It was a typically sub-par Monday afternoon in Renton, the town I like to describe as ‘the armpit of Seattle.’ Renton is plagued with the same depressing gray skies as Seattle, and is close enough for residents to claim themselves as Seattleites, only instead of cool museums or outdoor markets to distract us from the soggy weather, we have motels and Jimi Hendrix’s dead body. In scoping out the “Seattle skate scene,” I hoped to gather some material for my first article in Everything Skateboarding, and headed to my local shop, which had been around since the dawn of skateboarding.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a poser. A poser in the world of journalism, a poser in the world of skateboarding… so much of a poser, I’m not even sure I’m a real human being. So, walking into what is supposed to be a pretty rad skate shop, and asking questions like some sort of fun-sized investigator, I wouldn’t be upset if any old school skaters in the shop didn’t take me seriously. I was ready to take what I could get,  and put aside any pride I had. Despite this mindset, things quickly took a turn for the worse.

Being a resident of Renton myself, I was in no way deterred by the crumbling motel lot I had to park in, or the store’s walkway, which was littered with tools and discarded wood. Such things were expected in this city, especially considering the age of the shop. In front of a poster for Creature Skateboards, I noticed a neon “open” sign hanging in the window as I approached the glass door. Before my entrance, however, it was established that this small business was not welcoming visitors at this time. A 30-some year old man stood in the shop, his shoulder against the door. As I began to push it open, he didn’t budge. With the door open a few inches, pressed against the dude’s shoulder, I hesitated, struck by the bizarre nature of the situation. Still clutching the doorknob, I made uncomfortable eye contact with the man behind the counter, who clearly saw that I, a customer, was attempting to enter his establishment. Perhaps the fact that the inhabitants of this vicinity were literally using physical force to keep me out should have been a clue that my first adventure in journalism wasn’t going to go well. But I had a few shots of espresso in me, and, bright eyed and optimistic, I proceeded to push my way in and introduce myself, disregarding the tension in the air, which mingled with the tropical vape that assaulted my senses.

The man behind the counter not only seemed uninterested, but abrasive. Only after extensive online sleuthing later on did I learn the man’s name (which I’ll change to Mitch), and that he had been working here for several years, most of which were spent rocking a much longer and shaggier hairstyle. Apparently he was not the owner, but “probably who [I] wanted to talk to,” whatever that meant. Great, I thought, I found my guy. Too bad Mitch had “no commentary on skating, or the skate scene, or whatever…” No insight, nothing to say. Looking to the side of the counter, the self-proclaimed bouncer of the store was still loitering, now smoking a joint. He had eyeblack tattooed onto his cheekbones, as well as a sloppy neck tat of the blue handicap symbol. I later wondered whether the tattoo symbolized his own handicap or the handicap he gave to those who crossed him. Mitch aggressively requested that I take no photos of him, noticing the camera hung around my neck, and record no audio either. It was at this point that it occured to me that Mr. Neck Tat perhaps was neither an employee or a customer. And that maybe I had walked into the middle of some nasty business.

Although I have witnessed many a sketchy drug deal during my time in Seattle, the close proximity of this one, as well as the amount of face and neck tattoos involved, made this particular situation seem like I should probably exit. I’m also a small not-at-all-intimidating teenage girl. But lo and behold, Sketchy Dude #3 made an appearance! Entering from a back room I hadn’t noticed, Sketchy Dude #3, hereinafter referred to as to as Sketchy Dude #3, was apparently the only one in the building who had any interest in answering my (mind you, pretty simple) questions. “Scenes?!” he shouted. “Scenes are dead! Scene culture used to be a thing, but not anymore.” At this point I said fuck it, I might as well get something out of this trip so it’s not a complete bust. Sketchy Dude #3, with this creative facial hair and patched hoodie, laid out his disappointment with “all scenes,” blaming new technology and younger kids for “turning everything to blah.” After pressing the 40ish year-old for something more specific than “scenes are dead,” and “people used to fuck some real shit up,” it became clear that his thoughts were just as pessimistic as they were fucked up by whatever he was on. From what I could make out of the slurred, arm-waving gibberish, Sketchy Dude #3 believed that the skate scene across the nation was on the decline. I had obviously heard this rhetoric before–mainly from middle aged men like him. And his resentment towards the new scene seemed to register with Mitch and Neck Tat, who were nodding and muttering in the corner. I guess they, too, were angry with how skating has progressed, or not progressed, in the Pacific Northwest.

I left the shop furious that nobody had even listened to my questions, let alone provided me with insight into the Seattle skate scene or how it has evolved. This place was supposed to be cool! Vintage decks lined their ceiling and ‘70s era ads and band posters hung above an old wood fireplace. But instead of meeting people of equal charm or character, I was rudely shut down and denied the basic courtesy and service that I would expect from any decent shop. I was pissed. But as I left the shop, I passed by Mitch’s car, littered with old skate stickers, a crushed PBR can teetering on the roof. It was a final visual of the sad shop that I had invested too much faith in. As upset as I was, perhaps I was naive to expect award-winning customer service at such an old-school shop. These original shops often cater towards an older crowd, who surely exist in a realm of skateboarding that is much different than how it is now.

 

 

While old-school skaters used to trespass into empty pools, tear it up, and carry an often anarcheal message of ‘fuck the man,’ younger skaters are growing up in a generation where the sport is being used to further more refined, even political, purposes. Skateboarding has become vastly more diverse, and skating organizations pushing everything from autism awareness, Native representation, and women’s empowerment, continue to succeed in the industry. Hell, “Skate Like a Girl” was founded here in Seattle! But this inclusion has not always existed in skateboarding, and it makes sense that the older generation of skating feels as though their scene has moved away from its original roots.

The conflict between local old-school shops and upscale, more consumer-based skate shops is therefore both a cause and effect of the generational gap that exists in skateboarding. I often agree with the complaints against the gentrification of local shops–I hate capitalist mass-produced bullshit just as much as the next guy. However, while these mainstream mall-shops (cough*Zumiez*cough) steal business from your local store, at least they’re actually encouraging more kids to skate. Ironically, I had actually visited a Zumiez that same day–I popped in for a Christmas gift, and was immediately met with smiling faces. When he was done helping some 8 year old pick out his first skateboard, a guy about my age asked if I had any questions or if I wanted to check out any boards. Call them kiss-ups or douchebags, but at least these chains aren’t too caught up with how underground, longstanding, or badass they are to treat their customers right and actually help them become better skaters. Local shops are being overrun because chains don’t care if posers like me walk in–they’re not going to scoff at mini-van-driving moms buying a board for their kids, or nerdy-looking high schoolers trying to skate for the first time. And they’re DEFINITELY not going to let clients walk in on their drug deals (pretty sure Zumiez employees are trained to buy their drugs in the food court).

The uninviting atmosphere festering in the Renton shop was not only off-putting, but incredibly self-indulgent. Being “too cool for school” is one thing, but being too cool for customers is quite another. Why do you even have an “open” sign if you’re just going to sit around smoking weed and being an asshole to kids? No wonder malls are kicking your ass–you have the worst business model ever.

 

 

At the end of the day, though, this attitude is just bad for skating. Mitch, Neck Tat, and Sketchy Dude #3 work at a shop which has a sole purpose of facilitating the success of other skaters, and if they actually loved skating, they would be passionate about encouraging people, even the most cringe-worthy of amateurs, to be better skaters. And if they’re not, then maybe they’re the bigger posers. I’m most definitely biased, but I think my generation understands the importance of this openness and inclusivity. The scene, especially in Seattle, skates on, even if these old geezers aren’t on board.

 

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Contests are weak. I can’t even be bothered to go to them anymore, let alone support them. Any why should I? Why should I support an event where only a fraction of the attendees are skating, and only a tiny handful of those go home as “winners”? No. I don’t want any part of those sorts of shenanigans. Everyone should be skating, all the time. Everyone should be a “winner”.

What I want to see, more than anything else, are free, all-inclusive, fun-for-everyone, grassroots skate events where everybody participates, and everyone has fun. And I want to see millions of ‘em, every week, all over the country.

We’re here to help that along. We’re gonna show you how easy it can be, and how it’s done.

 

From my first-ever grassroots skate event, where I played the role of organizer and host, left to right: Adam Richards coming down the line; the crew at Eldorado park; the flyer; Robert Rodriguez, 360 Boneless into the bowl at Eldorado Park.

 

Why…?

There are lots of reasons. The adventure of it? Trying something new? Meeting new people, and making new friends? A great road-tripping excuse? Getting sponsored? Yes. It happens. Becoming an industry power player? Don’t laugh: a lot of our current industry heads actually started out as humble ramp owners and grassroots event organizers. Hell, the MESS (MidEast Skateboard Series) alone spawned about half of our industry bigwigs, for pete’s sakes. And that was just one contest series.

But by far, “having fun” is the biggest and the best initiative. If that’s all you ever get out of it, then it’s still way worth it.

 

“The MESS wasn’t about contests. Contests were a way to get ourselves organized, push each other, and get free stuff. The MESS was a way for us to take skateboarding in our own direction.”

