I love the smell of Shoe Goo in the morning.

WINTER COAT

I'm the dude on the right. That's exactly how I feel on my board. Hmff.

DIGGING IN DA (SHITTY CELL PHONE MOVIE) VAULTS.

Blair kicking up at Marginal. Zero/Thomas-hyper-editing, sorry.

Blair Tailslide Marginal from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

Jesse with Leroi in tow, Marginal.

Leroi vs. Jesse from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

Poaching Sky Sileg blasting a boneless-disaster at Marginal during the shoot of this cool promo video for Lib Tech.

Sky at Marginal Way one day from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

Blair and I freezing our asses off, having fun at a high-tech-High School in West Seattle.

New (Years) Spots from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

I LEFT MY HEART, SOME BLOOD, AND CARTILAGE AT JUDKINS PARK....AND NO T-SHIRT TO SHOW FOR IT.

Patrick, textbook pivot to fakie. Nice form. Shot with my little Nikon COOLPIX.

Little Azai. Rock steady.

Matt and I, synchronizzzzed.

Q Flippy to Pivot Judkins, yawn. from Quinn Davis on Vimeo.

Never shift your feet AFTER a trick is landed. PLAY IT OFF....

LEANING WITH G'S

This is the best skateboarding photo I've seen in a long time.

Dennis is a class act.

Nowhere Man

With this blog, with my skating, with being a social creature, I feel absent, hollow, vacant.

But I'm good at kicking my own ass. Now, where are my boots....

FLOW, CONTROL, IMPACT, YAWN.

Here are some quotes from the Portland Street League:

"Magna Carta Holy Grail!! Get out of town!" (I heard this phrase used multiple times....?)

"Because everything happens so much more faster...."

"This trick he's trying takes some carving action."

"Insurance, smart play."

"His highest careers scores in this section..."

"No one sits on these rails quite like Torey."

"So precise, the level of difficulty!"

"Blows the roof off the arena, man I wish he had done this so much sooner...9.9!"

"9.9...highest score ever in the Street League....Nyjah is the only other one to get this score."

"Dylan is a great skater, but a mercurial contest skater."

"Board spins 360 degrees...flips 360 degrees, uh, 720, I can't even do this much math..."

HAMMER TIME.

I took the grip off and immediately realized this was a Rick Howard I bought from Mike York in between EMB and Pier 7. At the time I gave it a try, but hated it because it was too big and flat to do flip tricks on. Guess that's why I painted over it and forgot about it. I actually thought it was a Davey Rogers Beer City board that he gave me. Now I'm bummed because I don't know where that board is.

Latest weird cruiser design. The hammerhead model. I was a big fan of the Hosoi series back in the day, but this is not an ode, and not about functionality, it's about a cool fucking shape of a badass fish. Did you know that there is no record of a hammerhead shark killing a human? Afterthought: hope this doesn't look like a giant ribbed penis. But I guess either way it's impressive...

It like totally clashes!

I cut, shaped and painted this deck for Patrick. My newer, wider shape. Weird combo of black over red paint, cut marks via Kershaw knife, then some sanding. Dig his big azz black Bones wheels, but as an artist, I can't get behind his choice of white trucks. Indy's or not, it doesn't mesh with the dark, somber aesthetic.

But what the fuck do "artists" know?

Enjoy, sir Pat. These set-ups are what I call "therapeutic."

It's 75 degrees out right now and I'm in shorts. What the fuck am I doing inside? Going out for some therapy.

Q.

FREE FALLIN'

Getting up this morning and watching The Bones Brigade documentary recalled one of my fondest Xmas memories. The year was 1989 and the distinctive plastic rattle of one package in particular could mean only one thing: my first skateboard video cassette. Bear in mind that in this pre-interwebs Dark Age I was reduced to watching MTV solely in hopes of catching 5 seconds of skateboarding in an INXS or Tom Petty video. So one could hardly expect 13 year old me to contain my excitement until Christmas morning. 

