tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42054270625152464202024-03-15T18:09:03.950-07:00The Parking Block DiariesSKATE AND DECONSTRUCT!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-39299323640009320602017-10-30T10:32:00.003-07:002017-11-01T13:01:18.979-07:00Lutzka And Me: A Non Interview and Some Thoughts on "Corporate" Sponsorships<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bP5J_IoT3OE/WfdW_lWW1UI/AAAAAAAAAlw/ToDH7Y-Qy54bCxJUmMTgI3BdQdudJX9bwCLcBGAs/s1600/Greg-Lutzka-pro-skateboarde.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bP5J_IoT3OE/WfdW_lWW1UI/AAAAAAAAAlw/ToDH7Y-Qy54bCxJUmMTgI3BdQdudJX9bwCLcBGAs/s400/Greg-Lutzka-pro-skateboarde.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When it comes to big corporations in skateboarding, I’m more baffled than threatened. I have a lot of questions. I know skating is more popular now than ever before but does that really mean Sean Malto can effectively sell Mountain Dew to the masses with his skateboarding prowess? Does anyone who doesn’t skate really care about skateboarding in any profitable way? Does P-Rod’s Axe scent smell better if you apply it with your non dominant hand? I’m not an advertising expert or a demographer. I’m barely an expert on skateboarding. Maybe my inner skate rat just can’t comprehend that anyone really gives a shit about skateboarding.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not too long ago I got a request to join pro skateboarder Greg Lutzka’s network on Linked In. Lutzka has gotten a lot of support from corporations outside skating’s fold. He’s had sponsors like Rockstar Energy (*), Onnit Supplements and even Harley Davidson. When a channel of communication was opened to Lutzka, I was excited. Here, finally, was a chance to get a lot of things cleared up, and get the perspective of someone who has benefited tremendously from corporate sponsorship </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just what is it that outside corporations value in the endorsement of a professional skateboarder? What do they expect from their riders? What opportunities beyond money can they provide for skaters they sponsor? Most of all who is the target when Rockstar pays a guy like Lutzka to put their sticker on his board? Is he valuable because they think he can get skaters to buy their product? Or is the marketing aim broader, along the lines of the universal demographics companies pull when they pay football stars, pop musicians, or Hollywood celebrities? </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conversely, I was also hoping to give a corporate-backed skater a neutral forum for talking about how the big money players enhance their career. This was not going to be a hit piece. The “core” skate industry is a cutthroat, highly political and cliqueish place. I could certainly imagine how having a majority of ones income coming from outside that little incestuous economic circle could be not just profitable for a skater like Lutzka, but liberating.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I contacted him via Linked In, Lutzka agreed to an interview without any hesitation. I also prompted him on what I was about and what I wanted to talk about. We went through the process of clearing up an interview time. With Lutzka its was easier than most.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the interim, I went about getting even more familiar with Lutzka’s career. He’s a ripper. He won Tampa Pro t</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>hree times</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. He’s got stacks and stacks of clips. He’s a fixture of the Dew Tour, and was frequently seen on network skateboarding broadcasts and online streams. His solid skating has earned him a well deserved place in the big time. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Looking at his sponsors gave me a few surprises. Rockstar Energy was obvious. (Frankly, though, I never see skaters drinking energy drinks ever, not even the park marks who like to debate Street League results and play skate all day in the flat). Osiris. OC prefab ramps, Independent, Ricta wheels. O.K. Pretty standard roster.</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dOQ1CgHAIl8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dOQ1CgHAIl8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there’s the other stuff: Kicker audio. A company that makes the audio equipment the meatheads who cruised Wabash Avenue in my hometown used to stuff in their lowered mini trucks. Of course, more than one skate rat had some kickers Macgyvered into their shitty hoopties too, but I digress. Onnit supplements is on the list, this one makes me roll my eyes. I immediately think of buffed up dudes with mullets and Zubaz spouting off terms like “leg day” and “feel the burn”, but I’m surprised when I mention this on the PBD facebook page and lots of members chime in on how much they like Onnit’s supplements. Chalk that up to my ignorance. Onnit also produced one of the best Lutzka video promos: a moody vid of Lutzka cruising the streets of Austin Texas on a lonely night. There isn't a contest ramp or skatepark obstacle to be found in the clip. It looks like something Dan Wolfe would film. Definitely not the standard square-headed corporate promo piece. It had soul. Kudos to Onnit for that one.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Harley Davidson sponsors him. That’s really intriguing… skaters have spent decades emulating biker culture in all sorts of ways, it’s either a no-brainer or a strange turnabout that Harley is hooking up a pro skater now.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At any rate, it's a broad and interesting list of endorsements, and I’m really amped to talk with Lutzka about what it really means to be backed by so many “corporate” sponsors. The plan is to get the perspective of someone who isn’t a naysayer or a “core” partisan. The day comes, and I’m ready to go.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Problems start when I get a call from Greg about 5 hours before the scheduled time. He’s on a long drive and has nothing to do. Me, I’m in the middle of cooking dinner for my family, and my wife is about to come home from her 11 hour work day,meaning I will have to run interference on my daughter to keep her form tackling my wife when she walks through the door. I’ve got some time though, so I prop up my recorder next to the saute pan and roll with it.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lutzka is a smart and well spoken guy, so I start with a sort of abstract, philosophical question, a question that I feel is the lynchpin of the whole “corporate” conundrum.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ask, straight out, something to the effect of this: When companies like Rockstar or Harley Davidson hire a guy like Lutzka, what is it they are paying for? Are the paying for someone who can sell to skaters? Or are they seeking to gain a more general cache for their product? An image boost that can enhance their brand to the general public? What is it that they think a great skater can do for them?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps I bungle the question, or maybe it is just too broad, but Lutzka tells me he doesn’t fully understand the question. Fair enough. It happens with my interview style sometimes. I also sense some hesitation to talk deeply about sponsors, but that may just be me reading too much in. I get specific instead. I decide to ask him about Harley Davidson.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Harley Sponsorship, as I mentioned, fascinates me. For nearly a hundred years, Harley Davidson has been the premiere embodiment of freedom, rebellion, and a sort of palatable quasi-outlaw lifestyle in the American mass consciousness. These are the same things skate culture has aspired to represent in it’s relatively small subculture. From Jim Muir, to Jason Jessee, to Max Schaaf, so many skaters have taken their stylistic and social cues form biker culture, skateboarding can almost be seen as a sort of tag-along younger sibling. What does skating have that Harley hasn’t already monopolized in the market of consumer images.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lutzka perks up at this question, and I can immediately tell he is very proud of his association with Harley Davidson. His answer is, essentially, that even though Harley has massive cache with the public, they are seeing a generational gap, a gap that they think skaters can help reach. In this it is interesting to hear that, unlike so many other skaters, Lutzka was not into Harleys before his sponsorship. They actually put him through cycle school and hooked him up with his first bike. I think he is more grateful for that than any checks he gets.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a telling example of the sort of bizarro world inversion that is taking place in modern big-time skateboarding, a phenomenon that has older skaters feeling like they have stepped beyond the looking glass and wound up in a strange hostile world. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also ask Lutzka if he has ever pressured to do something by one of his outside sponsors that he disagreed with or thought was inappropriate or just misguided. He brings up a crucial point in his answer.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jcVtW8PF5w4/WfdXMVKrXqI/AAAAAAAAAl0/G4dIYm2wEcAKi33jmVB0rHkDFOMJ0AWwgCLcBGAs/s1600/95858c4432b6da492f8174714c8b93ad--greg-lutzka-skate-videos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jcVtW8PF5w4/WfdXMVKrXqI/AAAAAAAAAl0/G4dIYm2wEcAKi33jmVB0rHkDFOMJ0AWwgCLcBGAs/s400/95858c4432b6da492f8174714c8b93ad--greg-lutzka-skate-videos.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The whole reason outside companies sponsor guys like him is to represents their products in subcultures and contexts the corporation knows nothing about. It makes no sense, Lutzka explains, for someone to hire him, and then make him do a bunch of stuff that is at odds to what he is all about. Dictating boneheaded marketing stunts or trying to impose some sort of imaging message on skateboarding flies in the face of what the smart companies are paying for when they hook up skaters. Skateboarders are not simply a commodity for these interests, but a point of access. You blow your rider’s credibility and not only is your investment wasted, but also your entry in to the market you are wooing.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I’ve heard from my own personal connections and simple observations bear this out. Even after a decade of dominance in the skate shoe market, I know from connected friends that Nike still devotes considerable thought and capital on how to crack the most stubborn vestiges of skate culture. Despite wild financial success, Nike still knows that it is an outsider, and unless Nike can remedy that, there will always be a market they can’t reach. This is why they pay top dollar to a guy like Lance Mountain, or take the time and capital to do something like a limited edition Chuck Treece shoe. It’s why they still write Chet Childress checks even though he is now more of a wandering artist/stoke sower than a prominent pro. There’s a solid market-based reason Adidas coordinates events by contracting with The Boardr instead of putting their own extensive promotions people on it, and why they continue to keep Gonz front and center in their marketing.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That famous Tony Hawk quote about The Olympics needing skateboarding more that skateboarding needs the Olympics is not just a platitude. The Olympics need to get eyes that are not reaching. They won’t do that if they screw up what makes people love skating in the first place.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The smart money is not pumping in resources to change skateboarding, they’re spending money to be part of the club, a part that, incidentally, wants to sell you stuff. There is an insidious side to this for sure, but the bottom line is this: corporations don’t want to change skateboarding. Skateboarding as is has something they want: an inroad to new consumers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The big corporations already have Little League, The NFL, and every other mainstream sport in their pocket, and they have saturated these markets with decades of involvement. They want to branch into our world because it is a place where they can reach the sort of consumer they won't ever get from blaring ads on Monday Night Football. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turn skateboarding into Football and you lose that inroad. It is more profitable and less expensive for a business to become a part of something than it is to exert massive resources to change it. This is why friendly takeovers are always preferred to hostile takeovers in the corporate world. Its basic marketing and economics.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If they start changing skateboarding, making it into what they already know, they are going to drive away the very people they are investing so much capital to reach in the first place. Corporate entities and their minions can be rock stupid, but most of them aren’t that stupid. Turning skateboarding into sportsball would be strangling the golden goose with a Monster-branded wallet chain.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: yellow; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Predictably</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, my interview with Lutzka gets cut short. I ask him if we can continue another time and he seems pretty agreeable, although I still sense he is a bit gun shy. Maybe he is worried about alienating sponsors or being taken out of context. More likely he is just not into what we’re talking about. After all, talking to me isn’t like broing it up with most of the highly connected skate media.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In short, a second interview never happens, but the little bit of info I did get got me thinking, and my experience following Lutzka on social media put some other issues on the table. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The real downside of the corporate invasion is not the mutation of skateboarding into something we’ll hate, it's about intrusion and attention and the penetration of our culture’s little bubble, its about the fact that watching a clip online means you are as likely to have to watch an ad for Geico as for Girl. The skate media is no longer a place of refuge from all the cheesy shit many of us turned to skateboarding to get away from in the first place. The walls have been breached. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that really sucks.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>*Greg Lutzka has parted ways with Rockstar since we talked. He has since picked up sponsorships form Zevia Soda, and Amy's Organic Foods.</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-58955719937114915522017-10-15T13:08:00.000-07:002017-10-15T14:12:58.306-07:00Stop Skating With Your Eyes<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gkbLnjyVSHc/WeO_Z3fSXtI/AAAAAAAAAlc/u2hwP9Lw5UA2TZ0ImhJkaDDL-Mqtx-D2gCLcBGAs/s1600/wj-pr16-jb-holds-up-mirror-to-md-on-stage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="847" height="356" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gkbLnjyVSHc/WeO_Z3fSXtI/AAAAAAAAAlc/u2hwP9Lw5UA2TZ0ImhJkaDDL-Mqtx-D2gCLcBGAs/s640/wj-pr16-jb-holds-up-mirror-to-md-on-stage.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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We experience skateboarding with all of our senses, but we consume it with our eyes. Ironically, when you are actually skating, what you <i>see</i> is the least important part of the experience. The feeling of weightlessness in the air, the vibration of the grind through your feet, the sound of trucks on concrete: These are the things skaters are really chasing after when they ride. Yet the increasing emphasis on watching skateboarding, from pro vids to your own selfies, can make it real easy to lose sight of this.<br />
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I love Instagram. I love that I can post the same old tricks at the same old spots again and again and people will get inspired even by my feeble skating. I have gotten a few thousand followers on IG with slappies and curb gimmicks, followers from all over the world and from all age groups. In their own little way, my clips get people stoked to skate. That's great.<br />
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What I hate about this brave new world of my personal skating is the way it has made me, despite all my conscious efforts, begin to focus more on what I look like when I skate.<br />
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I have always been a very tactile skater. I do tricks for the sensation they give me, the experience. That's why I can do the same tricks over and over again and never get tired of them. That's why I get irate when I can't get some trick i've pulled a thousand times. Its not perfectionism or competitive drive, I simply fiend for the sensations my tricks give me and I go crazy when I can't experience them.<br />
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When I look at a clip of something that felt pure and powerful and perfect when I did it, yet looks stiff and forced when I watch it, it always triggers a poisonous dilemma in my brain, a dilemma that cuts to the soul of skating.<br />
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Skating has a dual nature: it is a full sensory experience on one hand, and a visual commodity we can only consume by watching on the other. When it comes to the actual experience of skating, does it really matter what something looks like? Is perfection of style and form worth chasing after for reasons other than the visual consumption of your personal skating by others? Does "bad style" really matter to anyone but those watching? And aren't we supposed to not give a shit about what anyone thinks<br />
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Or, to bring it back to that personal dilemma: should you change the way you do something that <i>feels</i> good just so it <i>looks</i> better?<br />
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The answer is clearly no. Period. There is no argument in the other direction that doesn't involve flexing, ambition or otherwise commodifying your own skateboarding for someone else's agenda. I'm not trying make a living or even get free shit from what I do on a skateboard. I don't skate in front of a mirror. What my skating looks like should be irrelevant for someone like me. I know this. I know it is a fact. I know that my whole philosophy of skateboarding agrees with this as a foundational principle.<br />
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But still, sometimes I watch and I feel the urge to tweak and try and alter my approach. I can't help it. I still want to do things the "right" way.<br />
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Is this a wholly bad thing? A character flaw to be overcome?<br />
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Skaters have always absorbed inspiration and instruction through their eyeballs. It's why skate mags don't really give a shit about the writing*. In the primal days we looked at our heroes in still photographs and aspired to look like them. The advent of videography just enhanced this practice. The coming of social media and universal access to videography, however, has completely and fundamentally changed the way skaters look at themselves: Back in the 70's, it didn't matter how sloppy and how far below the coping your frontside air was, in your mind you looked just Tony Alva at the dog bowl every time you rolled away. Unless some jerk on the deck told you different, you never had any reason to think otherwise. Now, in a world where you don't even need a photo nerd friend willing to document your skating to get a good look at yourself, these exhilirating delusions are hard to come by. Before we were all looking at ourselves in electronic mirrors, skating for yourself was much more likely to mean not giving a shit about what you looked like pulling a trick. You were never going to know anyway. If you rolled away you felt like Natas no matter what you actually looked like. Ignorance was bliss.<br />
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Strip away videography, photography, pissing contests, localism, whatever, and in that moment you are actually on the board, locking in that grind or sucking your legs up into some giant ollie, what you look like doesn't really matter. No one skates in front of full length mirror.<br />
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There is another perspective here. For some, the ruthless pursuit f perfection is intrinsic to their personal enjoyment. It is as much a part of why one skater might fall in love with skateboarding as the simple thrill of the sketchiest grind is to another. This is fine and even admirable, but the growing need to consume our own skateboarding means this mindset is becoming something skaters impose on themselves, not a part of the experience they relish for their own personal reasons.<br />
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There are also those occasions where something looks better because it actually feels better. I took shit for lifting my front trucks on slappies. It got to me enough that I worked on my technique and got close to eliminating the lift. Turns out, that does feel better most of the time... although, honestly, the ol' lift and lever is actually a more practical approach on most of the ratchet stuff I skate. Sometimes I wish I could go back. But every skater's mileage will vary on this, and sometimes being bullied to change your skating by how you look in a video clip can suck the enjoyment out of stuff you've loved for decades.<br />
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Case in point: as soon as "slappygate" put to rest on the Parking Block Diaries social media appendages, the even more contentious "Tuck War" broke out. Bolstered by comments by Jeff Grosso, commenters began ribbing anyone who didn't tuck their knee on a boneless. Being a site full of old never weres, there were a lot of easy targets, myself among them. I was dumbfounded by this apparently age-old rule about bending in the ol' knee on a boney boost off the crete, and, although I could see the aesthetic advantage of it, and suddenly began to notice how many pros and hotshots throughout the decades snuggled their back knee under their arms in photos, when I started actually doing it, it felt like shit.<br />
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The thrill of thinking I looked like GSD for a second paled in comparison to the constricted, limited and altogether awkward feeling of having my knee scrunched up unto my solar plexus as I hucked over the hip at my local park. I went back to my apparently ugly but altogether higher, smoother and more enjoyable boners instantly. I haven't looked back since, but I still can't help but feel some little twinge of guilt for my stinkbug ways.<br />
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Then again, Mike Vallely and Bill Danforth, two unassailable masters, don't tuck, so I don't really lose any sleep over it either way.<br />
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Style has always been misused as a bludgeon or set of handcuffs by skaters. Now, with so much emphasis on watching, its easier than ever to be controlled by the tyranny of the visual spectrum. Don't ever forget that skating is about all the senses, and that, in the moment of actual skating, looking is a distant second to feeling. Ff you are hitting a curb or concrete coping it may even be third to what you are hearing. Sometimes (OK, a lot of the time) I throw clips on IG because they <i>sound</i> rad.<br />
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Skateboarding is a full sensory experience. (Ever catch a whiff of a crusty curb after hitting it really hard?)Even if stacking clips is an essential part of your vision of skateboarding, don't forget to embrace the tactile, or the sonic. What others see will always be the least important element of your skateboarding. Get the camera out as much as you like, have fun with it, but remember: Don't just skate with your eyes. This ain't anybody's show.<br />
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*<i>With the exception of Big Brother. However, what they were writing about rarely had much to do with actual skateboarding</i>.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-90262397005869650152017-04-26T09:22:00.001-07:002017-10-15T14:17:02.710-07:00Ride Channel Rejects Part 1: "7 Things You should Be Worrying About More Than The Olympics"<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-3b20cede-ab06-d855-0765-d346aca00898" style="font-weight: normal;"><i>(Recent editorial changes at RIDE channel mean I may not be contributing to the site anymore. In my time at RIDE I contributed a few things that were in limbo in terms of publication. Now that the restrictions are off, I thought I would post a couple of pieces here. Enjoy.)</i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The inclusion of Skateboarding in the Olympic Games has a lot of skaters up in arms. The way some are talking, you would think the International Olympic Committee was coming to personally focus their boards and stopper all their spots. In reality, the Olympics are way down the list when it comes to threats to skateboarding. It's time for some perspective: here are 7 threats to skateboarding that are way worse than its inclusion in some international sports prom that only takes place every four years.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Pebbles</b></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pebbles are the ultimate geological poseurs. Not big enough to be rocks, not small enough to be dirt, pebbles spend their whole life just sulking around on the pavement waiting to take you out. Pebbles are everywhere, and the worst thing is, you never know just which ones are going to take you out. You ever been rolling along and knocked some big chunk of rock away harmlessly with your wheel, only to hang up on some miniscule bit of silicate 20 feet later? I hate pebbles. So, unless you've ever taken a slam by hanging up on your gold medal, pebbles are still worse than the olympics</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Collapse of Longboarding And “Cruiser Culture”</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sales of longboards and penny-type boards have dropped drastically in the last few years, some estimate by as much as 30% (</span><a href="http://www.boardsportsource.com/trend-report/longboard-fw1617-trend-report/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.boardsportsource.com/trend-report/longboard-fw1617-trend-report/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That drop in longboard sales may not seem so bad to the tough guys who look down on the campus cruisers and “wrongboarders”, but there’s another side to this. As the longboard market implodes, so may the skate shops or brands leaning on the trend to stay profitable. In addition, the numbers of longboarders and cruisers out there have effectively padded the stats when it comes to number of skaters in communities, and those are the numbers that can be used to convince cities to invest in parks. Narrow minded skaters may refuse to see longboarders as brothers in arms, but we're definitely weaker, at least financially, with fewer of them around.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Rubber Parking Blocks</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parking blocks are the plankton of the skateboard ecosystem; the humble, ubiquitous, organism both beginning skaters and veterans alike can feed on almost anywhere in the vast urban oceans. With the introduction, of un-grindable rubber parking stoppers to an increasing number of parking lots, skateboarders are faced with a potential habitat loss scenario. If these non grindable abominations become the norm, the prime spawning grounds of future skateboarders will be rendered barren,You ever try so slappy or boardslide a recycled rubber block? There's not enough wax in the world to get it going even if you are riding two rails. So forget about the olympics, and save our blocks! </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Parents</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parents have always been a threat to skateboarding. Back in the day they might ground you from skating for bad grades, or take away your board because your favorite skater’s name backwards happened to spelll “Satan”. These kinds of parental threats still exist, but now you can add “skate parents”, from the obnoxious sideline coaches, to the helicopter hangers-on who want to scream in your face for accidentally bumping into their clueless six year old at the local park, to the list of parental perils. Sure, now you can actually see parents skating with their kids, but even these moms and pops can be a detriment if they never give their kids the space to build their own identity in skateboarding. On the whole, the potential threats parents can pose to skate culture has both grown and diversified. Until the IOC can impose a curfew on your skate time, or cut your deck in half with a bandsaw because you skipped school to skate, Parents are a much bigger worry than the Olympics.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Graffiti</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The spaces that attract skaters are often the same kinds of places that draw graffiti artists, both good and bad. Public skateparks, unsupervised and open, are especially attractive. Sure, street Art has a culture and tradition every bit as sophisticated and influential as skateboarding but, for every writer whose work brings beauty and consciousness to urban spaces, there are about a hundred kooks who just want to spray played out hip hop slogans and sketchy bubble letters on whatever is around. Either way, graffiti, even work that is equivalent to fine art, can shut your spot, DIY, or even public park down quicker than anything short of a drive-by shooting. It doesn’t matter if the graffiti consists of jaw dropping, politically insightful murals or terrible renditions of pot leaves and glocks, to the average square, it is all equally an eyesore and grounds to cause a ruckus with the cops and the city council. This is why lurkers with spray cans and sharpies are still a bigger threat to your skateboarding than some overhyped athletic festival.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Global Warming</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good ‘ol cold-grown, “hard rock” canadian maple, it is, literally, the thing that all of skate culture stands upon. After decades of tinkering with epoxies, fiberglass, bamboo, and carbon fiber, skate manufacturersahve still not come up with anything close to cold grown maple for deck construction. As The earth warms, more and more of the world’s maple trees are going to fall out of the “cold grown” range that produces suitable skateboard veneers. Fewer trees mean higher prices. Unless we all stop using fossil fuels, or someone comes up with a miracle synthetic deck material in the next few decades, the $100 deck may be in our future. So, go ahead and rage against the Olympics if you want, but you might be doing skateboarding more good by shutting up and buying a Prius.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Continuing Sausage Party</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conventional wisdom says that the skate industry, and especially skate shops, are in crisis. While skaters wag their fingers and blame big corporations, scooters, and the olympics, skate culture continues to marginalize 50% of the earth's population by not working harder to include women. From board graphics, to media and advertising, the objectification of women is everywhere in skate culture. Whether it is clips of strippers twerking next to handrails, or the multiple softcore graphics hanging on shop walls, sex sells in skateboarding… Too bad it’s only straight male fantasies on sale. Beyond the visuals, women skaters find too often find themselves skating in the “Girls Division” in skate contests, coverage by photo editors is too often dictated by sex appeal, and, on message boards, skaters still don't seem to get that saying how “sexy” a female skater looks doing a trick is more objectifying than encouraging. So, until the board walls and t-shirt racks at the local shop begin to look a little less like a Jr. High boy’s spank bank, maybe we shouldn't be worrying so much about the Olympics.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-4955283216189190102017-02-09T11:11:00.001-08:002017-02-09T11:11:08.317-08:0053 'Til Infinity: Ron Allen Part One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B85M1kONWY8/WJo_8L7BJwI/AAAAAAAAAjo/_VzbYHoxFTgyEZenE_0O-l-jPRmDm2H3gCLcB/s1600/Ron-Allen_iimmdz.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B85M1kONWY8/WJo_8L7BJwI/AAAAAAAAAjo/_VzbYHoxFTgyEZenE_0O-l-jPRmDm2H3gCLcB/s1600/Ron-Allen_iimmdz.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ron Allen gets a lot of respect for skating hard and putting out street parts at 53, but to really get it you have to put that number in perspective: at 53, that makes Allen 4 years older than Mark Gonzales, 4 years older than Eric Dressen, and 3 years older than Natas Kaupas. When H-Street exploded with Shackle Me Not way back in 1988, Ron was already 25 years old… practically ancient by 1980’s pro standards… but he’s still going, and going all out. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Ron Allen is not just a skate rat with a storied career, He’s a man who really thinks about skating, a man who has taken decades of experience and refined it into real insight. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, when I ask Ron the million dollar question: is today’s big-time, mass popularity era of skating better than the nostalgic, underground hard scrabble days of the 80’s, I get an answer that spins us off into a lot of different directions. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I wanna say better,” Allen replies after some deliberation. “The money in it is better. There’s a lot of parents involved now. I love that parents want to be involved, but I also come from a place where they were never involved in skateboarding. Never.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There’s a different realm out there when you do it on your own without parents being there,” Ron explains. “It gives you pride of ownership. That’s what I had when I was 12 years old. My dad would take me to Concrete Wave skate park and I was like: ‘Everyone one here is so good!’ He’d just say: ‘get out and go skate.’ That’s the only advice I ever got from my father: ‘Go Skate!’”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, in an era of pay-for-play skate “lessons” and parents who see skateboarding as extreme little league, that has all changed, and Ron knows better than most. Before he was a full-time skate pro, Allen taught high intensity cheerleading and gymnastics camps and clinics, a job which lead to his gig as an instructor at the original “Bobby G” skate camps in the 80’s. Essentially, He's been working at skate camps helping kids get stoked on skating since the skate camp was invented.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But changes in attitudes eventually lead Ron to give up teaching classes and camps.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I was at my local park the other day and someone was doing a skate camp and he was just laying down like napping, I was like are you the camp dude? It was funny how people don’t realize that they are right there where the rubber meets the road. This is the literal point where a kid is trying to learn about skateboarding, and if you're lying there and you are not watching, and this kid tries something and you are not really into it? Dammmn? Skateboarding has reached the point that it is like that even in a skate camp. I had to just smile. ”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a far cry from the days when skate camps were even rarer than skateparks. When Allen started teaching the youth, if you didn't have the cash to hit Woodward or one of the handful of camps on the west coast, the only skateboard “lessons” were those doled out by the older kids in your neighborhood. For Allen,though, “teaching” skating was always more about teaching community and attitude and less about picking up tricks.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In 95 I kept running into kids at parks… literally running into them at high rates of speeds at parks, and I though: ‘I gotta teach these kids” not “I'm going to teach you how to do a mctwist. No, I’m going to teach you how to be aware and the etiquette. I’m making skateboarders. I’m not trying to make pros I’m trying to populate the world with more skateboarders.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What I did with skate camp I adopted from the gymnast camps I used to teach. They would tell us, every kid that comes in, this is their first experience so when you are teaching camp, this may be your first kid or your third, for that kid it is his first day. For me in my skate camps, I was like “I don’t care if you slammed last night filming or you just got your board yesterday, you are here today. I was having so much fun with these kids on that level. I don’t care if you’ve got a spongebob squarepants board you’re here, and that makes you a skater, and if you learn tricks on that board at the end of the day, mom and dad are going to hook you up.”</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0s5YD4ieNsA/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0s5YD4ieNsA?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As skateboarding got bigger and more mainstream, for more and more parents, that just wasn’t enough. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’ve seen moms cry, I’ve seen dads cry… but this is why I stopped doing lessons: Even after 15 years teaching kids, I would still jump up and celebrate when a kid learned to roll down the big 10 foot bank at the park. All the kid wants is to do it, they may be shaking when they are on top of that bank, and they want to do it because everyone else is doing it, but really it is about challenging their fears. One time, this kid was learning how to roll down a ten foot bank at the park, it took him all week to do it. When he finally got it I was cheering and excited I was jumping up and down, and he was so stoked. When his parents came at the end of the day they asked what he had learned and he went out there all excited and showed them how he could ride down the bank and they were like: ‘that’s it? We paid all this money and that is all he can do?’ They just didn't understand it. To them it was nothing, but to that kid he had faced and conquered his fear. It was a big deal and it was worth celebrating. That was one thing I learned doing the gymnastics camps. I had to tell parents: ‘you can celebrate minor things with your kids just to make sure they know they can celebrate something they have done and feel it.” </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And Ron sees the parent problems spring up at every level, even in the world of competitive and sponsored skating there are parents who just don’t get it. Ron starts talking about a top level sponsored am I’ll keep anonymous, a guy who should be right on the verge of big company pro status, who is being “managed” by his parents and the problems that has caused.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That kid is amazing, backside Smith Grinds to 360 out on picnic tables…sick stuff” Ron explains. “But he just lost his board sponsor and can’t ride for anybody because his parents have been with him since he was 11 and they’re still with him every day. He’s 21 now and his parents are so involved he can’t break out and be his own man. I see that a lot.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He also mentions a prominent female skater who had to drop out of competitive and sponsored skating for a while because of her parents. “I traveled with a lot of kids, Leticia Bufoni, Alysha Le Bergado… then this other girl, she had just won this pool contest, but she had dropped out of competing for a while because of how her mom was. She was the best female skater I’ve ever seen in my life and it was weird to see that happen.