           – Britt Parrot, from The Skateboarder’s Journal Lives On Board

 

The Biggest Risk

Believe it or not (you won’t), I’m pretty shy by nature. When I started doing events, my biggest fear was that nobody would show up, and I’d be a huge loser. I think that’s a pretty universal fear, and the universal result is that nobody ever does anything. If people could find the inner strength to put that fear aside, if only for a moment or two, then they’d probably accomplish some really cool stuff. I know I did. Getting over your own uncomfortable insecurities is a totally redeeming reward, all by itself.

If you’re afraid of the same sort of stuff that I was worried about, well, don’t worry. If I can do it, then you can do it too.

 

Photos from my first-ever Phoenix CitySkate event, left to right: Jo Nathan, Alex Dunning, and Andrew Borden; the flyer; the prize packs that we gave to every participant that showed up; the crew; drone shot of the crew heading downtown, photo by Jessie Pena. 

 

 

Get Creative, and Get Weird

What sounds like fun? A backyard ramp session? A street-skating session at the local schoolyard? A BBQ at the local skatepark? A bank/ditch excursion? A longboard cruise through downtown? A flatland/freestyle gathering? Ever wanted to try slalom? (It’s kinda fun!) Think outside the box, and don’t be afraid to do something different. Variety is the spice of life. So, live it up.

I’m a pretty lucky guy. I’ve lived a pretty good life. I’ve done all of the above at some time or another. But I wouldn’t have done any of it, without taking a little bit of initiative.

 

Pick A Venue

Don’t ask. Just do it. “It’s easier to apologize than it is to ask for permission”; that’s a really smart piece of advice right there. Okay, fine: if it’s a private, backyard ramp, then definitely ask for permission. Otherwise, go rogue and make it all way easier on yourself. Skateparks, schoolyards, cityscapes… these things are public domain. Be respectful, keep it tidy, clean up after yourselves, and keep it hush-hush, and you should be just fine.

 

Plan An Itinerary

Having a solid plan is the key to legitimacy. You don’t want to half-ass that part. “Meet at the park at 11, and bring some brats and beers” is a great start. Or, “meet at the ditch at 9 am, and bring a broom”. Don’t be shy about asking everyone to pitch in and contribute something to the cause. If they’re not total dicks, then they’ll probably be really happy to help. What kind of jerk hates having a good time…? Nobody I know.

 

Sometimes, I get super ambitious and plan two events, back to back…

 

How Much Does It Cost?

That’s always the big question. People think it costs hundreds or thousands of dollars to put on an event. That’s just not true; money isn’t as important as everyone thinks it is. Honestly? Some of the best events I’ve ever attended (or organized) have either been totally free, or pretty damned inexpensive. It’s really not about getting spendy. It’s all about having fun.

The weekly skate jams I used to host in Concord, New Hampshire way back in the ‘90s started out as free events; we’d simply get together every Friday night, skate the stuff at the schoolyard, and that was that.

Once I became a company owner and had a few bucks in my pocket, I bought a used pickup (for $500 from my intern), and built legitimate obstacles. I think I had about a grand in the whole project. But we did those skate jams week in and week out for almost ten years straight. That’s a damn good return on investment, right there. I skated about half my life away at those things. Best times I’ve ever had, for sure.

The events I do these days are still pretty cheap. I print off flyers at FedEx Office; that might cost me twenty bucks or so (at the most). I might buy a train ticket or a bus pass for the longboard cruises ($2), and buy myself lunch at the after party ($20?). Maybe a bunch of cheap plastic cups to use as slalom cones ($3 or so).

In the last three years, I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than $50 on organizing and/or hosting one of these events. It’s not nearly as expensive as you might think it would be.

 

Invite Everybody

Don’t be a douche. Don’t be a part of some weak cool-club clique. Invite everybody. Share the love. Trust me: you’ll get the love back, fer sure. You get what you give. So give it up, buddy.

 

…sometimes, I plan two for the same day. Phoenix participated in Michael Brooke’s “Roll For Peace” event by planning a morning and an evening roll, so everybody could be accommodated and nobody would have to miss out.

 

The Flyers

Digital media is a Godsend, and computers are easier to use than ever. You could probably do it even better than I can, and make a really catchy presentation. But there’s still a certain charm in the old-fashioned, hand-drawn flyer. Hell, even a photocopied scribble still works wonders. Try it. It’s not that hard to do. Take it to your mom’s office, and photocopy a zillion of ’em. Then, give them to everybody and hang them up everywhere.

As you can see, I put a lot of time, energy, and work into my flyers. It’s a mega creative outlet, and a labor of love that pays off. When Jim Gray messages you on Facebook and tells you how much he loves your flyer-style, you’ve sort of arrived.

 

Promote, Promote, Promote

Here’s a tip: social media is not the end-all and be-all of promotion. I did an interesting experiment last year with my events, and it taught me a lot. Half of my events, I promoted via skate shops and social media. The other half, I promoted via social media only.

The events where I only used social media attracted half the attendance, sometimes a quarter, compared to the shop-and-social-media-promoted events.

The lesson? Get your local shop involved. They’ll love ya for it. And you’ll get the love right back at ya.

 

The Prize Packs

At my events, everybody gets a prize. Just for showing up. Much like party favors, it’s a small token of appreciation for participating, and it’s super sweet. Be a good host. Hook everybody up, and thank them for coming.

They don’t have to be expensive. Michael [Brooke, at Concrete Wave Magazine] sent me boxes of mags to give away. A lot of companies and shops gave me stickers. Now, what kind of skater hates magazines and stickers?

Nobody, that’s who. The prize packs were really popular, and a super big hit. And best of all: they didn’t cost me a single dime.

 

The 2017 Weekend at The Wedge event saw heavy hitters (such as famed skateboard collector Daymond Dodge, and the illustrious Natalie Krishna Das) in attendance, mixing it up with the locals. Everyone had a blast. That’s the whole point.

 

Sponsors

Obviously, prize packs mean sponsors. Any skateboard company with a teeny fraction of a tiny brain should be more than happy to at least kick down a handful of stickers; if they’re not, then they’re not very bright. After all, they’re getting great, on-the-ground grassroots promotion and excellent PR (that’s short for “public relations”) out of it.

Many companies will even toss in some legit prizes. Free product, stuff like that. Have a raffle, or a mini product toss. Giving the product away to some kid that really needs it to keep on skating is also a really nice touch. If you’re super cool about everything, the sponsors may even kick in a little “thank you” present for the organizer. That’s a nice perk. Make sure you send them a thank you note, if they do. Class still counts in this world.

Don’t be shy at all about contacting these folks. You’re actually doing them a really big favor by inviting them along. These brands can’t be everywhere, all the time. Believe it or not, brands actually look to kids like us… well, kids like you… to help them promote their brands. Remember that.

If they decide to send along one of their regional sales reps to attend the event, and do a little bit of on-site promotion? Then, even better.

 

Go Full Swank

I like to put a lot of style spin into my events. Every time I do a longboard cruise, I plan a nice lunch at a swanky restaurant somewhere. Being a middle-aged adult with lots of middle-aged adult friends, we can do that sort of stuff because we have the means to do it. But kids can do it too, with a little bit of imagination and creativity. Your local skatepark is probably in a city park, with grills and stuff. Permanently “borrow” twenty bucks from your parents, raid the pantry for some fixin’s, grab that bag of charcoal out of the garage, steal a basting brush from your mom’s junk drawer, make yourself some marinade (you can find a great recipe in this month’s The Paupered Culinarian segment), and impress your friends with the best hot dogs ever. If your parents are supportive, they might even help. Everybody loves an ambitious kid, right?

Maybe if your local skate shop is cool enough, they’ll help you out with this sort of swank too. I’ve personally spent many an afternoon at the skatepark, flipping burgers and toasting buns. That’s kinda what skate shops are for, right…? To help the kids along, and bring them up right?

 

A Life Well Lived Deserves To Be Documented

Share the fun. Take lots of photos with your crappy camera, just like I do. Post ‘em up all over your social media. Send some in to Everything Skateboarding, and write a little article to go with ‘em. Let everyone know: if they weren’t there, then they missed out in a major way. Spread the stoke. Live life well, and live it up right. Savor the memories, and then do it all over again.

 

 

 

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This is the way ‘zines are supposed to be. They show up  in the mail, bruised and broken from being force-fed through the US Postal Service delivery machinations. I’m not really sure how I got so lucky, and I don’t really care (although I’m almost certain that Lew Ross had something to do with it); I’m just glad that it arrived in my mailbox and made my day. The stamp is on the back page, my address hastily hand-scrawled in the center, and the cover is torn in the corner. It’s taped shut, but it’s still falling apart everywhere (because unlike most glossy magazines, there’s not a single staple in sight holding the pages together).

This is Do-It-Yourself publishing, as it was meant to be. This is Neverwas Skateboarding.

 

 

Hailing from America’s Breadbasket of Overland Park, Kansas, Neverwas is a serious read. Sixteen half-size pages of insights, stories, philosophies, and observations from a clearly aging skate demographic, this one lacks the finely honed photography of a “real magazine”, but more than makes up for it in raw, uncensored, brain-bruising ideas.

 

“I am humbled to be able to share the words in this ‘zine with you. The following articles show a skater’s birth. They show a skater’s discipline. They show a skater’s morals, and a skater’s commitment to continue to worship at the great concrete altar. I am also humbled to continue to help provide a place for all skaters of all disciplines to engage in an exchange of ideas.”