By the time the 25th rolled around, I had already unwrapped, watched, and rewrapped the Blockhead Splendid Eye Torture video every single day, probably some twenty times. In addition to the amazing skating in early parts from Rick Howard and Steve Berra, its soundtrack taken exclusively from the Dischord catalogue set the basic course for my musical development for decades to come. Now that I think about it, the song in Howard’s part was probably directly responsible for my first musical purchase that soon followed - the Fugazi Margin Walker tape I bought after taking the ferry and making my way up Capitol Hill to Fallout Records and Skateboards.

Nice work ma!

MUTT vs. BULLDOG

Yet another skating bulldog. I just don't get it.

Edited out the "pet psychic", a human-weary but sk8-dog-curious Rodney gets down (and jacked) with mans best friend. Never seen a dog carve before.

LEST YE BE JUDGED...

Pretty silly infographic designed as a mock-up. Fun to do, easy to make stupid shit up as I went along. Should've been titled something different but I had to appeal to a non-skater.

HAPPY HALLOWS EVE

Heh.

FOCUS AFTER FOCUS

YamaodaBroken skateboards are recycled into Iris decks.

What do you do when you break a board? Toss it in the dumpster, save it for your wall collection or paint something on it and make it an art piece? George Rocha takes his broken decks and makes them into decks! How is Rocha resurrecting the dead? Black magic perhaps? Well, he wouldn't go to deep into the actual process of his technique but you will find out that he's a 100% skateboarder and his company, Iris skateboards, is making a deck skateboarding has never seen before.

ESPN.com: Can you explain what is an Iris skateboard?
Rocha: They are cruiser boards made entirely of broken skateboard decks. Skateboards are made with glue and the catalyst in that glue is toxic, so it can't be put into landfills. So you have to do something with them. So I take broken ones and make them into skate-able ones and it just perpetuates the idea of keeping skateboards under your feet.

Are you an Eco-conscious person?
Yes, I am, I'm not like a tree hugger but I do think that we do have a responsibility on this planet not to kill it. So this is like an extension of that.

[+] Enlarge

YamaodaHow many people do you know that skates a recycled board in their own backyard pool they've poured themselves? George Rocha goes frontal.

Is that the inspiration for making these decks?
No, it was more like a bonus. The inspiration is skateboarding itself. There are other people that will take broken boards and make sculptures for example Haroshi who's amazing at his craft, I'm not trying to copy I'm just doing my version of what to do with a broken board.

Where are you getting the broken boards from?
Fortunately I live in San Francisco where a lot of great companies exist here and they allow me to use their returns, places like Deluxe, FTC and NHS. Big thanks to them. I do want to make a note, that every board I use must be broken or cracked, if it's rideable I'm gonna go down to the park and find a kid who wants it.

Is it possible to take a broken Iris boards and make another one?
That's a good question! I can't wait for the day to have a stack of broken Iris boards and glue them together! Just perpetuate the cycle, you know.

What's your work background?
I've been building skate parks and working as a masentry carpenter most of my life. I started making ramps when I was 10 years old. I got hooked on making skate parks first at Freddy Smith's Skate Park call "The Skate Hut" in Providence Road Island. When my friend Sloppy Sam began a company Breaking Ground is when I learned concrete, I basically jumped in and had to learn, that was 1999 or 2000ish. After that I've worked with Grindline, Red and the Dreamland crew, great dude doing great work. Then I decided to stop traveling so much and to try and make my living in SF. I made Thrasher's "Double Rock" park and I make private pools for people.

How long does it take to craft an Iris board?
It varies, I make them by hand so at best I can probably make 10 a week, just me. You can't walk down the street with one of these boards without someone stopping you and being like "what is that?" It's obvious it's made of other boards but don't know how or the story behind it so hopefully when some gets one they will know the story and keep passing it on.

Taken from:

Broken board resurrection

October, 15,

By Tadashi Yamaoda

Yamaoda

You gotta push -wit' cher arm!

 Gotta warm up to the spot.

Ah, that's better. Blair-style wallchomp. Always palm down.

Bremerton still has its secret spots. GET SOME BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

I'M DREAMING...NOT OF TENNIS.

FAR OUT

She grew up down the block from my Old Man. Then I grew up with a torn bikini poster of her in our work room. That's where I got the skateboard bug....