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For all the good parental support can bring, there is something in the nature of skating that requires independence, and skating feeds that independence. Allen sees it in the different contexts suburban skaters and urban skaters place on skateparks</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Suburban Kids now, they leave their house in an air-conditioned car, they go to the park, they get out of the car to skate the park, and then when they are done, they get in their car and ride straight home. But this inner city kid, he get on a bus to get to a train, then get on the train, then he gets on the bus after that train and gets to the park. All that way he is seeing the world, he is seeing reality, and when he finally get to the park, it becomes a major thing in that journey. When he gets there he gets solace because he’s had to run a gauntlet to get there. America needs to learn form those kids how to be independent.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We don't grow independent kids anymore and skateboarding is one of the first really independent things kids can do. Your parents can't fall for you.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As someone who started skating just in time to the see the skateparks die, and who had a guiding hand in the evolution of street skating, Ron definitely see a flipside of the modern skatepark revolution.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sometimes I think they’re trying to get rid of street skating with all of the pros, make street skating something in the past and get rid of kids skating the terrain they run into. ‘Go to the park. Go to the park, and you go to these parks and there’s no ‘street’ obstacle that looks like anything you would find in the street.</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4bQELMMZunY/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4bQELMMZunY?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Then you got pros who build this stuff at their house, so how am I supposed to compete against somebody who has all that stuff at their house already.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But don’t think Ron is that old curmudgeon grumbling on the deck of the bowl at the skate park. There are something’s about skateboarding that are stronger than ever, things that you can’t remove from skating no matter how many parks get built.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s amazing. Its great to see. (skateboarding) is where it needs to be. It's what keeps kids out of trouble. It kept me out of trouble most of my life; Riding a skateboard. I told the kids at my camps skateboarding keeps you away from all the bullcrap. A lot of guys are like: ‘Ron, why don't you ever do drugs back in the day?’ With my parents and everyone else back then, I rode a skateboard so I was already in trouble just by being on my board. I got pulled over by cops for not doing anything, hassled and hustled. You know why I don’t drive with weed in my car? I just don’t want to deal with the cops. The drugs and partying also affects your skating. I remember back in the 80’s guys would be high on crystal meth and they would just want to skate the same curb for hours and hours and, after a while, I would be like: ‘Guys, can we go find some stairs or something?’”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One definite bright spot for Ron is the fact that skateboarding has become more acceptable in the African american community. Things weren't so simple back in the 80’s, when Ron had to deal with being black in America,and being a skateboarder.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Black people, just now are going ‘you know skateboarding ain’t so bad’. Go back 30 years you look at a black person talking to you about a skateboard, and it was like: ‘what the hell are you doing?’ ‘I’m on a skateboard. It’s a cool instrument,’ but people were like ‘you need to talk to someone, you’re crazy’. To be a black person on a skateboard, early, people would say the craziest things to me. ‘You want to date my daughter?’ They’d take me outside, look me up and down and say: ‘you going to take my daughter out on that skateboard?”’just the craziest things. I’ve heard that clown so much. I’m stoked on that one.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“People didn’t like me having a skateboard, so my world was always a separate thing. I went to college and I was in this EOP, program with black kids and latino kids and we got to go early to school, it was like a trainer course to get ready for classes and things and, the first day, I came in with my skateboard and I was like: ‘Wooo! What’s up!’ People looked at me like I was crazy. We’d go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I would sit by myself and a group would sit 3 or 4 tables over just laughing and having a good time, and I was by myself. The last day two girls came over to me and asked ‘why do you ride a skateboard?’ I said: ‘it's fun’ and they said: ‘Well, everyone here thinks you are trying to be white. That’s why nobody talks to you. They think you’re trying to be a white person because you have a skateboard.’ I just said: ‘Oh, ok that’s cool, because I don’t really care’. For me, not belonging... I was stoked they didn’t like me. That sounds crazy, you realize early, that whole group whoever it is, I realized back then, this was before the white students even came in, my own kind were treating me like an alien and a weirdo.”</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lFLQCJjm7xs/WJpA5oQD12I/AAAAAAAAAjs/Tw-o2DgtXZ4kZaEJz44V5W2rGZMFXGvBgCLcB/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lFLQCJjm7xs/WJpA5oQD12I/AAAAAAAAAjs/Tw-o2DgtXZ4kZaEJz44V5W2rGZMFXGvBgCLcB/s400/images.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For Ron, skateboarding really was the place of unity we all like to think it can be. At least ,most of the time. Whether it was about the color of his skin, or even the way he cut his hair, skateboarding seemed like the only place he fit.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I was working as a professional cheerleader for the United Spirit Association, because I could do gymnastics, so I got a great job teaching kids about being positive and teaching gymnastics. When I started growing dreads they got bummed, and started ostracizing me. It was weird, they let me go, and it was at that point I was like: ‘that’s it. Everything I do keeps pushing me back to skating’. It lets you be who you want to be, I keep trying to be who they want to be and they keep kicking me out. I realized with so many things, the professionalism means leaving the fun side of it out… at that point it was ‘what else do I got?’ I’m gonna skate.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Gullwing Trucks offered me a hundred bucks a month, I was like: ‘oh my god, i'm going to make $1200 a year from my truck sponsor…’ I called my mom...i was like: ‘This college thing… there are no guarantees, and this skateboarding thing, I'm getting guaranteed a hundred bucks a month just for trucks...then I got on Santa Cruz wheels, and then I wound up on the Thrasher cover… it was like… at that point, I realized, this is how you collect funds… and guys were like: ‘I don't want to put a sticker on my board…’ I’m like: ‘Dude, make some money. The industry wants to give away money and guys are like ‘i'm so punk rock..’ that's cool. I will.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“As a black person in America, as a person on a skateboard, finding out I was the first black pro street skater, it was crazy. I’d talk about traveling all over the world, riding a skateboard and having people make all sorts of comments towards me… it was a microcosm of the rest of the world. Skaters see things before the rest of the world. Think about it. Brian Anderson comes out as gay, everyone else thinks it's a big thing but not skateboarders. A lot of other things can’t handle that kind of stuff. We are one of the most open societies. If you rip, you rip, if you’re a kook you're a kook. Kooks come in all different colors.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With racial divides growing wider, that element of skateboarding seems more valuable than ever.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Being a skateboarder and getting hassled by the cops is one thing, and getting grabbed because you're black is another, but one Of the reasons skateboarders understand black people better than anybody else is because, if you are skateboarding, at some point you’ve had that happen to you. Whether you are Asian or Latino or White, we’ve all had that stupid stuff happen to us as skaters. A lot of people, they've never even dealt with cops.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More than simply creating empathy, the experience of skateboarding and getting harassed by police, to Ron, is also instructional especially in the era of police protests and rising tensions between minorities and cops.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_K-c1_pw80M/WJpCO2t6BXI/AAAAAAAAAkA/bC6NXPUUeoMg7imcxhDJ4dPjm0_KXzMngCLcB/s1600/roncoverchrome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_K-c1_pw80M/WJpCO2t6BXI/AAAAAAAAAkA/bC6NXPUUeoMg7imcxhDJ4dPjm0_KXzMngCLcB/s640/roncoverchrome.jpg" width="474" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sometimes in skateboarding you also learn that sometimes you have to let it go. That’s why I have a lot of problems with Black Lives Matter, because i’ve been out there in the street, it's not this big war between white people and black people. It’s dumb people vs. smart people. Skateboarders have always had that sort of mentality.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I have a hard time when Black Lives Matter sees a black man leaving the scene of a crime with a gun and they want to riot in the streets. I don’t want to riot in the streets because, why are you, a black man, at the scene of a crime with a gun? What the hell? To me we have to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. Like, with me, I jump over a fence to skate a pool, I Know I’m trespassing. When the cops come I’m like: ‘Time to go, right?’ I don’t get upset. I know I’m breaking the law.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’ve seen a lot of racism because of skateboarding, and I’ve seen a lot of people do things that are stupid because they think everyone who rides a skateboard is a kid. I have to be like: ‘Ok, I’m not a kid, so i’m going to need your badge number and your supervisor's name, because I know you have a responsibility but there are laws. You treated us like kids and thought you can get away with it.’ I’ve had officers pull me aside and be like: ‘C’mon man, I’ve got a wife and kids bro…’ Well, then why did you act that way? I’ve had cps literally cry to me ‘please don’t go to my supervisor… I apologize.’ It’s amazing when the shoe is on the other foot, how people act. That’s just the way it is.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ironically, the opposition of cops and the community are part of what has made skateboarding what it is for Ron, and modern skaters would do well to remember this when addressing their own obstacles.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“People make fun of scooters, and I’m always like: ‘You should probably chill on that, and they are like ‘why?’ Adversity creates conviction. It makes kids feel like they can do what they want to do. At 53 I’m still putting out boards, I’m still sweating for ten days making a part. Sometimes I think about the people who put me down. If you want someone to quit riding scooters go ‘HEY! What’s the latest trick?’ Embrace it, then they will be like ‘hey, I want to skateboard’, if you are giving adversity you are fueling them. It’s too much adversity that created what skaters have now.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of that adversity; Sketchy cops, scooters, crazy parents, not even the advance of time can stop Ron. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Skateboarders, they do all these crazy things with their body. You know how it is, you get hurt, you move around, the blood gets flowing. Skaters are already a level above most people, who don’t even exercise right off the bat. The breathing, the physicality, your cardiovascular system goes, but there’s also that inner voice: the way we talk to ourselves while we skate, that’s why we’re so different from the world around us. Let’s face it. We live in an obese world.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ron’s even got some tricks up his sleeve when it comes to keeping it going.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hot tubs,” Ron comments. “I was doing some research on dried cherries and how they are supposed to decrease inflammation and help with soreness. I went and bought ten pounds of dried cherries and I’m going to eat them for the rest of my life…”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The real secret, though, may be mental</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I feel better now than I did at 25. I know that sounds crazy but at 25 I was really intimidated by all the guys on the (H-Street) team. You had Danny Way, Matt Hensley, Sal Barbier. Everything I did was in comparison to what they do, but when you get away from those guys skateboarding becomes your skateboarding. You start to see yourself become part of your board, and you begin to learn and I can honestly say I am better now than I was at 25. If you would have told me at 25: ‘Yeah, don’t worry, 28 years from now you’ll be fine’ I would have said “no way1’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I have always thought of myself as the Middle Class of skateboarding. Not wealthy, but my attitude was, ‘I pay the bills, the fridge is full: I can go skating’. That's what’s really important to me, being able to get on the skateboard. It’s been that way since I was 15.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">40 years rolling, Ron has seen all the changes, all the peaks and valleys, and he’s rode through them in a way that makes him unlike anyone else. Then again, like the rest of us, there are some things that will never change for Ron, not at age 53,or a 153.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I woke up this morning bummed because it was raining,” Ron sighs. “My girl looked at me and said: ‘you look like you lost your best friend.’ And I go ‘It’s raining.’ She says, ‘you knew it was going to rain, did you think it wouldn’t?’ and I was like, ‘yeah, I guess I kind of thought that, then I could go out and skate."</span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-83951805777314067292017-01-21T12:59:00.002-08:002017-01-21T13:03:14.370-08:00With "Fetish", Welcome are no longer the Monarchs of the Mystifying<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When Welcome skateboards apparated onto the scene in 2010, they immediately got attention for putting out boards that looked like no one else's. With team riders like Chris "Mango" Milic, and Eric Winkowski bending minds in their <i>Monarchs Of Magic</i> vid, they just as quickly gained a rep as the team that <i>skated </i>like no one else. A lot has changed since <i>Monarchs</i>. A brand that began as a quirky oddity, has grown to become much more than just the common ground between old warhorses looking for the glory days and millenial hipsters burning to be "different". Welcome is now a wildly successful a-list company. The distinctive boards that once set them apart are now representative of the status quo. With Welcome's new full length video <i><a href="http://www.thrashermagazine.com/" target="_blank">Fetish</a></i>, the same might be said to have happened to the team's skating.<br />
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No doubt, The skating in <i>Fetish</i> is top flight. State of the art. Mind blowing in many instances. But is the old magic there? Or is the wizardry that once defined Welcome just become the norm?<br />
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Fetish is a undoubtedly ambitious video. It clocks in at about 40 minutes in a time when many skate brands are abandoning full lengths altogether. Its aesthetic is low-fi, using a VHS style square aspect ratio, and there's not a drone shot to be found, nor a single minute of slow mo ultra-hi-def b-roll. <i>Fetish</i> has more in common with <i>Shackle Me Not</i> than <i>Away Days</i>. That's not a criticism either. I may be an old kook, but I still like it when skate vids look more like <i>Rubbish Heap</i> than an episode of <i>No Reservations.</i><br />
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The caliber of skating on view would certainly be at home in any 4k, professionally lensed piece of big company promo porn. There are crazy gaps, ludicrous handrail and hubba tricks, and dizzying, a-list park flowing. The Welcome team's location scouting is also on point, with unique spots, from pixellated hubbas to roller coaster quadruple-kinked handrails, on display. The skating is also inventive, each rider has his own style, every member of the team is distinct.<br />
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In short, <i>Fetish</i> looks like a very solid team video from a very formidable team. There's lots of talent. Lots of jaw-dropping hammers and even a few mind-benders. But, even though theres a whole bag of NBDs, there aren't not nearly as many of the HOEDYTOTs (how on earths did you think of thats) that set <i>Monarchs Of Magic</i> apart back in the day. <br />
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And there's the rub.<br />
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Welcome's rep was not built on just being creative, It was built on the bizarre. <i>Monarchs Of Magic</i> was characterized by maneuvers that had skaters not just asking themselves: "Could I do that?" but also "Would I do that?" There are many moments in <i>Fetish</i> where the old magic shows up in little bits. Ryan Lay kicks off his opener with a nollie hippie jump through a bump-to-ledge. Will Blaty ups the early grab game (early grabs are a recurring theme in the vid actually) and also throws in some next level cave mans, Jason Salilas does a literally death defying wallie between two roof-high ledges(his ender is a gnarbender as well). But, on the whole, only Jordan Sanchez delivers a part that really felt like the "original" Welcome to me: solidly unconventional and brain-altering, free of stunt skating, yet no less accomplished because of its technical and creative level.<br />
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Still, All the parts are great. No denying. Daniel Vargas could put together an edit that was 3 minutes of carving and it would be awesome. Nora Vasconcellos still looks like she is having more fun on a skateboard than anyone else. Aaron Goure does the biggest stair-set early grab yet, and a great rail grind-dumptruck out move. Ryan Townley more than earns his ender spot with yank out variations on rails, a boneless fs wallride down a set of stairs, as well as other assorted gnarness like a flatground no comply over a ridiculously huge sidewalk gap. This is great skating. But is that enough when the name "Welcome" is above the titles? This is a good video, but The difference between <i>Fetish</i> and <i>Monarchs Of Magic</i> is the difference between the cutting edge and the Avant Garde. One is impressive, the other, disruptive.<br />
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It may be unfair to judge a video by these standards in 2017. Unique use of unique terrain, and a no-tricks barred approach to every type of skating is the norm now. It's harder to surprise people when they've been conditioned to expect the inconceivable. I don't know whether Welcome has come to look more like the rest of skateboarding, or if the rest of skateboarding has become more like Welcome. Yeah, it's an unfair standard. But it was a standard Welcome helped set.<br />
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Welcome is no longer a cult, but an established religion. They are a big deal. I have heard whispers about philosophical changes in the welcome camp, but these, are just rumors. What is indisputable is that Welcome's presence has pushed the outliers in skateboarding even further out. Maybe it is just not feasible for a company in Welcome's current position to be able to match the skewed brilliance of crews like Fancy Lad, or even go weird-on-weird with players like ex-Welcome rider "Mango" Milic, whose recent, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiqlZ2FZoE" target="_blank">fantastically bent, 6 minute "Dr. Scarecrow" edit </a>looks more like the evolution of <i>Monarchs Of Magic</i> than anything in <i>Fetish</i>. Then there are Instagram ronin like <a href="https://www.instagram.com/rollersurfer/?hl=en" target="_blank">Ben Koppl</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/fustoop/?hl=en" target="_blank">John Benton</a>. How can you keep it weirder when strange is the default setting, even in the flow ranks? <br />
Still, this is the first video that I felt compelled to write about at length on this blog. That counts for something. It certainly got me wondering if there can ever really be another skate flick like <i>Shackle Me Not</i> or <i>Video Days:</i> One that can change everything: not just the contemporary trick roster, but the whole style, approach and objective of skateboarding? If it's still possible, what would that edit look like? Thinking about that is definitely a futile endeavor. That's the thing with revolutions though: by definition, you can't see them coming. They just appear. Like Magic.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-27683976841815417922016-10-13T06:46:00.001-07:002016-10-17T09:14:58.986-07:00Shredding Chords And Shredding Boards With Lucero's Brian Venable<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SWcWbIAoYIg/V_-MJXJBqXI/AAAAAAAAAh4/o4vTpqXGnLA1Vn_bQ25fCdUL8yFCqejEgCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-10-13%2Bat%2B9.28.13%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="612" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SWcWbIAoYIg/V_-MJXJBqXI/AAAAAAAAAh4/o4vTpqXGnLA1Vn_bQ25fCdUL8yFCqejEgCLcB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-10-13%2Bat%2B9.28.13%2BAM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The exchange between skateboarding and music is as old as skateboarding itself, a cliche really. As a fanatical skater Lucero guitarist, Brian Venable is a part of that old story, but his evolution from skater to musician to musician/skater is a little different than the standard “skate rat starts band” trope. Venable didn't pick up a guitar until long after he had put hs board on the shelf, and even though his band shares a name with the godfather of slappies and enjoys a sizable following among skaters, Venable tracked a lot of miles on the road with the band before he finally put his feet on grip again. Now, he’s back in full-on obsessed skate rat mode. Skating has become a big enough part of his life that Lumberjack Outfitters put out a Brian Venable deck last year (which quickly sold out). Rediscovering skating has bled into Venable’s work, and how he balances and blends shredding a board with shredding on his guitar, illuminates the eternal realationship between skateboarding and music.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, you started skating in the 80’s, and, in that era, you were either a skater who got exposed to punk because of skating, or you were a hardcore kid that got turned onto to skateboarding from punk culture. How did it work out for you?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In about 1985, a kid in my freshman shop class gave me a mix tape that had Seven Seconds and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flipside Volume 2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or something on the other side. The music was like something got in my brain. I didn’t start a band, but I started going to shows. Skating and that music was all kind of coming from the same thing: I hate School, I hate my parents. My friend was like: “Listen to this music” and I was like: “what the fuck!?”. All the hardcore kids were wearing vans and I had never seen that shit before. It was the whole thing, the denim jackets... I think I was wearing Roos and Hawaiian shirts, being a full nerd and all the sudden there was a group of people out there, this whole other world. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the skating came after?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My first board was a full K-mart special. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thrasher</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, all that, I knew about none of it . That was the beauty of it. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We lived out in the country at the time and I had shotguns and my parents were letting me save up for a pistol. I took that money for the pistol and bought a Variflex skateboard instead. I skated it damn near to death. I would sand that board down, paint it another color, and I kept riding it until I saved my money for a real board. It was freshman year in high school, but by sophomore year I was a skater. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is how it was in the midwest and the south. You started with a crap board that you might have for years and eventually got clued into “real” skateboarding and, if you were lucky, you eventually got a pro board. What was your first pro set-up?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I ended up with a freakin’ JFA board. I could have chosen any board in the world but I had a JFA shirt and I liked JFA. I didn’t know who all the pros were, but I knew what JFA was, so if someone questioned me on what JFA was, I could answer.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was so proud of that JFA. It was black and pink, and after a while I was so proud that I had skated it for real and the edges were getting worn. I was like: “yeah!” We were shoe repairmen in my family and I had my board at the shoe shop one day and my dad took black shoe polish and buffed out all the scratches. He though he made my board look better and I was like: “what are you doing! I worked really hard for all those scratches!” </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So you start skating, and you are listening to hardcore music, but, back then, the two never came together to the point where you started to play music?</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My dad tried to get me to constantly play in bands and I was like: “man, I just want to go outside.” I wanted to be a writer. I spent my 20’s hopping trains and riding Greyhounds and going places. I wasn’t thinking about skateboarding or music. I wanted to be a writer. I was going to be Bukowski or Aaron Cometbus.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So by the time music came along, you had stopped skating? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My evolution was more: kid discovers punk rock, kid discovers skateboarding, kid skateboards then drops out of HS, works for a year, then starts doing the living in punk houses and traveling thing but I was still not playing music or skating. I was, just making zines and doing the living everywhere thing. Then, when I was 27, I just decided one day that I was going to learn to play guitar. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So even though you had not skated in years, were those years of skating still an influence on your music?</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think what skateboarding did for me, musically, was give me the same attitude for learning the guitar that I had when I first saw someone on a skateboard. I didn’t say: “I can’t do that! That’s as dangerous as fuck!” I said: “I want to do that!” The thing is, I still don’t know how to play guitar, but 6 months after I got a guitar, I started a band. You take that same “we’ll figure it out” mentality that you need as a skater. I learned to play guitar like I learned to skate. I spent hours by myself trying the same thing over and over again. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So when did you start rolling again?</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s been in the last five or six years. My neighbor he is 50 and he skates with me. We are in a dad gang and we still send texts and pictures to each other about skating. Everywhere we look it is like: “look at that curb...boom! There’s a weird bank by planned parenthood…” Everything we see is a spot. I like that. I like getting up in the morning, me and a couple other guys, drop off our kids at school, get em ready, move em out, and then we meet up at about 8 o’clock and go to a DIY park called Altown here in Memphis and roll around while nobody’s there. It’s just nice when everybody is headed one way for work and we’re headed to the skatepark. That’s the feeling, that’s just feeling like a kid. There’s something about having five dudes between the ages of 38 and 52 skating in a parking garage at 9:30 at night and the police coming and the policeman being 24 years old and looking really fucking confused at all these old gnarly dudes rolling around. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8f2Xsy3X4mU/V_-Me83pNtI/AAAAAAAAAh8/Eszz76YMNoc0x6LoIKAjd45InjIu3rt9wCLcB/s1600/File_001_1_1024x1024.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8f2Xsy3X4mU/V_-Me83pNtI/AAAAAAAAAh8/Eszz76YMNoc0x6LoIKAjd45InjIu3rt9wCLcB/s400/File_001_1_1024x1024.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So many people have come back to skating in the last few years, and they have this new love, but a lot of times the changes are too much for them, or they are intimidated because they are not as good as the young kids everywhere.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem I had when I was younger was that I was terrified of all the older skaters, I was like: “Oh, I’m not good enough…” Now I’m older and I’m terrified of all these young kids… but the young kids are stoked. “You are a fat old dude covered in tattoos and you ride the biggest fucking board I’ve ever seen and you are going for it”, and I’m just carving and doing my thing. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What people who don’t skate don’t understand is, man, if you can roll across the parking lot you are addicted. I can’t slappy for shit but it don’t stop me from trying. Every 8th time that I make it it’s like I pulled a 720. Its like: “fuck yeah!”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I go to Hernando (Pigeon Park in Hernando Mississippi) and I cant’t get up on the pink tile, but I still go down there and have fun. I like dumb things like putting a piece of plywood up ...the other day I got a can of clear spraypaint and spraypainted the entire curb in front of my house. Waxed it, it’s still rough as hell, but still, I’m in front of my house skateboarding. I can’t ollie anymore. I just now got to the point where I’m bonelessing again. Its fun as hell.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kids are awesome. You have to stop and let go of all these hang ups and that’s a big problem. Half the poeple I ask “let’s go skate”, they don’t want to because they can’t kickflip anymore. Who cares? Let’s just go skate, and then they are like: “These kids are showing me up!” No they’re not. You can’t do it, they’re not out-tricking you. They don’t care. Just have fun. Appreciate it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The best thing about starting over skating, I’ve learned, and its the same for being in a band, is that if you do it long enough and you realize: “I’m not going to be a metal gutarist. I’m not going to out-shred someone. but I do what I do and I do it well and I’m comfortable with it.” That’s what skating is about: I don’t care what you think.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A lot of guys who came back can’t get their heads around the fact that Punk and Hardcore music is nowhere near as central to skate culture as it was in their day; that skaters are more likely to listen to Rihanna and Drake than Black Flag and Dinosaur Jr.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a lot of ways, that hardcore scene, it was a protective thing… back then you were getting beat up for being a skater...back then, music was a way you found other people.You would be like: “If I see a kid with a DK shirt on and I’m carrying my board, I’m going to talk to him.” I’m also going to know the right people are going to find me. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, a skater might be a lawyer type dude. Nobody is getting beat up for being a skater anymore. With skateboarding now you are seeing it become more universally accepted and that’s why you don’t have as much of that same scene.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As much as I love that music and enjoyed those times, I can’t help but think that maybe it is a good thing for skateboarding that we no longer have a culture where every skater in the world has the same 10 or 20 cassette tapes in their car. Lucero is a great example of that. If you guys just listened to hardcore, Lucero wouldn’t exist. There’s as much country, roots rock and even soul influences as punk in your music.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thats the joke for us. We’re uncategorical. But, See, here’s what’s crazy and what a lot of people have forgotten about: There was this huge weird influence of country in punk in the 80’s and 90’s. It was ok to listen to The Blasters. Dwight Yoakam came out… X made country records, Drunk Injuns...these were country influenced punk in the same way The Big Boys were influenced by funk. Some of those bands were a kid’s first taste of country and they didn’t even realize it. There was a whole lot of stuff that fell into a weird sub-genre on those Skate Rock comps. It was not Reba Mcentire, but there was some weird stuff that kids could listen to and think: ‘I’m going to start a country band’. Stuff like Social Distortion. In 1988 they got back together and covered Johnny Cash. You had 15 year old kids thinking “I like that ‘Ring Of Fire’ song” Not knowing it was a cover. If you told them it was Johnny Cash they would have been like: “Ugh! That’s old people music.” Put a different face on it and they grew up listening to country music and they didn’t even know it.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mike Watt once told me that punk was never supposed to be a genre, but a way of doing things.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rebellious music is rebellious music no matter what it sounds like. That was always our thing, kind of our joke forever: It Doesn't matter if you like country, metal, hip hop, if you’re a punk rock kid, whatever you are, you get your heart broke. You get sad. You want to jump around.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Punk rock was how I learned to pick people up and be nice to strangers, or that you can do something even if someone tells you you can’t. That gets caught up in the music. You can have any genre, any group of people be punk. You’re not supposed to be doing a genre, it’s a way of life. How i’m raising my kids is from what I learned form punk rock shows.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jaAO78zrgCM/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jaAO78zrgCM?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, has starting skating again changed your music or your approach to how you play?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think me skating again is part of a new lease on life in general. I’m enjoying everything more because I don’t feel so shitty. I was up to 274 pounds and feeling like crap. I don’t get tired playing now, i’m just having more fun. You get up in the morning and you go skate for an hour and the rest of the day it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, you skated that day. You live off that shit.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once you are not looking to impress anybody and you dont have anything to prove you just have fun. I’ve lost 40 pounds in the last year from skating and not drinking. I’ll skate everyday for a while, and then I may not be able to skate for two weeks but i’m always thinking about it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The intensity I put into the early days of my skateboarding, of learning tricks, getting lines and thinking “I’ve got to pull this”, that’s what I put into my music now. I treat playing guitar Like I used to treat skating.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The basics of skateboarding are really hard to learn, but learning them, just rolling around and messing aroud doesn’t feel like work or practice. Is it as hard to learn the basics of playing guitar? It doesn’t seem like there is as a much of that element of learning coming about through just messing around… like, with music you’ve got to actually be more disciplined with it. Its “practice”.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If your holding a guitar and you put a finger down and you just play a note, you’re going to be stoked. You put three fingers down and get a whole chord, that’s awesome. Time to start a band. In that way, it’s the same as just rolling around on a board. You are having fun. There are guys who will just mess around with like 30 different effects pedals and thats what they do, and all they do. Technically, that is playing a guitar. You may not be doing it well or correctly but you are making noise and having fun. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With music though, isn’t there an element of having to focus on learning specific things before you can really have fun and get creative? You’re trying to learn to play songs, or organize how you play into a song of your own. You may not ever intend for anyone to hear you play, but there’s still a structure you have to follow to even get to the point of writing songs even for yourself. That seems different than skating, where, from the very start, you just go out with no real rules or structure.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can sit in my room and play guitar all day long and never join a band and never let anybody hear it. I can go outside and skate for days and have a great time by myself. I don’t play music for people, and go: “I hope people like this.” This is where it’s like skating. If nobody in the world liked our music in Lucero, we enjoyed playing it. We are very lucky that people do enjoy our music and we can play for them, but if nobody ever came and saw us, we’d all have real jobs but we’d probably still get together and play on Thursday nights. There’s plenty of people who do that. Thats the beauty of both. I started skating because it was fun. I started playing music because it was fun. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, for an actual working band, you have to be on it at a specific place and a specific time. It’s not like a skater taking a whole year and a 100 tries to get one trick for your edit. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We been doing this 18 years and we still critique every show. Every show we are like “oh shit, let’s see what happens.” I’m going to miss a few songs… we don’t work with a set list...there’s a whole range of things that can happen. Like going skateboarding. You may make all the tricks. You may make none of them. You may break your arm.You are going to try again. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I never throw my board when I am skating. I just try and try again and then sit down and leave it, but there are guys like that in music who just smash up the drums or break their guitra when they can’t get something right. Musically you get to go somewhere and practice, it’s the same thig in skating, you can spend 27 days learning to mctwist at some halfpipe and when its time for the contest you have to make it even though you know you have missed it more times than you have made it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a rush to it, like before you can do a variation of a trick, you’ve got to learn the parts of a trick. Same with the guitar. Like I tell my kids when they just want to make noise on the guitar, I tell them, “great”, and they talk about Jimi Hendrix and I tell them they all had to learn how to play guitar before they unlearned how to play guitar. You got to learn to drop in before you go do a backside air. Dropping in that first few times is scarier than a backside air.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vFWZmazQJo0/V_-ORWVxdtI/AAAAAAAAAiI/X0RMOmO36hk8_IQaYIlaA3580B_z0secQCLcB/s1600/lucero_123011_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vFWZmazQJo0/V_-ORWVxdtI/AAAAAAAAAiI/X0RMOmO36hk8_IQaYIlaA3580B_z0secQCLcB/s640/lucero_123011_11.