 

There’s a consistent theme here. The “official” theme of this installment is “The Where We Are” issue, but the de-facto theme is one of staying the course, even when all the odds are stacked up square against you. It’s a study of defiant determination, a neverending quest to find a quiet joy and a tranquil peace of mind through the physical torture-chamber of skateboarding. There’s a certain joy to be found here, of course. That joy is called “prevailing”.

I’m not sure if I got all the writers right. Anarchic tendencies yield incomplete credit sometimes. But looking at the photos, I’m guessing that the guys responsible for this might well be Brian Czarski, Kenny Harrison, Jim Lee, Chris Sedition, and a must-read interview with Jason Renn of the South Austin Curb Services crew. You probably don’t have a crew like this in your hometown, but take it from me: you need one. Now.

 

Somehow, I got the distinct impression that Neverwas is either influenced by, or derived from, the old Luchaskate ‘zine. At Luchaskate, they (apparently) had a tradition of running a picture of Chad Crawford in every issue. Being a sucker for tradition myself, I took to Facebook, found the same exact photo, and stole it so that I could include it in this article. “Just remember: he rips, and so do you”.

 

If you’d like your own copy of Neverwas Skateboarding (and trust me, you do), send a couple bucks to 11325 Marty Street, Overland Park, Kansas, 66210. Tell ’em that Everything Skateboarding sent you; maybe they’ll be impressed enough to let me write a story for them someday.

 

 

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When I was summoned to judge the most recent stop of the Collegiate Skate Tour in Astoria, Queens this past Fall, I was fortunate to do so alongside Fairweather Skateboards’ Bryan Davis. In getting to know each other before the heavy afternoon of shredding that we were about to witness, he introduced me to his brand and told me to look out for a couple of his riders that were seeking the podium that day. Judging by tricks that the likes of Rene Searles and Caleb Yuan threw down, it was clear that Davis had some talent on the side of team Fairweather.

Through my efforts to write a recap of the event, I took a deeper look into Fairweather SB. Finding a considerable social media following for an independent brand in New York and seeing some praiseworthy editorial reviewing some of their graphics, I was intrigued. In taking things a step further and interviewing Davis himself, I would come to learn that the Fairweather Skateboards is actually a group effort that uses their combined competencies to create the finished decks we see in the walls of shops across the greatest city in the world. Take a look:

 

Team rider Caleb Yuan showing the college students what a textbook backside 180 to backward nosegrind (or switch 5-0) looks like. Photo: Amy Torres.

 

Based on how freezing and snowy it’s been in the Northeast lately, NYC weather is anything but fair for a good part of the year. That being said, where does the name Fairweather come from?

Fairweather came from a group of friends that got together to skate (at first, only). Sort of a Fairweather Friend thing… We met at KCDC’s ramp on weekends and evenings (oddly enough, during crappiest of weather).

 

It seems like having five different owners of the company could get a bit tricky, especially given the size of a small independent skateboard company. How do you guys find a happy medium?

This is true, we have 5 owners. Basically, we all put in a reasonable amount of money to get samples from various manufacturers and to produce a run of decks for us, at first. We sold some to the local supporting shops and reinvested. Back to the owners, 2 are silent partners, 2 others help with web and graphic production and I handle Social Media, Sales and Inventory. It is basically a 3 man crew to make it work. We all have full-time jobs so things move slow sometimes.

 

Tensions running high behind the judges table at the NYC stop of the Collegiate Skate Tour. Photo by Amy Torres.

 

I know you’ve already spoken on many of the Fairweather graphics over the years on NY Skateboarding but are there any special boards to have come out since 2015? Any stories behind those ones?

We try to have a lot of fun with the graphics and some examples would be the Ooh Baby I like it raw graphic Wu-tang’s ODB as Jesus eating Sushi. It was made to look like some clip-art MS Paint production level. Another one that comes to mind is a complete throwback to the old Vintage Valterra Dragon graphic. Lately we are focusing on a few 2 deck mini-series that play off each other and highlight an artist or work together.

 

You guys got a gleaming review in the Ripped Laces “Best Boards of 2016” piece. What’s it like to see your care for quality, empowered art direction recognized and celebrated?

Blown away and flattering! It was wild to see that come out and be stacked against those heavy, heavy hitters. We have Jurgen Koch to thank for the care, attention for detail and high quality art production. The Fairweather Staff does get together (the 3 of us, Ha’) Rob Russell being the 3rd, to brainstorm on graphics, concepts and new products. With that, we hope to not let you down and keep getting better & better at it.

 

How have you guys built a community of riders that ride your boards in a city where there are so many other boards available to them?

We are not trying to take over the world but I feel there is room for Fairweather to have a place in this industry. We built a network of NYC shops that have supported the product since day one, so we are grateful for that. We also have a few team riders that help to push the product and create that presents so a big thanks to them – Jesse McEneaney, Rene Searles and more recently Caleb Yuan. Personally, I am out skating with people as often as I can. I also try and acknowledge any supporter of the company. This could be through an introduction & thanks or a thank you via Instagram post (be sure to check from time to time). If someone out there is skating hard on a deck that has had some better days I usually give them my deck at the end of my session. Maybe the next deck they get will be a Fairweather but I am glad to do it regardless of the results.

 

See more of Fairweather at www.fairweatherskateboards.com

 

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Hey, Carson! Bud here from Everything Skateboarding. How you doin’ today? Are you ready to answer a few questions…?

Howdy there Bud! I’m doing great! Thanks for having me apart of Everything Skateboarding. Hit me with the questions, dude!

First up: what’s your position at the company?

I’m the owner and artist for Taffy Boards, Apparel and Art.

How’d you get into skating? How long have you been doing it? What kind of stuff do you like to rip?

I first got interested in skateboarding when I was really young. I had just moved to Arizona and had noticed a lot of kids skateboarding. Plus, there were a lot more skateparks around compared to where I had lived previously in Tennessee. It looked like loads of fun and since then, I have been thrashin’ and cruisin’ off on and on for fun! I mainly like to skate the streets as well as skateparks. I’m always on the look out for a tasty manny pad, ledge, or stair set!

How long has the company been around? What year was it started?

I started the company in July of 2017.

 

 

Here’s the most important question, right here: Why did you decide to start a small company? What was missing in the marketplace that made you ultimately say to yourselves, “Damn, man! We need to get up, get our asses going, and do this ourselves!”…?

I decided to start the company because I wanted to combine my love for art and skateboarding together. I had been doing a little bit of freelance art for local brands and skate companies for the past couple of years. But, I realized that I didn’t want to try and get my foot in the door of companies so I could design their decks or shirts for them. I wanted to be able to design my own decks, clothing, and stickers with my own ideas in a lowbrow art style. I aim to contribute a funny and wacky side to skateboarding with the graphics I make for Taffy!

Who’s on the team (if you have one), and why did you pick those guys to represent your product/brand?

I don’t have anyone on the team as of right now. However, I’m in the process of getting some local shredders to join the Taffy Skate Crew soon! I’m a pretty busy duder with school and work, so I can’t always put as much time into the company as I want. But I’m working on the company whenever I can!

What are the goals of The Company? Rock star status? International distribution? World domination? Corporate alliances, aquisitions, and mergers? Hookers and Blow?

The goal of the company is to keep expanding and making an impact in the local skate scene and beyond it as well. I want to collaborate with other artists and skaters as well as spread Taffy Boards, Apparel and Art in a lot skate shops across the U.S. Getting a bunch of young riders to be apart of the team is also a big goal of mine!

Do you, or would you, sell direct-to-consumer? If so, do you have an MSRP pricing structure to protect the retailers?

That is all I do right now is sell direct to consumer. I usually sell off of my website (Taffylife.com) and at art shows and festivals.

Are your boards in shops? If so, which ones?

I have boards and shirts in the Sk8 Haus which is in Surprise, AZ. I am trying to get into some more shops though.

 

 

Have any distributors picked you up yet?

No, not yet! I haven’t focused on it thus far but I am definitely interested and have made it a goal of mine for the near future!

Have you advertised in any magazines lately? If so, how and why did you pick those mags…?

I had an artist profile spread in Concrete Wave Magazine. It includes a bunch of my illustrations as well as board designs I have done for Taffy. It’s a magazine I’d get when I would visit skate/surf shops in California growing up. I was beyond stoked and honored when I got the opportunity from you to do a showcase of work as well as a short bio of myself and the company!

How crappy are my questions? Is there anything that I forgot to ask, that you’d like to talk about? Famous last words, perhaps…?

Pshhh, these aren’t crappy at all! These questions are awesome Bud. Thanks a lot for having me apart of this month’s magazine! I’m working on new shirt designs, art, and boards, so stay tooned!

Ya’ll can follow what I’m up to @taffy.life and @carsonsmithart on Instagram!

 

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It’s 2am on a hot and humid Sunday morning. The house just fell silent less than an hour ago. Until then, the downstairs of this grand old Victorian had seen a steady parade of skaters coming to and fro, and of projects being attended to that have to be held to their various deadlines. But now, all is quiet. The skaters have either turned in for the night, or bailed for an impromptu midnight session somewhere. And just under my ass, in the basement of this stately old house with cathedral ceilings and heavy, aged oak sliding doors sits a 600-ton skateboard press, quietly crushing the next batch of blanks that will be Fickle Skateboards’ next round of prototype decks.