AGAINST THE RAIN

Got rained out before even arriving to Jefferson park at 9am. Headed down to Marginal and pretty much had it to myself for a couple hours. Artsy shots ensued.

"FROM A BUNCH OF PUNKS."

Undoubtedly one of the more banal trends in skateboarding, from an artist's perspective or not, was when everyone became a tagger in the early 90's. It was so rampant amongst street skating, (i.e. condensed in commercial urban areas) that it actually may have been what led to the full-force crack-down on graffiti in general, starting in Los Angeles. SWAT teams burst into the scene (and my front door), molesting and arresting potential felons under the ruse of fighting gangs. The tactic spread like wildfire to law enforcement all around the country as it was considered an effective method of stomping out the most feared and loathed artwork in our national history.

Indeed, you don't see the quality of pieces anymore anywhere on the West Coast. Just shitty tags and throw-ups....ironically, as one saw skaters doing en masse a la '93.

It did make for some good hometown drama though....

 Ah Billy, where are you?

THE CHROME BALL IS IN MY COURT.

Treated self for birthday...wanted something big and fun, roughly like an old Blind shape from days of old. I found that shape in a Black Label series, and Mike at Gravity hooked me up without selling the whole series to some board collector schmuck. The only problem is all the artwork is done by Neil Blender, and now I'm having a hard time thinking about fucking it up. Same reason I can't buy one of these beauties...

And it's Blender!

....couldn't resist.

Vatos Loc(als)

Long hiatus away from the blogs. 3 funerals and a wedding. Seriously heavy.

Not sure how to segway back into posting, but it was so random before, I guess there's no reason it shouldn't continue that way. I am running out of material however....

So why not steal an epic pic?! Skateboarding can make anything cool cooler.

I actually dreamed about a chicano gang last night after having stared for a long while at this superb photo of Stecyk's yesterday. Why a gang, I'm not sure....maybe the various 13's in the background. Ah, what I miss and don't about living in Venice. V13 ese!

POLY-ETHYLENE BUMP.

This bump was across the street from my old pal Ben's apartment in Los Angeles. It's not legit for me to claim the spot in any way, because we never skated it. But I always looked at it from my car door when coming over. Many, many times. There were so many "bumps" in L.A. that were just, well, not bumpish enough, that many got second-guessed and over-looked. L.A. had a lot of "spots" that were just plain fucking hard. You had to earn it. Apparently I underestimated this one. 2 recycling receptacles via Dill, one of my all time favorites, galvanized for me ever since this. This kickflip is the earned last trick in this epic part.

BLEEDING HEART, LIBERALLY SHAPED.

Newest cruiser. Old (my original) shape; acrylic, oil-based paint pen, aerosol, polyurethane coat. (p.s. FOR SALE!)

AND IT WAS GOOD...

(Taken from http://seattleskateparks.org/)

Jefferson park lights will be fixed

Posted by: Matthew Lee Johnston in Jefferson Park, South Seattle

Photo credit: Joel Lee

If you’ve tried to skate the first ever skatepark in Seattle to have lights at nighttime, then you know there is a serious problem: they don’t adequately illuminate the park.  This is in spite of the lighting designer shutting down any questions brought forth during the public meetings with quips like “I am a professional, this is what I do every day.”  There was even a bunch of talk about using LED downlighting that obviously didn’t make it into the final product.  (I almost wonder if this is why the shadows exist…)

It’s great that we finally have a skatepark that is open at night, but it adds a bit of insult to injury to have just enough light to skate, but not enough to actually skate safely.  There are shadows all over the park, and some of them could be dangerous if you weren’t familiar with those areas.  Good luck if it’s your first time skating there.

The good news is that Seattle Parks has gone back to the contractor to get a bid for adding more lights and frankly, for finishing the job they were supposed to do right the first time.  It must be nice to be a contractor with the City of Seattle…if you don’t do it right the first time, they will just pay you again to fix it later.

Anyone want to go in on a contractor’s license?

The schedule for this fix is TBD.  I will post more info as I get it.