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo: Peter Koeling/Soundspike</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does music fade as fast as skating if you have to stay away for a bit?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not quite as fast. I play seven days a week every day of the year for at least two hours. If I quit playing guitar for two weeks, its not going to go away. It may fade a little bit, if I skated as much as i payed guitar...who knows. Last summer I was getting pretty comfortable on my board again. We were skating two or three hours a day, and then all the sudden we were going back on tour. Then it was like twice a week… hopefully it will come back quicker… </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course skating lacks the collaborative element of being in a band too. It’s just you on that board, bust or bail</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In skateboarding you don’t have 5 people trying to do a trick, sure, but one thing I’ve realized from the collaboration in music is that I miss skating with people who are better than me. It’s the same with music as it is with skating: the people I play with make me play better. Sure, music is different because theres an element of playing in a band that means you get to blend four voices or styles to make one bigger thing… but there is also the intensity of pulling something off that is like skateboarding: “I learned a chord”, “I wrote a song, or “I played a whole set and didn’t mess something up”, there’s a whole intensity in doing any of this stuff whether its music or skating, or juggling or playing with a Yo-Yo, I’m sure there’s someone somewhere who is a professional yo-yo guy.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With a band you’ve got people depending on you though. If you took a bad slam and couldn’t play would you get in trouble? Do your bandmates get nervous because you skate so much?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every person in my life is like: do you really need to get on that board? I’m a bottom dweller, I still don’t drop in in the pools and I have this illusion that what I’m doing is not dangerous: “I can hit that curb, I can roll around in the bottom of that pool, it’s fine”, and them I’ll watch some dumb ass video of some guy rolling and falling backwards and hurting himself and I’m like: “fuck!” So, again, it’s like a lot of things… do you know drinking is bad for you? Do you know eating sugar is bad for you? Yes, but you’re still going to do those things. I haven't been hurt yet. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I broke my arm skating I’d get in so much fucking trouble. There’s no doubt about it. I would get a severe talking to or maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to get on skateboards anymore.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you get time to skate when you are on tour or is it just too hectic?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thats the best thing, all of the sudden, being in this popular band, people can’t wait to take me to their secret spots, I see Bill Danforth pretty regular now. That’s insane to me. I was in Atlanta and I had a friend take me to Grant Taylor’s secret spot out in the woods. I had to give up my phone so it didn’t get geo-tagged, then there’s the Lost Bowl in Richmond, I went to Kona...people are like: “hey you got 30 minutes?” I bring a board everywhere. Half the time I’m skating in the parking lot at the show.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you use skating to blow off steam if things are going bad in the studio or at practice?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the end of the day I have never got to the point where I have said “fuck this, I’m going skating right now!” I’ve never been in a place where I can do that, especially in the studio or on stage… I can go in that other room for five minutes but I know at the end of the night when I go home I can go outside and roll around before I go to bed.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you play better if you’ve had a good session?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve Never thought about it. Getting on that stage is such a nerve wracking thing sometimes, but I play better when I’m comfortable. It’s hard to say. I think skating makes my life in general better, which bleeds into everything I do.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being on that stage, actually performing for others, that must be a lot different than skating where, unless you are a pro doing a demo or contest, there’s no performance element, it’s so internal. Has skateboarding had an effect on how you perform?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Going out and doing things in front of people, I don’t get nervous because I’m concentrating on my hands, on not fucking up. It’s like when we used to go right into the center of downtown Memphis to skate on a Friday night. We were in front of every drunk and frat kid in the world. As far as I was concerned they weren’t there. I was there thinking: “can I ollie up that third step?” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember when Bill Danforth came for a contest and every kid in town was like : “I’ve got to be good”. Now it is like: “J Mascis is in the crowd and I’m about to play shitty guitar in front of a god.” My butthole gets knotted up, I get sweaty, but you just do your thing. You learn to tune out the distractions. You pull it off and they cheer. It’s great. Just being a skater in the 80’s, walking around with weird hair and a jean jacket getting the shit kicked out of you by football players, will tecah you that you are tough enough to deal with this shit.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s funny to think about the opposite scenario. If you went to see J Mascis play, you aren’t going to be sitting in the crowd with your guitar playing your own music along with him, but in the world of skateboarding, even today, when the pros come through, they go to the skatepark and you get to actually skate with them a lot of the time, as long as you are not being an idiot. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We did an interview for Tony Hawk’s radio show and I got to roll around on a Boom Boom Huck jam ramp for a bit, and he came out and started skating for a little bit and I was like: “Nope.” I flipped my board over and just started watching. It sucked though because really, he didn’t care. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah, I’m sure you could have skated with him. He would have been stoked.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah, but I did just want to watch. There's a picture on my Instagram of him doing a nose grind on some thing higher than my head. I was like: “hey , bet you can’t do that”, and after, like, 19 tries, he did it.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZPx6weAtLfk/V_-PvVBEu5I/AAAAAAAAAig/OhH6XqwBb9UUfkfDPnsGx4us-Oo7wSGmgCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-10-13%2Bat%2B9.43.46%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="397" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZPx6weAtLfk/V_-PvVBEu5I/AAAAAAAAAig/OhH6XqwBb9UUfkfDPnsGx4us-Oo7wSGmgCLcB/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-10-13%2Bat%2B9.43.46%2BAM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you have things you dream about doing on a guitar the way you might dream about pulling a trick?</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The thing about playing music is, I think, with the guitar, I am pretty confident that I can learn anything new with enough time. A jazz chord, whatever. I can learn a whole Metallica song with enough time…</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But no matter how much time you had, you probably couldn’t backside lipslide a handrail..</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exactly, and I don’t know that I would want to. I would love to be 24 years old and 100 pounds lighter and have knees of steel and rubber and just fly… </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whats the equivalent of a slappy for the guitar?</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes when you just are soloing in this one position and you are like (makes shredding guitar noises with mouth) and then you slide down and you are like (more shredding rock noises) and you bend that note and it’s rock and roll and it’s metal and it’s (wreeeeeeee-OWWWWWW) and its just “‘AHHHHHHHH! I could do that all day long.” It’s that kind of thing, it’s simple, you are not tapping or nothing. It’s just a bend and it’s pretty much just like a slappy. I just throw it out there and I get this look form my band mates sometimes and I’m like “What? It’s fun.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s the tre flip to handrail then?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s another band. That’s playing for Rush or something. I don’t know. It’s not in my wheelhouse. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you had to live without one, the skateboard or the guitar, what would it be?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Right now I would have to keep the guitar, because that’s how I make my living, but in a way that’s why I love skateboarding maybe more. I love playing guitar but I do it for a living. Can you imagine getting up and going “ugggh… I have to skate…” “I have to go get video content…” Just imagine that. Music is my job and it’s a wonderful job, I’m not curing cancer but I get to play guitar for a living and that’s pretty fucking sweet. In then end it is still a job though…but with a skateboardIi can build them and give them away, I can go skate, it’s like a pipe dream; “I get to go skate today, yeah!” I get absolutely no monetary gain out of it. I get nothing but the pure joy and it is still pretty awesome. </span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-53292635552108006672016-09-06T11:50:00.001-07:002016-09-06T11:50:02.372-07:00A Wheel/Journalistic Ethics Review, Or, Why Skateboard Product Reviews Have Always Sucked<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nYHTjVRyuVk/V88PFjde_II/AAAAAAAAAhU/K_oMTO5LnYUiShjxJfW2GiPlrWuYgNeMgCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-09-06%2Bat%2B2.45.58%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="632" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nYHTjVRyuVk/V88PFjde_II/AAAAAAAAAhU/K_oMTO5LnYUiShjxJfW2GiPlrWuYgNeMgCLcB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-09-06%2Bat%2B2.45.58%2BPM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For decades, skateboard magazines have dealt mostly in celebrity. Skaters buy mags to see and read about the exploits of famous skaters, not to get practical information that helps them skate. Sure, there are occasionally gear reviews and trick tips, but these are inevitably useless. Skateboarding is not a spectator sport, our culture is driven almost 100% by actual participants, yet our mags are basically selling spectatorship. Compare that with the mags that serve cyclists and runners or particpants in any other physical hobby: in other disciplines, the media is driven by things like training tips and comically exhaustive equipment previews and reviews. Nobody would buy a copy of Runner’s World if it was nothing but pictures of famous runners doing laps, but that’s kind of what skaters re doing when they buy a copy of Thrasher or Transworld.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-01eebff5-00cd-2b19-5747-b2b74e53fadc" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The last thing I want is for Thrasher to mutate into Golf Digest, but I’ve always felt that there is a place for something more “rider-oriented”, in skating. Figuring out how to do this, however, is not so simple, and plunges a writer deep into the weird, murky depths of skating’s unique nature, revealing just how complex and substantive skateboarding really is.</span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take the product review, for example; Product reviews are The bread and butter of everything from bike mags to hot rod publications. As mentioned before, at least for teh last 3 or 4 decades, skateboarding mags have never gone in for them in any deep way. There are some good reasons for this, even if you exclude the ethical grabass inherent in a publishing sector where all the magazines are partially owned by stakeholders in the products being reviewed. nevertheless, I always thought there must be a way to do real product reviews if someone really wanted to try.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not so sure anymore.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://parkingblockdiaries.blogspot.com/2016/04/keepin-things-rolling-with-speedlab.html" target="_blank">Recently I wrote a piece on wheels with Speedlab Wheels owner Alan Keller</a>. After he learned I had not actually ridden his wheels, he offered to comp me a set for review. Easy enough, I thought. Ride some wheels. Write about what I thought of them with no deadline. Simple, right?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not quite. Deciding how “good” or “bad” those wheels were became an exercise in second-guessing, self-reflection, and heavy analysis.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whether we choose to think about it or not, Skateboarding is complicated. Why would reviewing a set of four skateboard wheels be any less. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, I received a set of 57mm 99a Speedlab Bombshells about a week after the interview. With a 26 mm contact patch and a slightly larger reverse conical inside edge, the bombshells were very similar to the discontinued OJ Jason Adams “Slappy Hour” wheels I had been riding previously. My only misgiving with the wheels was the green urethane. Every colored formula I have ridden has worn down quicker, and deformed and flattened around the edges faster than naturals or whites. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first thing I did was take the wheels down the big asphalt hill in front of my house. Rolling along, I immediately latched on to how the wide contact patches made me really “feel” the road beneath me, and how solid they made the wheels feel in a carve, but when I hit the bottom of the hill and threw myself into a powerslide, I really fell in love with the wheels.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The speelab urethane slid unlike any wheels I have ever had, they had a clean, completely smooth, and completely consistent slide with no break and no catch. When I pushed them they drifted the same all through the slide, with no breakaway and no sudden hangs. They also had a stealthy hiss instead of an aggressive bark. I probably bombed that hill two dozen times just that first day on those wheels, and after a few runs I started sliding on the way down as well as at the bottom, memories of Eric Dressen in Speed Freaks barking in my brain.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I while, I reluctantly walked back up the hill and went back in my house to check out how the wheels were holding up. When I looked at them, things started to get complicated.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I noticed some significant flattening around the edges. There were no flat spots on the contact surface but, on the edges, flattening was obvious, moreso than i would expect forma brand new set of wheels. In terms of performance, the wear was purely cosmetic, but still pretty surprising on a brand new wheel. I also had a tear in one wheel that did extend to the contact patch. A fairly large one. Of course, I hadn't noticed so much as a bump actually riding them, so did that mean anything?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I couldn’t help but have misgivings about the toll that had been taken on my wheels after just one session. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s the thing though, I had sllid those wheels harder and longer in that one hour on my hill than I probably would have in a dozen trips to the local park. In light of this, what did that wear actually mean in terms of the quality of the wheels?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In just one hour of skating I had already hopelessly complicated the parameters of reviewing the wheel.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I kept riding the wheels and I kept liking them. The tear slid oout pretty quick. After multiple hang ups on rocks and other crap at the local park I was still flatspot-free. The wheels continued to outslide anything I had ridden, but they continued to wear pretty hard as well. The perimeter of the wheels were soon completely lopsided, and they were getting smaller pretty rapidly. No doubt, I was going to burn through the wheels much faster than my previous set.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But how long would it take exactly?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The one big hitch about skateboard product reviews has always been this: To really know how good something is for skateboarders, you have to know how long it will last, what kind of beating it will take, but, with the exception trucks and bearings, the time it takes to find that out in a review outstrips the time any given product is actually available.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So my wheels were wearing down faster than my OJs or the Landsharks I had been riding before that, But what did that raelly mean? I wrote up a glowing review for Speedlab, talking about how great the Bombshells felt and slid. I wondered if maybe I was being too easy on them because Speedlab flowed me wheels and Alan was a cool guy. But I loved riding the wheels, no doubt… but the wear was troubling me. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the other hand, even if they lasted half as long, I was having twice as much fun riding them. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is another hitch with reviewing skateboard gear. With skateboarding, even when it comes to something as seemingly straightforward as a product review, you have to get way beyond the what’s and into the whys.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z7btcfr7nDk/V88POou0hZI/AAAAAAAAAhY/2sxHgiFlUcYk9_FFbDbmXPTkKc9u_oIVQCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-09-06%2Bat%2B2.45.29%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="393" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z7btcfr7nDk/V88POou0hZI/AAAAAAAAAhY/2sxHgiFlUcYk9_FFbDbmXPTkKc9u_oIVQCLcB/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-09-06%2Bat%2B2.45.29%2BPM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The reason why my wheels were disintegrating so fast had nothing to do with deficiencies in the urethane, or green dye in the formula. They were shrinking because I couldn’t stop powersliding them. The bombshells had me sliding my wheels whenever I could… on curbs, across banks, or just throwing powerslides flatground whenever I got the urge. I was pushing those wheels non-stop, and they got small pretty quick. To me and most skaters I know, that quick degradation, then, is not the indicator of deficiency, it is the indicator of a great product… I wanted to skate those wheels hard, and destroy them fast. I burned them down way faster than my previous wheels, but that is not a bad thing, it is a great thing. There is no higher compliment in skateboarding.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, for skateboarding, the ultimate test of a product, is not how long it lasts, but how quickly we are inspired to destroy it.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skateboarding is weird.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I finally switched out those wheels a couple weeks ago. I had to do it because I had hung up on a rock full speed in the bowl and flat spotted one irreversibly. In the previous weeks I had been frustrated by how stiff my ollies had been and was baffled as to why. When I switched out those wheels I had ridden them down to 53 millimeters in diameter. That's how much I liked those wheels. I liked them so much I had kept riding them past the point where they messed with other aspects of my riding just because I loved how they felt. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I went back into my instagram account to look when I first set up those wheels. In spite of aIl the fun I had had, I still really felt like those wheels had worn too much in just 3 months or so. When I looked at my first post riding the Speedlabs, I was shocked. It turned out I had been not been riding them for the 3 or four months I usually rode a set of wheels. I had been riding them for almost six months.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s a good wheel, a great wheel, but by putting on the role of the traditional product reviewer, I might have dismissed the product for several reasons. Quantification and skateboarding are never easy partners. Anyone looking to add something more substantive to skateboarding's media must proceed with caution.</span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe this is why we can’t have nice things when it comes to real product reviews.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-22437352812083215412016-08-05T06:14:00.001-07:002016-08-05T06:14:02.559-07:00The PBD Skatecoach 8 Point Program To Get Your Ollie Back<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5rmwb-MnnlY/V6SMiGzhEzI/AAAAAAAAAgs/XRaxyWuXBGwXNHAAqYgPbJX1aAuobYgngCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-05%2Bat%2B8.53.54%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5rmwb-MnnlY/V6SMiGzhEzI/AAAAAAAAAgs/XRaxyWuXBGwXNHAAqYgPbJX1aAuobYgngCLcB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-05%2Bat%2B8.53.54%2BAM.png" width="636" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For Go Skateboarding Day this year, I reposted a blog on why “International No-ollie Day” should be the next big skate holiday. When I put it up on the PBD facebook page, I was surprised by the number of people who commented that the ollie is no longer part of their repertoire. Some were brash about it, others wistful. Either way, as an aged skater who recently reacquired a fair portion of his pop, I felt duty bound to share some tips on how you can get your ollie back. If I can do it, anyone can.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fe4c8df2-56d1-11f1-1e1f-8e91816948d0" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Around 2004 I basically stopped skating street. For the next 5 years I was pretty much skating bowls exclusively. From 2009 through 2011 I was lucky to get on my board once every couple months. In 2012, when I started re-discovering roots street skating in the parking lots and abandoned strip malls of my neighborhood, my ollie was all but gone. A little less than a year later I was popping high enough to clear a medium sized traffic cone, and far enough to clear the euro at Marsh Creek skatepark. Here’s a few insights on how a nobody like me, a mediocre skater even during his best years, who only had about 3-4 hours of skate time total a week got his ollie back.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Re-Learning is hard, but it isn’t nearly as hard as learning the first time.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If your ollie is gone, looking back and thinking about how much sweat and repetition it took you to learn it the first time can break your spirit. The truth is, getting it back, even after years, probably won’t be near as hard as learning it the first time. Sure, you will spend lots of time barely clearing the ground and feeling like you are getting nowhere, but even if it has been decades since you popped a manhole cover, you are not starting form scratch. A lot of the mental work is done and stays with you. The trial and error of the first time will be eliminated, and all you will have to do is re-train your body and your reflexes. Doesn’t sound like much of a leg-up, but it is. Trust me.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1Wabw4Cu4mA/V6OpjU1bSII/AAAAAAAAAf4/njskuevvaDcRi9RlFnHWjglf7zJbPJ_cACEw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.43.50%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1Wabw4Cu4mA/V6OpjU1bSII/AAAAAAAAAf4/njskuevvaDcRi9RlFnHWjglf7zJbPJ_cACEw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.43.50%2BPM.png" width="103" /></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-khlJZRUHk5I/V6OpjicfdLI/AAAAAAAAAgA/hIsH5G2e3BYEOuLczGtwO8C1-AIuB7LHQCEw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.44.01%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-khlJZRUHk5I/V6OpjicfdLI/AAAAAAAAAgA/hIsH5G2e3BYEOuLczGtwO8C1-AIuB7LHQCEw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.44.01%2BPM.png" width="106" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SnL-zloSZZI/V6OpjR-xlII/AAAAAAAAAf8/ftg_Lei997oGotQ7lpQZyquny0_VXN0_gCEw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.42.34%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SnL-zloSZZI/V6OpjR-xlII/AAAAAAAAAf8/ftg_Lei997oGotQ7lpQZyquny0_VXN0_gCEw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.42.34%2BPM.png" width="154" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WZUK2IIf6AA/V6OpjUC7aqI/AAAAAAAAAf0/AktIyKcy0pIrpY3plojgZSG9Ka3MPrhPQCEw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.41.50%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WZUK2IIf6AA/V6OpjUC7aqI/AAAAAAAAAf0/AktIyKcy0pIrpY3plojgZSG9Ka3MPrhPQCEw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B4.41.50%2BPM.png" width="98" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Get a board with a big, chunky tai</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">l</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nothing gives straight vertical pop like the modern popsicle shape, the problem is, popsicles have a “sweet spot” you have to hit just right a to get that perfect pop. That's because those rounded tails are designed for flip tricks, which means they are intentionally unstable. To get a decent pop on a popsicle, you have to be more precise and more delicate in just how you pop that tail, and if you are off a little bit in your foot placement or too forceful, your board is going to flip out or lurch sideways, or even, worse, your tail will not make contact at all, resulting in an awkward “ghost pop”. With the popsicle it’s all in the reflexes, and you aren’t going to have them. That's why an ugly shovel tail is the right choice to get your ollie back. A longer, more squared tail is going to make contact easier, and when it does, it will want to pop straight forward, you will have to try real hard to get it to turn or flip sideways. Also, with all that surface area for contact, you will be channeling most of your power through the tail and to the ground, even when your foot placement is off. With a chunky tail you don't have to be so delicate in judging how much power you put down. On a tank, you know you can get away with just hammering it down sometimes, and even when you don’t get the power you need, you are going to make some contact. A monster tail is going to work better with bigger wheels, and give you a more horizontal arc in your ollie, which is better for flowing over the manholes and up the sidewalks you will be tackling at first to get your pop back.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That nose is for more than noseslides</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are a skater of advanced age like myself, you probably first learned to ollie on a vert shape with only an inch or two of lumber beyond the front trucks. This means you learned to stop that crucial front foot slide at the front mounting bolts. Modern concaves and shapes, however, are designed to boost your ollie by allowing you to slide past the trucks and catch your foot on the kick at the nose. Whereas the front foot action of the early days was a slide followed by a sort of push or stomp down at the truck, ollieing on a modern board should be more of a smooth slide past the bolts, with a rock back once the deck is level. It’s That slide past the trucks and into the nose that gives modern skaters that distinctive downward tweak that pops the rear truck straight up into the compressed back leg, resulting in a massive, vertical pop. That old school street shape may seem like fun, but if it doesn't have a nose, you are going to be ollieing with your hands tied, so to speak. The modern ollie technique is also a reason to think about dropping your wheelbase. The closer your front foot is to the front trucks, the easier it is going to be to slide past the bolts and catch that sweet spot. Of course, finding a shape with a squared tail, a healthy nose, and a smaller wheelbase is tough, but they are out there.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Less Jump, More Bounce</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another habit skaters who learned to ollie in the pre-popsicle era pick up is the tendency to stomp on the tail with all their might and jump up in the air as hard as they can when they ollie. When boards averaged ten inches in width, had primitive concave designs, and weighed about a hundred pounds, this was the only way to give the finger to gravity, but modern boards, even the chunky-tailed ones I’m suggesting are much more refined and much better at channeling the power in your pop. For a good controlled pop, you need to think less like pounding a jackhammer and more like dribbling a basketball. If you slam a basketball into the hardwood with all your might when you dribble, the ball is going to either smack you in the face or fly out of your hands. A skateboard is the same way, you want a controlled bounce off the pavement, and that back foot action is more like a knee bend than a jump. Bounce the tail and let the returned energy suck that rear truck right up as your knee bends in a smooth compression. Sure, having a board with a squared tail is going to make this a little less fiddly, but managing your power and bending instead of jumping is what is really going to get you off the ground and over stuff taller than a parking block. </span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_I8RmTcIAio/V6SLE6N0MiI/AAAAAAAAAgg/Co86SEHYKu42xiPbLpa03TsMzmN-ETu3gCLcB/s1600/p1149586620-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_I8RmTcIAio/V6SLE6N0MiI/AAAAAAAAAgg/Co86SEHYKu42xiPbLpa03TsMzmN-ETu3gCLcB/s640/p1149586620-3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Get The hell out of the skatepark</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The modern skatepark is about the worst place to try to learn to ollie, even if you don't factor in how self-conscious you’ll be flubbing tiny pops while ten year olds are vaulting euros and pyramids left and right. Getting your ollie back, requires focus and repetition. Two things that the modern skatepark scene is not designed for. With the distractions of avoiding other skaters lines, and worrying how much flat you have before you run into a quarter or flat bar, getting the right timing and balance for a proper pop is going to be just one of a dozen things bouncing around in your skull. If you have to think about anything other than popping that board off the ground, you are not going to get it. On top of that, If you are lucky enough to get your own corner of the park to concentrate in, after about 5 minutes of awkward popping, that bowl a few yards over is going to start calling to you… beckoning you to take solace in the same old lines you’ve always done. That’s hard to resist. One of the best pieces of advice I can give, then, is to get out to places where popping ollies is just about the only thing to do on your board…. the empty parking lots and tennis courts…places where you have just enough room to roll around, but not enough space to spend hours soul carving all over the place. Remember: Focus and necessity are the friends of perseverance, and perseverance is even more important than perfect reflexes or massive leg muscles. And on that note...</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few minutes here and there really add up</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More than physical failings, more than lack of terrain, it is the lack of time that will be the biggest obstruction to getting your ollie back. On the other hand, if you are focusing on just ollieing, you can pack a lot of practice into 15 minutes in front of your house. Sure, you may only be able to get a real session in once a week, but getting 15 minutes to pop around everyday between work and dinner or after the kids are in bed is easy. Those 15 minutes of “fooling around” here and there add up quick. You can practice anywhere you have a few yards of pavement too. A paved driveway is perfect. If your neighborhood streets are janky, get hold of some nice, cored all-terrain wheels. The best ones will pop almost as good as hard urethane. I got my ollie back rolling on Spitfire 80a speedies. Wherever you are, If you can grab ten minutes here and ten minutes there to just pop around, do it! Don’t hesitate. It will all add up. Believe me.</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w05FQR47X2U/V6OKDyYFJsI/AAAAAAAAAfk/CTFkSP89_scSVKE2TfWJMOsBj-6fq895gCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B2.07.38%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="635" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w05FQR47X2U/V6OKDyYFJsI/AAAAAAAAAfk/CTFkSP89_scSVKE2TfWJMOsBj-6fq895gCLcB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-08-04%2Bat%2B2.07.38%2BPM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Make sure you have things to ollie over and onto</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's a skateboarding truism that you can always ollie higher and farther than you think. Once you get to the point where you can get all four wheels off the ground, even if just barely, you need to step up to going over things. Throw a stick on the pavement, or barge the painted lines in a parking lot. Better yet, find a sidewalk you can try to pop up. Start by doing axle stalls onto the curb to get a feel, then up and over once you got the timing down. Going to board is also a good way to gauge whether not you are ready to pop onto taller things and and a good way to get a taste of how it will feel to get on top. It's amazing how little pop you need to lever yourself onto a sidewalk or even a bench when you are rolling away on top of it instead of going over it. Once you start floating up onto sidewalks and over manholes, get yourself a traffic cone, the ultimate ollie trainer. Tip it on it’s side, start at the short end, work your way up until you can get over the base. Then get real rad and stand it up and go for it. Cardboard boxes are great too because they usually have two dimensions you can set them up on, one for height, one for width, and if you don’t clear it, you’ll get away without hanging up and slamming, No matter what you are trying to ollie over, start barging things early on, no matter how humble, and you'll progress faster. I guarantee you will surprise yourself.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A little bit of pop opens up the streets</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Watching videos or the best guys at the local park can be discouraging. When you are sweating and breaking yourself off to just get off the ground, you will feel that the giant vertical pop of the local park rats is basically impossible. You are probably right, but that is not the point. Even a small ollie creates exponential possibilities on your board. That is what you should be thinking about every time your board flies out or you fall on your ass. Even if you will never be able to vault over a trashcan again, if you can get just a 4 or 5 inches off the ground, you will be able to lever yourself into a boardslide on a bench or average skatepark ledge. It Takes even less height to pop into a 50-50 on a curb, and if you can do that, you will have a lifetime of variations to try without ever leaving a parking lot. If you are inclined to ollieng off things, even a tiny ollie will be enough to get you down four stairs. Beyond that, if you can manage a knee-high pop, most of the world's ledges will be yours to grind, and you'll never run out of things to pop over. Maybe you will never get much higher than a curb, but popping up sidewalks and floating over manhole covers can sustain some skaters for eternity.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Ollie is not a requirement. It’s not a test you have to pass. It’s a skeleton key that opens a million doors. That is what you need to remember when take your first, clumsy pop, and why all the effort will be worth it, even if a curb is the tallest thing you can tackle.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-31857277601178003102016-07-16T13:54:00.002-07:002016-07-16T13:54:37.229-07:00Don't Blame Jamie Or Jaws, Here's The Real Reason For The Scooter Menace<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QEsWen4EfyU/V4qYmH8LKtI/AAAAAAAAAe8/bptC-_ifI2w0hR4zibZ5-dtRrGtmql_TACLcB/s1600/a01d4ab6c816f303e363a6d0e83e983a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QEsWen4EfyU/V4qYmH8LKtI/AAAAAAAAAe8/bptC-_ifI2w0hR4zibZ5-dtRrGtmql_TACLcB/s640/a01d4ab6c816f303e363a6d0e83e983a.jpg" width="450" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skating often captures the imagination of those who lack the will, temperament or dedication to take it up. This is why trends like rollerblades, snakeboards, rip-stiks, and razor scooters are always yapping at skaters' heels.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-500dfc08-f560-a906-d5df-4f4ea1d4b633" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The latest incarnation of this phenomenon, the Razor scooter, has been especially persistent, not to mention obstructive to the modern skateboarder. More than one skater has placed the blame for the scooter epidemic on the high-impact, highly technical trends in modern pro skateboarding. At a glance, the connection seems plausible: Elite level Skateboarding has developed a more risky dimension than it had in the good ol days, they say. An emphasis on increasingly complex and risky tricks rather than "just rolling", is making kids take up scooters instead of skateboards. The skate world, they posit, has become an all jocks club that welcomes only the most athletically driven skaters.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take a closer look at skateboarding, and a good hard look at the Razor scooter, and it becomes clear that the kids riding those Razors wouldn't be riding skateboards no matter what sort of stuff was going down in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thrasher</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> magazine.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skateboarding is hard, and not just hard to master, its hard form the first push. The basics; standing up, staying balanced at a decent speed, turning, doing a basic kickturn on a quarter pipe, not to mention dropping in or doing an ollie, are all harder than sinking a basket, harder than popping a wheelie on a bike, harder than hitting a baseball, and much, much Harder than rolling around a skatepark on a scooter. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact that skateboarding is really hard at the entry level is crucial to the nature of skate culture and the identity of skateboarders. It shapes every aspect of skating. It is an element that has existed since the skateboard was invented. It is the most important filtering mechanism in skateboarding.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it isn't a mechanism that filters for athletic ability. It filters for passion. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the new skater, skateboarding has a maddeningly steep learning curve. It is just as steep for the captain of the jock squad as it is for the 90 pound poindexter. This is because, unlike football, track and field, or any other sport, skateboarding requires you to use your body in ways that have no analog in everyday life or conventional sports. No matter how much of a leg-up genetics or training has given you, there is no way to become a competent skateboarder without spending a lot of time looking real stupid. You have to figure skateboarding out before athleticism makes any difference, and that figuring out takes a long time and a lot of seemingly fruitless repetition. No matter how tall you are, how strong you are, how fast you are, no matter how gifted you are, you will hit the ground hard. Over and over. Most of the time, you will look like an idiot. That’s something the misfits will always handle better than the golden boys and girls.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The truth of skateboarding is this: it is only for those who care about riding more than they care about being better than everyone else, because at the point of the first push, being better than even the local kid on your block will take so much effort, you won't ever want to do it unless you get hooked; unless the love hits you. