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....

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)