If you read Kilwag’s series in Concrete Wave Mag, then you’ll certainly know that most skateboard companies… maybe “virtually all skateboard companies” would be far more accurate… all follow the same modus operandi. Some dude wants to start a business. An art direction is laid down, a few neato gimmicks are thought up, and some sort of skateboard superstar team is employed and/or exploited to endorse it. Then, somebody calls up some anonymous woodshop somewhere, and orders a bunch of product. That’s right kids: 99.999% of all skateboard “companies” don’t actually make a damned thing. Instead, the tedious task of actually making the product is usually outsourced to some little Chinese dude on the other side of the pond that has probably, most likely, never skated a day in his entire life. And that’s just the way it goes. That’s why most of us in the know, in the industry, call these businesses “skateboard peddlers” or “skateboard marketers”, not what the average kid on the street usually refers to as a “skateboard company”.

 

Left to right: The press; the workshop at night; the man with the plan, Lew Ross. Photos by Aaron Ross.

 

Fickle actually started out in the very same manner. Call woodshop, send graphics, get the boards in, and turn ‘em around for some fast cash. But only a year into the process, the same wrench in the cogs that derails so many other small start-up “skateboard companies” began to muck up Fickle’s plans as well. Skateboard woodshops, after all, do have a nasty tendency of being a little bit hard to work with, and a whole lot of shady and unreliable. Fickle’s woodshop was no different. The first time that I met Lew Ross, the guy behind Fickle, he told me that something like 30% of his boards would arrive, up to par. Which meant that an astounding 70% of his decks would show up in a subpar state. Colors being not what they had specified. Cracks and putty marks in the wood. Gaping glue lines. Holes drilled everywhere but where they should’ve been. Knots and fissures in the face plys. Lews theory was that, even though he was one of the bigger-volume customers for this woodshop… he was still getting what were essentially “seconds” (rejects), yet still being charged for prime grade wood. Somehow, somewhere, there just had to be a better way.

 

“New board brands, take note: There is no incentive for wood
factories, no matter how cool they may seem on the phone, to tell you the truth about what kind of wood you’ll get, or when you’ll get it…”

– Lew Ross

 

When Lew and I first met, Lew was at the very beginning of the process of grappling with what to do next. The woodshop wasn’t cooperating, that was for damned sure. But what’s the alternative? Move to another less-than-upright woodshop, and blindly hope and pray beyond hope and prayer for the best? Or take matters into your own hands, and have a go at pressing your own boards, in your own presses? Clearly, the latter would pose a very clear and present risk: Setting up a fully functioning woodshop is in no way, shape, or form, “easy”. On the other hand: It’s definitely not impossible. Lots of guys- from Paul Schmitt, all the way to Danny Creadon- have done it, and done it successfully. And in Danny’s case, done it on a small (read: affordable) enough scale to make it a practical proposition for most ambitious skaters. “Ambitious” being the key word here. If Lew was gonna go with the woodshop, he was gonna have to go all the way, and make it work out come hell or high holy water. Because once he started down that road, there’d just be no going back. The financial commitment alone could sink a guy real quick. Never mind the time and struggle that such an experiment would surely require. Add to that, that Lew’s not an engineer in any way, shape, or form (he’s actually an ordained minister in the Christian church), and you can see right away that this could be a journey fraught with all sorts of risks and uncertainties.

 

Lew in the woodshop, doing what he does best

 

Thankfully for skateboarding, we’ve been blessed with a certain amount of ancestral knowledge from highly articulate and enlightened sources. One of those being Mr. Craig R. Stecyk the 3rd. His mantra- that “an unsure thing beats a sure thing every time”- certainly held true thirty years ago when he first said it. And thankfully for the rest of us, it still holds true today. If order comes from chaos, then chaos must be a pretty damn good place to start. The basement of Lew’s house was pretty damned chaotic, so it was decreed that this is where the prototype woodshop would be constructed. Aged wiring was ripped out and replaced with industrial-grade stock. Piles of random stuff were cleared aside for a climate-controlled wood storage room. Stone walls were cleaned and painted over with two-part epoxy for a silkscreening shop… because if you’re gonna go legit, you might as well go all the way, right? Various glues were assessed and compared. And finally, the first pallets of skateboard-grade maple veneer arrived, partitioned, and stored away to acclimate to the ambient environment. Lew might not have known what the hell he was doing. But he sure as heck wasn’t screwing around, either.

 

“Things that are healthy, grow…”

– Lew Ross’ guiding principle of business

 

While the wood sat and did its acclimating bit, another parallel project unfolded. Just five miles away from where my ass sits, is the Fickle Conceptual Corporate Headquarters. Located in Over-The-Rhine in Cincinnati’s old industrial district, the Fickle HQ is where the “training facility” and future production center are located. It’s an old, concrete-block warehouse with leaky walls, old wooden rafters, and ample sky lighting… but it’s got charm, it’s got history, and it’s gigantic, so it works uniquely well for the purpose. And the mini-ramp that’s on-site is an absolute dream to skate. About 3’ 9”’ tall, and 21’ wide with 7.5’ transitions, and a spine that leads out to what will soon be the street area. It’s actually a salvaged vert ramp that was built to survive an Armageddon, and it is solid as a rock. I died a little bit skating it yesterday, and my knees are quietly revolting… but it was well worth the toil and the toll. There just aren’t many mini-ramps anywhere that can stand this strong, and skate this smoothly. You can trust me on this, because we all know that I’ve spent a lifetime looking for one.

Back in the basement a few hours later, I watched Lew load up another board into the press. It’s really quite an experience, seeing a skateboard being born. Lew only uses about 500 gallons of glue on each deck, because profits aren’t really a priority… but dammit, building a tank-proof skateboard sure is. Then, he slides it into his custom-crafted concrete molds, and sets the cranks of his press into motion. He wrestles with the cranks for a half-hour or so, all that excess glue spurts out all over the place, and then the battle’s over. Twelve hours or so later… Lew loves long press times almost as much as he loves slathering glue everywhere… the blank emerges, and is again left to acclimate and cure for several days before it’s sent to the band saw and the laminate trimmers. Every single deck is cut, shaped, drilled, and finished by skaters that know what they’re doing, and that make every single thing as if they were gonna ride it themselves. This is in no way a mass-production sort of deal. Rather, it’s an evolving process of carefully crafting singular pieces of art for an excessively demanding demographic.

 

Weston Vickers, blunt to fakie, Dry Ridge, Kentucky.

 

A good example of an “excessively demanding demographic” would be the Fickle team. Which is populated by local rippers like Weston Vickers, Ben Osborne, Native Nik, Aaron Ross (Lew’s son), Lew Himself, and Tennessee transplant Josh Viles. Guys that you haven’t heard of (yet)… but wait a minute, because you just did. The biggest trademark of Team Fickle is that they’re genuinely nice guys… that much is apparent, right from the first meeting… that make a habit of slaying whatever gnarly-ass terrain gets in their way. Bigger is always better, and these kids don’t play around. Yesterday, I got the fun (and rare) opportunity to spend some quality time with Viles, and drop trick ideas into his head while he methodically tore apart a vert wall over at the former Sessions that had to have been 12’ tall, with 5’ of vert. I got on top of it, looked down into its belly, and immediately got a little bit tummy-tied, because that thing was just a whole lotta scary. So Viles whips out a whole bag of Crailslides (both ways), Madonnas, and 5-0s to fakie (on my suggestion, that one). It’s not every day that I see a whole skatepark rise to its feet, but I got to see it yesterday when Viles bagged that one. Everybody on the team is just like that, too. You slap yourself silly in disbelief when you’re skating with this crew, so you’d better just get used to it. My head hurts. But it kicks ass. It’s inspiring. And there’s just not enough “inspiring” in skateboarding these days.

“Initiative” is a great concept that just isn’t embraced enough these days. Most skaters act like primadonna little bitches that seem to expect every great thing in life to be hand-delivered to them on a silver platter. Well, skateboarding just doesn’t work like that, kiddies. What we have here is a paradigm shift of the highest order, and everything else just looks a little bit lazy and stale in comparison. The trick to getting it done, and done right, is getting your hands dirty and not accepting your own self-imposed limitations. If Lew and Crew have shown us anything at all, it’s that everything you want and need are right there in front of you, plump and ripe for the picking. All you’ve gotta do is stand up, stand tall, and go after it. The trick to getting on the winning program is as easy and simple as investing, and believing, in yourself.

 

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Billy Ruff, Sadlands, Los Angeles, California, circa 1979:

Billy Ruff attempts an impossible drop-in at a popular public park which was frequented by skaters such as fellow G&S team rider, Neil Blender.

 

Brad Bowman, Lakewood skatepark, California, circa 1978:

Brad Bowman was one of a multitude of top skaters who frequented the skatepark and honed their skills in one of the most popular skateparks of the time.

 

Jeff Phillips, Kona skatepark, Florida, May 1984:

Hailing from Texas, Jeff Phillips ripped every terrain and locale, and was a highly respected skater for his smooth and progressive skate style.