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even before the advent of Jamie Thomas and his daredevil descendents, skaters coming into the culture with an eye only on being the best, had to face the reality of wobbling, flailing, and slamming their way to bare bones basic competence. There's no shortcut to getting rad. Paying the dues early on teaches every new skater one thing: the glory of being the best, of being like the guys on Street League and in Thrasher, will never be easy. It will never even be probable. In fact, that dream will seem downright nonsensical once you actually begin to skate. Mounting the grip tape and going for it on that first push is a rubicon that, once crossed, forever changes the way you see those pros and their amazing achievements. It forever changes your relationship with them and the entire context of skateboarding. Once you actually begin to skate, the distance between your abilities and even the abilities of the local flow kids is so big that the distance between yourself and the top pros, whether they are Gonz and Natas in 1987 or Jaws and Nyjah in 2016, is so cosmic, it becomes an abstraction. Skaters have always had to face this challenge, even when state of the art was a single kickflip.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uxHjIbN7p2Q/V4qY_pxOYeI/AAAAAAAAAfA/6vRoUJPtY4Y8ZS1oGbV-piL75FmWLoUQwCLcB/s1600/119766.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uxHjIbN7p2Q/V4qY_pxOYeI/AAAAAAAAAfA/6vRoUJPtY4Y8ZS1oGbV-piL75FmWLoUQwCLcB/s400/119766.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Put it this way: the relative distance between a fresh faced skater and Eric Dressen in 1987, and the relative distance between some grom and Nyjah huston today probably is, technically, wider, but this is not so relevant a thing. Comparing how much "better" the best of today are to the best of yesteryear is kind of like comparing the difference between 1000 light years and one million. In practical terms, the difference is meaningless. Both distances are really damn far, and, in both cases, seemingly impossible to traverse.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skateboarding is a bitch to learn. It was then. It is now. That is an equalizer when it comes to jocks versus nerds, not a discouragement. The skateboard has never been a vessel for the casual dabbler. To even master the basics of skating requires dedication. To have a foundation of simple tricks to really bring out the creative and expressive aspects that are at the heart of the pursuit requires nothing short of obsession. There is no such thing as a "casual skateboarder".That defines us as much as haircuts or attitudes or punk rock music or whatever you want to name check.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With this in mind, you can begin to see the real reason more kids want to ride Razor scooters than skateboards, and why the Razor scooter is more reviled by skaters than any of its predecessors.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a tool of the wannabe, the Razor scooter is magnitudes better than rollerblades, snake boards or anything else mass culture has come up with. Now, people who are too intimidated to try skateboarding or not passionate enough to persist with it, have an easy option that is, unlike rollerblades or snakeboards or even bikes, also extremely well adapted to the modern public skatepark. Where, in the past, those who didn't have the temperament to skate just sort of disappeared and did their own thing, now, thanks to the scooter, they can stick around, clogging up the concrete on a device that is cheap, easy to master and, crucially, creates the illusion of participation in the spaces skaters have pioneered. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The razor is not an alternative to the skateboard, it's a substitute. It's the Mcdonald’s cheeseburger to skateboarding's Kobe beef . It is something anyone can do, and learn almost instantly. Kids who can barely run can pick up a scooter and start riding it around their neighborhood in a matter of minutes. There's’ nothing wrong with that.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem is, they can start zipping around the local skatepark almost as fast.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 90's In-line skaters were our biggest bane, in the early 2000's and even today, kids on bicycles have caused frustrations. In between there has been a smattering of short lived gimmicks like ripstiks and hoverboards. None of these things have proved as destructive to scenes as the scooter. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The reasons for this are pretty simple, and they have nothing to do with any pro skateboarder, beacuse for all their irksomeness, scooters, unlike rollerblades or bikes, are very well suited to skateparks.</span><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 90's the average skatepark was almost always a pretty standard quarterpipe, flat bars and funbox type of configuration. They were linear, straightforward... in other words, ideal for in-line skaters. Bladers clogged up the parks in irritating, but manageable, numbers. This was because, although inline kids could get wobbling around a street course much quicker than beginning skaters, it still took a fair amount of dedication and skill to ride in-line skates functionally in a skatepark. On top of that, even for the “experts”, blades never quite had the versatility or style of a skateboard in a park designed for skating. Even the best bladers would admit this if you pressed them on it. This put a cap on how many bladers were ever going to jam up your park. Once concrete parks became the standard, so did round walls and flowing curves. This sort of configuration is the antithesis of what blades were made for. Predictably, "extreme in-line" died off, and now you don’t see very many of them pirouetting their way through the public crete. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skaters have also maintained a tentative balance with BMX riders through the years, but unlike the scooter, navigating a bike through a bowled corner, or even just turning one on a quarter pipe, is much harder and more dangerous, than doing the same thing on a board. Likewise, cities have been pretty proactive about officially prohibiting bikes from skateparks. Because of this, even though bikes are even more common than scooters, they have not caused as much frustration to skateboarders.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A scooter, on the other hand is not just simple to use, but they can navigate those concrete curves easily, and it's easy to fly into the air on one, even if the average scooter kid is only getting a few inches off the ground. Scooters have brakes for speed control. Even worse, the norms don’t know enough to differentiate them from skateboards. The fact is, they work beautifully in a skatepark if all you want to do is zip around and pretend you are doing something "radical".</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-51JoVGbJWTk/V4qZvDmkD8I/AAAAAAAAAfI/wqX4ANGjgCYWedms8_EZ0Z300q6dBI-HQCLcB/s1600/p5pb9074660.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-51JoVGbJWTk/V4qZvDmkD8I/AAAAAAAAAfI/wqX4ANGjgCYWedms8_EZ0Z300q6dBI-HQCLcB/s400/p5pb9074660.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that is all most people aspire too. The instant gratification, or rather, the instant appearance of gratification. It's why there will always be more of them than us. Aaron Homoki has no culpability in that. Jamie Thomas is not to blame. You can't even pin that one on Monster Energy</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scooters are the perfect storm for making your local skatepark blow. There will always be many, many more kids choosing scooters than skateboards. Erasing drive, audacity, and mastery from our culture will not change that. We can't stop scooters by going back to "just rolling around", because, At the end of the day, "rolling around" on a scooter will always be 100 times easier and simpler than pushing on a skateboard.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It is the wild creativity, diversity, the crazed adaptability from adversity that makes skating endure. That is why skating has substance. That is why scooters lack it. Substance is never as accessible as consumption. That is what matters.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what is the answer? Bullying tykes at the skate park who just want to have fun? Ranting online about how much scooters suck? Posting videos full of implied threats and homophobic insults?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No. We need to use what gives us strength. We need to take the same route that every skater takes when he chooses the board: the hard route, the one with substance. We need to start being vocal with city administrators, parks boards, and parents about why skateparks need to be spaces for skaters, and only skaters, we need to be able to articulate why this is so important, and be prepared to stand firm and dig in our heels, even if that means waiting a little longer for that new park. We need to be examples so we make sure every kid on a scooter who really wants to skate has a way in. We need to make our case through substance. That's what we have, and they don't.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scooters aren't going away. Putting a cap on how big you should ollie or how many times you flip your board isn't going to change that, so let the eagles soar as high as they want. They aren't the problem.</span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-9989027843759680592016-07-03T06:02:00.001-07:002016-07-03T07:05:07.462-07:00I'm Not An Old Guy Anymore, As If I Ever Was before<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pErQI4HYl_M/V3kMhbRGZGI/AAAAAAAAAek/1Z4BA_-l8qEWWO_hpLWmcaS8G-ZpmBQ-ACLcB/s1600/how-do-you-do-fellow-kids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="380" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pErQI4HYl_M/V3kMhbRGZGI/AAAAAAAAAek/1Z4BA_-l8qEWWO_hpLWmcaS8G-ZpmBQ-ACLcB/s640/how-do-you-do-fellow-kids.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My days of peak skill on a skateboard are long past. In fact, at 42, I may be one ankle injury away from never popping an ollie again. I skate curbs more than anything else. I spend a fair amount of time skating bowls, but I don't worry too much about getting up on the coping. So yeah, I'm an old skater: a veteran, a lifer.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-845bdfa6-b0d8-81e3-5b0b-20720b054de8" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I don't think I want to be an "Old Guy Skater".</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have no illusions. I am old. Older than any skater I knew when I was in my prime, and there are lots of great things about being an old guy. The emergence of an older demographic in skateboarding has had positive effect on everything from the building of municipal skateparks, all the way down to the revival of curb skating. But with the coming of the old guys has also come a lot of back-slapping and self organizing, as well as a tendency toward a sort of pouty self-imposed marginalization. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No doubt, "Old Guy Skater" groups on social media have been invaluable in getting veteran skaters together to shred, socialize, and share spots. I frequent a couple of really great ones, and when they are done with the right attitude, they are a great resource. Still I can never quiet escape the fact that, at some level, being a part of these groups, even the positive ones, also implies that being old relegates some skaters to a separate place in skateboarding, a place of either perceived privilege, or resigned inferiority.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The thing is, now more than ever, age has nothing to do with one's place in skateboarding. Maybe it's time to drop the "Old Guy" branding from all the groups, blogs, and other outlets that bear that tag. Maybe it is time to re-think what being an "Old Guy" means, and what we are really trying to promote when we exult in our "Old Guy" status. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One pillar propping up the Old Guy" trend is the perception by skaters both young and old that one's skating ability is equivocal to one's centrality in the skate community. I think older skaters buy into this more than the younger counterparts they are avoiding. Just because most old guys can't skate like they used, or because they just skate differently than their younger peers, they often think that they need an insulating space, a space where they can escape the fear of judgment. The problem is, that safe space can be a place of exile. To fully embrace the "Old Guy" trend often means buying into the idea that Skateboarding has passed you by, that not only do the youth have nothing to offer the old, but that we have nothing to offer them. It makes it easy to overlook the connection points that enrich all of skateboarding. Connection points you may never see if you get too fixated on "Old Guy" politics.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skateboarding is not a sport, it's a culture. Athletics is part of that culture, but it may be the least important part. A waning ability to charge the craziest terrain has absolutely no effect on how much you can contribute or participate in the skateboarding. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being a skater has never been about how good you can skate. It's about passion, and veterans can be just as passionate as anyone. Beyond that, art, music, the crafting of our boards, the construction of our skate spots, these are all things that define skateboarding, and these are forms of expression that do not dim with age. In many cases, they only burn stronger and brighter with accumulated experience. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, there are still plenty of 40 and 50 year olds who can shred most of their younger peers to the ground, but let's not even contemplate those guys for now. Think about a small timer like me: I do not have even the modest skill set I once did on my board, yet, I feel now, I have, a bigger place in the culture than I ever did in my twenties. This is because the culture of skating is built on voices and visions as much as edits and NBDs. The writers, shop owners, videographers, artists, photographers, and company masterminds that energize skating are all heavily skewed into the 30 and over demographic. When you get down to it, the only cultural venues where youth is king are the professional ranks and the consumer ranks. Most pros are young, and kids buy most of the product, Admittedly, these are no small things for the industry, and the marketing of the brands and the output of the media reflect that, but we should never mistake the industry for the culture. Business doesn't define skateboarding. Skateboarders do. What happens on the crete is more important than what happens in an ad.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Think about Jeff Grosso: Granted, Grosso still rips on his board, but he has as strong an influence now as a commentator and personality as he ever did as a top professional in the 80's. A lot of kids who weren't even born when Grosso's first video part dropped are taking their stylistic and cultural cues form the his </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Loveletters To Skateboarding</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Grosso is an old guy but he is not mired in "Old Guy" thinking. It is not just Grosso's firsthand knowledge of the past that makes him relevant. It is his skepticism and frankness about everything in skateboarding old and new, and the way he encourages others to embrace that skepticism that gives him influence. The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Loveletters</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> challenge as much as they cherish. That is what makes his show inspirational rather than merely nostalgic. Grosso doesn't inspire skaters to re-create the past, but to build it into something new. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a writer putting content onto social media I have seen firsthand how indistinct skateboarding's generational lines can be, and just how much we assume about younger skaters is wrong. I started Parking Block Diaries not to simply re-hash old memories, but also to connect history to the present in order to better understand skateboarding today and for the future. In writing this blog and putting stuff out through the youth-oriented RIDE channel, I have discovered that the roots of skateboarding have a lot to offer everyone. Maybe the youth most of all. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="448" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/c375jMuwYrd5InYunV_vUr852p0y-5DPH548FPYWhSWu32fIOldsDzjWgJ-ryH22zAhsq4Mo1Cp1wgaZtPtRhw4tlmhD1uFk6H_4Ml-YDI9Nk8DVzlTqKTxLmir7oLAez5gydT4x" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I put a lot of my own skating on my instagram: Sketchy slappys on janky curbs...other basic stuff that I feel is accessible to any skater. None of it is state of the art, just easily picked up insanely fun stuff. The ones who really responded to the clips were not the usual over-30 suspects, but the young skaters, kids in their early teens looking for things they can take possession of in a climate saturated with mind-blowing pro clips. Now, I've got more middle schoolers following me than middle agers. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is because the last decade of skateboarding has been characterized by the widening of horizons, from the return of bowl skating, to the resurrection and continued validity of tricks and styles of skating long thought lost. Now everyone can contribute at a session, whether it is by busting out some weird lip trick no one has seen in decades, or just by getting really stoked right alongside other skaters. This is the post modern age of skating. Everything is up for grabs, which means the young and old not only have more to learn from each other, but that they learn it on a more equal playing field. It makes me think of that old Blockhead graphic: "Nothing Is Cool". Why? Because everything is cool.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But there's a whole other dubious side to the self-conscious "Old Guy" rhetoric. For some, the term old guy is not just a description, it's a hall monitor's badge. For these "Old Guys", the self-imposed label is a point of stubborn pride, a status that, to them, denotes privilege. These are the folks who think a few extra decades rolling (or, more often than not, a few years way back when followed by a decades long hiatus) makes them the elder statesmen of skating, the only ones fit to judge what "real" skateboarding is. For these guys, the "Old Guy" groups and message boards become a safe refuge where they can preach to a captive audience about the superiority of their philosophy of skating, one usually set in stone in whatever years they happened to be between 15 and 20.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of these guys are annoying outliers, Old Skater groups are usually pretty great places to network with cool people, but the existence of these clowns does highlight a universal truth: that self organizing by age is not a totally wise thing for skaters to do. It's just the easy thing.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being an "old guy skater" doesn't mean you are automatically going to have a better attitude and perspective on skateboarding. Time does not equal wisdom, especially if a large chunk of that time was spent insulating yourself from other perspectives via "Old Guy Skater" groups. Just because you are old enough to remember when Danny Way was the hot new kid on the skate scene, it doesn't mean that I, as a fellow fossil, will relate to your any better than I might relate to a 19 year old skater who has grown up watching Grosso's </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Loveletters</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and skating the local bowl. "Old Guy" cliques become great entry points for older skaters starting up after a hiatus or guys moving to a new community, but they also become a collection point for some of the most stifling negativity in the scene today. I would lay money that just as many returning skaters bail on the culture because of bitter old guys as they do from exposure to bratty, jocked out kids.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, If you run an "Old Guy" group or are a part of one, more power to you, but don't make being an "Old Guy" into an identity. Demographics are not a valid basis for a philosophy, especially not in modern skateboarding. Crawling too deep into the "Old Guy" mindset not only cheats you, but it cheats skateboarding. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Skateboarding is what it is because it is a culture where being different doesn't mean you have to be separate. Skateboarding is what it is because we can throw everyone together if we choose to. This is why for every Nyjah Huston out there, there's also a Ben Raybourn. That didn't happen because the old cut themselves off from the young. Be proud if you have put time in in skateboarding, fly your flag a bit if you want to. Dress like an "Old Guy", skate like an "Old Guy", but, please, don't </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">think</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> like an "Old Guy". </span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-19901981010719892362016-04-29T10:20:00.002-07:002016-04-29T10:20:56.768-07:00Keeping Things Rolling With Speedlab Wheels<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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When Speedlab Wheels started in 2002 it wasn't about cashing in, it wasn’t even an act of rebellion against big time skateboarding. Speedlab started because a skater named David Rogerson couldn’t find a wheel like he wanted to ride.</div>
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“Speedlab began because no one was making bigger wheels.” Explains Speedlab's current owner, Alan Keller “Back then, you couldn’t find anything over 58 millimeters.”</div>
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Now Speedlab has changed hands, but Speedlab is still all about getting skaters the kind of wheels they want and deserve but can’t always get. </div>
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Today, with skating going in all directions, things are different. Even the big companies are looking to squeeze profits out of every niche. Big wheels in all shapes and durometers, as well as a multitude of formulas are becoming common. That doesn’t mean there is no longer a place for independents like Speedlab.</div>
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“I pride myself on quality,” says Keller. “I‘m not making thousands of sets like these other guys. What I make has to be good. I don’t want to ride a shitty wheel myself. I don’t expect anyone to buy a wheel that will break down on them in two weeks. I want a wheel that is going to be a quality and highly functional wheel for whatever you skate.”</div>
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Even in today’s indy brand boom, having a small wheel company isn’t as easy as starting a startup board brand. With a few hundred bucks, anyone with a graphic can start their own deck “brand”. As Krstian Svitak once put it: “ Deck Brands are like toilet paper”, but it takes more investment and more effort to get a wheel company going. </div>
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“With a Woodshop that makes decks, if you have a graphic you can get a 50 board run and in that run you can get 3 to five different sizes, that will only cost a few hundred bucks,” Keller explains. “Problem is with wheels the minimums are higher…” </div>
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A minimum run of wheels, even for the most basic, stock design, will run at least a thousand dollars. If you want to make different sizes, that means ordering full runs for each size. Having even 3 size choices, to say nothing of custom shaping, varied durometers or colors can quickly run into 4 or five thousand dollars, and that is for the generic option. The bar is set higher for the indy wheel guys, even if they just want to put out generic shapes.</div>
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Of course, Speedlab has never been in the business of making generic wheels.</div>
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“I'm not a fan of the regular donut shape wheel,” Keller explains. “I’ve toyed around with different side cuts and different, contact patches. I grew up in the 80’s so I love all the fluorescent colors too. I found it amusing when no one rode anything but white wheels. I kind of wonder who put that out there.”</div>
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From its inspiration in one skater’s need to have the kind of wheels he wanted, Speedlab has grown into a company looking to connect skaters of all sort to the wheels they need. Speedlab's designs are based on direct contact between Keller and the skaters he wants to supply. </div>
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“If we went by what I like we would make like two wheels,” Keller explains. “I definitely take into consideration people I skate with, people that send me feedback...team guys...it's a collaborative thought process.” </div>
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The big companies may have dozens of riders, sales managers, and marketing heads to calculate what wheels they should make, but for an indy like Speedlab, It’s the owner and designer himself taking a hands-on interest and riding what gets made and sold. One guy can gauge the whole development from lab to pavement.</div>
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“Before I launch a new wheel I get samples, there’s a test out period to make sure...not just dimensions and specs coming through properly but how it performs.” The samples get tested by Keller and his team riders on a variety of terrains, not just street and ramp, but crusty spots that put wheels to the test. “They get ridden on street, parks...I’ve got one ramp I always ride my samples on that has a deck that just tears up wheels…” Keller comments.</div>
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What this means is that Keller has seen how any Speedlab wheel works personally, not just by word of mouth from some distant team rider. </div>
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“With the blue collar (hammers),In the last month I have skated that wheel with people who are riding that wheel on 13 foot vert ramps and still able to get their speed up on it, and then skated with people who were just skating curbs and street shit...I know it works for both.”</div>
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For Speedlab, the fact that the guy in control of the wheels is also the one of the guys destined to ride them means the kind of compromises large scale operations make just aren’t going to happe.</div>
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“I pay attention to what the big companies put out but I don’t let it dictate what I do,” says Keller. I make what I make and what I think others are going to like. I don't let their trends affect me. They’ll do whatever they want and if they screw up it’s no big deal for them...they’ll just sell them off in some other country or eat the loss, I can't afford to do that so I have to stay with what I think is good and what has proven to work”.</div>
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On top of that, some big wheel companies source their wheels from multiple plants, including overseas plants. Like decks, you could get two of the same model wheel from a big brand and have different results in terms of quality and characteristics. In addition, unlike the deck manufacturers who sell to the made to order deck companies common today, making skate wheels is only a tiny side business for the urethane manufacturers who supply most companies with wheels. </div>
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“The plant I work with mainly makes the fake wood covers for hot tubs. That and natural gas pipes,” says Keller. “The place where I’m getting wheels was involved in the initial advancement of the urethane wheel, and some of those guys are still working in the plant today, they definitely know what they are doing. They are not skateboarders, but they know what they are doing.”</div>
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Because of this speparation, it is really up to the guys running the wheel brand to know what they want and how to get it. For Keller, it is consistency that helps sets Speedlab apart.</div>
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“I make sure I picked the highest quality urethane my supplier uses,” says Keller. “I could pick the worst possible formula I wanted to and make a cheap wheel but I chose not to. I use the best formula they have.”</div>
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Of course, formula is only one part of the story when it comes to making a wheel that performs right. Speedlab’s conviction to have distinctive wheels also means working with the manufacturer to combine pre-existing wheel molds with the proper machining techniques to create original shapes.</div>
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“Formulas can feel different because of the plants, but also because of the profiles,” explains Keller. </div>
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When it comes to how a wheel slide or grips, the contact patch, that is the surface of the wheel that actually maintains contact with the ground, has a big effect. In theory, less contact width can equal less grip, but makes for a lighter wheel with a higher resistance to flat spotting. </div>
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“If you look at some of the normal Bones shaped wheels, the donut shape, you look at the profile and they seem kind of wide, but if you look at the contact patch it is pretty small...really small, I hear a lot of things about guys sliding out on those types of wheels and talking about the formula but it may have more to do with that contact patch....I don't want to skate a narrow contact patch...I don't want something 22mm or under. A smaller contact patch is going to be easier to break away…”</div>
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The direct link between Keller’s experience as a skater, the feedback of his riders, and the manufacture of Speedlab's wheels is what defines the brand, and what Keller would like skaters to think about when picking up a set of the same old wheels out of habit and loyalty. </div>
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“Unless you are getting free wheels or getting paid by the company, maybe try something different. Maybe you should expect a quality product, not something that flatspots or breaks down… “ asserts Keller. “Brand loyalty is great, but that brand has got to give back at least a quality product...I'm not saying there are never any issues with my wheels, but the people who have issues. I take care of personally. I’ve had people hit a rock or pebble, and that will flat spot any wheel and it really sucks on the first session, but I'm really sympathetic to that, because I skate and I know how it is. I just want people to expect quality products. Getting skaters to do something different, It’s a struggle, but it's a struggle I enjoy fighting.” </div>
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<i>Speedlab Wheels can be found at </i><span class="s1"><i><a href="http://www.speedlabwheels.com/">http://www.speedlabwheels.com/</a></i></span><i> . You can also pester your local skateshop to carry them if they don’t. Their 57mm 99a Bombshells are my new fave wheel. Check them out, epsecially if you are a fan of the discontinued OJ Slappy Hour wheels. Follow Speedlab on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/speedlabwheels/?hl=en" target="_blank">@speedlabwheels</a> .</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-68457030037822931652016-04-15T10:10:00.002-07:002016-04-16T07:42:41.884-07:00Bomb (Drop) The Suburbs<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PndI5HYLyk4/VxENtOizsxI/AAAAAAAAAdY/2J4Xk6yi81oECWOSoO8WiuFOLegxoaZ9QCKgB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-04-15%2Bat%2B11.49.14%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="532" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PndI5HYLyk4/VxENtOizsxI/AAAAAAAAAdY/2J4Xk6yi81oECWOSoO8WiuFOLegxoaZ9QCKgB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-04-15%2Bat%2B11.49.14%2BAM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not me...but pretty close</td></tr>
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In recollecting all the shenanigans and illuminations surrounding <a href="http://parkingblockdiaries.blogspot.com/2014/03/jimmy-wallaces-driveway-part-1.html" target="_blank">my first ever quarter pipe session in Jimmy Wallace's driveway,</a> I forgot to mention that I learned my first skateboard trick that day: The Bomb Drop. By today's standards the bomb drop might not be considered a trick at all, even in '88 it was already out of date for most skaters in the know, but for me, back then, it was the first thing I learned that looked like a trick and, more importantly, that <i>felt</i> like a trick.<br />
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And, to me, it was the most awesome thing I had ever done, on or off a skateboard.<br />
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I had just spent the aftrenoon skating a quarterpipe for the first time ever, culminating in my first magnificent pushes on a "real" pro model skateboard: Danny Pike's Sims henry Gutierrez with Gullwings and Rat Bones. After Danny re-possessed his board, I loped away and half-heartedly looked for my pathetic set-up, which I had flung it off into the aether of Howard Subdivision, oblivious to where it landed, the moment I had gotten the green light to try out Danny's complete. I was not really too pumped to step back on my Variflex anyway, so I wound up sitting down in the grass next to the quarter pipe scanning the munchkins circling the driveway to see if one of them had copped it, but none of them had. To my surprise, It was one of the BMX kids who had commandeered it.<br />
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This was not surprising. <a href="http://parkingblockdiaries.blogspot.com/2013/02/skateboarding-losers-choice.html" target="_blank">Skateboarding and BMX were hopelessly intertwined in those days</a>. A lot of BMX riders had messed around with skateboards in one way or another before discarding them for the much more acceptable, functional, and accessible BMX bike, some dabbled in both activities simultaneously. At first I thought he was picking it up just to look at it. Maybe he was observing what a junky piece of crap it was and was going to toss it away. Instead, I watched him weigh my board in his hand for a moment, then grip it little tighter, and, instead of turning up his nose and flinging it away, he broke into a quick run up the driveway, then leapt into the air and onto my board. For a split second, he was off the ground, mounted on the deck, flying through the air. When the four wheels made contact with the pavement again, he rolled forward with the momentum of the jump, rolling away clean.<br />
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I felt an earthquake ripple in my brain.<br />
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Now, At this pint in my embryonic skate life I was certainly familiar with a number of tricks... I had groped at the ollie, I had seen pictures of boardslides, curb grinds and slides of all types, I had seen pics of all the launch ramp tomfoolery of the mid 80's... I had a basic understanding of the state of the art of contemporary skating. That bomb drop wasn't some mind blowing bit of technical wizardry, and I knew it, but seeing it was more important than seeing some ripper pull a move straight out of Thrasher: The Bomb Drop looked like something I could actually do, even on my shit Variflex.<br />
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And it looked cool.<br />
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To understand how important that was you have to understand that the only way we had to learn about skateboarding was through the magazines...there were very few journeyman skaters in our neighborhoods, no older siblings or neighbors with a bag of simple tricks we could emulate. All we had were the mags and what we saw in them was the cutting edge: the 540's, the stalled Andrechts...10 foot high methods off jump ramps at the Venice Pavilion... Even the trick tips in <i>Thrasher</i> were for moves two or three steps up the ladder from anything we could do. For me and my friends there was only the basic dead end simplicity of carving and kickturns that we saw in our driveways, and the pro level shredding of our heroes we saw in Thrasher and BMX Plus...everything in between, everything we might be able to access, was invisible.<br />
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But here was this crazy skateboard jump trick going down in front of me, and I thought I could really do it. Something new to do on my board...a real trick.<br />
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I didn't just charge over and re-posess my board from the BMX kid, even though I was itching to. I was patient. I knew he'd probably head off on his bike for a smoke break or something pretty soon anyway, so I watched him do a few more drops, praying he didn't break my board. Sure enough, about five minutes later my raggedy Variflex was back on the ground, forlorn and forgotten.<br />
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What he could possibly have ben doing that was more important or more fun than that bomb drop, I certainly didn't know, but After he left, I ran over and grabbed my board, completely forgetting how terrible it was, amped to give that trick a go. <br />
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It seemed like a simple thing, yet, in practice, I was bit baffled. I couldn't quite remember how he had grabbed the board. Grabbing the outside rails with my strong right hand seemed awkward, It shifted my body sideways, and I usually ended up kicking my board away instead of sucking it up under my feet. Grabbing the other rail required me to use my weaker, left hand, although it made mounting the board seemed more natural, smoother. It provided a longer bit of "hang time" in the air with the board under my feet. Still, I wasn't quite getting it with my left hand on the rail either.<br />
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I decide to choke up and grab the nose with my left hand and kind of jump on it straight-on. It felt good. I stuck it and kept rolling. It didn't feel like I was really sticking that "hang" in the air with the board under my feet and I wasn't getting as high as the guy I had been watching, but, still. It felt good. I stomped down three or four more in the driveway.<br />
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This was good. This was really good. Even better, I wasn't thinking about the fact that I was back on my shitty board after my ever so brief roll through the real skateboard promise land on Danny's board. I was focused, no, fixated, on jumping on my board, over and over.<br />
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I kept jumping up higher in the air. When I'd hit the ground there was a resounding clap and rattle from my board taking the impact and the rails and tailbone vibrating against the wood. I started running faster and then really slamming them down, rolling away better.<br />
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I started looking at my surroundings. I started looking for things to jump off of.<br />
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I've talked about how that day of skating made me cross the line from being a kid with a skateboard to being a "skater", but it was at that particular moment though, sticking that the simple bomb drop, that the operating system of my brain was ever after re-formatted into skater mode.<br />
