JUNK

I FILMED THAT.

I FILMED THAT. from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

Only thing I ever filmed that made it into a legit company skate vid. Daewon Song, Daewon vs. Rodney Round 1. You don't care about credits when you're 21. He gave me a board and wheels. Good pay for 10 minutes work.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I wish Jeff Henderson would get his ass in this here blog...I know he's filmed some of the gnarliest stuff ever done to date. Stay gold, hoss. 

FEELING A BIT MELANCHOLY

Greg Martin, old buddy, hometown ripper. Taught me board(rail)slides. This has got to be my first skate photo. Ma's point-n-shoot.

Wade Speyer, Aforementioned Bainbridge Think demo. Taught me I am a pussy. My old trusty Pentax Asahi, RIP.

Adam Crew, another hometown ripper. Blasting at Silverdale. Taught me what style looks like, holmes. Dad's newer Pentax, still got it. 

Blair Taylor, homeboy, running a little interference bonkage. What was that bank called? U-Haul? Pic taker?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

ANTICI...PATION

Earlier post about taking the plunge sums this up.

Age is not an issue.

BULLDOG SKATE GENE

Why do all bulldogs like to skate? I think we need to find and research that genome.

Pools held the primordial ooze

This is a great photo. And I don't know the back story....he'll fill us in via comments.

 Blair's always been one of the funnest people to skate with, and always a step ahead of me.

Grind over the light, no coping, more like ledge on vert.

Skate & Destroy vs. Disrespect

Board in question from previous post, being molested and abused as described, circa '95. Posed lay-back grind on one of my favorite all-time spots, Safeway Red Curb in Silverdale, R.I.P. (Photo by John Daley on a late, very bored night, right before we stole a television and photo-staged it sliding down a playground slide.)

Q.

Power = ambition + talent

I think I only skated with Junior Wudruff (sp?) once. But it was inspirational. He and Ben Hooker and others were of the generation before us who we looked up to. I skated with him and Ben at the newly built Fred Meyer on Wheaton Way in East Bremerton. I remember Ben slappy 50-50ing the ledge, Danny Seargent style. Amazing. Junior, I just remember being goddamn good. No specifics.

Anyway, I don't remember who posted this photo I stole on Facefuck, but credit due, because it's epic.  Rough ground, no nose, huge hydrant, and he's easily going to clear it. Nick White had similar power and finesse. I skated with him more often, so he was the dude I idolized the most. I geeked it completely and actually asked the proverbial (of old) grommet question, "what's the highest thing you ever ollied?" He humored me and after laughing, said, a tennis net. It floored me. What a little grom I was. Fuel for the fire. Ollieiing was the goal at the time.

What really pains me is I used to have that exact Natas board. And later, I treated it like shit, just skating it and not caring about the damage done. I left it in an L.A. garage to be thrown away by an unknowing mother. I just spoke with someone about that the other day. He said it sounded insignificant, like a vintage car that doesn't get seen or driven. I told him it was about the significance of actually having owned it when it came out, and it meant a lot to me as history. It's not about the commercial value, but the nostalgia value. Red Slimeballs, my first pro wheels. I had a mini Natas (w/ the kitten) for about one day before breaking it by dropping my launch ramp on it while trying to move it. My new board was focussed by a fucking launch ramp. Or rather, gravity and a lack of physics planning. (Wedge vs. fulcrum vs. counter-weight.)

So I kick myself about those old boards I vandalized. More on that note later when I shaw/talk about an old Greg Martin board I have that looks like drift wood. Not many people would understand what it means that I want to frame it professionally. To me, it is the symbol of passion and endurance in the face of a lack of means.

Q.

ROLLING IS KEY.

Regardless of who or what, makes getting this blog going easier. I think early era with no affinities should to the trick*. I'll have a better photo of this day later down the line, but have to go into the Old Man's slide vault to do so. For now, just know that these 2 dudes (first 2 frames) rode bikes (yes, bicycles) from somewhere in Southern California up the coast on HW101, and that day stopped at Cannon Beach OR to do some radical shit. This was the first built-to-skate thing I ever touched down on. It was the Chin Ramp as far as I was concerned. And yes, I brought a freestyle board too, to make up for the fact that I could barely skate the bowl thingy. I think dropping in and kickturning was my whole my bag.

*I'll give a prize to whomever can name the "trick" in frame 2. 

Take the plunge

Just like dropping in for the first time, you gotta be stupid and just take the plunge. (My first drop in story will come later...think early grab Christ airs on a 4 foot in the woods. No, I didn't do the airs...)

There's no perfect way to start this BLOG. But that brings up a good question: How/why did you start (skateboarding)?

I saw the videos "Possessed to Skate" by Suicidal Tendencies, "Devil Inside" by INXS, "End of the World as we Know It" by REM, and saw a dude do a handstand all the way down a hilled parking lot of of Wheaton Way in Bremerton. Then I stood on a banana board, and rolled down a hill. Then someone showed me Animal Chin. That was it. From there on out, standing on a skateboard and rolling was like mainlining. From what I hear...

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).

GOLF THUG LIFE

This one's for the old man, who is bewildered by the plethora of "No Skateboarding" signs in public domain. Well, turns out, we aint the only vandals.

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

JUST A LITTLE SOLITUDE...THAT'S ALL.

Andy Jenkins is a definite favorite of mine, and one of my earliest influences in the world of art. Any skateboarder who picked up a Transworld mag from the late 80's and early 90's must recall with delight Wrench Pilot. Not a lot of people can get away with drawing someone skateboarding without making it look, well, silly.
Anyway...not to pigeon-hole him either. His talents are far reaching, much further than Lettus Bee. Check out his site, and here's a good interview.

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....