 

La Costa, California MG car commercial, 1977:

From left to right is Mark Bowden, Bryan Beardsley, and Ty Page. The photo captures the three California Free Former team riders jumping an MG sports car during practice for a commercial for the car company.

 

 

Micke Alba, random hotel shenanigans, 1978:

Traveling on the road for various skate contests and events often left skaters with little outlet for their high energy when back at the hotels. Micke Alba performs some skate fun here on one of the hotel beds, but the antics often turned more destructive in the quest for more fun when not skating.

 

Neil Blender, hotel parking lot invert in Virginia Beach, Virginia, June 1985:

During the 1985 Mt. Trashmore contest in Virginia Beach, we had lots of time with little to do before and after the contest, and Neil found some fun on a parking stop outside the hotel room.

 

 

Robin Logan, Del Mar skatepark, California, February 1979:

Robin Logan was one of the top female skaters of the time, and this was from a session for an ad for a portable Walkman-type music player that was fitted on the chest and versatile for all types of action sports.

 

 

Tony Hawk, Mt. Trashmore, Virginia Beach, Virginia, June 1985:

Tony Hawk was already one of the top, most winning skaters of all time, and was a force to be reckoned with at this local Virginia Beach skatepark built on top of an old trash dump (hence the name).

 

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Just swept the 2017 World Championships in all disciplines – Giant Slalom, Hybrid, and Tight. Eight time in a row World Champion. Impressive facial hair. Totally not a dick. What else can you say about Joe McLaren? He’s an unstoppable force in slalom skateboarding.

I met Joe, like, 15 years ago, when he was just a pup. Over the years I’ve run into him at many races, and I had the pleasure of working with him as a slalom instructor at Woodward awhile back. I will say two definitive things about him: he goes really f’n fast, and he is not douchey. Let’s face it, I’m a fat hack of a skateboarder at best. And I can be annoying. No, really, I can. But Joe has always been very cordial to me, never dismissive, free to offer advice, or trade insults. Did I mention he goes real fast too? And he’s like that with everyone. After all the success, you kinda expect a big head and all that, but it really ain’t there. Look, we’re not going on a couples getaway anytime soon, but I’m really not blowin’ smoke here – he’s really an okay guy.

Okay, ass kissing aside, let’s get this interview goin’:

 

It doesn’t matter what Joe does- he always rips at it.

 

Okay – regular, goofy? How long skating? Vert? DH? Ramp?

Regular. I skate everything – slalom (obviously since that’s the reason you’re even giving me the time of day), vert, street, pools, bowls, ditches, downhill – you name it and I’ll skate it! I started skating about 21 years go at the age of 3. It started just messing around in front of the house. I quickly made my way to skateparks and that’s when I really fell in love. In 2002 I met Chris Barker at the skatepark and he introduced us (me , my dad, and my brother) to slalom and took us under his wing.

What’s with the slip ons? How do you race in those?

I strayed away from the slip ons a few years back. But I just love super basic shoes like that that have tons of board feel. When I did ride slip ons though I would always buy them a little small so that they would stay on.

Current race rigs?

I’m current ride my pro model Sk8kings board for tight and hybrid and a Sk8kings Maximus for GS. Both boards have Sk8kings Turbo wheels, Radikal Trucks, Venom Bushings, and oust bearings. Set up to grip and drive out of every turn!!

Favorite type of pie?

Warm apple pie with a scoop of ice cream on the side. But it all honestly I would choose my mom’s cheesecake over pie any day. She makes the world’s best cheesecake – and I’m not just saying that because I’m her son. Ask anyone would has ever tried it they will tell you it’s changed their life. I’ll send some out to you Fatboy.

 

The lighter side of Joe Mac, featuring Maria Carrasco, Richy Carrassco, and Joe’s mom. I’ll let you figure out who’s who.

 

Purely speculation of course, but who do you think would be the better kisser, Richy or Maria Carrasco? Sure, Maria is extremely pretty, but Richy has those full lips.

At first thought you would obviously choose Maria. She is far more beautiful (sorry Richy), extremely sweet, I imagine it would be a fair more “gentle” experience. Richy does have the full lips. The other thing you have to think is he would always have some tasty food on his breath from his last meal/snack, which probably wasn’t any longer than a half hour ago, so it’s still fresh.

If you see don’t your opponent in your peripheral vision, do you back off a little? Or do you always just go balls out?

I definitely try to race smart and not blow my load if I don’t need to. Unfortunately I have had a lot of injuries over the year and have a really bad back. So that sometimes limits the amount of runs I have in me.

 

These two photos from the 2014 Nationals show the sort of intensity it takes (left) to manhandle a burly slalom course (right). You don’t become a multi-time world champion without it.

 

What was the 100 cone challenge like? Do you just get in a zone and wail?

The 100 cone challenge is crazy, it’s a totally different experience. You get into a groove there you are just going with the rhythm and looking for the centers. It’s interesting because you don’t really have time to think. It’s almost like you temporarily black out and then you’re riding away from the finish line.

Since you’ve raced all over the world, what was your favorite city? What was your favorite race? Favorite local food?

Czech, Czech, and Czech. Czech has been by far my favorite place. The city is extremely beautiful and fun. Cool bars and crazy good food!! The races there have always been amazing. They really go above and beyond to have an outstanding race…. and hey you can’t complain about beer trucks on the hill.

Other than me, are you intimidated by any other racers? Or do you know you’re just gonna school them all?

I don’t know if intimated would be the word I would use, but I definitely have a lot of respect for a lot of racers. There are many racers that could beat me any day of the week (and a lot of them do beat me). Somehow I just keep getting lucky.

 

Being a multi-time world champion means…

 

… being in a lot of promotional advertising. Must be a rough gig, being a rock star and all.

 

What do you do when you’re not dominating races? Hobbies? Job?

I do have a “day job” as a manager at a bank. It’s a very different world than skating but I love it. I’m a huge golfer so golfing, watching golf, thinking/talking about golf takes up a lot of my time. If I’m not skating, working, or golfing you can probably find me cracking a cold one open with the boys.

Tell me something most people don’t know about you – like you’re an accomplished triangle player, or Ouija Board master, or omelet chef, or ocelot breeder.

1. I’m color blind
2. I’m allergic to chocolate and peanuts
3. I’m obsessed with flamingos

What are your bands of choice?

Wu-Tang Clan is hands down my favorite. But really It depends on my mood. I listen to so much different stuff; rock, classic rocks, rap, punk, reggae, a little country. I also listen to some stuff I’m I little ashamed to say like; Fergie, Dido, Nelly Furtado, Natasha Bedingfield. Whatever, I’m a freak!

Rodney Mullen pulled out of competition years ago for a number of reasons. One of them was that he was just expected to win every contest. Do you ever feel that way? Is it still fun to race?

No not at all. I definitely don’t feel like there is any pressure on me to always win nor do I put that pressure on myself. I still have a blast racing. How can you beat traveling the world, with some of your best friends, doing what we all love to do? I’m in it for the fun. As long as I skate my best and have fun – that’s a win in my book.

Top 3 all time favorite movies?

1. Grind
2. American Sniper
3. The Hangover

What was your first car? And can you drive a stick?

1995 Ford Aerostar covered in skate stickers. We called it the “man van” back I the day. It was awesome – kinda wish I still had it as a second car. I’m not gonna lie, I’m not the best at driving stick, but I can. I prefer to drive an automatic though. Much less stressful for me.

Do you do any cross training? Weights? Cardio? Watch what you eat?

I go to the gym quite a bit and lift weights and do a little cardio. I definitely try to watch what I eat, but I also am a foodie and love beer, so I do fall off the wagon a little from time to time. It’s just too hard to resist sometimes.

Other than me, who is your favorite skater living or dead?

That’s a hard one. I would probably have to go with Steve Olson. He has such an amazing style and rips anything and everything. Beyond on that he is a great dude and I’m honored to call him a friend.

I’ve met your Mom, she’s a real nice lady. Does she brag your shit all up in her friend’s faces? Does she make you call when you get to the race? Hahahahaha , mine did and I was 50! Did you call her today? Tell her I said hi.

My mom is by far my biggest fan so she loves to talk about me. She brings it up whenever she can. It’s a little embarrassing for me sometimes because I’m super humble and don’t like to talk about my skating too much, but I love how into it she is. I call my mom every single day (usually multiple times a day) so it’s not that she makes me call her but more that I want to call her.

 

Here’s to another decade of slalom domination, buddy…!

 

How do non-skaters react when they find out you’re a famous World Champion?

They freak out, a lot don’t believe me until I show them video. It’s funny too when people from my job figure it out. A bank manager in pressed dress clothes and shiny, fancy dress shoes is not what you imagine as a professional skateboarder.

Other than me, anyone you wanna thank? Sponsors? Mentors?

First and foremost my parents, they have been beyond supportive of my skating and life in general. I wouldn’t be where I am without them and couldn’t ask for better parents. Next of course, Richy and Maria Carrasco. They play so many roles in my life; sponsors, skate coaches, life coaches, managers, parental figures, but most of all two of my greatest friends in the world. I would also like to thank the rest of my sponsors; Keith at Radikal Trucks, Justin and Zak at Venom bushings, Marshall at FlyAway Helmets, Carl at Oust, Wild Bill at Pro Designed, Jeremy at Rocky Mountain Beard Company. All of the COSS crew for mentoring me as a young racer, especially Chris Barker and Jason Mitchell. I would like to thank my little brother Kyle as well as all my non blood brothers; Dustin, Stin, Wesley, Doug, Koby, Josh, Anthony and Niko. Everyone who I just mentioned have changed my life so much and made me the person and skater I am today. Love you all!! And if I forgot anyone (which I’m sure I did) I apologize and I love you too. And most of all -thank you skateboarding!!!

