TAKE YOUR OWN.

SHAPE YOUR OWN.

I ONLY SKATED IN SAN DIEGO ONCE...

Diggin' in the vaults for spare parts, found a clip. It aint a great piece of footage, but it does have 3 nostalgic components:

1. Koston had a manual run there in the 101 promo.
2. I had a long-gone edition of my "Legalize It" T-shirt.
3. I could do nollie flips.

TOOFLESS WONDER

Aside from the fact that he looked like a malfunctioned Terminator T2000 gone rogue and homeless, Tim Jackson was a style king. I saw him in his Venice stomping ground circa his heyday, probably 1989. I went down to the beach in search for Mullen (whom I never saw him in those days, but always saw someone) and was blessed with a one man show. Jackson was doing his usual (though far from any other usual) onslaught against the 4 foot tall, 40 foot long wall divider above the (once was) graffiti pits, which are now filled in with sand. He would approach at full speed a la bad-ass Dogtown gangster surf style (i.e. attitude) and straight wallie up and boardslide through the kink, about 20-30 feet. Sometimes he'd layback (as below), other times tuck-knee or pop-out early. It was his shtick and he did it better than anyone I've seen since. Venice had such a rad 80's scene, which was borderline voyeuristic in its display. They performed and we watched. Or was it because we watched?

Check out Rowley's psyched intro to Jackson's Risk It Part

ARE GOOD CURBS ENDANGERED???

What I wouldn't do for a nice waxy double-sided curb right now....maybe I'll start a non-profit to save them in their plight. Seriously -where have they all gone??

OLD WORLD ORDER

Banger of a video (Manolo's mixtapes are the illest) for the weekend: World Park Mixtape

To this day, World Park, which I only went to once, remains one of my favorite skate parks ever. It was nestled in a shitty warehouse in what I think was Lawndale, just between Hawthorne and North Redondo. Private to Rocco team players and various friends of the teams, it was an unsupervised den of inequity/hell. And it saw not only the hellfire wrath of kids without adults (but with spare cash), but also some of the most progressive skating in the early 90's tech boom. Whenever this park showed up in a video part I got really hyped. It was all about the noise. That little warehouse was a huge acoustic drum. The clanking of the metal lips on the ramps, the hollow wooden boxes echoed when wheels touched down, the banshee wails reverberating in the rafters whenever a trick was landed....it enhanced what was already really good footage -usually something you hadn't seen before.

When I went there, I met Daewon Song for the first time, as he was our chaperone for the night. I'm sure I geeked it, but I do remember enjoying the park to its fullest, skating until late in the morning. And I of course remember every single thing he did there that night. Blunts on the hip spine (4" worth of wood/coping), mach 3 tailslides to heelflip out across the box, his usual barrage of manuals, 360 flip fakies on wood laying against the wall almost vertically, and showing us how he could kickflip with his foot in the extreme heelflip position. He also challenged any of us to try and "take him down." Don't you always wrestle before you skate?

That building will never Rest In Peace after what it went through at the expense of Steve Rocco and his band of misfit toys. Small wheels, flip your board, tricks for cash, kick a hole in the door, climb the walls, howl at the moon, claim to be the King of the Wild Things.

FUCK YOU SKATE BARN!!!!!!!!

Blair and I tried stopping in at the Skate Barn over the holidays. I had some free passes that my lady bought me thru Group-on. I had talked the the owner a week previous to make sure I could redeem my coupons, to which he replied, "no problem....yeah, over a thousand of those were purchased..." He failed to warn me (and I imagine the rest of the 1000+ people who obtained the Group-on) that they would be closing their doors for good within a weeks time. What a god-awful businessman. Not only did they obviously fail to meet their rental requirements, but they failed to let those who invested in their coupons (probably sold knowing they'd cash in on them as their business sunk into the ocean) that they should hurry to redeem them. They didn't change their website, they didn't send out a courtesy e-mail. I hope their debts outweigh what they ripped-off from their coupon constituents. I would hate to think all that money was a scam to help them out of bankruptcy. Shitbirds. 

Speaking of birds, that night, over the Skate Barn, there was an ominous flock of about 2000 crows swooping and screeching and diving around the sky. It was an omen. But for what or whom, we shall never know. 

Oh...really?!?

(NOT) DOWN WITH SKATE BARN!

Where to now? Another hour in the car to Inner Space...

WHAT IF?

SECRET SPOT IS STILL THERE. (I thought it was demolished.) Some ply wood, a machete, lots of wax, and 2 helmets should do it. Frontside and back, curved madness!

DOOR WAYS

I took Nick to South Park for the first time. He seemed to really like it, especially the arches.

This is a make. Proper backside 5-0.

Attempted melon.

Up and over roll-in, and another hairball one with a grab and shove.

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.