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If there is a core of skateboarding, a single idea at its heart, a baseline philosophy, it is not the joy of the roll or the carve or the turn, it's not even the imperative to "have fun". At the heart of our culture is this: the alteration of the physical environment that surrounds us via the skateboard. The skateboard is not a toy or a tool, it is a device to transport you into a parallel reality, a reality where everything around you is up for grabs in an endless game of re-definition and re-appropriation. That curb is not just for keeping your car from rolling up the sidewalk anymore. That staircase is no longer just something to get you to the entrance of a building.<br />
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Now I saw that the step leading to the stoop of Jimmy Wallace's house was not just a way to get on the porch, it was a launch pad. I picked up my board, ran through the yard and boosted off the edge of the step. I flew through the air and slapped my feet on my deck as I flew. I hit the ground hard and fast several feet away from where I'd launched, but still rolling.<br />
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It was the nearest I had ever come to flying both on or off a skateboard.<br />
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It was amazing.<br />
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What ensued for the rest of that afternoon, for the rest of that month for that matter, can only be described as a spastic orgy of jumping off things with a skateboard. Porches. Car bumpers. Planters. Over bikes. Over skateboards, over <i>skateboarders. </i>I bomb dropped off <i>everything. </i>Picking up my board, breaking into a run and then hurling myself through the air and landing on it was the most awesome thing I had ever done. And I did it a lot. Rolling on my board, whether it was in a driveway, a parking lot or the rattling, gravel filled streets of Terre Haute, soon became nothing more than a pretext for finding things to bomb drop off of.<br />
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And I got good at them too, for whatever getting good at a bomb drop was worth. I came up with some variations: grabbing cross hand and spinning the board around in what I would later learn was a varial. Turning my body 180 when I jumped, footplanting off walls... One of my favorites was grabbing by the tail and swinging the board up under me with an underhand motion as I jumped . This didn't look as good as the other techniques, but it sucked my feet right onto the deck the best, giving the longest hang time and the greatest illusion of flying.<br />
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I quickly got to the point where I could start from a roll, pop the board up into my hand, take a few steps and bring one down without stopping my stride. I could do this at speed and jump off obstacles, boosting myself into the air to what felt like ridiculous heights. That was when the trick really started feeling like something.<br />
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One of my earliest memories of skateboarding is rattling that claptrap variflex down the brick sidewalk of Wabash avenue in downtown Terre Haute. My mom had driven me and one of my friends down there because she had some sort of errand to run. It was a strange thing because, back then, there was almost no reason to ever go downtown in Terre Haute for anything. Where she was going, I have no idea, but she let me skate around while she did whatever she had to do. So, my friend and I started rolling around, pushing and exploring in this area that almost looked like a real city, and we hit the strip of Wabash avenue. We were pushing down the sidewalk as fast as we could with no real destination. I remember seeing a bench in front of us, and kicking off, flipping the board up into my hands, jumping up on the bench running across it's entire length and leaping off the end as high as could.<br />
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In my memory it feels like I flew a hundred feet and hung in the air for a thousand moments before coming down, perfect, and rolling away clean.<br />
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I don't even remember how I learned that that "trick" was called a bomb drop. But that's what it was. My first trick. Just a bomb drop. A stupid bomb drop. But learning it made me feel like I was finally really skateboarding, pro board or not. Everything great in skateboarding was there when I launched off that bench downtown...The spontaneous moment: a few seconds where a forlorn bench on a forgettable street was elevated into something else, and I was elevated too, into the air, into a memory that endures 30 years later.<br />
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Tricks have changed, friends have changed, but when I get out my skateboard I'm still basically doing what I was doing back then. That corny maneuver was a first step, but it was also the last one that really mattered.<br />
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I'll repeat myself here and say that skateboarding isn't important; But it's not important in the way that art and poetry aren't important. It's only as important as flying through the air like a 14 year old maniac, and feeling for a few moments like your are doing something momentous. Only as important as a feeling that never quite dies.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-77797006591503550622016-04-12T09:37:00.001-07:002016-04-15T09:28:43.814-07:00The trouble With FUN<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gxZf31v-SNg/Vw0jXVPsLjI/AAAAAAAAAdE/mhERZHY50Pk9PpRmBoBZH_CGUAJNJm-zQCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-04-12%2Bat%2B12.33.02%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gxZf31v-SNg/Vw0jXVPsLjI/AAAAAAAAAdE/mhERZHY50Pk9PpRmBoBZH_CGUAJNJm-zQCLcB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-04-12%2Bat%2B12.33.02%2BPM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">I've always loved that little clip from Speed Freaks where the late, great Jeff Phillips declares: "I skate for fun and that's it!. If I don't have fun you see me quit." Pretty good words to live by. "Phillips' Law", I like to call it. But If I am completely honest with myself, I have to admit that I have always had a tiny bit of reservation about that assertion. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">I do “skate for fun”, but that is most definitely not “it”. When it comes to my relationship with skateboarding, "Fun" just doesn't cut it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">If someone asked me why I write, would I say because it is "fun". No. I get joy from it...sure, but creating something, fighting with each thought and trying forge it into words is an arduous, meticulous, maddening, exhausting process. It is often, unequivocally, not "fun" by anyone's definition of the word. I'm not sure I'm having fun typing these words right now. Does that make them less pure, less valuable? I write because I am compelled to, and because I believe I have something worth saying. Fun is there...occasionally, but I could never sum up writing, creating, as "fun".</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">Some people go to therapy. Maybe they need to banish a destructive habit. Maybe they need someone to tell them they are worth something, that things are not as bad as they seem. Maybe they just need it as an outlet to deal with the crushing madness of everyday life. But, is therapy “fun”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">Have you ever done something you weren't sure you could do? Something that tested your limits, something that made you re-define those limits altogether? Something you had to fight and sweat for, something that almost broke you? When it was over, the feeling of accomplishment was probably energizing, overwhelming. But would you ever say what you did was simply "fun"? If not, was it still worth doing?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">Think of the people you love most in life. Do you love them because they are “fun”? If you really do love someone you've fought with them, you've been angry with them in a way you never thought possible. You may have done things for them you didn't want to, things you can't stand, out of love. You may have struggled like you never have before just to make them happy. Were those moments "fun"? You don't marry someone just to have "fun". You don’t have a child just because it is “fun”. You love the people you do because they make you better, because they challenge you, because you know you can depend on them and you know you will always do your best for them. Fun is in there too, sure, but "fun”? That's just not enough to explain it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">Amusements are fun. Hobbies are fun. Is skateboarding an amusement? A hobby? </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">For lot of us, even those who have no interest in being the best or getting sponsored, skateboarding is so much more than an amusement or hobby. So much more than "fun".</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">With today’s conflicts in the culture between the core and the corporate, the term "fun" has become both battle cry and bludgeon. Sometimes, the fun police can be as militant as the trick nazis, asserting that certain kinds of skating, and, by proxy, certain kinds of skaters are somehow impure because what they like to do is not "fun" enough.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">It's a strange notion, since the term "fun" is as subjective as it is broad, and meaningless without context. But set aside even those semantic quibbles, and "fun" as great as it is, as vital as it is, is still too shallow a concept, too simple a term, to describe the complex, multifaceted relationship skaters have with their skateboards.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">Jumping down a giant set of stairs over and over, battering yourself, taking hour after hour, to get one trick, That may not be your idea of fun. It may, strictly speaking, not be all "fun" for the person doing it. But there are personal reasons to do something like that that are as pure and positive as “fun”, reasons that have nothing to do with dominance or the hope for fame, and those reasons should be respected, even if "fun" is not at the forefront.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">Riding a skateboard for years and never setting foot in a bowl or on a ramp, hitting the same sorts of ledges every day, meticulously laying the groundwork for lines, flipping your board around a hundred times just to land it once, may not be your idea of fun...it may not, strictly, be purely fun to the kid doing it, but there may be other reasons he or she has the drive and compulsion to go through that struggle. Very pure reasons, very laudable and even admirable reasons. Skaters should respect that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">Self-fulfillment, personal growth, emotional well-being, the urge to create or challenge one’s self...these things are not always “fun”, but they are reasons why we skate. Good reasons. Positive reasons that make skating more than a sport or an art. Motivations that make this culture stronger.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sure, there are lots of reasons </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to skate. Don’t skate for money, or for fame, or to be better than anyone else. Keep “fun" at the foundation but don’t turn it into dogma. Fun is not the alpha and omega of why we do what we do, and it is certainly not enough to explain the connection skaters have to skating.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">So, “skate for fun and that's it…” I don't know if I can totally back that. Skate for yourself, and that's it? Maybe.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999;">How about this: Skate for love and that's it. If I lose the love, you'll see me quit. Yeah. That works for me.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #999999;"><br /><span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hope Jeff would understand where I'm coming from.</span></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-59797349881405734262016-02-02T08:24:00.000-08:002016-02-02T08:25:50.045-08:00Keep Your Heroes. We Don't Want Them.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vUJ6tkg62Ak/VrDOhMsl2yI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/_LB1SVvNKdE/s1600/alva.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="488" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vUJ6tkg62Ak/VrDOhMsl2yI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/_LB1SVvNKdE/s640/alva.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slash Dog with Real Dogs. Alva at Nude Bowl on that fateful night, by Andrew Hutchison</td></tr>
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The culture of skateboarding is largely built on hero worship. In this way, skating is not unlike conventional spectator sports. Pro endorsements are the prime mover of skate products, and the deeds of pro skaters dominate the media we consume. Still, even in an era where pros can earn seven figure incomes, the relationship skaters have with their pro "heroes" is fundamentally different from the relationship adoring sports fans have with theirs. In fact, it makes me wonder whether the term "hero" has any place in skateboarding at all.<br />
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When I was 16, Tom Knox was my skate "hero". I had a Tom Knox board. I had a bag of Tom Knox tricks, the Tom Knox shirt. I pretty much had the Knox segment of Speed Freaks playing on a loop in my mind every time I hit the streets. Nevertheless, when popping into a frontside hurricane on my favorite parking block never once did I ever actually pretend I <i>was</i> Tom Knox .<br />
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On the other hand, my basketball crazed friend Bryan, who was obsessed with Michael Jordan, would regularly crank his basketball goal down to 8 feet, get out his sisters jogging trampoline, and imagine that he wasn't just "like Mike", but that he actually <i>was</i> Mike, complete with a self-generated, fantasy ply by play commentary("Pippen to Jordan...2 seconds left...Jordan drives he scores BULLS WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP!!"). Likewise, my older brother, a kid who could be ruthless about belittling me for playing Dungeons And Dragons, reading comic books or any other sort of imaginary activities, could often be seen taking on the role of Walter Payton in neighborhood football scrimmages with his friends.<br />
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This sort of fantasizing is normal for sports fans, and it can continue, even if fleetingly, well into adolescence, long after other role playing games, like playing with action figures or playing cops and robbers, have been abandoned as childish.<br />
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But skaters don't do this sort of thing.<br />
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Even in today's world of the crossover skate superstar, I don't see even the grommiest of kids going int role play mode. Even at the height of Muska-mania, when 12 year-old Muskateers were racking themselves to bust illusion flips in their breakaway warm-up-pants, I don't believe even any of them were ever fantasizing that they were "The Muska".<br />
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Put it this way: all skaters fantasize about being on the cover of Thrasher, but none of them fantasize about actually being <i>the guy</i> on the cover of Thrasher.<br />
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The difference is subtle but crucial.<br />
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In the world of mainstream sports, inspiration takes a backseat to the adoration and worship of heroes. Sports heroes, thanks to the emphasis on competition and league hierarchies, are built into something more than the mere mortals. They inhabit the same space for most fans as Batman, Abe Lincoln or Tupac Shakur. Fans can never truly be like such lofty heroes, so just watching them becomes an intense, if false, form of interaction and participation. Witness the way sports fans will, when talking about their favorite team, say things like "we played hard" or "we really got robbed" when all they actually did was sit on the couch with a beer and yell at their TV. Witness the rabid fervor some college sports fans have for schools that would never admit them in a million years.<br />
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The cultural and economic forces that drive big time sports have a very vested interest in maintaining this relationship. 100 million people <i>watching</i> a football game are much more profitable than 100 million people actually playing football. After all, if watching Tom Brady inspires you to go outside and toss around the pigskin instead of just sitting on the sofa with a bag of nachos <i>watching</i> Tom Brady toss around the pigskin, how is the NFL going to sell you beer, junk food, and pickup trucks? It is the constant reinforcement that what Tom Brady does on Super Bowl Sunday is more important, more <i>real,</i> than what you and your friends do in the backyard, that keeps asses on sofas instead of out in the field on Sunday afternoon.<br />
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The role of the sports superstar, then, is to create consumers, not participants.<br />
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In skateboarding we put our "heroes" on a pretty high pedestal too, but that pedestal has a built in staircase, a staircase built from our participation in skating. Despite the disparity in skill between the raw kid and the superstar pro, the participation of both is, in its own vital way, at an equal level. The distance between our "heroes" and ourselves has never seemed insurmountable in skateboarding, not even today when some pros can afford Lamborghinis and mansions in Malibu.<br />
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When I was young and most prone to idolatry there were definite economic factors in play that prevented the top pros from crossing into the realm inhabited by other sports heroes. The fact that my favorite skaters probably didn't make much more as professionals than my dad did being a maintenance supervisor at the local aluminum plant certainly helped. Compare that to the salaries of the guys I saw on on baseball cards and the covers of Sports Illustrated, guys who made tens of millions a year. For the adolescent sports fan, the adulation is often just as much about the hero's mansions and fast cars as their skill in the game.<br />
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But this economic disaprity was never the whole story. Even now, if you take the the pilgrimage to California and hit up the most prominent parks and session the best spots, you are very likely to encounter multiple pros and famous skaters. The skater's instinct in these situations is not to sit and watch, not an instinct of separation reinforced by the "hero's" superior skill. The instinct is to skate, and the nature of the skate "hero", With the rule-proving exception of a few, rare, pumped up pro douchebags, is such that he or she will have no need to deny any skater that experience.<br />
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In 1998 I took my one and only skate pilgrimage to California. One night, while our crew was sessioning the ledges at the San Francisco public Library, Mike Carroll,Scott Johnston, and a handful of high-profile ams rolled up. We were shell-shocked for a few seconds, but <i>we didn't stop skating</i>. We found ourselves in a session with some of the greatest skaters to ever spin urethane, and It didn't feel much different from the hundreds of sessions we had had with no name skaters across the country. Sure, Carroll and company were performing on a level way beyond us, but that didn't change the fact that we were all riding the same place together for the same reasons. Their skill, celebrity and <span style="background-color: black;">prominence</span> as skateboarders were not a barrier dividing us, at least not one the act of skateboarding couldn't quickly destroy.<br />
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This sort of occurrence is not uncommon in skateboarding, especially if you live in the right places, but it as an experience completely alienated from anything but the wildest daydreams of conventional sport fans.<br />
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The L.A. Lakers aren't going to randomly show up at the local playground for a pick up game. There are a lot of practical reasons for this, but, more importantly, there are powerful philosophical reasons.<br />
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For one thing, basketball stars, (and football or baseball stars as well), don't spend much of their free time playing basketball (unlike pro skaters, who actually spend a lot of time when they are not "at work" filming video footage or skating demos, skateboarding for fun). For the heroes of big time sports, their status as superstars is supported and enforced by an organizational and financial structure that puts playing their game in a context that discourages the value of playing "for fun".(1)<br />
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Big time sports are business, and, as such, they only work if they are restricted to the properly monetized and organized venues: i.e. corporate mandated "training", and monetized games in the privileged, restricted spaces of auditoriums. Even if the stars did want to just cut loose at the local playground, the fame they receive as a dividend of their talent is an effective means as any for preventing the hoops hero from giving his talents away for "free". Kobe would not dare drop by the local court without a security detail to keep him "safe" from the very people responsible for giving him his privileged place. The mob of fans that would soon aggregate would make any real exchange with those fans, much less any type of game, logistically impossible. The gods of sport don't just choose to stay on mount Olympus, they are trapped there.<br />
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But let's say, just for the sake of making a point, Kobe and his boys did magically show up at some local ball court, sans press, sans security, sans entourage, to play for fun. Think about the exchange that would take place between the superstar heroes and the kids just shooting hoops at the park.<br />
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Most of the people there, feeling unequal to those stars thanks to the profitable separation big time sports encourages, would revert into spectator mode, stepping aside to make way for their sporting superiors. Even outside the auditorium, the hierarchy is maintained.<br />
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If there were a few guys there with enough initiative to ask for a pick up game, the possible outcomes are pretty predictable, and all of them reinforce the nature of the sports "hero".<br />
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First, the superstars might tell their prospective challengers to beat it. This might very well upset the challengers. It might tarnish their image of their heroes in their eyes forever. Then again, it might not. So deeply ingrained is the hierarchy of sports that there is a fair chance those rejected might not even feel upset, seeing the privilege of their heroes to determine who they choose to play with as an unquestionable prerogative of their greatness. Certainly many of the onlookers would not consider such treatment of "the fans" as offensive. Many would most likely turn their scorn on the challengers for having the hubris to challenge their superiors to a basketball game.<br />
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The other two options involve what would happen if our hypothetical hoopsters graciously accepted the invitation to a pick up game. In this case, the Lakers might play straight against the nobodies, flattening them in a bloodbath that could hardly even be called a game. Alternately, they might pull their punches and let the challengers score a few points before trouncing them, a situation that might be calculated as much to salvage their own image as the ego of the challengers (who would, nevertheless still lose, and be very aware that they were being condescended too).<br />
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The point is, either way, condescension or annihilation, the relationship between star and fan will essentially be the same: there is no real exchange or relation of equals. The Heroes' interaction <span style="background-color: black;">is </span>characterized by the granting of a privilege to the lesser "fan"(2). The competitive and hierarchical nature of sports, the way they segregate the players into leagues and divisions, filing them by importance and prominence, means the exchange between fan and hero will always be shallow, one sided: A relation of dominance and respect and awe for that dominance There is no parity, even symbolically, between fan and hero.<br />
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This is not how it works when skateboarders meet their "heroes". There's is an exchange that flows in both directions.<br />
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Later in the trip I alluded to earlier, my friends and I found ourselves at an all-night rager at the Nude Bowl. Luminaries in attendance that enchanted evening included Darren Navarette, Dave Ruel, Randy Colvin, Dave Duncan, and Tony Alva.<br />
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Tony fuckin' Alva.<br />
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For three nobodies from Indiana, The urge to simply sit and watch at that session was pretty strong. After all, 1998 was only the beginning of the skatepark boom, and we had only just encountered our first park bowls on our swing through Colorado. Being from Indiana none of us had ever ridden a real pool at all .<br />
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Still, as the night went on and the stoke elevated, I eventually found myself standing in the shallow end of The Nude Bowl, board in hand, waiting in the queue. Just being there was like standing in the middle of a thundercloud. When I finally got my run, I gave the hardest push I could, hit the deep end, carved backside about 2 feet shy of the lip, and rolled back into the shallow end only to slide out trying the hit the tight wall.<br />
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And people got stoked. I was congratulated, I had my hand-shaked, my shoulder clapped. I was <i>acknowledged</i>. Acknowledged by people hitting more walls than you could count and pulling something gnarly on each one. Acknowledged by the "heroes". The fact that I was skating a real pool for the first time was important to <i>them</i>.<br />
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I hit that same wall again and again and again the rest of the night and kept on hitting it when the cheap beer and flowing liquor had caught up to everyone else in the session. As the sun came up, I sat up on the hill above the nude bowl watching it rise, just having what I thought was a solitary moment.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Author emulating Alva. Hutchison photo</td></tr>
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A second later I realized I was not alone.<br />
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"Did you have a good time tonight?"<br />
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I turned around to see Alva watching from a few feet behind me.<br />
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"Yeah," I replied. "I'm from Indiana. This is the first time I've skated a real pool."<br />
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"Well, that's what it's all about. I'm glad you could come out," he answered.<br />
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A couple second later he walked off.<br />
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I charged back down the hill and took as many more runs as my sleepless body could stand in the early morning desert heat.<br />
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<i>This</i> is what I'm talking about.<br />
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Our heroes are not like their heroes. "Hero" status is not a hegemony, its a consensus.<br />
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Our "heroes" don't gain their status from objective competitions subsidized by spectators, but by the subjective acclaim of enthusiasts who are not just spectators, but participants. The actions of pro skaters are not separated into some privileged venue tailored for observation and adulation. Our heroes skate the same streets, the same parks, with the same goals as the rest of us: the pursuit of skateboarding.<br />
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This is why a journeyman skateboarder doesn't feel like an impostor standing on the deck of a bowl taking runs with Ben Raybourn, Greyson Fletcher, and Grant Taylor. This is why demos featuring the top pros are still often free-for-all affairs, with locals skating alongside the "heroes". It is why pros themselves often feel awkward in demo situations where their "fans" are simply sitting idly by and watching them perform. It is why contests, even in the era of Street League and The X games, are still a marginal part of our culture.<br />
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And this is why maybe the term "hero" itself is a disservice to skateboarding and the pro skaters who inhabit it, why I feel uncomfortable referring to the many amazing figures I have admired and emulated in thirty years of riding as my skate "heroes".<br />
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A lot of skaters are worried about Nike selling shoes to skateboarders, Zumiez selling them boards and shoes, or Monster bankrolling contests and sponsoring pros in order to pitch energy drinks to skateboarders.<br />
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A lot of skaters are taking up arms to fight the infidels, but many of them are completely oblivious to the true nature of the invasion. Corporations aren't buying in to take over the skateboard business. there's no real money in that. Just ask the local skateshop owner the skate partisans are ordering you to support. The corporate invasion is not about controlling the products skaters buy, it is about turning skateboarding into something that can be used to to control the things everyone else buys.<br />
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And the key to that, as big-time sports so eloquently exemplify, is the establishment of heroes. Heroes who are such specials, <span style="background-color: black;">untouchable, </span>glittering snowflakes that merely watching what they do is infused with the illusion of real engagement. The endgame of corporate America is to make professional skateboarders and elite skateboarding so rife with contrived significance that Nyjah Huston won't just be able to sell skateboards and Monster energy drinks to gullible groms, he'll be able to sell Mcdonald's hamburgers and minivans to people who never even contemplate stepping on a skateboard.<br />
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Zumiez doesn't care about putting your local skate shop out of business. There's not enough money in that market to elevate their stock profile. They care about making skateboarding into a sales pitch that transcends skateboards and those who dare to ride them.<br />
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That is the endgame folks. Not to make sure very kid on a skateboard wears Nike's. Not to get every grom at the park swigging monster. The endgame is to turn our culture into a consumable fantasy, easily attached to any product; to make it a universal, easily adaptable sales pitch.<br />
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When that happens, then we really may lose skateboarding.<br />
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The strongest way to resist is to make sure no skateboarder ever becomes a "hero", or, at least, not <i>their</i> brand of hero.<br />
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Lets all be skaters. Let's all just <i>stay</i> skaters. That's all any of us need to be.<br />
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Notes:<br />
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1) <i>In fact, since pro athletes represent a significant business investment for corporate sports teams, those teams usually impose very strict controls on the physical activities athletes can engage in in their "free" time. If a sports star was to injure himself shooting hoops in a neighborhood pick-up game, not only would the resulting injury be extremely detrimental to his performance that season, but it may also often result in a stiff fine from his employers. Risking the corporation's assets in the pursuit of enjoyment must be discouraged when profits are on the line. This fine structure extends to all sorts of "risky" activities a superstar might participate in, from dancing to riding motorcycles. It would be interesting to know if any skate sponsors have similar rules.</i><br />
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<i>2) It is interesting to note that skateboard enthusiasts are virtually never referred to as "Skateboard Fans", even by the mainstream. They are "skaters". This is because there are very very few people interested in skateboarding that do not actually ride a board in some capacity. In terms of identity, both internally and identity imposed by others, the fact that a person rides a skateboard supersedes their status as an aficianado. Contrast this with spectator sports, where there are millions of enthusiasts who don't ever play: "fans". In fact, thanks to the hierarchy of sports, even those who play everyday, yet do not belong to some officially sanctioned or prominent team or organization, are usually still referred to as "fans" instead of players. You need structural validation to be more than a consumer.</i><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-5699801352128135532015-12-16T09:16:00.002-08:002016-04-17T06:49:22.465-07:00Skateboarding is Not A Sport<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You can take practically any physical endeavor and turn it into a “sport”. Just flip through the cable channels late at night and you’ll see. There is competitive lumberjacking, competitive aerobics, competitive martial arts. There's even professional eating. Turning something into a sport is simple all you have to do is impose limitations on it. Mark Twain once joked that the sport of golf was “a good walk spoilt.” It was just a smart ass remark, but the essence of sports lies in that little quip. Add in rules about teams, official measurements and require someone to carry a ball, and something as simple as walking from one end of a field to another becomes football.<br />
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Skaters have been antagonistic about branding skateboarding as a sport for decades. A lot of this comes from skating's DIY roots and the punk rock ethos it picked up in the 1980’s, but the need to refute and reject all attempts to make skateboarding a sport go beyond simple rebellious desires, it cuts right to the nature of skating itself. Limitations and skateboarding are two entities that always have trouble getting along. Entities that should have trouble getting along.<br />
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To really get at the heart of why skateboarding is not a sport, and why it never should be, you need to understand the nature of sports, and that nature is in limitation. Sports need limits on almost everything to make them work. All sports have rules that limit where you play and when you play. Rules that enforce how you play and who you play with...most importantly rules always define <i>why</i> you play, and the why is always to compete and win. Shooting baskets with your friends is not playing basketball. It’s practice, or just fooling around. You are not really playing until winning and losing is on the line, and that concept shapes what you do even when you are “just fooling around”.<br />
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Skateboarding neither has nor needs any of these limitation to define itself. Skateboarding’s essence is anathema to establishing simple, universal goals. The imposition of these things should be resisted at all times.<br />
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Look at how sports restrict space: In basketball, rules determine how high the goal is and the size of the court. You can’t go “out of bounds” and still make the shot. An “official” baseball diamond has prescribed distances from home plate to first base and from the pitcher’s mound to the batter's box. Hitting a ball outside of a certain area is a “foul”, the list goes on and on. All of these limitations are required so every time the sport is played, the conditions are as uniform as possible. The whole endeavor is contained in order to abet competition. If things aren’t static and uniform, how can you really compare the skill level of different competitors, how do you know who “wins”?<br />
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The limitations extend to time as well. A baseball game is nine innings played consecutively. A soccer match has two halves limited by a time clock. A goal sunk after the buzzer doesn’t count. Running the fastest lap in practice doesn’t win anything. Sports always have to have a beginning and an end that is predetermined, and what goes on outside of these boundaries is irrelevant.<br />
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Now think about what you would have to do to regulate the where and when of skateboarding. Can you imagine a world where skateparks are standardized, where every local park contains the same obstacles of the same size, where every bowl or ramp must have the same transitions and shape to be “official”, or where a ledge trick only “counts” if it is performed on a ledge of a certified height and made of an official material? Suppose you only got a set number of tries to make a trick in order for it to “count”. Imagine being scored on the exact number you made within a certain number of tries. Picture kids sweating over their handrail completion averages.To be a real competitive sport, gear would have to be standardized too. No decks under or over a certain width, standard durometer wheels, trucks all standardized into a set size and geometry... It’s a dystopian vision of skating even Rob Dyrdek would find hard to accept. <br />
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But that is the future of skateboarding if it is allowed to evolve into a “sport”.<br />
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In fact, turning skateboarding into a standardized, goal oriented competition would make real street skating irrelevant altogether. There can be no regulation in the streets. No standard curb. No official handrail specs. As for DIY skateparks: Forget about it. Too unpredictable. Remember, if it is not in an official venue in sports, it doesn’t count.<br />
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Restricting the “how” of skateboarding to adapt it into a true sport is even more offensive. Forget about the scoring rules and format of something like Street League, those limitations are nothing compared to what we would have to do to skateboarding to get it in line with the rest of the sporting world. <br />
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In sports, extensive official rules always determine the “right” way to attain the sport’s “goals. You can’t score a basket by running behind the goal and sinking one from behind the backboard. You can’t get a home run by hitting the ball behind home plate.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See, this PROVES who is the best!</td></tr>
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In skateboarding, though, we are all about hitting the ball the wrong way or shooting baskets from the wrong side of the goal. In fact, we are rewarded for it. Alan Gelfand didn’t have a rulebook stating that he had to have at least one hand on the board for an air to “count’. No one was blowing a whistle when Salman Agah decided it would be cool to try all his tricks riding the “wrong” way. <br />