Well there you have it, race fans – Joey Mac in his own words. Thanks for reading and thank you Joe for being a good sport. I tried not to ask all the same old questions, that’s boring as shit.

Hugs, Fatboy

 

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To the generation of skateboarders who, like myself, learned to fall in love with skateboarding through the releases of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video games, there are a number of reasons that stick out as to what made the gameplay so great. The most paramount, in my opinion, was the design of the game’s playable levels and the bounty of opportunities presented each time your character spawned themselves in a new city. What this impressionable generation of skaters saw was a utopia. When I think of it years later, I can still picture levels from Boston to Barcelona clear as day.

Since we first saw some of these games though, most of us have experienced the reality of skateboarding in the non-virtual world. On one hand, constant threats and legitimate citations have come to beset the many of same kids who once thought the skateboarding world was akin to the Pro Skater paradises.

On the other hand, things haven’t been so bad. Downtown Portland, OR has lanes devoted specifically for skateboarding in their streets. Colorado has more skateparks per capita than any other state. Hell, the local volunteer skate community of Tacoma, WA got not one, but six parks built in their city. By looking at the glass half full in this scenario, we find a possibility that some dare only to dream of. These skateboard-centric utopias are a foreseeable vision for the future of American cities and beyond.

 

 

However, the truth of this matter is that no progress can happen without skateboarding advocates. Any successful start in attempting to transform the public’s perception of riding a skateboard into something as thoughtless as the act of walking a dog needs dedicated initial support and even stronger continued support throughout the process. Therein lies the problem that Peter Whitley and the folks over at the Tony Hawk Foundation are trying to solve.

At the very core, this essay is a way of shedding light on the underlying issues to this topic. As Whitley affirms, the root of this issue is the disconnect that many skateboarders feel between their personal experience of riding a skateboard, the intrinsic reasons as to why they ride and the ways in which they express those sentiments.

 

 

As a skateboarder, it’s inherent to acknowledge that we possess certain advantages over the greater part of society that chooses not to skateboard. By this, I mean the grit, the perseverance and the unending need to challenge yourself and find creative ways to overcome those challenges. “Those are things that teachers in every public school across the nation are trying to unlock in their students and yet here, skateboarding is providing it to students as a nuisance activity that teenagers are doing behind the library,” says Whitley, Programs Director at the THF.

But what good are these advantages if skateboarders keep them to themselves?

And what does the Tony Hawk Foundation do about all of this anyway?

The answer is simple to state, though it’s implications span hundreds of pages. To save the read for now, the crew at the Tony Hawk Foundation wake up every morning and try to enable the next crop of empowered skateboarders. They offer a comprehensive skatepark construction grant program, a national index of skateparks and research and in depth skatepark advocacy training and project consultation. In the Programs Department of the THF, skateboarding advocates often arrive with questions on where they might even begin undertaking a community wide project. Other times, advocates might arrive with some momentum behind their causes and are looking for project support further down the line.

 

 

As is, this facet of the Tony Hawk Foundation’s endeavors fights for a noble cause. But to truly get and keep a successful build project off the ground, the local supporters need more fuel. Thankfully, THF has it covered. Instead of simply presenting facts and figures to groups looking for hard statistics, Whitley and the crew will help advocates evaluate the question being asked. From there, they offer support in helping advocates to formulate the most effective responses to common but troubling questions from authoritative figures. As Whitley puts it, “I’d rather have everything than not enough.”

Finally, perhaps the most powerful offering from the Tony Hawk Foundation comes in a different form: encouragement. This is where they truly live up to their role as a group of skateboarders who exist to save other skateboarders from the psychological pitfalls that can sideline their dreams. In Whitley’s words, “Encouragement is providing somebody the tools that they need to feel confident. If somebody’s feeling discouraged, it’s because 1.They don’t see the path through or around this obstacle, or 2. If they see the path, maybe they feel like they don’t have the tools to pursue that opportunity.” With this combination of psychological and physical support the Tony Hawk Foundation has created a recipe that has helped nearly 600 skatepark projects come to completion over the years.

 

 

There is an idea fostered at the THF that the utopian vision of a society allows having fun on a skateboard in every inch of the city is possible. Interestingly, as Whitley explained to me, the THF’s goal is to become obsolete in the face of this getting accomplished. However, in times where we stand divided as a skateboarding community and as a society in general, there’s still plenty of work to be done. Maybe the best bet is to spend a few minutes thinking back to the old Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games and hours you spent in a virtual city designed to be skated. Then, snap out of it and get to work on transforming your environment into the skate-centric society that the Tony Hawk Foundation is committed to building.

 

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“Skateboarding isn’t going to take you anywhere.”

We’ve heard it many times, and we still don’t believe it. Why? Because skateboarding took us, collectively, to Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, Lesotho, China, South Korea, Peru, Brazil, Norway, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, and Spain in 2017 alone.

However, these weren’t your typical family vacations or backpacking adventures. Here’s what makes traveling for downhill skateboarding so unique, accessible, and absolutely incredible:

 

 

The Squad:

When do you get the opportunity to travel to multiple countries, for a month (or more), with your best friends? In downhill skateboarding, that’s exactly what happens when you and your friends all follow the same race circuit, either for a continent or the whole world tour.

 

The New Squad:

While following the circuit, you will meet people from all over the world who all have one thing in common: Downhill skateboarding. It’s an amazing thing when two people, from two worlds and two languages, can become family over a shared passion. This happens multiple times, at every race, every year, thanks to downhill skateboarding.

 

 

 

The Locals:

Everywhere you go- everywhere you go -there are local downhill skateboarders who can’t wait to give you a roof over your head, traditional food in your belly, and share their culture, customs, and roads with you. Why? Downhill skateboarding. We really can’t explain it any better than that.

 

 

 

The View:

Seriously. Downhill skateboarding takes you to the top of every mountain road… including those in the Alps, Pyrenees, Dolomites, Himalayas, Andes, etc. etc. you get the point. Imagine camping at the top of these roads and waking up to stare a glacier in the face before getting your morning skate on. That’s downhill skateboarding.

 

You:

There’s something about traveling this way that forces you to appreciate, and find beauty in, nature, people, and culture. You can’t help but see life through new, explorative, and curious eyes. If you’re a downhill skateboarder, do yourself a favor; take advantage of this beautiful community we have and travel the world for your passion.

Don’t believe us? Check out our 2017 Eurotour edit below, and try to tell us we didn’t have a trip of a lifetime:

 

 

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Sometimes, things don’t exactly go your way. Sometimes, things go far better than you could have ever hoped for. Or even, dreamed of. This was one of those rare weekend diversions that memories are made of. This is the sort of weekend that explains why I spend so much time out on the open road, traveling to weird, strange, obscure, and little-known places to go skateboarding. You just never know what you’re gonna find out there, patiently waiting to be discovered. There are surprises, quite literally, right around every single corner of this great country of ours. My mission in life is to be pleasantly surprised at every turn. This weekend, I was not let down.   

I was not really expecting this weekend to be all that great. Being a salary employee at a trucking company means lots of deviations, distractions, and unscheduled working days. Saturday was one of those days that I found myself unwittingly working way too late, and far too hard. Not that I mind too much… my job, after all, is usually pretty damn entertaining and enjoyable… but, it did wreak a bit of havoc with my travel plans for the weekend. Which it regularly does.

I was also pretty tuckered out. I’d been skating, touring, writing, photographing, and yakking a lot over the past month. I did need a bit of a break to rejuvenate and recharge. I decided that a quick trek over to Buckeye was just what the doctor ordered.

 

The Buckeye Air Fair; a local, small-scale, free-to-see air show. Thought I wouldn’t? Real nerds (like me) never pass up a chance to geek out over classic airplanes. February, 2017. Illustration by the author. Views of Estrella Mountain from across a typical Buckeye cottonfield (upper center), and from the peak of a nameless mountain at Buckeye Regional park (lower right).

 

Buckeye does not have a particularly good skatepark. I knew that already. I’ve seen it before; it’s not all that impressive. The skatepark consists of a bunch of cookie-cutter steel prefab ramps on a concrete slab. Not that big of a deal at all, and definitely nothing to get all that excited about.

But, Buckeye does have a pretty amazing camping attraction over at Buckeye Regional Park, a free-to-use facility with minimal policing and extremely sparse facilities. It’s basically boondocking, but with official permission. As a result of the overly sparse facilities, only a very few (extremely hardy) camper-customers ever utilize the campground. But the place is really quite a spot, if you have an adventurous spirit that is inclined to give the place half a chance. The bonuses include beautiful, wide-open skies; lots of bright stars (far away from the city lights); ample mountain-climbing opportunities; and fantastic, panoramic views of the valley from the tops of the many knolls that pepper the place. It’s a fairly well-kept pseudo-secret, one that I profit from quite regularly. And it would allow me some downtime this weekend to play the “typical tourist”, to boot. A role I enjoy playing, and playing well, from time to time between solitary skateboarding expeditions.

