3 years prior. This was before every sorority in America (and whatever Real World was being filmed at the time) had a "pimps and ho's" party.
As if to say, "ha! look at me, I'm dressed like an actual whore! aren't I cute? Of course, I'm not really a prostitute, so it's ironic--the opposite of what you would expect!"
Let me tell you--there's nothing cute or funny about prostitution. It's a business like anything else. And it's a cold world out there.

Too fucking cold.

ps. looks like a nollie f/s railslide on the fountain curb. goddamn, that thing is waxed to hell.

Vanilla Ice: a decent mc - continued

2008-02-01T19:58:00.000-05:00

Last year, I made this post in a sleep-deprived haze, claiming that Vanilla Ice was really not that terrible of an mc, especially compared to a bunch of dudes that are popular now. Well, it would seem that I am not alone here:
These fucking guys do a segment on their show where they go through the alphabet, playing a track from the "best" artist whose name begins with each letter. They take calls from listeners with suggestions, and it's entertaining radio. For example, "T" was Tupac, "S" was Smif-n-Wessun, etc. So, the other night, the best mc they could think of for "V' was Vanilla Ice. The only artists that were remotely close were Vinnie from Naughty by Nature and that hooker Vita from Murder Inc. or whatever the fuck she is affiliated with now. I'd agree with Jude, though, that his main downfall was only creating one decent song.

ps. yes, I did attend (note: I got in for free, thanks to college radio) a Vanilla Ice concert on his "hardcore" comeback tour in 1998, when he put out a record produced by that Limp Bizket producer guy. He performed both the regular version of "Ice Ice Baby" and this one.

Too fucking cold.

22-shot sequence & superman

2008-01-23T19:59:00.000-05:00

Two textbook examples of the late shove. Well, Sheffey's is not so textbook--but it's Sheffey. I cannibalized the Brennan sequence from a Thunder ad. Although police informer pretty much has the scans on lock, I came up on a grip of mags from 1991 because my co-worker came up on them at his parents' house. So I'll be posting shit from them from time to time. Mostly though, I try to contribute more literary content. Get in where you fit in. In other words, play your position.