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In a sport, the goal is always the same and it always makes the winners and losers crystal clear, and if you find a new way to play that doesn’t help attain that goal, or play without that goal in mind, you will be a failure. The Harlem Globetrotters have found all sorts of innovative and exciting ways to manipulate a basketball and put it into a hoop. This doesn’t make them NBA champions, because, in the official parameters of a basketball game, those exciting manipulations can’t beat a team running a conventional strategy. In sporting terms, spinning the ball on the tip of your finger or shooting a half court shot blindfolded are all a waste of time.<br />
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Likewise, The thing you may love the most about football is passing the ball. You may even become the best passer in the word, but if all you do is pass, and those passes don’t result in most touchdowns, it doesn’t really matter. In sports you have one goal: to win, and winning requires playing within the limits and eliminating anything that does not move toward that goal.<br />
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But what is the “goal” of skateboarding. Ask 20 different skaters and you will get twenty different answers. To be a sport, we’d have to mandate one definition of skateboarding and apply it universally. You would have to confine skateboarding, restrict it, box it into something comprehensible like baseball, an endeavour where a whole season of play can be completely explained by a handful of stats.<br />
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Suppose we did all get together and decided the “goal” of skateboarding was to do the “best” tricks. Even if you go from that narrow definition of skateboarding, determining what the best tricks are with the rigid standards a sport requires is impossible without imposing unacceptable limits on how we skate. Is a sketchy 360 flip better or worse than a smooth kickflip? Do you score each individual maneuver on some universal scale or are tricks evaluated in combination? All of these things would have to be standardized and objectively enforced. Skaters would be conditioned to ride with a certain outcome in mind.<br />
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To be a true sport, skateboarding would have to have a pre-determined roster of ‘official maneuvers”, like gymnastics or figure skating, and each one of those maneuvers would be defined by rigid definitions of what perfect form looked like. Gymnasts and figure skaters don’t win competitions because they make their triple somersault distinctive with their own personal flair. They don’t win by inventing new maneuvers. They win by making their moves conform as closely as possible to a predefined, meticulously described ideal.<br />
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Do we as skateboarders really want perfection definitevely defined? Because that is what you would need to do to make Skateboarding fit into the world of sports. In a sport, you either make the basket or you don’t. The soccer ball hits the net or it doesn’t. You don’t get extra points for sinking a basket with “style” or intensity. Sports can’t accommodate that. Forget about the eternal style vs. tricks debate that helps fuel creativity in skateboarding. Style as we know it, as the individual way a person skates and does his tricks, would be wiped out. Skaters would focus on “form”. Doing something the “right” way as described by a rule book’s ideals.<br />
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If skating was a sport, there would be no arguments about Hawk vs. Hosoi, because there would be a rulebook that decided it definitively. Debate would be irrelevant. Ask yourself, how would a skater like Jay Adams or Mark Gonzales fit into the “sport” of skateboarding? The answer is: they wouldn’t. They would be too imperfect, too outside the lines...too themselves to ever “win”.<br />
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For a lot of skaters, thinking about the sport debate is a waste of time. It doesn’t really matter.The term ‘sport’ is just easy shorthand. Using the term is simpler than really thinking about what they are doing when they skate. <br />
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But it does matter, because, If you love skateboarding, you love something that is the opposite of a sport. <br />
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In a lot of ways, no matter what happens, no matter what changes corporations and athletic organization impose on skating, it will always be easy to keep skating from becoming a sport. Skateboarding is so big, so open, so boundless that , even if cultural forces concoct some variation of skateboarding that is rabidly goal-oriented, standardized and regimented like little league or the NFL, all it will ever be is just one facet of a whole cultural phenomenon, a facet that, even if it is wildly popular, can be easily resisted and will never be definitive.<br />
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Think about running, a pastime whose participants can be as dedicated and philosophical as the most hard core skater. Everyone runs sometime for some reason, but running only becomes a sport when you decide to race against another individual at a certain place and time, or when you decide to “race” against yourself by timing a particular run and comparing it to a previous “race” against the clock. There are people who love to run who never time themselves, who never think about whether they are going faster than the other guy or faster than they went yesterday. The existence of marathons and track and field have done nothing to keep these people from doing what they love the way they love it.<br />
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Skateboarding should be the same way. No matter what happens, the way to resist and refute the specter of sportified skateboarding will always be simple: Do it how you want to do it. Skate. Create. Enjoy. Do that, and skateboarding will never be a sport.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-16616691239062898262015-12-07T12:40:00.000-08:002015-12-07T12:41:11.724-08:00The Popsicle Experiment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">For the last two years I have been one of the thousands of skaters who has embraced alternate skate deck shapes. I've ridden shovel heads, punk points, curvaceous, wide bodied hybrids like the Street Plant Street axe, and I’ve had custom shapes made to my own specs, The whole time I've been pretty vocal about how these shapes can be more than just nostalgic, stylistic affectations.</span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-ab1eb3d5-7e1a-5c61-b617-5d00a82818a9" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">About 3 months ago, for the first time in 2 years, I set up my first popsicle deck. It was my attempt to come full circle with all my experimentations, and see how my perceived preferences stood up against the baseline of modern skateboarding. </span></span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even in light of all of my shape advocacy, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t notice immediate advantages with the popsicle. There are good reasons to ride a standard shape, just as there are good reasons to ride a well-designed alternate shape. Teasing out what advantages come from the actual popsicle shape and which come from other factors like a shift in wheelbase size and width is a more subtle matter.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">for my return to the standard shape, I doubled down and went with a Chinese-produced, mass manufactured deck: an Almost Chris Haslam resin 7 model with a 8.38” width with a 14.25” wheelbase. I picked Almost because a friend of mine who has a tendency to snap decks as if they were the proverbial popsicles of the shape’s name, has been extremely lucky with their wood, and the dimensions and slightly blunter contours on haslam’s model seemed ideal. </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">At the heart of my popsicle experience was a healthy drop in the length of the wheelbase I was riding. </span></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">A number of designers, brands and retailers have created their own recommendations for matching wheelbase sizes with riders, recommendations I have, in true skate anarchist fashion, usually ignored (I’M NOT GONNA LET THE MAN TELL ME WHAT WHEELBASE I SHOULD RIDE!!). I have been riding 14.75” to 15’ wheelbases for the last couple of years. The Haslam’s 14.25 wheelbase size actually lines up with the wheelbase I am ‘supposed” to be riding according to most of these recommendations.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Knocking half an inch off the WB changed the whole dynamic of how my front foot slid and how my back leg compressed in an ollie. When I ollied the Haslam, the tail of the board sucked right up against my feet as my rear knees bent, giving a very controlled, very level and snappy ollie. This effect improved my ollie even more once I altered my front froot slide to actually scrape beyond the front bolts and partially into the nose, a technique a lot of guys who learned to ollie on the tiny-nosed decks of the 80’s, have neglected to learn. All in all, the shorter wheelbase (in combination with a shorter and more rounded tail, more on that later) had me popping ollies higher, in a shorter arc. The advantage on ledges and in popping off skatepark banks was dramatic.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Of course, you could put a short wheelbase on a shaped deck and gain some of these advantages, but very few brands offer shapes in the smaller wheelbases. Finding a stock 14.25” shaped deck is almost impossible and 14.5” is very rare. If there is one thing I have learned from my switch up it is that a lot of guys who love riding the shapes may be ill-served by the long wheelbases that come with them, especially if they are street skating. Brands might do well to branch out with their shaped deck designs</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The shape and the dimensions of my popsicle’s tail also played a role in that new snappier pop. The Almost Haslam had a 6.5” inch tail with the standard rounded shape. I’ve been riding 6.75 and 7 tails. The shorter tail definitely let me channel more power straight down much easier, this combined with the short wheelbase meant I could place my front foot farther up the board and still pop a good ollie. On a small wheelbase with a short tail, you can pop an ollie with the the edge of your front foot practically touching the mounting bolts. This translates to much more stability setting up for a trick, and it makes it much easier to set up for the next ollie in a line. In a park setting it means there is a lot less sliding your foot around to adjust from pumping down a transition and popping an ollie on a pyramid or to a ledge. On the street course at the skatepark, the popsicle, or at least, the snappy tail and reduced wheelbase of that popsicle, was supreme. </span></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The signature round shape of the tail can be a mixed blessing. The round tail design of the modern popsicle is designed for instability. Applying pressure to the rounded corners will essentially tip your board sideways, a motion at the heart of a lot of flip tricks. In fact, on the modern popsicle, the rotation of a kickflip or 360 flip comes just as much from the pressure of the back foot as it does the flick of the front foot. In the case of the modern 360 flip, the back foot “scoop” is often doing most of the real work. Once again, a lot of guys who struggled to nail kickflips and tre flips on the long-flat tailed decks of the late eighties find themselves stymied when it comes to getting the proper rotation on a popsicle. That's because, on those old tanks, the front foot was the engine that drove the flip. Apply the that technique to modern pop and chances are you will never get enough leverage in your pop to get off the ground, or at best, you will get a clumsily executed “rocket” flip. Kickflips on a popsicle are essentially a completely different trick than the flips we learned on fat boards in the 1980s.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4HIwbxQnfxA/VmXqw2KeEwI/AAAAAAAAAbY/mFNchyRR39A/s1600/almost-chris-haslam-cheetah-resin-7-deck-yellow-width8.38-s380233-01.1392.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4HIwbxQnfxA/VmXqw2KeEwI/AAAAAAAAAbY/mFNchyRR39A/s400/almost-chris-haslam-cheetah-resin-7-deck-yellow-width8.38-s380233-01.1392.jpg" width="400" /></span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Since the popsicle tail is basically built to tip, it means to get the most stability and pop on a plain old run of the mill ollie, foot placement on the tail must be more precise. If your foot is not well balanced and centered on the tail, the deck is going to pull sideways in one direction and tip a bit, meaning you will lose a lot of the power you are trying to put in your ollie and lose a lot of control as well. A flat, square-cornered tail shape, however, means you can apply pressure out of the “sweet spot” in the tail and still get a fairly solid, stable ollie. </span></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Of course, even on a square tail you are going to pop better when you apply pressure to just the right spot in the center of the tail. One advantage of the rounded popsicle tail is that it essentially forces you to make sure you are always centered in your pop. It is a sort of conditioning tool in a way. You may start out less consistent on a popsicle tail, but the ollies you do do will be cleaner and higher. The difference is a matter of consistency and on-demand stability versus versatility, improved vertical pop and the potential for cleaner flip tricks. There really is no “better” option. It's your call in accordance with your own style.</span></span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Another point of contention with modern decks is their durability. Veteran skaters often swear up and down that “they don’t make'em like they used to” and single out Chinese production decks as especially suspect. On the whole, my Chinese popsicle took a pretty good beating and maintained a pretty good bit of elasticity and pop right up until the end. In terms of the longevity of aforementioned pop, the Almost Haslam certainly couldn’t compare with the eternal stiff snap of a workshop board like a Fickle deck, but it certainly stayed snappy up to the point where tail wear and other factors made a deck change necessary anyway.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Tail wear on these popsicles is, in my experience, an issue. As previously mentioned, the rounded shape of the tail is going to direct you to snap your tail on a fairly narrow “sweet spot”. This means you are impacting the tail repeatedly in a smaller area than you might on a flat-tailed deck. It adds up to faster wear in the exact spot you make contact. This definitely made me feel as if my tail got shorter quicker. In a sense, the deck hit the perfect “broken in” feel much quicker than some of my shapes, but that optimal broken in feel lasted for a shorter amount of time. Even though the wood was still nice and springy, it began to get a “softer” pop a bit quicker, making me feel like the deck was sogged out even though the wood was still solid. Still, I got 3 months of riding out of it. I’d call that respectable, if not comparable to the 6 to nine months I get out of my workshop decks.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Edge wear and ply bonding was pretty good. Being a curb enthusiast and a generally mediocre skater, my boards take a lot of side and nose impacts, not to mention a lot of top down slams to the ground from bailing ollies over hips and off banks. My Haslam took several hard head-on hits on curbs and ledges without chipping out or separating the plies. Once again, in this category the small-batch workshop boards I have ridden reign supreme, but the durability of the Almost wood was certainly beyond satisfactory.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The final verdict on this experiment: mixed.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I am definitely dropping my wheelbase from now on. Although the 14.25” size was definitely not optimal for bowl riding, splitting the difference and bumping up to a 14.5” wheelbase might work out well. A shorter tail than the 6.75” I have been riding is definitely better for me, although I’m thinking a squared 6.5” tail may be my best strategy. It's possible a square shape with a short length will mediate stability with the increased power the better leverage of the shortened tail gives me. The popsicle experience has certainly made me more wary of “punk point” noses. Nothing beats having a full sized nose, not just for nose slides and other ledge tricks, but also for ollies and, yes, even slappies. Cutting a 3rd of the real estate off your nose off just to get a “punk” look to your shape is not worth it. I’ll look more “punk” locking better backside slappies and more properly tweaked ollies. I think the Grosso-style “shovel’ nose is the way to go for me.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The big take-away from it all : ride what you like, but don’t write anything off you haven’t tried in a while. “Just because everyone else does” is no reason to ride a standard shape. Then again, it's no reason NOT to ride one either.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-62067747221461106452015-12-01T12:06:00.002-08:002015-12-01T12:06:52.551-08:00Submit To The Grind: Examining Skateboarding's Original Sin<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MmEOoVpCLfs/Vl3bW7JmkoI/AAAAAAAAAak/aCCNyZcxqaw/s1600/intdannysargentstruckschrome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="306" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MmEOoVpCLfs/Vl3bW7JmkoI/AAAAAAAAAak/aCCNyZcxqaw/s640/intdannysargentstruckschrome.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE AXLES!!!!</td></tr>
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There are things in life so ingrained that we never notice how weird they are unless we take a big step back. Skate culture is full of these sorts of things. In fact, you could say it is built upon them. After all, we're a culture obsessed with finding ways to further complicate riding <a href="http://parkingblockdiaries.blogspot.com/2012/12/skateboarding-terrible-way-to-get-around.html" target="_blank">what is already the world's most dysfunctional vehicle.</a><br />
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Take grinding, and by grinding I mean all the related acts of board sliding , tail sliding, nose sliding, whatever, as well. Grinding, be it trucks or decks, is as essential to modern skateboarding as urethane wheels and precision bearings. But, step out of your skater consciousness and really ponder the grind for a moments and you will quickly realize our obsession with the grind is really fucking weird.<br />
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Granted, all of the elements of modern skateboarding's aesthetic are unique, but most of them can be easily traced back to common urges that are expressed in many other athletic and artistic activities. Blasting a huge air or ollieing a big gap ties to the inherent desire we all feel to defy gravity and fly through the air, an urge that goes all the way back to cavemen watching birds circling overhead. Bombing hills is just another permutation of the eternal need for speed, a primal urge that runs through everything from track and field sports to street racing. Technical tricks, the flips and varials, they have an inherent beauty, the same beauty found in the precision movements of a great dancer, gymnast, or juggler.<br />
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But grinding? It's an activity that is both unique, puzzling, and totally mad. What we do when we grind our trucks, be it on curb or rail or coping is basically take an already hazardous, poorly controlled vehicle, and intentionally ride it in the worst way possible. We forgo locomotion via the finely engineered, free-rolling wheels, in favor of forward movement by a friction inducing, scraping crash that not only robs your board of forward momentum, but also destroys it.<br />
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And we do it on purpose. For fun.<br />
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Carry this impulse to other sports and past times and you'll see it for what it is. It's like a stock car driver suddenly saying: "hey, lets' try to run this race without tires." Like the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi ballet deciding she wants to dance the lead in Swan Lake wearing Doc Marten creepers. It's like a baseball player stepping up to the plate and attempting to hit a home run using his glove instead of his bat. In any other context, the impetus that drives us to grind makes no sense.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wuHO-DVqO0g/Vl3bkZkimCI/AAAAAAAAAas/UCmKYjeA94Y/s1600/slow-motion-nosegrind.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wuHO-DVqO0g/Vl3bkZkimCI/AAAAAAAAAas/UCmKYjeA94Y/s640/slow-motion-nosegrind.png" width="640" /></a></div>
Even in context, grinding seems in direct opposition to many of skateboarding's other obsessions.Grinding doesn't make you go faster, it slows you down. It doesn't give you the feeling of flight either, in fact it it gives you the diametric opposite. Grinding is about feeling the ground underneath your trucks with enhanced and perilous intimacy. It's not about separation through speed or weightlessness, its about connection; A destructive and dangerous connection.<br />
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Beyond that, grinding, and all the related disciplines...boardslides, tailslides, have basically guaranteed us the eternal scorn of society at large. Not only does our obsession with the grind defy logic, it also puts us in the crosshairs of the rest of the world. Isn't grinding more trouble than it's worth? Isn't it an element of our culture that has, in all conventional ways, held us back? Wouldn't we be better off if it we left it behind?<br />
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The logical, rational answer, the answer someone who has never rode a board would give is "yes". You know it. I know it.<br />
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At the end of the day, the norms out there could probably get over the inherent danger of skating. They could get over our weird clothes and strange slang. They could get over the skulls and disingenuous allusions to satanism, the weed references plastered over everything, but the one thing they will never let slide is the damage and defacement, no matter how inconsequential, all that grinding leaves on property public and private.<br />
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Does that mean we'll stop?<br />
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No. Never. Not for a second. We love it. We are compelled in service to the grind. But why? Why is it so important to us?<br />
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If you trace the grind back to its origin and chart its evolutions, how the grind became so central becomes clear. even if the why remains elusive.<br />
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Ironically, the grind was born as a side-effect, a by-product of pushing skyward. It was neither a means nor an end. When skateboarders began to test their limits on the vertical walls of pools, the goal was to push as high up as possible. Once skaters breached the tile, the lip was naturally the next place to go. In that push to get radder and radder, eventually, skaters took their kickturns to the very limits of the wall and wound up going three wheels out. Pushing above the lip had a side effect: it put the strip of metal between the back wheels in contact with concrete. What ensued, if the lip was level, was a little click...a little pivot, a split second where the board was turning, not on its wheels, but on the metal between them. Enough forward momentum would also result in the tiniest of scrapes as the axle actually moved along the lip. If the pool had nice coping, that pivot was a jarring bump and a more robust grinding of metal. It took skill and daring to keep riding in opposition to that bit of friction and the shock the lip could serve up. A new rite of passage was created, a new gauntlet thrown down.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LbRTbh0alCY/Vl3b0bgR_JI/AAAAAAAAAa8/BOiW5e8hQu0/s1600/7b68fb6985c66db5da5daaeac2a51296.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="434" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LbRTbh0alCY/Vl3b0bgR_JI/AAAAAAAAAa8/BOiW5e8hQu0/s640/7b68fb6985c66db5da5daaeac2a51296.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jay Adams says it all without saying a word. Photo by Glen E. Friedman</td></tr>
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Even when skaters started giving gravity the finger and sticking aerials, the grind, the ground-connecting, speed stealing, anti-matter opposite of the air remained. We needed to shred aluminum and plywood just as badly as we needed to fly through the air.<br />
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The park era soon followed, and the serendipitous act of brushing axles on coping mutated and propagated into a whole vocabulary of tricks. Skaters got rad, and truck manufacturers got rich. One day, a skatepark dissident named John Lucero got booted from Skate City Skatepark and, in an earth shattering moment of dorkery and defiance, Lucero decide to amuse himself in the parks' parking lot by jamming his trucks onto a nearby curb in an earthbound parody of a 50-50 grind. The slappy was born, and forever after the unstoppable urge to grind aluminum was exported into the public domain. The next few generations of streets skaters took it from there, creating an exhaustive array of grind variations on all manner of urban terrain.<br />
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This solidly established in the minds of the public that destruction, not fun, not expression, was at the heart of skateboarding. Today, the love of the grind has become our original sin: A forbidden fruit tasted in the primeval days of the first pool skaters that we can't lose our taste for. It has caused our culture more trouble than any thing else we've created. The lord Gonz himself said it: we're vandals. And we're vandals because we're slaves to the grind.<br />
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Maybe You can simplify the appeal of grind as merely the appeal of destruction, but I'm not sure this explains it. I think the idea of "skate and destroy" was born form our love of the grind, not the other way around. The variations of the grind encompass much more than brute force. I think we'd all be bashing our trucks on whatever we could even if it didn't wreak havoc on our boards or the environment. An outgrowth of some juvenile need for vandalism is not a sufficient explanation.<br />
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From a purely visceral standpoint, If someone were to ask me what the appeal of locking my trucks into a nice slappy or a long 50-50 around a bowl corner is, I think I might start by comparing it to sliding along a patch of ice on a snowy street. Who can't relate to doing that on a cold, snowy day? It's a feeling of forward momentum that, once started is not totally under control, an act which requires you to balance poise and concentration with the knowledge that the slightest leaning in the wrong direction or the most incremental change in the slickness of the ice under your your path will pitch you to the ground. It's about seeing how far you can glide without hitting the pavement, about moving against the odds.<br />
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Perhaps you can find the soul of the grind in skateboarding's surfing origins, in the way surfers crave not just the momentum of the ride but the feel of the waves beneath their feet, the way they challenge and express themselves by pushing against the tidal forces of the waves that propel them in cutbacks and other turns. Grinding is also largely about the "feel". As earlier stated, its an act of connection, of "being grounded" on your board in an almost literal manner. It's, like, about connecting to the Earth, man...<br />
<br />
In a more philosophical sense, though, it is the fact that grinding is the exact wrong way to ride a skateboard that may be the key to it all. The skateboard itself is nonsensical vehicle, and for many of us just standing up and pushing around on a board was enough for our peers and parents to ask why on earth we would ever bother. The secret power of the skateboard is that it's meant to be ridden "the wrong way" because riding it at all is wrong. Every trick, whether it is a 60's freestyler inverting himself in a handstand, or a modern skater riding switch, is about riding a skateboard "wrong". The grind is as wrong as it gets, but we do it anyway to show that we can, to show we are not bounded even by the basic limits of the skateboard itself. In that context, grinding your trucks will always feel right, original sin be damned.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-18216251401208641942015-11-08T10:18:00.001-08:002015-11-08T10:18:09.281-08:00Talking Gear Doesn't Make You A Poseur, And Not Giving A Crap Doesn't Make You A Jock<br />
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<br />
If you are familiar with the work I've done with The Ride Channel or even hung around the Parking Block Diaries Facebook page, you probably know I put a fair amount of thought into the gear I ride. In modern skateboarding, thinking critically about what you are riding is usually a point of controversy, not for the opinions you might form, but for the fact that you have an opinion at all.<br />
<br />
I see it all the time on my pages or in the comment sections of my articles: Someone will ask some advice about how a deck rides or ask for suggestions on what kind of wheels to get, and, soon afterwards, the snarky and even hostile comments come rolling in. For many, even asking about gear is "over-thinking" and considering the specs of different products"Doesn't matter". Before long they always end up twisting the good ole' Zorlac "Shut up and skate" slogan into their ultimate justification. <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
The prevailing wisdom today is that a board is a board. As one company owner put it to me: "It's seven ply hard maple. It's not rocket science." It's true. It's not rocket science, but it's at least shop class. The fashionable apathy towards the specs of our gear is a strange sort glitch in the matrix of skateboarding, one that implies
that talking about how your board works is, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a mark of high kookery.<br />
<br />
This notion is one of the highest, most fragrant piles of bullshit in the free-range pasture that is modern skateboarding.<br />
<br />
The fallacy has some of its roots in our anarchic pretensions, another portion in the shameful streak of anti-intellectualism lurking in skating, but, look past the bullying and the nitwits, and it is evident that the real source of this prejudice lies in the way skaters look to their most athletically talented peers as the authorities, not only on what they should do on a board, but on what board they should ride. It is a less a symptom of elitism, and more of a blind spot that reveals something about the divide between the greatest riders in skating and the average guys on the street.<br />
<br />
Because of this, it's no coincidence that it is the most talented riders who are often the
most skeptical about dudes talking gear, but this fact can't simply be chalked up to arrogance or elitism.<br />
<br />
I did an interview with Jason Adams where I asked him why he
preferred the punk point nose on his boards. I posited a few functional
ideas, and he responded by telling me it wasn't anything functional at
all. He just liked the way a pointed nose looked. "I could probably slappy a two by
four" he commented.<br />
<br />
True. I'm sure he could. But I couldn't. And therein lies the glitch I am talking about.<br />
<br />
The
best skaters really can shred everything. Sure, they have their
preferences and quirks, but the fact is, you can put them on a penny
board and they will destroy whatever terrain is in front of them. It's not that
the best skaters don't notice little differences like a deeper concave or more
rounded tail in their gear. It's not that they don't have preferred wheel
formulas, deck sizes, etc. It's that when these guys do get something
different, they can adapt to the changes in a matter of minutes and
never look back.<br />
<br />
You see this play out in elite level skating all the time. In the 80's
you had the Bones Brigade absolutely shredding on decks that were easily
2-3 years behind what was state of the art in deck design. Pros can jump sponsors effortlessly without even wondering
whether their new sponsor's products will be as "good" as their previous
sponsor's. You can see it in skateboarding's worst kept secret: the fact
that very few pros put in time to actually design the boards that bear
their endorsement, and if they do, the boards that actually get sold by
their brand may be nothing like the rider's preferred set up. You see it
in the fact that pros often ride someone else's board or wheels or
shoes when the cameras aren't on
(this, of course, happens a lot less nowadays because, now, the cameras
are ALWAYS on). <br />
<br />
The development of the modern skateboard industry is at the heart of this phenomenon. Pretty early on, it became obvious to manufacturers that the way to sell boards was not through the sort of hyper-technical innovation-based marketing bicycle manufacturers or car companies use to drive their sales ( a model which, admittedly, often breeds more hot air and gimmickry than real innovation) but through endorsement by the best and brightest talents of the sport. The best skaters in the world set the pace not just for performance, but for the gear.<br />
<br />
But here's the problem with that: skaters with that much talent, even skaters with local-hero level talent, have a fundamentally different relationship with their boards than everyone else, and I'm not just talking about the fact that they get an endless supply of brand new equipment for free. I'm talking about their ability to adapt to any skating situation.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">God of Gearheads, Professor Paul Schmitt</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
To them, it really <i>doesn't</i> matter. Who has the best concave, what wheels have a smooth slide instead of a hard break...who cares when you can pull any trick out of the bag on anything with wheels? These are the people we respect the most. They deserve our respect for many reasons. But when it comes to what YOU should be riding and how that decision is made, you should treat their words and consider their apathetic attitudes with skepticism. <br />
<br />
Skaters that good don't understand all the talk about balancing wheel grip with hardness...with figuring the best wheelbase that balances stability with a nice pop. They may not know what a little bit of tweaking in a set up can mean for the rest of us. These are guys who feeble handrails as a set-up trick. When they are baffled at all of our talk about leverage and turning radiuses and the quirks of shaped decks, it comes from their experiences. And those experiences are limited by the very thing that makes us see them as authorities. A lot of them are just so good they never need to worry. They have no idea what we are talking about. So, for a lot of those guys, it all sounds like hot air and excuses. And, just because we can't land bolts on a nollie hardflip down seven stairs, we all take pause and wonder: maybe we <i>are</i> overthinking it.<br />
<br />
It's easy to forget that, for a lot of us, every trick is a fight. Every tiny little edge matters. Any little variation that can make a trick more difficult means hours of adaptation for skaters who may not have hours to spare. It may mean "losing" something. I've dealt with this all my years of skating. And yeah, I've had to deal with it because I'm a mediocre skater.<br />
<br />
That gives me, and guys like me, a knowledge base the best and the most talented may never need to build.<br />
<br />
Yes, adaptation is at the heart of skateboarding. If you are not prepared to deal with the less than perfect, you probably shouldn't be skating. Struggling to Adapt to sketchy terrain, new obstacles, new spots... <i>that</i> is rewarding. Struggling to adapt with a new set-up that doesn't work for you, that's not.<br />
<br />
Admittedly, there is a line that can be crossed. Compulsively switching
set-ups and endlessly going on and on about the minutiae of skate
equipment can wind up being a waste of your time and other people's patience. When gearheadedness gets in the way of putting
whatever you got down and doing what you can with it, when technical speculation mutates into excuses, that's when its time to invoke "Shut up and skate". <br />
<br />
That doesn't mean there is not real value in applying some thought to what you put beneath your feet...and what you put on those feet, for that matter. It doesn't mean that seeking out the advice of your skateboarding peers when it comes to what to ride should be something you should be ashamed of.<br />
<br />
And if you are one of those guys who can't understand why dudes go on and on about why they are riding what they ride or what they should ride next, there's no need to throw shade on their sometimes silly obsessiveness. Just pat yourself on the back and be proud. You can't relate beacuse you've got skills they don't, or maybe you just have such a mellow attitude that it doesn't matter to you.<br />
<br />
For most of us, though, the struggle is real. Anything can help. All the gear gabbing is just a by product of our love for skating and our desire to be able to express ourselves as best as possible despite our limitations. There's no shame in that game.<br />
<br />
That said, who's down for an in-depth discussion on wheel wells... <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-75165183554738890112015-10-31T06:50:00.002-07:002015-12-09T11:43:40.659-08:00Stop acting Like The Taliban. Start Acting Like The Hell's Angels<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Skaters like to wax poetic about the virtues of core skateboarding, the values fostered by the underground...they go on about how important all of that is, how vital it is, yet, when anything comes along that might (gasp) move skateboarding outside the boundaries of their own personal, subjective and usually overly idealized ideology of "core" skateboarding, they start ranting about how skateboarding is in peril of being "ruined".<br />
<br />
I have to wonder: Just what is this fragile thing they call skateboarding that needs so much protection? It's not something I recognize. The skateboarding that I have cherished for three decades is not some precious, fragile little flower, it's a fucking weed that won't die no matter how hard it gets pulled, stepped on, or doused with poison. It's a weed that can't be killed because its roots are too strong.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
All the hue and cry over the Olympics and corporate skateboarding reminds me of the antics of religious fanatics like the Taliban or the Christian right. These nutjobs go on and on about how strong their faith is, yet feel the need to strike out violently against anyone with a different opinion or way of life than theirs because it "threatens" their god. It's absurdly ironic: if your god is so great, why is it threatened by a cartoon or two men getting married? <br />
<br />
Likewise, if the soul of skateboarding is as strong and important as we all say, how can it be threatened by the Olympics or Monster energy drinks?<br />
<br />
There's a weird irony in the fact that the lifers, the 20 plus years on board contingent, are often the ones leading the charge against all of these dire "threats" to skating's soul. On the surface, it makes sense: after all, these are guys who have seen the ups and downs of skateboarding over decades; they've seen everything from the embattled roots, to today's bright lights and big money. Change is a threat.<br />
<br />
But these same lifers have also seen seen hardcore skateboarding survive everything the world has thrown at it: recessions, crashes, public outrage and criminalization, social marginalization. After witnessing all that, the idea that some shoe company or the Olympic committee could sweep in and ruin skateboarding is laughable. Veteran skaters are living proof that all these things they worry about
are mostly powerless.<br />
<br />
The hardcore will survive no matter what.