 

 

Buckeye is a former farming community that has undergone a bit of a modern movement to become one of Phoenix’s burgeoning “bedroom communities”. Fields that once produced cotton, citrus, flowers, and alfalfa now sprout Middle-Class McMansions at an alarming rate. Many of these middling communities are queued up on either side of the I-10, a few miles north of midtown. But Buckeye Proper still retains the old-school, main-street feel of many familiar farming towns. It actually reminded me quite a bit of rural Indiana. But in a much more arid, highly irrigated desert environment.

 

Clockwise from upper left: The Buckeye History Museum; vintage photography tools of the trade; Buckeye Union High School, on the National Register of Historic Places; Hokoham pottery display at the museum; historic downtown Buckeye, circa the mid-1930’s; more vintage artifacts.

 

The Buckeye History Museum was really fun. Small, but super friendly and informative. The lady manning the front counter was gabby as hell. She was probably just really lonely; it seemed like maybe this museum didn’t see too many visitors. Although it was centrally located on the “main drag”… i.e., Maricopa County Route 85… the reality is that the real “main drag” was the whizzing interstate to the far north of town. Buckeye, in the grand scheme of things, is a tiny, inconvenient diversion that most travelers would probably go well out of their way to avoid in their mad rush to get to Phoenix or Los Angeles. But the tale of the valley’s native Indian and transitory migrant past, and the stories of turn-of-the-century cotton farming (and the hardships and opportunities that came along with increasingly irrigated and industrialized agriculture) were extremely fascinating. The museum was really well-done, for being such a small little facility. I was glad that I took the time to stop in and check it out.

 

 

Clockwise from upper right: Staring at his own shadow; Buckeye Skatepark; downtown Buckeye, circa 1930’s; another view of Buckeye Skatepark. Note the bright reflections from the scorching sun. It gets hot out here. Damn hot…!

 

The skatepark, on the other hand, was actually far worse than it looked from afar. There were lots of obstacles between the obstacles. Not like, “Oh, look, a fun-to-skate obstacle!” More like, “Holy shit, I could seriously impale myself on that damn thing” sorts of “obstacles”. And then, there were those skatewheel-sized expansion joints in the concrete slab that I only survived by bringing 92a, 60mm Bullets with me for my outing; anything harder or smaller, and death would have laughed his pansy-pants ass off at my extreme expense. The park was really hard to skate, to put it generously. But, y’know… it’s all part of the job. I took a few runs to say that I skated it, did a couple carves and grinds, and somehow lived to tell y’all about it. I consider that a high achievement worth being pretty proud of.

 

Clockwise from upper left: A super rough ditch find out in the open desert (it takes a determined soul with big, soft wheels to skate it); The historic Gillespie Dam Bridge on old US Route 80; abandoned cabins on Old US 80; steel artwork; the remnants of the broken Gillespie Dam; Gillespie Dam postcard before the breach, photo from bwcdd.com; window to the world; a combine hard at work in the arid agricultural valley along US 80. Yes, I’m a total history geek. Sue me.

 

In between checking out the air show, poking around the history museum, and scoping out some rough-as-hell skate spots, I decided to take an impromptu trip down Old US 80, one of the more storied (but lesser known) of the decommissioned US highways. Route 66 tends to get all the glory, while all the others (like US 80) are rapidly fading into a forgotten obscurity; the contributions they made toward building our great country are steadily being lost to the blowing sands of time and indifference. Wholesale abandonment exists out there, far off the beaten path, which is a treasure trove of investigation opportunities for the urban explorer in me.   

 

Clockwise from left: Camper and scenery illustration by the author; the sun sets over the western desert mountains; my campsite at Buckeye Regional Park; the panoramic view from the knoll behind my campsite.

 

Not only do I camp out at Buckeye Regional on a fairly regular basis, I’m also a bit of a caretaker when I’m there. By necessity, not necessarily by choice. Fact is, Buckeye Regional isn’t really “maintained” in the same manner as White Tank, Estrella, Lost Dutchman, or any of the other area regional parks are. The grills are almost never used, so they’re prone to cultivating a severe case of rust. And the “landscaping” is completely ignored by whoever’s tasked to take care of such things. My campsite for the evening was the same as they always are at Buckeye Regional: in dire need of a little bit of TLC. So, again, I spent my evening burning the dead branches of a Palo Verde tree (they’re great at keeping the flies at bay), and sanding, priming, painting, and seasoning the on-site grill before I made my dinner.

“My Dinner”, by the way, was f’n delicious. You should be openly jealous of my suave cooking skills. It included sweetly seasoned burgers with sharp swiss and cheddar cheeses, topped with my garlic and brown sugar BBQ marinade; spiral-cut sweet potatoes sprinkled and baked with butter, paprika, and parmesan cheese (among with a few other secret spices); potato, macaroni, corn, and arugula salads; and a few tasty desserts brought by my friend Brooke, who graciously joined me for the sights and sounds of a brilliant evening out on the high desert. The cedar-and-pine campfire smelled sweet, the ghost stories were spectacularly spooky, and the stars were burning bold and bright. Camping and skateboarding, as it turns out, complement each other pretty damned well.

 

 

Left to right: Air Tractor crop duster at Pierce Airport, on the far outskirts of town; cabin and gas station abandonments along Maricopa County (MC) Route 85; Hobo Joe, a Buckeye institution, now in storage undergoing restoration (photo from Wikipedia commons); gas pump illustration by the author.

 

The next morning, I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to rock and resume my ambitious tourist-itinerary, which included exploring various airfields and abandonments in and around Buckeye that I had spotted in my travels the day before when… completely out of the blue wild yonder… I spotted one of those every-skater’s-dream-scenarios: a brand-new, perfectly clean and smooth drainage ditch complex under construction. Along with an isolated, unmanned, and totally unsecured construction site, complete with an easy-access ingress road, and all kinds of convenient parking. No security, no hassles, no worries, and not a single problem. Just a bunch of frolicking fun under the bright, relentless midday sun.

 

A few views of my incredibly fortunate find, somewhere in the open desert wastelands near Buckeye, Arizona. Get your ass out there, and go find it for yourself. Gas station trailer billboard illustration by the author.

 

The ditch was long, tall, and super smooth. It must have been an easy 6’ deep, maybe even a shade deeper. It featured… of all the good and fortunate things… slight, yet smooth transitions between the flatbottom and the walls. It had the typical “brushed” concrete finish, but it wasn’t so rough that it posed any sort of super-outlandish injury threats. Quite the opposite: if you didn’t know any better, you’d think that this ditch might have been purpose-built for skateboarding. And the best part was, it wasn’t even finished yet. There were still a couple hundred yards left to be poured. You could tell just by looking at it that it was gonna be epic when it was done. Hell, it was pretty damned epic already.

Boy, was that ever the find of the year. Quite possibly, the find of a lifetime. And all because I went to document a crappy skatepark, and do a little bit of impromptu camping out in the middle of nowhere. Who would’ve thought that I’d stumble across my own little slice of skateboarding heaven in the process…?

 

The finished product. The dream is real. And it’s out there, just waiting to be discovered (and skated). I still have no idea what Plaid Stamps are. Studebaker illustration and by the author. 

 

Kids everywhere, listen up: Dreams do come true. The adventures are out there. They’re just waiting on somebody… anybody… to get up, get out, initiate the search, and discover them for themselves.

The only missing variable in this equation, is you.

 

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Paradigm architecture. If I had to whittle my twenty-five (or so) years of work in the skateboard industry into a couple of quick words, these are the two words that I would personally choose to use. In layman’s terms, I would define that as the empowering, enabling, and execution of new ideas. New ideas are not always popular. Michael [Brooke, of Concrete Wave Magazine] once told me, as he’s told so many others, this tired (but true) cliché: “First, they make fun of you. Then, they fight you. Then, you win”. It holds true over so much of mankind’s human history that it’s almost nauseating. But it still remains sickeningly applicable nonetheless.

Everything Skateboarding is an aggregate experiment of a whole host of new ideas. Some will be popular, some won’t, and some will surely elicit some pretty extreme reactions, both positive and negative. So be it. Here’s the hard-hitting bullet-point laundry list of what I set out to do with the newer, bigger, cleaner iteration of Everything Skateboarding, just so everyone knows why I do all the weird stuff that I do:

 

The Death of Paper

It’s a bit ironic that I’m coming into this project after spending the better part of the year as Concrete Wave’s Executive Director- a title that I liked so much that I decided to keep it here at Everything Skateboarding.

Even though it was really great while it lasted, and I certainly enjoyed (and learned a lot from) the experience… my heart wasn’t completely into it. At the end of the day, I still can’t see why we’re chopping down trees to print information and inspiration onto paper, copying it by the thousands and tens of thousands, making it ridiculously difficult for idea consumers to find, and then selling it to them as some sort of punishment for their diligent search for enlightenment. It costs far too much for everybody… the advertisers, the publisher, and the readers… and makes far too tiny of a footprint in terms of exposure and eventual effectiveness. And it still seems environmentally stupid for us to kill all of those innocent trees for such a limited-ends result, no matter how great the final printed product might be.

