BIPOLAR BEARS

You can feel that Winter is upon us soon. Get ready for frost sessions. Must...find...mittens.

Heath, Chris, Blair and Quinn at Silverdale, Dec. '09. Fun.

SKATEBOARDING IN 4 STEPS

Found it in a random Men's (Dude's) magazine.

Guy Mariano

We've both spent time away from skating and have come back. I know there are things that I really appreciate about it when I'm not around it and things I really hate about it when I am. Maybe hate is too strong, let's say really find great discomfort in. Did you find this to be true when you started skating a lot again?

Yes I agree. It's like a love / hate relationship. When I was away from skating I would only wish to be in a 10 hour van ride to some random town going to battle a trick just to end up not getting it and then being so sore the next day it would hurt to walk. People might think that's the bad part but to me that's the love. People might think that it's all about the money, the contracts, and the fame but that's the part that I find discomforting. That's the stuff that will pull you away.

This reinforces what Drake Jones told me about ducking out of professional skateboarding: "it feels like a job." For most of us, what this means is 'it sucked having to do stuff and deal with stuff I don't want to do, based off the feeling in my gut.' It's just amazing that this can happen even in careers where the employee is doing exactly what he wants to do, what he's passionate about, he just doesn't like the forum or context he has to do it in as a pro. This has everything to do with how freedom, can be so frail a concept (and how it is an addiction).

Clown Flip

BIG PANTS LITTLE STYLE from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

Weird music for weird times...

IF one has to accept certain stages as necessary in the history of progress, than this is truly an experiment in learning humility. I probably only showed this to a handful of people, reluctantly. But it was all filmed with some unclear intention. I never really thought of anything beyond shop sponsorship, and turning pro, unlike the newer gen's hardwiring, never even came to mind outside of abstract envy. I was obsessed, but progress was a thing of self, and moving forward. Or somehow backward, if you think about this period of big pants and small wheels. (Tho perhaps necessary as it grounded us long enough to get a feel for a need to get back speed and air.) And yet looking back, as embarrassing as it may be, I'm glad we used to film this stuff. And it's amusing to go back and watch, to get to acknowledge where you were and how far you've come. My pants fit and my wheels roll. I did lose late flips....

SK8 RAT VAULT VID #2

SK8 RAT VAULT FILES 2 from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

One Night Downtown

Once Downtown from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

Skate Rats 101

Skate Rat Vault Files 01, circa '92 from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

SLOWLY GETTING MY GROOVE BACK

Bummed On Self.

In my 21 years of skateboarding, I've done the following twice, now:

You get back to your car, a little tired from skating, and you lean the board up against the car. You take a seat, leaving the car door open, because, you're going to skate some more. You sit and drink some water or whatever, and due to reason A, and maybe B, or A minus B, or just out of sinking back and getting comfortable, you decide to throw in the towel and leave. ("I'll come back in the morning when nobody's here...yeah.") And you close the door to the car and you drive off.

Forget anything asshole?

The first time I did this I was gone for a full day, and came back and the skateboard was still there, lonely, sitting in the middle of my residential street in Los Angeles. Lucky?

This time the Gods did not grant me such kindness. They reached down and scooped up my poor lonely axe, and are now fingerboarding on the cosmos with it as I write this. Hardy-har.

Does God laugh harder when you announce your plans -or when you change them quietly and do something stupid?

No Gods. No luck. No board. Some little kid is reveling in his found treasure, and is probably still asleep somewhere, without a care in the world about plans.

TOMMY G

One of my favorite photos of old, that I remember staring at for great lengths when I was probably 12. The word "style" comes to mind. The weird thing about this pic is my memory of it was from the other side of the street.

ZIP-ZINGER ZING ZING

Satisfied a powerful lust for a Zip-Zinger. A friend (thanks Jesse), knowing how broke I tend to be, suggested I make the deck myself. It worked out really well, after 7 hours of labor. Used an old Flip deck I randomly won in an online trivia contest. The hardest part is definitely the drawing of the shape. Much props to the board shapers out there.

Yes, a mess.

Stole some curve from the G&S my high school history teacher gave me. Mr. Smith is The Man.

I learned this fold-symmetry method from some footage of Rodney Mullen.

New wheelbase. I made the tail too small.

Getting a clean line was impossible for me.

The old man's orbital sander is apparently broke, so I had to sand it by hand. A good workout.

ZING!

Indy 129's and Powell All Terrain, 80 du.

I GOT SHIN SPLINTS THAT DAY*

Think demo, circa 94, Bainbridge Island. Matt Pailes, pre-Rasta cult. Backside 180 over the volcano*, a smooth move. Taken with the old trusty (yet stolen, R.I.P.) Pentax Asahi. Probably one of my first skate photos ever. Got some others of Wade Speyer from that day I'll post soon.

Skate Decks

Points of Contention

More to come....

LEGALIZE IT.

Did this in 1993, high school. Seemed a cool idea at the time, because there was a lot of generic Legalize It hoopla going on to sell t-shirts and whatnot at Above The Belt, etc., and I thought this could be a counter to it. I thought it also kept me sort of separated categorically from my other straight edge friends.

The interesting thing about this is, because it got such a good overall response from people, I mailed it to myself, to budget-copy write it. I eventually forgot about it, until I saw a Think Skateboards hat with the exact same idea (it more resembled a curved one I did that looked more like a pot plant, I'll add it later if I can find it) embroidered on it. I was dumbstruck. It was so similar.How did this happen?

The copy write was buried somewhere for years.

But I wasn't alone, it didn't end there. My artist buddy Dan had also done up a very unique graphic, a half of a skateboard carved out of a tree stump. A nice drawing, which I believe Marley had done a quick-run graphic for. But, soon after, Think Skateboards came out with the exact same graphic. Dan hadn't secured a copy write. But still, even if we both had legit copy writes, I don't know if we were prepared at the time to go head to head with Greg Carroll.... 

 

 Thanks for sending it over, Dan. I can't find the Think versions so far.

UPDATE: (Found randomly on the interwebs)