Otherwise they wouldn't be called "hardcore".<br />
<br />
No doubt, mainstream influences will take skateboarding to places it hasn't been before, places a lot of us have absolutely no interest in going. Maybe parks will become as standardized as basketball courts and kids
will obsess over their tre flip averages. It is conceivable that, in the future, the most common and popular form of skateboarding may be some flexing, jocked out form of rolling little league. <br />
<br />
So what?<br />
<br />
But all these things people worry about, all they can really do is change what <i>everyone else</i> thinks about skateboarding. They can't take the board out of your hand. They can't kick you out of the parking lot. All they can do is change what is popular.<br />
<br />
And when did we start giving a fuck about what is popular? When did we start investing ourselves in what everyone else thinks? When did that become part of the "hardcore" ethic? If you are really hardcore, you've been ignoring what's popular and how everyone else defines skateboarding from day one. <br />
<br />
So Nyjah gets on the Wheaties box with a neck full of gold medals. Some douche sportscaster with plastic hair will suddenly know who Chris Cole is. So what. You should be too busy skating to even notice. The pavement will still be out there.<br />
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Ask yourself this: If street league became as popular as the super bowl and every college had a skateboard scholarship program, would that make you quit? If the answer is yes, you don't get it. You never have. Proceed to a different subculture. I know where you can get a set of Rollerblades real cheap.<br />
<br />
Of course, there will be financial ramifications of a full mainstreaming of skateboarding. The Olympics may very well put skate culture in a position where all sorts of new corporate players will be seeking to reap dividends off skating. Some of the small fish in the industry, and even some of the bigger ones with legacies may take a hit. That is certainly something to resist. The ramifications for the local skateshop could be dire as well...then again, they could also be beneficial. It's a coin toss. But all these concerns, as valid as they are, are not about skateboarding. Not really. They're about the skateboard <i>business</i>.<br />
<br />
That's different.<br />
<br />
Just how is the Olympics going to ruin <i>skateboarding</i>, you know, getting on a board and rolling? Is the IOC going to come to your hometown and stopper your favorite spot?<br />
<br />
The corporate money is already here folks. It has been in the mix for a while, it's going to be from here on out. The Olympics may turbocharge that a little. The Olympics could very well change the context of skating for people who don't skate and those who start in the future. Honestly, I'm not sure norms will give any more interest to Olympic skateboarding than they have to televised street league and Dew Tour contests.<br />
<br />
Either way, I still don't see how any of this will "ruin" anything for people who really ride. You want a look at where skateboarding is going in the age of Nike and The Olympics, look to the Bikers.<br />
<br />
Here's a quick history lesson: In the years after world war 2 returning vets disillusioned with life in the increasingly conformist postwar America turned to motorcycles as an escape from society and as a wellspring of personal freedom. Not surprisingly, in the Eisenhower era, something as simple as loving to ride a motorcycle could earn a person a one way trip to society's margins. This negative pressure from the masses wound up having the opposite effect on cyclists than the one intended. The pressure turned a simple passion and a pastime into a lifestyle. Bikers banded together to insulate and protect themselves from the mistrust and disdain of mainstream society: the icon of the biker and the biker gang was born.<br />
<br />
For 4 decades the bearded, leather-clad Harley "biker" was a figure of pop culture menace: a brawling, drunken, drug addict on a loud, dangerous death machine just itching to mow down your grandma with his steel hog. Pop culture made them stock villains in every genre in every form of media. Bikers responded by making their own culture: Their own music, their own art, their own fashion, their own literature. Through it all, the hardcore kept rolling, and the subculture kept growing.<br />
<br />
But then something happened. By the 80's, thanks to the growth of the subculture and the aging of the demographic, the pop culture wheel of fortune spun a 180 on the outlaw biker, and before you could say: "Easy Rider", the biker became a symbol of good ole American freedom. The Harley Davidson became one with mom, dad, and apple pie, and Wall Street bankers who had sold their souls to corporate America began to try to buy them back at their local Harley dealership. Soon, the outlaw bikers were awash in a flood of weekend wheelers. An outsider culture soon became a consumer product for the masses.<br />
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<br />
Any of this sounding familiar?<br />
<br />
I'm sure there was a lot of grumbling, complaining and growing pains in the hardcore bike culture when this shift came up...but bikers dealt with it by doing what they always did: riding to live and living to ride. Some of those Wall Street weekend warriors and suburban Harley riders eventually got tired of their bikes. Others kept them for the occasional ride. A chosen few got pulled in deeper and earned a place for themselves in the core of the culture.<br />
<br />
The end result: lots of people of all kinds started riding motorcycles, but there was still a difference between someone with a motorcycle and a "biker". A difference evident to anybody, even in a world where the motorcycle itself had lost its automatic cachet as a counter-cultural signifier.<br />
<br />
That still holds true today. The core of outlaw bike culture endures. It's even spun off its own alternative variations. Guys not into the big Harleys found an outlet in customizing smaller, cheaper bikes. There are the guys into classics and antiques, guys who don't want any part of stock bikes who are deep into fabricating and riding customs. Sure, the wannabes still dip their toes in these movements...and the hardcore often capitalize on it quite well. People with money and no soul will always shell out hard cash to buy a chromed up symbol of what they'll never have.<br />
<br />
Here's the point: The Olympics and Wall Street, they may turn skateboarding into a mainstream pasttime. There will be more kids on skateboards. Many of them, maybe even most of them, may be people you can't relate to, skating for reasons you don't agree with.<br />
<br />
But that doesn't matter, because there will still be a difference between someone who rides a skateboard and a <i>Skater, </i>like the line between cyclist and Biker, it will be a line that anyone can see.<br />
<br />
The hardcore may end up being a small, underground movemet in a big culture, but there is nothing the rest of the world can do to skateboarding that will get them to stop. They will be skateboarding's one percenters. The ones who will always possess something no corporation, no international broadcast, no corporate infiltration can ever own.<br />
<br />
The IOC and wall Street never have any power to stop that. <br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-79824547779528383902015-07-14T11:54:00.003-07:002015-07-14T11:56:53.721-07:00SLAPCHAT: With Danny Sargent<br />
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If there was a Mount Rushmore of curbs, Danny Sargent’s face would be on it, three stories high, right between John Lucero and Tom Knox. At the apex of his career it seemed as if there was no angle of concrete in the San Francisco Bay area safe from the wrath of Sarge’s trucks. But now, after moving his family to Minneapolis, Danny Sargent is getting a sample of the pain every midwestern skater felt back in the day trying to emulate his video edits on sketchy middle america crete. <br />
<br />
“Out here the curbs are all weathered,” Sargent comments. “It’s not like out west, that’s for damn sure.” <br />
<br />
But even if he’s mostly hitting bowls and parks nowadays, Danny Sargent is still a slappy god. “For me it was always a way of life,” Sargent says. “You go out and you slappy around.. it’s just what we did”.<br />
<br />
A beacon of inspiration for curb fiends past and present, I was honored to collect Danny Sargent’s accumulated wisdom on the intricacies of the slappy for this edition of Slapchat. <br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>First Off, what counts as a slappy? Do you have to get your trucks involved? Some folks consider a noseslide on a curb where you don’t lift your tail a “slappy noseslide” or a slapped in blunt slide a “Slappy blunt”?</b></span><br />
<br />
I never understood that shit...slappy noseslides and shit. A slappy is when you fuckin’ hit your front truck and then your back and grind. <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>This is the question where I usually reference you slapping the big block at EMB in New deal’s 1281 as an example, so I’m stoked to take this straight to the source: Is there a height limit on the slappy? When you’ve got guys slapping up knee high hubbas and grinding down them, is that still a slappy?</b></span><br />
<br />
It’s not really a slappy if its a wallride up. When I did that Embarcadero slappy I did it front truck first. It was a slappy, not a wallride 50-50.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Have you seen the footage of Jake Johnson slapping up and grinding down hubbas, or some of the stuff Guy Mariano has done...pushing up walls into backwards 5-0s and stuff like that?</b></span><br />
<br />
Yeah, Jake Johnson was the one who did that wallie 50-50 down Clipper. That was pretty awesome but it wasn’t a slappy...It’s a slappy if you hit your front trucks first.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>So what about a feeble?</b></span><br />
<br />
I don’t think that’s a slappy. I used to see people do that, crash into a feeble, but there’s no front truck. <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Frontside or backside?</b></span><br />
<br />
Both feel awesome when you do them right...cruise down the street, crash into a frontside slappy up the curb onto the sidewalk, bash up instead of ollie is fun though.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>When are your trucks best for slappies?</b></span><br />
<br />
I always set up new boards and wheels and keep the same trucks. I like trucks worn in. Now my trucks last forever. I get tired of looking at my boards before they actually wear out.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>When you were at your peak, how quickly would you go through a set of trucks?</b></span><br />
<br />
At my peak when I was doing slappies every second all day and all night I was probably changing trucks every couple of months. I’d get to my axle in a week or two.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>What gets you more stoked: A nice, smooth and styled out slappy on a nice buttery curb, or powering through a square, crusty, dry curb?</b></span><br />
<br />
It makes you feel good if you can slappy gnarly stuff. We used to have a curb outside of Thrasher that guys started skating during lunch, and it had no paint on it. We’d just try it and grind it just a little bit and then it got the metal from our trucks on it and started to look like a real curb. I like a good smooth Yellow or red curb you can slappy all day. I guess its a struggle to skate a raw ass curb...but it’s real satisfying when you can slappy anything.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Toughest variation you can/could do?</b></span><br />
<br />
I don’t know, there aren’t very many variations. Slapping the Embarcadero big block I guess, or something with no paint on it.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>That trick is kind of the gold standard when it comes to slappies. When I ask other guys about the gnarliest slappies ever done that always comes up. What were you thinking when you did that? is it something you hade been working up to for a long time?</b></span><br />
<br />
Not really. That was the biggest slappy I had ever tried up to then. When I went down there that day I tried it about ten times maybe and I was feeling it, so i kept trying and then I just did it. That’s the same day I switch backside 180ed the Embarcadero seven. I had a good day. It was all spur of the moment. Now I kind of wish I had thought about filming and where to go, but back then you just went out for two or three days and got what you got.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Craziest slappy you’ve ever seen?</b></span><br />
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Sean Martin used to do the sickest real slappies switch...I never did that. Another one that stands out in my mind is Mike Archimedes at Embarcadero. There were three steps going into the plaza with a corner and he frontside slappied up all three stairs in a row without taking his wheels off the ground. Three stairs with just enough room between them for your board. I never really understood how that was possible.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Did you have a slappy sensei? Someone who inspired or even taught you?</b></span><br />
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I remember Tommy Guerrero doing a demo when I was living in Portland. When I moved back down to San Francisco it was all the city guys. Guerrero, Mike Archimedes, Julien Stranger...those were the ones I saw doing slappies. Them and Ricky Winsor in Sacramento.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Wax: when is it appropriate?</b></span><br />
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I have never used wax.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>What’s the worst you’ve ever got wrecked on a slappy?</b></span><br />
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It’s not really that far from the curb to the ground so you can’t get hurt that bad, so there’s nothing memorable. I’ve never really gotten wrecked on a slappy.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>What kind of set-up do you prefer for curb skating?</b></span><br />
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I ride the same board for everything. I don’t have slappy board. Just a regular popsicle shape.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>What makes a good curb?</b></span><br />
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I like red, painted curbs, or yellow or white. Painted curbs are good. In San Francisco you’ve got ones at the bus stops, long ass red curbs going down hill. Those are fucking awesome to frontside slappy. If you lock in right frontside or backside you can just go and slappy forever.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Do you still like to look at the grind marks on your hangar after a session? </b></span><br />
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I like looking at the different colored paint on my trucks afterwards, especially when you get like 3 different colors, red, yellow, white...<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Do you catch yourself scoping out curbs when you are just running errands...hanging out with your family, etc...?</b></span><br />
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I’m always on the lookout, especially out here in Minneapolis because curbs are so hard to come by here. My girlfriend trips out about it. I’ll be looking at handrails or whatever and she’s like: “what?” I think we’ll all be skaters in our 70’s and still be like: “Sick! Look at that!”<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Have you ever gone to a skate park and then found yourself having a slappy session on some curb in the parking lot?</b></span><br />
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I remember this one time in seattle there was this street contest, NSA Amateur, and there was this street course that was really solid but me and Ben Schroeder just skated the curbs in the parking lot anyway...when it was time for our runs we hadn’t even practiced on the course.<br />
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<span style="background-color: #666666;"><b>Why are slappies so rad?</b></span><br />
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Slappies rule. It’s the best street trick. Ollies and slappies. It’s a natural street skaters trick. I love slashing and grinding. Keep skating and have fun. Enjoy the ride.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-58600724637928566302015-06-20T19:16:00.005-07:002015-06-20T19:22:14.236-07:00Why "International No Ollie Day" Should Be The Next Big Skate Holiday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every year when Go Skateboarding Day rolls around, I get to thinking about other holidays skaters might think up to celebrate their culture. Usually these musings are just an excuse to <a href="http://parkingblockdiaries.blogspot.com/2013/11/beyond-go-skateboarding-day-some-new.html" target="_blank">crack jokes and troll for cheap laughs</a>, but this year I’ve been thinking about something more functional, more sincere. I’ve come up with an annual event that will both pay homage to some neglected elements of skateboarding while opening the minds and trick repertoires of all the skaters who choose to participate. A holiday skating, especially street skating needs.<br />
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I call it International No Ollie day.<br />
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When the ollie reached the streets it revolutionized skateboarding. In the 80’s for kids who didn’t have access to ramps, it was the gateway to “real” skateboarding. Fast forward to today: The ollie is the basis for almost every modern street skating trick, not to mention a practical necessity for moving smoothly through almost any urban environment.<br />
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What would happen if, suddenly, the ollie just disappeared, even if it was just for one day.<br />
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The ollie is an innovation we all take for granted. But the ollie wasn’t something pre-ordained. It might just as easily never happened. What would skateboarding be like if Gonz and his colleagues had never applied Rodney Mullen’s mutation of Allan Gelfland’s no handed air to the city streets? Would street skating have never happened?<br />
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Of course not. The ollie wasn’t the beginning of street skating and it is not the end. If it had never been invented, we would still be going wild in the streets, it would just be a different breed of wild than what we came up with.<br />
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I have spent a lot of time looking at old footage and photography from the first half of the 80’s, the days when modern street skating was beginning to define itself. Watching clips of the Venice Pavilion, or the early street contests, you can see a whole parallel evolution that might have taken place had the ollie never been taken to stratospheric heights by Gonz and Natas. For the most part, this evolution was never allowed to happen once the ollie became a practical and obligatory move. In the era when the ollie had limited pop, skaters were improvising all sorts of aggro ways to exploit the streets. Steve Caballero’s ability to boost an early grab out of even the barest of inclines was incredible. Hosoi was doing bomb drops off roofs and floating 10 foot high wall rides. Guys were sliding their wheels and slapping curbs. Static streetplants were evolving into increasingly dynamic and complex wall plants. And then there’s the curb skating. I don’t even need to get into all the things you can do on a curb without ever popping an ollie. How far could these styles have gotten if we hadn’t all become rightfully obsessed with the ollie?<br />
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International No Ollie day isn’t about commemoration of the past, it’s about evolution for the future. Complete freedom can spark inspiration, but limitation is the best catalyst for lateral thinking. Deprive yourself of the most basic and obligatory move in your repertoire and you will have to barge headlong down the alternative avenues those primal street skaters were paving before the ollie reigned supreme: Slappies, footplants, no-complies, early garbs, berts, street slides, wallrides, wallies, bonelesses and bomb drops...<br />
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Sure, a lot of skaters have dabbled with the techniques mentioned above, but, for the most part, these things are just novelties sprinkled into a riders usual repertoire. Some guys have even helped evolved these tricks to heretofore unseen levels. But just, imagine how far the best of the best could get devoting a whole day to these secondary styles of skating. <br />
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Imagine how far you might get. Where you might wind up going if you had to abstain from the ollie for a day.<br />
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But forget about tricks for a minute. International No Ollie Day can help skaters tap into elements of street skating that have nothing to do with tricks. Street skating not only pre-dates the ollie, it pre-dates what we now consider “trick riding”. With this in mind, No Ollie Day is not just a time to connect with your inner GSD or Ricky Winsor, it’s also a day to call forth the street mojo of Jay Adams, Stacy Peralta, Steve Olson, and all the other guys who could make rolling down a hill or just carving a bank look epic without ever lifting a wheel off the pavement. <br />
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So, lets get together and make International No Ollie Day a reality. For style, for imagination, and for skateboarding. The streets are wide open, and there’s infinite ways to shred them. One day could open a whole lifetime of possibilities. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-13818064697920667402015-06-19T05:59:00.001-07:002015-06-19T06:00:27.081-07:00SLAPCHAT: With Matt Field<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the mid 90’s Matt Field and his Real Skateboards teammates like Keith Hufnagel, Mark Gonzales, and Greg Hunt did just as much to bring flow back to skating as any of the Sub Zero or Zoo York crew. Although he may be more renowned for wallrides and one of the best nollie front 180’s ever popped, Field’s east coast roots and soulful style means he’s also deeply connected to the dao of slap. Subjecting Field to the slapchat grind revealed that this smooth operator had a lot to say about slapping curbs. No doubt, he’s one of us.<br />
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<b>First off, what counts as a slappy? Some folks consider a nose slide on a curb where you don’t lift your tail a “slappy noseslide” or a slapped in blunt slide a “Slappy blunt”?</b><br />
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No on nose slides. I don’t count that as a slappy, but the slappy krook I see a lot these days is probably a slappy. Maybe it’s a new school slappy, but I’m not a big fan. Bluntslide slappies are the bomb though. Stoked on those.<br />
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<b>Is there a height limit on the slappy? When you’ve got guys slapping up knee high hubbas and grinding down them, is that still a slappy? (Remember Sarge slapping the big block at EMB back in the day)?</b><br />
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I would call it all a slappy, and Sarge’s slappy on the big block was epic and will stand the test of time as the definition of raw street skating.<br />
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<b>Frontside or backside?</b><br />
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Both are amazing. Switch slappies are a dream. Probably one of the best feelings, because your doing such a classic trick, but switching it up just gives you that channeled essence of the feeling you sometimes get when you see Gonz skate. It just feels special.<br />
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<b>When are your trucks best for slappies?</b><br />
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I would say when they are a little past mid way and you’re starting to dread the fact that your kingpin nut is so thin you don’t know when your front truck is going to fly off.<br />
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<b>What gets you more stoked: A nice, immaculately smooth and styled out slappy on a nice buttery curb, or powering through a crusty curb? </b><br />
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Hard to say. The SF DMV curbs are worked in so good that they almost shimmer metallic, but there is nothing like hitting a virgin red. Then again, there are the metal edged curbs in NYC, where the whole curb is metal and always perfect.<br />
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<b>Favorite slappy variation?</b><br />
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I am by no means a slappy master like some of my mentors, but a full speed feeble slappy over a double sided curb to fake is pretty pretty Blessed.<br />
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<b>Toughest variation you can do?</b><br />
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Just learned the slappy frontside nose grind pop out. That’s a pretty cool feeling.<br />
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<b>Craziest slappy you’ve ever seen?</b><br />
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Barker Barrett’s frontside slappy at Fort Mason in the first Planet Earth video 25 years ago.<br />
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<b>What are some slappy style mistakes?</b><br />
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Running your front truck into it and getting totally pitched and thrown<br />
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<b>Did you have a slappy sensei? Someone who inspired or even taught you?</b><br />
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Rodney Smith at Shut skateboards, and Bruno Musso from old school Shut. I was probably 9 years old at a Brooklyn banks contest and they where out in the street. Inspiration and priceless memories<br />
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<b>Wax: when is it appropriate? </b><br />
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Just don’t get carried awy <br />
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<b>What’s the worst you’ve ever got wrecked on a slappy? </b><br />
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The other day I went to slappy this cheese as hell mini ramp flat bottom. It was like 2 inches high and got totally pitched into the side of the ramp. Fuck that thing.<br />
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<b>What kind of set-up do you prefer for curb skating?</b><br />
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I just ride my board normal board <br />
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<b>What makes a good curb? What are some of your favorite curbs of all time?</b><br />
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DMV SF, Rock Ridge bart is pretty tight, and this red curb in the cul de sac turn around by my house. It’s rad because it feels like you’re grinding around a corner in a bowl. Since I can’t do that too good I use my imagination. Ha ha.<br />
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<b>Do you still like to look at the grind marks on your hangar after a session? </b><br />
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Oh, most def. <br />
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<b>Do you ever rip a good one and have to look at your hanger right there at the session?</b><br />
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Sometimes when I get a lot of paint on one I will definitely rub my finger tips on there for a little extra juju. <br />
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<b>Do you catch yourself scoping out curbs when you are just running errands...hanging out with your family, etc. ? </b><br />
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Insanely, yes. It occupies my every thought pretty much. Sad but true.<br />
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<b>Have you ever gone to a skate park and then found yourself having a slappy session on some curb in the parking lot? </b><br />
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Most of the time I find myself having more fun on a crappy curb or wall ride than at the park. Sad but true.<br />
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<b>What is it about slappies? Why are they so rad? </b><br />
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It blows my mind when I see kids that can just kill it on everything but can’t even do a slappy pole jam or wall ride. I’m blown away right now with all the new school kids doing no-complies and slappies. It’s pretty rad. Skating is just one big karmic wheel. It just goes round and round. I feel so blessed and privileged to have been turned on to such a phenomenon when I did. It is one of the most fulfilling and satisfying sensations and experiences ever. Life would be absolutely boring without it. Jah. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-43009970872795920462015-06-18T08:52:00.000-07:002015-10-13T07:05:02.587-07:00Branding And The Birdman: To Advertisers Tony Hawk Is More Celebrity Than Stuntman Now, But What Does That Mean For Skateboarding?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the days before I stumbled upon my first issue of <i>Thrasher</i> magazine, seeing the odd skater flying off a launch ramp or doing an invert in a soft drink commercial would whet my appetite for skateboarding while simultaneously giving me no real hint of the true flavor of the culture I yearned for. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that the latest Mini Cooper commercial, featuring The Birdman himself, Tony Hawk, got me thinking about the strange looking-glass skateboarding has jumped through in the last 15 years.<br />
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If you haven’t seen it, the TV spot depicts Hawk and three of his kids in a Mini Countryman, road tripping to what Hawk senior cryptically describes as a “park”. As they drive, Hawk’s progeny spout the kind of familiar platitudes all kids cooped up in a car on a long trip inevitably make: “Are we there yet?” “Where is this park?” Etcetera. When the Hawk family finally reaches their destination, we see it is neither a skate park nor an amusement park, but an abandoned water park, complete with defunct fiberglass slides and dry concrete channels (the same park Killian Martin shreds in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSbbY5ibas" target="_blank">this</a> vid, in fact). Hawk and the kids all bail out of their ride and proceed to roll on the abandoned structures, all thanks to the versatility of the 4 door Mini Countryman.<br />
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Oddly enough, there's not much skating in the ad, and none of it is orchestrated to make the average square camped out on their couch drop their jaw in amazement. There’s just a couple of shots of the kids rolling down fiberglass slides, and one fairly unexceptional ramp-to ramp launch by the Birdman at the very end. Instead of an “extreme” approach that focuses on Hawk’s stunt appeal, It’s a textbook celebrity based sales pitch. Ad agency Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners is using Hawk’s persona as a skater to put a clever twist on some old familial road trip conventions. The spot's narrative hook comes from the Hawk’s celebrity status and his role as a dad, not his high-impact skateboarding. Hawk barely needs to put urethane to the ground to make the ad work.<br />
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Madison avenue has been using thrashers to pimp everything from soft drinks to <a href="http://skateandannoy.com/?s=diapers" target="_blank">diapers</a> since the shred stick first barged the scene, but this ad represents a radical shift from the depictions of skateboarding I was digesting back in the 80‘s and 90s. Back when I was an impressionable young demographic, mainstream advertisers always exploited skateboarding’s high-flying maneuvers and worked skating's connection to a sort of oversold California dream lifestyle so many in middle America both resented and aspired to. Skate shots were a dash of California cool thrown in to pepper up the image of a product, Quick bits of lifestyle-insinuating aerial fireworks often thrown in with no real connection to the product on display or the narrative of the ad. Throughout the 80’s and most of the 90’s not only were these flashes of thrash brief, but they were almost always totally anonymous. Skaters were never identified by name in the spots, skate company logos and trademark graphics were always painted over, and the skaters were usually dressed by the producer’s wardrobe departments, not their clothing sponsors. <br />
