WHY DO YOU RIDE THE SKATEBOARD JOHNNY????

Man the Cap'n is looking haggard. But I think that was par for the course. His hair is the exact shape as Tony's helmet. I used to dig the Kangaroo.

TO THE KID FROM THE DORM WHO APPROPRIATED THIS FINELY CRAFTED TOOL: I HOPE YOU APPRECIATE WHAT YOU HAVE.

R.I.P. ZIPPY

NUMBER OF THE BEAST, ER...I MEAN, BLOG!

EVERY DAY I'M STEN-CIL-IN, EVERY DAY I'M STEN-CIL-IN...

VELOCITY vs. INERTIA

Any downhilling on video is good video. Eating shit, well, reality. Usually hilarious. You live on to ride another day. There was a kid in my part of town that became a vegetable by downhilling. But he didn't have any practice! Crazy kids.

SPOT CHECK: PIER 1 CURB

This was the spot to learn feebles and feeble-slide combos. Sherman and Joe Cantu come to mind in this department.

Is it me or should good red curbs be on the national extinction list?

FAST CLASS

This is a great photo and looks genuinely older....but it also looks like Remmy Stratton. I want a back story! Either way I don't care. Cool ass photo. I shouldn't even comment on it. (back story!)

HANG IN THERE.

I re-drew the Real Thiebaud hanging clansman graphic when it came out because I liked it so much. We xeroxed it (some with the soul man cartoon...I think that was stolen from Andy Howell) and left it all over school.

The original impetus to do this was prompted after an unsettling event. I was casually invited over to this kids house who I rode the bus with in junior high. He said he had cool stuff to show me. "Cool stuff" referred not only to his giant t.v. complete with porn channels, but specifically to all of their guns. For instance, (but not limited to, no!) he had a Mac 10 under his bed. He must've been 13. And his good ol' dad slept with a cocked and loaded .45 under his pillow and a sawed-off shotgun under his bed, apparently, according to his delightful son, really wishing someone would break in so he could blow them away in his pj's. And then, when I was leaving (in a hurry) and I didn't think it could get any worse, he insistently handed me a piece of paper from a large stack of copies atop the kitchen counter. "You should fill this out!" It was a real (no pun intended) Ku Klux Klan application. I couldn't believe it. I said I was definitely not interested, at all...at all.

The next week I happened to acquire the Thiebaud board. I would dangle it in KKK jr.'s face every time I saw him on the bus with a big grin on my face. Empty threats ensued. Looking back, of course this (graphic, and pushing it) is not the right philosophy. (I did not plan this post for MLK Day...he would be rolling in his grave.) Evil begets evil. But it sure is fun to rile up the wicked...

Thiebaud doesn't get enough credit for how innovative and stylish he was. First kickflip front board and 10 foot high frontside wallrides. And what other skater can you name who has published books of poetry?? 

And...Banksy seemed to have (inadvertent yet oddly similar...who knows?) made this homage to the infamous graphic in his southern U.S. escapades not long ago. He dropped into Birmingham and threw up some bangers. My favorite artist (cliche or not), period. 

WOODWORK

Where are all these amazing fuckers coming from??? Stumbled upon this randomly on the interwebs. Quick footed ninja kid, good loosey-goosey yet somehow solid style, Mark Sucio. Amazing trick selection, reverts everything the wrong way, big or small looks to have the same (none) impact on him. Honorable (or Questionable) mentions in this corner are the gap to front board to fakie at the SF Library, nollie cab front board a rail, the back tail to over gap-to-3 stair at Pulaski Park (did I get that right?), ssbsnb a rail, the ridonculous ender...oh, just goddamn everything. I like the fact that he does lots of runs. Oh, and the rarest trick in his part, reading a book.

THE WHEELS ARE ON THE GROUND!

 This song will perseverate in my brain until I am dead. Love the stunt girl tick-tacking around and around and around....

HEP SNOW CATS

Alien sighting in the deep-end of Leavenworth years ago. If you live in Seattle and aren't familiar with Spacecraft, come out from under your rock. Conscientious consumerism at it's best. I just wish they made (made by scoped-out, legit suppliers in Bali, and elsewhere) more stuff. 

THE RESULTS ARE IN...

BEST OF 2011

BEST TRICK: 

James Hardy, frontside 180 to switch backside 50-50 the Clipper. This is gnarly. I always loved this trick, evur since da Gonz...

BEST PART:

This is a tie, so I'm just linking to Youtube. No posting here. (takes too damn long.)

a. Anything . by . Daewon.

b. Torey Pudwell's Big Bang 

c. Alex Perelson, Real Since Day One (Sorry, you gotta find this on your own. Just think 540 body jar.)

BEST PHOTO:

Goin' artsy on this one. Jack Sabback is rad. 

FAVORITE PART:

While living in L.A., the beige plastic school yard picnic tables were the uber bench. In the 90's, it was quite popular to do flip tricks over objects on flat. The plastic benches were hard enough to pop a good flip trick over. But if you could do something on, up or over a table on flat, that was about as good as it got. Even ollieing them was a struggle. And everyone knew exactly how big they were, so it was a (gold?) standard ruler for Big Pop. Jeremy Wray was the first to have a run with 2 flippies in a row (heel and back heel), and the only, for a long time.

So this is part nostalgia, and part recognition. You rarely see the tables anymore. Bryan Herman comes thru, pays his respect to the 90's, and kills tables for ever. And makes it look easy. Why bother now? Sort of like Tom Penny "shutting down" the chain banks in SD. I love that it's just an intro too. And Tom Waits is the icing. Thanks Herman.

AND THE TREE COMES DOWN.

"THEY'RE DIGGING IN THE RIGHT PLACE!!!"

Super cool series online by Skateboarder Magazine, "Raiders of the Archives." They are short videos looking into the offices and/or archives (literally, shelves, boxes, walls) of great artists and photographers in the professional skateboard world. This post links to my favorite (though they are all great), that being Andy Jenkins, one of my favorite artists, whom I've posted about before. He gives the rare treat of showing some of the conceptual work that happens before a graphic or ad is made, including sketches and renderings from another one of my absolute favorites, Evan Hecox who does amazing graphics for Chocolate Skateboards.

Very inspiring series, and makes you want to dig into the vaults. (And get organized...)

WHEEL BITE vs. HEEL BITE

This image comes to mind:

NEW (YEARS) SPOT CHECK

New Years Eve skate-a-thon, found some secret weirdness. Very fun. Old men street skating. As usual, Blair gets 5 things, I get 1.