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This began to shift a bit in what can best be called the “extreme” era of mainstream skate exploitation. Thanks to the rise of “alternative” youth culture in the 90’s corporations started taking real notice of skateboarding and related activities. Pretty soon the word “extreme” became an ubiquitous Madison Avenue buzzword, ready made to be slapped on snack chips, candy bars, and cereal, usually with an accompanying graphic of a skateboarder, BMX rider or, (ugh) Rollerblader. The TV ads got meatier, with a little more actual skating creeping into the quick cut edits, yet they still seldom identified the riders performing all those “extreme” actions. As much as the advertisers wanted to latch onto skateboarding to sell their junk, they were usually disinterested in attaching their products to actual skateboarders. Skateboarding became more central in some advertising, but even in these “extreme” ads, skateboarding only functioned as a signifier of another overhyped, commodified “extreme” lifestyle.<br />
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Thanks to his crossover fame in the last half of the 90’s, Tony Hawk became the first skater famous enough for mainstream advertisers to actually identify by name in their ads. Thanks to things like the X-Games and his popular “Pro Skater” video game, the mainstream saw Hawk as The Greatest Skater Of All Time. Once skateboarding had its own “Michael Jordan” (at least in the eyes of the norms), having some anonymous vert jock bust a McTwist in your ad just wasn’t enough anymore. You needed TONY HAWK doing a McTwist in your ad for mass appeal. <br />
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A giant in both skateboarding and in the public perception of skating, it is no surprise that Hawk would be the first skater to transcend the barrier between stuntman and mass media celebrity. Still, even though The Birdman was paraded in front of cameras and identified by name in his 1990’s spots, the ads were still structured around his mind-blowing skating. There was very little, if any, narrative attached in these spots. Usually it was just some shots of Tony doing his thing while a narrated pitch unfolded in the background. At the most, there might be a couple shots of the Birdman noshing pizza bagels or flexing his skills for Tony The Tiger mixed in with all the madonnas and 720’s, but it was always about putting Tony’s skating in front of the consumer and connecting it to the product. Now the skating just had its own premium brand name attached. <br />
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Which brings us to the Mini spot, an ad which displays Hawk’s complete transition, at least in the eyes of Madison Avenue, to mainstream celebrity. The ad is not about Hawk wowing consumers with stunts, it’s about who he is both personally (as a father balancing work, fun, and life) and in the public eye (as the mainstream’s anointed “greatest skateboarder in the world”). Although it’s far from a complete picture of his skating, it is a more complete (albeit constructed) picture of him as a media personality. What is isn’t about is his legendary skill on a skateboard.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Rodriguez? Is he a tattoo artist? A Rapper? A Car Customizer? Wait....I see a skateboard up there at the top...</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Hawk is not the only skateboarder to transcend the celebrity vs. stuntman barrier either. There’s a whole generation of kids devouring Lunchables who may not know that Oscar Meyer’s DC-decked celebrity pitchman Rob Dyrdek was once one of the most exciting skaters to ever grind a ledge. Axe Body Spray was so confident in the renown of Street League champ Paul Rodriguez that they marketed a whole line of P-Rod grooming products without so much as a picture of a switch tre on the bottles.<br />
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My inner 14 year old is ambivalent about this transition. In one sense, it is nice that skateboarders are becoming more than anonymous cut-and-paste stunt monkeys in advertising. It signifies that there is at least cursory nod of respect being shown for the amazing individuals who drive the subculture. It’s certainly nice for Hawk, whose status as a celebrity means he can still collect substantial checks even as he slides into his late 40’s. <br />
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On the other hand, in a lot of ways we’re in very much the same place we were when I was scoping Mountain Dew ads as an aspiring grom. Sure, the Mini spot treats Hawk as a marketable person with a multi-layered identity instead of an interchangeable stunt performer, but it still doesn’t tell you much about the culture or practices of skateboarding. It doesn’t show anyone that Hawk has a company called Birdhouse, or that he has a foundation that helps build skateparks around the world. It doesn’t help show a kid where to get a decent board, or how to pop an ollie. In one aspect, it is even worse than those old anonymous ad clips, since it doesn’t even dazzle the viewer with a barrage of killer maneuvers that might get them excited enough to pick up a board. <br />
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Fair enough. I’m sure Cooper is not aiming to sell Minis to 12 year olds who have somehow never seen a Street League broadcast or rubbernecked at their local public skatepark. They’re certainly not in the business of promoting skateboarding, but the question I asked myself about these ads back when I did finally snag my first copy of thrasher back in ’88 still remains: what do these sorts of things do for skateboarding besides pad the wallets of some corporation who has no real interest in the culture? Sure, its an opportunity for Joe Couch Potato to get better acquainted with a particular famous skateboarder, but does is it get them better acquainted with skateboarding? Does it matter anyway?<br />
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Either way, as their target demographic, I still think a four door mini is a pretty dumb idea, no matter what Tony Hawk thinks. Interpret that however you want Madison Avenue. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-43171074927670343092015-06-10T11:55:00.001-07:002015-06-10T12:04:50.839-07:00SLAPCHAT With Donny Humes of Smelly Curb Zine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All photos: Jason Bash</td></tr>
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When Ohio Skater Donny Humes started Smelly Curb Zine in 1987, skating curbs wasn’t a nostalgic trend or a time-filling gimmick, it was the status quo for anyone who didn't have access to a pool or half pipe. (i.e., almost everyone not near a coastline). As decades passed and skating changed, Humes became more than just another guy making a zine about skating. Producing <i>Smelly Curb</i> by hand with X-acto knives and Xerox machines even after the advent of digital publishing, Humes became a sort Keeper Of The Curb, using his zine to help keeping skating rooted to the crete thorough all its ups and downs. Humes efforts as an artist, publisher and skater have earned him the respect of skaters around the world and secured him a place in the prestigious Grand Order Of Curb Crushers. When it comes to slappy authorities, you can’t do much better than Humes. We ran Humes through the Slapchat gauntlet, and here’s what we got. Read and learn.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>First Off, what counts as a slappy? Do you have to get your trucks involved? Some folks consider a noseslide on a curb where you don’t lift your tail a “slappy noseslide” or a slapped in blunt slide a “Slappy blunt”?</b></span><br />
<br />
The first slappy involved grinding your trucks, literally carving or slashing the curb. there are variations now because that’s what skateboarding does, it evolves and expands. Slappies are all about the grind, and feeling the concrete<br />
and trucks rippling under your feet.<br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Is there a height limit on the slappy? When you’ve got guys slapping up knee high hubbas and grinding down them, is that still a slappy? (remember Sarge slapping the big block at EMB back in the day)?</b></span><br />
<br />
I’ve seen baby curbs 2-3” tall up to 2 foot high. Slap em big or small. I guess the taller curb, it almost counts as a wall ride to 50-50.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Frontside or backside?</b></span><br />
<br />
Whew, that’s tough... There’s nothing better than running into a curb frontside full speed and just laying it all out.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not quite maximized</td></tr>
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<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>When are your trucks best for slappies? Brand new? Ground with a nice groove but still a lot of metal on the hanger, or down to the axle and beaten all too hell?</b></span><br />
<br />
Funny you ask. I just went through that scenario. I was riding theses old 149 Indys and they were almost to the axle. The kingpin nut kept catching on my<br />
grinds and slowing me down. I stepped up to new 159s and, wow, I could grind a<br />
lot smoother and faster. I ride the same trucks forever, I hate breaking in new trucks.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>What gets you more stoked: A nice, immaculately smooth and styled out slappy on a nice buttery curb, or powering through a crusty, dry, cranky curb?</b></span><br />
<br />
They are both a treat. The crust curbs remind me of weathered pool coping. It makes dust and it’s smelly... Painted yellow square curbs are fun because you can go farther and a bit easier to do combo tricks.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Favorite slappy variation?</b></span><br />
<br />
Frontside slappy-feeble-lipslide<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Toughest variation you can do?</b></span><br />
<br />
(The above) or I did a frontside slappy to front boardslide to fakie<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Craziest slappy you’ve ever seen?</b></span><br />
<br />
Tom Ramey from Dayton was a madman of slappies. Mike Hill, Barefoot switch<br />
slappies back in 1988.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>What are some slappy style mistakes?</b></span><br />
<br />
“Edging” the curb instead of getting up on it. Not getting low and shifting your<br />
weight, pushing and pulling back at the right time.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Did you have a slappy sensei? Someone who inspired or even taught you?</b></span><br />
<br />
Bill Minadeo. He skated for Alva and G&S in the late 80s and early 90s. He taught<br />
me the slappy. It was one of the first tricks I learned.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Did you “teach” your son, Ivan, how to do slappies? If so, how did you do it? A lot of guys say you can’t “teach” the slappy.</b></span><br />
<br />
I guided him. I showed him how you use you body and shift your weight. You are correct that you can't be taught slappies. You either get em or you don't. He's a natural, he had slappy blood from birth. At first, when he was learning, he kinda "edged" them, and I told him you have do that plus run into them and use your momentum get you on top of the curb. He learned on yellow curbs. It was like that feeling when you first learned to ride a bike as a kid. It's cool to see him progress and push me as well. We definitely influence each other to get rad.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ivan Humes shows that the slappy gene is not recessive</td></tr>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Wax: when is it appropriate?</b></span><br />
<br />
Only on raw concrete curbs, just to get her going.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>What’s the worst you’ve ever got wrecked on a slappy?</b></span><br />
<br />
I get wrecked more from trying to ride pools or big tranny. Curbs have been<br />
pretty kind to me.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>What kind of set-up do you prefer for curb skating? Shaped board? If so What kid of shape? Dimensions? Truck width, wheel size and shape, etc.?</b></span><br />
<br />
The older I get the more picky I am. I’m a shaped board guy. I usually modify my<br />
noses or wheelbase to accommodate my liking. Been going back n forth with 8.5” and 8.75” decks. Square tail and egg-pointy nose, 14.5 wb, 159 Independents, usually 56mm spitfires, no rails, loose trucks, creative grip tape job.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>What makes a good curb? Your fave curb of all time?</b></span><br />
<br />
Curbs that are 6-8” are the best. Painted, of course. Probably my favorite curb<br />
spot was the All-Rite parking garage, downtown Columbus. Yellow curbs and<br />
islands everywhere. Indoors and dry for the winters. It’s getting demolished. RIP. Curbs are everywhere. The most common skate obstacle of all time.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Since you are from the midwest, I have got to ask you about parking blocks. what kind are your favorite? The standard sized angle-top blocks? The low blocks with just a tiny vertical face below the angled tops? The fully triangular ones? The square ones?</b></span><br />
<br />
My favorite parking block is the standard, fatter block. In Ohio they are usually 8 feet long. Some are 4 and 6 foot. The longer 8 footers are the funnest, more grind obviously. Put 2 together and get a 16 footer slappy to slider. Those super chubby fat parking blocks are fun too, like a mini wall ride to slappy. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Do you still like to look at the grind marks on your hangar after a session?</b></span><br />
<br />
OCD curb behavior. Yes. I smell my hangers regularly. Hence the name of my zine<br />
“Smelly Curb”.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1Q8QdX4aTw4/VXhoT5OMr4I/AAAAAAAAAWo/PKcqGK1X4VY/s1600/curbseshB4-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1Q8QdX4aTw4/VXhoT5OMr4I/AAAAAAAAAWo/PKcqGK1X4VY/s400/curbseshB4-2.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I bet he took a big sniff after this one.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Do you ever rip a good one and have to look at your hanger right there at the session?</b></span><br />
<br />
Oh yeah. I got those new trucks this spring and my groove was on. Curb skating and its religion.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Do you catch yourself scoping out curbs when you are just running errands...hanging out with your family, etc...?</b></span><br />
<br />
Since I was 15. It’s funny, I go on vacation and I’m all gooning the town, scanning the scene for spots. My son and I were in Chicago and the hotel had a ripping yellow curb. The maintenance man was bumming.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Have you ever gone to a skate park and then found yourself having a slappy session on some curb in the parking lot?</b></span><br />
<br />
Yeah, for sure. I’m old and sometimes a curb just feels safe. My big deal isrunning into or wrecking with dudes on bikes or kids on scooters who are not paying attention. My worst nightmare at a concrete parking is slamming full speed.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: yellow;"><b>Why are slappies so rad?</b> </span><br />
<br />
I get the same feeling now I got when I was just learning slappies. Now it’s even radder because it’s30 years later and my son Ivan is 12 and he’s bustin’ slappies too. It’s seriously the best trick, it’s fun and gnarly. I cant even kick flip but I can slappy. I love it when kids at the park are like “How did you do that, get up on that curb”? I just tell them you gotta run into it! <br />
<br />
Man, I am having the most fun I’ve had on my skateboard since I was, like, 17. I've been re-learning old tricks I lost, trying to stay healthy, eating right, trying yoga.... I hope I can slappy when I'm 50! I wanna have Slappy 50th Birthday. Skating is good for my brain, my body is another thing. So I have days when skating rules, but I won't be able to wallk the next day.<br />
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<i>For Smelly Curb zines, decks, coozies and other radness, including the new Smelly Curb "Lost In The Feed" video visit <a href="http://www.smellycurb.bigcartel.com/">http://www.smellycurb.bigcartel.com/</a> . Or follow Smelly Curb on Instagram @smellycurb.</i><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4205427062515246420.post-44250359053861613752015-06-05T08:25:00.000-07:002015-06-05T08:25:01.699-07:00Jimmy Wallace's Driveway Part 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>This is the second part of series of posts about one of the most important days in my skateboarding life. Read the first part <a href="http://parkingblockdiaries.blogspot.com/2014/03/jimmy-wallaces-driveway-part-1.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</i><br />
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<br />
In the 80's anyone who took a journey on a skateboard began it at a crossroads. On one side was a slight detour off the conventional teenage track: a scenic exit that lead, ever so briefly, down the “skater dude” stretch of an otherwise conventional segment of the highway of adolescence.The other direction was the wrong turn; An exit that might put you into the social badlands for years, and out of the orbit of the right clothes, the right music, and the right friends forever.<br />
<br />
<br />
Regardless of which direction that little piece of plywood was going to take you, the journey really couldn’t begin until you had a skateboard that cost about a hundred bucks and was endorsed by some feverishly marketed pro superstar. Lifer or poseur, to be a skater You had to have the right board, and there were
magazines, videos and, for a while, even peer pressure to let you know
what the right board was. It’s not very punk rock, its not egalitarian, but it’s true. The mid 1980s boom that helped define skateboarding, was subsidized by trendiness, conspicuous consumption and the acquisitiveness of skateboard manufacturers. <br />
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For kids in full on fad mode, exactly how those expensive mail order or surf-shop purchased boards were superior to the department store junk was a non issue. The ambient forces of pop culture had declared that a pro skateboard was cool. There was no reason to ever give a thought to wheelbases or concave. Durometer and wheel size were not nearly as important as who rode what wheel or what kind of graphics ringed the urethane. You didn't admit you picked out your board for the graphics, or your trucks because of their color... but in that first wave of the trend, most kids didn't know enough about boards to make an informed choice on any other basis. <br />
<br />
Those of us who did think about performance had only the vaguest ideas about why the "real skateboards" were better. Some kids just thought they were stronger (not necessarily true), or lighter (true). Others knew a good set of trackers or Indys were going to grind better than the scrap junk bolted to a valterra (not that we could grind anything but the edges of our driveways). The pro wheels certainly looked different, many were bigger and narrower, and we assumed the low durometer wheels would take on the crusty pavement around us more effectively than the plasticene garbage on our crap boards (very true). The shapes of pro boards were much more diverse and interesting too, but how these things applied to actual on-the-pavement riding was beyond us. When it came down to it, we didn’t know shit, just what <i>Thrasher</i>, <i>BMX</i> plus or <i>Club Homeboy</i> told us.<br />
<br />
Thanks to the flashfire trendiness of skating, the possibility of being “cool” was a nice potential side effect of becoming a skater in 1988, but, for me, the real mission was always the skating itself. It was all about turning the blah rural-suburban world I lived in into the giant playground we saw in <i>Thrasher</i> magazine. A "real" board was the entre into an endless grinding game with no rules, no scoreboards and no varsity teams. The griptaped stairway to heaven.<br />
<br />
The hypothetical difference between what I had and what I wanted was more than just a point of curiosity, it was an article of faith, the crux of all my fevered midwestern loser dreams. After all, if the difference between Variflex no name and Vision Psycho Stick wasn’t enormous and paradigm-shattering, then the lack of progression in my skating had nothing to do with my board's lack of concave and everything to do with my lack of athletic talent. If the marketing hype and ad pitches didn't mean anything, then I was destined to forever suck at skateboarding no matter how much I loved it. For me, so much hinged upon pro boards not just being a little better than the generic ones, but exponentially better. <br />
<br />
So I became fixated with deducing just what kind of board was going to slingshot me into the land of stoke fastest. I couldn’t just toss off some wish list based on names and graphics. There was too much at stake. I paged through the mags like a zealot digesting scripture. I was looking for the cryptic knowledge, the secret codes, the data that would put the magic in my hands. <br />
<br />
So When I stepped on Danny’s “real” board for the first time, I wasn’t just <i>expecting</i> it to be something significantly better than what I had been riding, I was depending on it. <br />
<br />
The whims of youth serve up a lot of disappointments. The transformer figure you had been eyeing in the sears catalog all year was never as big as you thought it was once you got it on Christmas morning. The Evel Knieval rip cycle would barely roll 3 feet before toppling over and spinning out. The slot cars always flew off the track at the corners, and that damn electronic football game...the players never went in the right direction, and no one could ever hold onto the ball.<br />
<br />
Just how often do feverish childhood dreams live up to the expectations aggregated by a youthful imagination? How often do they not only meet those expectations, but exceed them, not just for a day but for a lifetime?<br />
<br />
I dropped Danny’s board, put my foot down over the front bolts, and took the first push.<br />
<br />
Aside from the fact that they were both made of wood and had wheels on the bottom, it quickly became clear that my board had almost nothing in common with Danny's real-deal pro set up.<br />
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<br />
Let's start with the bearings. <br />
<br />
Bearings are not sexy. Old kooks aren't coughing up their tax returns on ebay for
vintage GMNs and NMBs from 1987, but in the humble bearing lies the
essence of skating. Even at the simplest, most qunatum level, the level of just
rolling, Danny's board was fundamentally different from my shitty department store one.<br />
<br />
Just pushing and rolling was suddenly transformed. <br />
<br />
The crappy department store boards we had been riding all had what were called “open bearings”. This meant that the ball bearings that made the wheels roll sat directly in a groove in the wheel itself, making direct contact with wheel and axle. They had no covers, no teflon shields, not even races to separate the bearings form making contact with the wheels. The open bearing design, which, at that point, was about a decade out of date, was incredibly hard on the bearings, especially the cheap-ass alloy ones in the standard issue crap board. <br />
<br />
The worst thing about open bearings was that if your wheel ever fell off, or if you wanted to take a wheel off on purpose to try and do clean all the crap out of it, there was nothing to hold the bearing assembly together. As soon as wheel left axle, everything inside fell out and dispersed in a hundred different directions; ball bearings and washers all rolling free of their urethane prison, never to be reunited again. If your Nash bearing got crushed you couldn't take your wheel off and fix it. You couldn’t buy a replacement either. One jacked bearing and Your whole board was pretty much done.<br />
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Danny’s board, on the other hand, rolled on precision bearings. A precision bearing is basically a self contained bearing assembly, housed in its own metal casing separate from the wheel. Balls, races, cover, are all self contained in ne unit that can pop in and out of the wheel completely intact. This design not only protected the ball bearings inside from wear and debris, but also made the bearings completely removable for maintenance or easily replaced if one of them got crushed or completely seized up. You can just pop out a gunked up precision bearing with your axle, pop another one in, and you’re golden. <br />
<br />
For me, the fact that precision bearings were protected and could be taken out and cleaned meant they were light years beyond what I had on my board. I didn’t even care if they were faster. <br />
<br />
But the thing is, those bearings were faster. Ridiculously faster.<br />
<br />
After riding open bearings, especially my bearings, which were gummed up and gnarled by 3 years of riding in rain, gravel, and dirt, stepping onto that board, with its precision bearings, was like stepping onto a patch of ice. <br />
<br />
So my first push on that board ended with me on my back.<br />
<br />
A short moment of embarassment aside, that back-slapping wilson immediately made it clear that wanting the expensive gear, the decks and wheels and trucks you had to order from California, was not like wanting Air Jordans so you could sit at the right lunch table. It was not like needing Guess Jeans or a Starter Jacket so you wouldn't get clowned during passing period. A good board actually <i>mattered</i>. It was more than a sales pitch and a celebrity endorsement. The california cachet was there, the bullshit, the image-making, that alone sold a lot of plywood in the 80’s, but that was not why I needed a good board.<br />
<br />
I needed one because I needed to skate. <br />
<br />
The system shock I got from riding precision bearings was just the beginning though. When I got back on and leaned into the first carve to circle the driveway, I almost fell over sideways. The way the bushings in the truck evenly compressed meant that the resistance was uniform and smooth. After carving on bushings that were basically hard plastic, my body was conditioned to push into stiff resistance followed by a sudden break in the bushings. On real trucks, the cushion was easy and consistent, so my reflexes made me push my weight too hard on Danny's board. Once I got used to the trucks, though, carving was so smooth, so responsive, it was like I had never really ridden a skateboard before at all. It had never crossed my mind that the trucks might actually turn better. I had been fixated on grinding.<br />
<br />
These aspects were really just bonuses for me. What I really had invested my hopes in was the superiority of a quality deck. I was convinced the properties of the state of the art 1980s skate deck were the single most important thing that set a good pro set up apart form the mass market junk. I had all but resolved that an ollie simply was not possible on anything else.<br />
<br />
like all good boards, danny’s Henry Guttierrez deck had a concave riding surface that curved like a ver shallow spoon in the front. This helped stabilized a rider's foot both in a push and as you stood. The concavity on the riding surface made it feel lliek your foot belonged there, whereas the flat surface of a bargain board made the deck something you actively had to fight against just to stand on. On the flat garbage boards you could never really throw your full weight into a turn, and the wight you did put in had less leverage, since there was no angle on the toes or heel to push afgainst. The 1988 era Sims concave design on that Henry Guttierrez wasn’t exactly cavernous like the H-Street "hell concave", but it was downright canyonesque compared to the flat, almost convex-feeling Variflex deck I had been riding. <br />
<br />
Under my back foot, I could feel the degrees of kick in the tail. My Variflex had a tiny bit of upturn at the back, but this was a real kick tail, and my feet were itching to pop that tail, or at least lean back on it and drag it across the cement while I bent down and grabbed a rail. <br />
<br />
But it wasn’t my board. Sure, real skaters weren’t supposed to give a shit about scratching up their decks, but convictions expressed around a communal copy of Thrasher in the school cafeteria, are a long way from the reality of gouges and shredded paint on your brand new, pro model skate deck. I didn’t know how pissed Danny would be if I scratched up his board, and, even though he was smaller than me, I wasn’t sure I could take him if we got in a fight, so I kept it to carving, not even kickturning the board for fear of abrading that expensive plywood on the cement.<br />
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<br />
Sill, I knew that wasn’t going to be enough. For once in my life I couldn’t just go halfway. I tipped back on the tail a little just to see how it felt. I looked around for Danny. He was fidgeting around on someone’s GT. I worked up the nerve and made a request.<br />
<br />
“Hey, can I try to ollie on your board?”<br />
<br />
Danny didnt give it a moment's thought. “yeah. I don’t care.”<br />
<br />
That was all it took. Suddenly, I had the keys to the Porsche. the house for the weekend, open access to the liquor cabinet...<br />
<br />
I crouched down and popped the closest approximation of an ollie I could.<br />
<br />
The board got away from me, bouncing like a coiled spring and spinning form udner my back foot. I had channeled all the muscles in my leg into that downward thrust of the tail, expecting the clunky, stiff contact from my Variflex. What I got was an elastic, energetic response, a rebound, complete with a ringing, vibrating reverberation like the sound of the flexing diving board at the Shrine Hill pool.<br />
<br />
I ran over and picked up the board, looking it over to make sure I didn’t do any real damage. I was clear. Danny wasn’t watching anyway. I immediately tried it again.<br />
<br />
I’m not going to tell you I hopped back on and immediately started popping ollies, but something real happened. After a few more tries, I began to dial in on the physics of the deck’s steeper kicktail and more responsive elasticity. When I stomped down on that tail, I concentrated on getting the deck as close to vertical as I could. After a couple tries I could feel the back wheels lifting. I don’t know that the edge of the tail was ever leaving the crete, and U only stayed on the board about a third of the time, but all four wheels were going up every seventh or eighth try. Consistently going up.<br />
<br />
It was not the coveted ollie, but it was something closer to that benchmark than anything I had ever done. Closer than anything my friends had pulled off. I heard somebody suddenly say: “Hey, Kyle almost did an ollie.”<br />
<br />
What I was doing had piqued everyone’s interest. We didn't know anybody who could do an ollie. People started gathering. I didn’t pay much attention. I kept hammering away at it...8 out of 10 attempts the board got way form me. 2 out of ten sort of tipped up. Given a full day of wacking away at it and I figured I might possibly have been able to manage getting maybe a 1/2 inch off the ground standing dead still once or twice.<br />
<br />
I was stoked out of my mind.<br />
<br />
So stoked I wasn’t even bummed when Danny came back to repossess his board and try to replicate my breakthrough. So stoked I didn’t even bother to go get my board from the older BMX hesher who had commandeered it while I was flapping up and down on that Guttierrez.<br />
<br />
I had taken the pepsi challenge. Run the experiment. Collated the data. The results were incontrovertible. I needed a board. The rationalizations and doubts had been disintegrated like the walls of Jericho, the scabby angels of stoke were circling me in a beam of light singing “halleleuia!” I had gotten a sneak peak of the promise land, and nothing was going to keep me out.<br />
<br />
But how was I going to make it happen? I didn't have a hundred bucks. I didn't have a job, and I certainly didn't have parents who would just buy it for me.<br />
<br />
So what was I going to do?<br />
<br />
To quote Mako: “That is another story...” <br />
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