If “ideas really want to be free”, then maybe we should start by actually making ideas free so that they can spread with a minimum of profiteering paradox holding them back.  The goal, then, was to create a paradigm that didn’t murder trees, had a global footprint, and was absolutely free for the reader to experience and enjoy. Thankfully, that paradigm was architected eons ago. It’s called The Internet.

At the same time, I do love the look and feel of traditional skateboard magazines. Especially the independent skateboard media, best represented by the ‘zine scene. That do-it-yourself, cut-and-paste, punk-rock, fuck-the-world attitude still appeals to me, all these years later. So, that was the first challenge: to create a web presence that had the general look, feel, and function of a traditional magazine, while existing on the all-access platform of the world wide web.

 

The Reincarnation of The Blog

The first iteration of Everything Skateboarding ran from 2009 to 2013. Technically a blog, it functioned much more like what I outlined above: as a free-to-read, internet monthly magazine. Complete with a staff of like-minded troublemakers, including AJ Kohn (our freestyle correspondent), Ron “Fatboy” Barbagallo (our slalom guy), Keith Gillogly, Dan Gesmer… and even Michael, when he had something to say that wouldn’t float or fit in the mag. You can still read the text here, although you can’t see any of the photos anymore; the profiteering assholes at Photobucket are holding them hostage, and I refuse to enable their moneymaking lusts by paying their outlandish demands for their release. I swear, money ruins every good thing eventually. The miscalculating crooks at Photobucket are a most excellent case in point.

Technologically speaking, Everything Skateboarding was not “impressive” at all. It was amateurish at the very best, and hopelessly inept at the very worst. Mostly, the latter. However, it garnered a pretty big fan base and a loyal following by doing something that the “professional skateboard media” hasn’t done in decades: we actually said stuff. We wrote about important, consequential topics. We talked about real things, and real issues, in real ways, and made no apologies whatsoever for having done so. That proved a very important point: that compelling content will beat slick programming, every single time. That lesson, hopefully, has remained relatively unchanged in the interim.

I was always pretty proud of my craptastic art direction, too, although I had no right in the world to do such a thing. That got a lot of rave reviews, although I still can’t figure out why. Maybe big, bold, colorful, sloppily drawn stupid things appeal to people- I don’t know. In any rate, the compelling and consequential writing, the photography, the imagery, the art direction… these things were the point of departure for the newer, bigger, slightly better (but still hopelessly inept) effort that you’re reading right now. Including, worst of all, that white-on-black colorway. I’ve gotta admit, I do rather enjoy breaking “the rules” as often as I can. I’m a skater. It’s what I do.

 

The Visuals

I never said that I was a great artist. I never even said that I was a good artist. I’ve never even claimed anything above and beyond “crappy” throughout my entire adult life, and I still stand solidly by that assertion, well into my middle age. Everything Skateboarding, however, is at it’s very core, a creative pursuit. That means it’s meant to be, feel, and look, “arty”.

Being “an artist”, I do like to throw outlandish restrictions upon myself, and creatively work within horrendously limited means most of the time. I like creating something out of virtually nothing; in my world, that’s art at it’s best, even if it ends up looking like art at it’s worst anyway. “Do More Damage With Fewer Resources”, that’s my motto. And every skater worth their salt will readily and easily relate with that core philosophy.

The visuals of the website reflect, if nothing else, an uncompromised Do-it-Yourself ethic. Everything you see here was created with Windows 2007, a super old Microsoft Office suite, Sharpie markers, copy paper, stock Paint programs, and a point-and-shoot camera. Any kid could use the very same easily-accessible tools that I used, and get some pretty neat results out of them. Maybe even far better results than I could ever achieve. Hopefully, I’ll inspire them to do exactly that.

This isn’t just crappy art, folks. This is crappy art with a purpose.

I did end up inviting a whole horde of relatively unknown artists (with actual talent, unlike me) into the fold, to contribute to the visuals of the site. Many of them accepted, so you’ll see far more artwork sprinkled throughout the articles in the next issue than you will in this issue… and this issue is remarkably art-heavy already. Media is, after all, a great way to share beauty, and to promote lofty ideals. I thought that having guest artists showing their work on our pages was a great way to advance those aims.

 

The New Editing Philosophy

I was particularly proud of the team that I had assembled over at Concrete Wave Magazine, and what they had accomplished under my brief tutelage while I was there. Naturally enough, I brought that fuck-all, do-whatever-you-want ethos right to the table; they, in turn, ran amok with that, and created some extraordinary content in the process. I do live for the freedom of doing and saying whatever I want, whenever I want, and however I want, with a minimum of editorial fluff and fuss, and I suspected that my staff probably lived for much the same sort of stuff. Anarchy does, after all, win every time; “professional editing” usually only serves to edit the enthusiasm, insight, and energy right out of every bleedin’ thing imaginable. No, sir, “traditional editing” just had to go. There had to be a better way.

Here at Everything Skateboarding, articles are critiqued– not edited. Writing is an art, not a “product”… and I heartily encourage the staff at every turn to see it the same exact way. I challenged my staff to freely experiment with their writing styles, and to try new things without the fear of some fucking “editor” pointing out all the flaws and the fidgets along the way. I also asked them to try their hands at art direction, photography, illustration, painting, and a thousand other things that nobody in their right mind would ever ask a writer to do. It’s paying off; things are moving forward,  everybody seems happy enough, and nobody’s died yet, so the future looks pretty damned bright from my lofty perch. It’s amazing what sorts of results you get when you stop squashing people’s spirits, and start letting them be their own uninhibited selves for a change. If you nudge them forward along the way… sometimes, even a little forcefully… even better.

 

The Staff

When I finally decided to plow forward with my nefarious e-magazine plans, I decided that I didn’t want to go it alone; I wanted the guys and gals that I had brought together to come along for the funtastic ride. They all lined right up, and enthusiastically signed on to the fun-and-freedom program. I couldn’t promise them ridiculously big paychecks, of course. But I could promise them a damn good time, and a huge measure of self-determination and self-definition. Turns out, freedom and empowerment still sells, and sells pretty well these days. Who woulda thunk it…?

Jim Goodrich, Daniel Fedkenheuer, Chad Thomas, and Tony Gale are the newest additions to the Everything Skateboarding staff, along with Everything Skateboarding alumni AJ Kohn, Ron “Fatboy” Barbagallo, and Mr. Gesmer. The goal here was to strike a balance between experienced wisdom, and youthful exuberance. A whole host of colorful and animated perspectives and opinions, all rolled up into a Brain Trust of the best and the brightest that our industry had to offer. Again, I merely had the big-picture vision. They made it happen, and they made it work brilliantly. My hat goes off for each and every one of them, and I could never thank them enough for their hard work, their dedication, and everything that they’ve brought to the table.

Everything Skateboarding is not a fascist regime, nor are we a self-appointed cool club. We actively encourage anyone with a few words to say, a good grasp of spelling and grammar, and a distinctively unique writing style to stand up, stand tall, come to the table, and say their piece. This month’s guest Perspectives purveyor, Lew Ross (of Fickle Skateboards), embodies that paradigm pretty perfectly.

 

Stealing The Ethos

The defining philosophy of Concrete Wave Magazine was that everybody should skate, and that there should be a skateboard for everybody. No questions asked, no excuses accepted, and no apologies given. “Inclusion” was the single-minded concept, and Michael… to his immense credit… has spent years, literally years, battling for a greater sense of even-handed inclusion in skateboarding. That was really great; I make no bones whatsoever for stealing that ethos along the way, myself. Men, women, straight, gay, bi, trans, young, old, middle-aged, white, black, brown, yellow, red, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist… you name your divisiveness, and we’ll fight it (and win) with an open invite to be a part of the best recreation, pastime, and performance art (but never “sport”) on the planet. Michael, we all owe ya one for that. Hats off to you, good sir.

There are lots of disciplines within skateboarding, although you might not know that by reading the mass skateboard media. Street, mini ramps, vert, bowls, pools, skateparks, freestyle, flatland, slalom, longboarding, downhill, racing, dancing, cruising… skateboarding is a cornucopia of divergent options, all defined commonly by a plank affixed to some number of turning trucks and wheels. “Some number of turning trucks and wheels” not always being two trucks and four wheels; no, even that commonly-construed definition is far too restrictive for my libertine tastes. In doing so, you’re forgetting that Lonnie Toft’s Outrageous Eights had a massive sum of four trucks and eight wheels. Now, if you want to argue with Lonnie Toft over whether that’s a skateboard or not, well then, go right ahead; I suspect that you’ll find that arguing with Lonnie Toft about anything skate-related will be an immediately losing proposition, because Lonnie Toft is Lonnie Toft and you’re not. We also had Chris Chaput’s six-wheeled slalom contraption from the mid-2000’s that “didn’t count” on the slalom scene because it won far too many races, far too easily; if you think arguing with Chappy is going to be any easier than arguing with Lonnie, then you’ve got another thing coming, bub. Lastly, we have land luges, skateboards specifically designed for laying on your back at breakneck speeds. If that’s not skateboarding, then neither is the classic surf-skate-style coffin, a skateboard trick executed… egads!… while lying flat on your back.

Yes, friends and enemies, these things are all skateboards. Different flavors of skateboards, perhaps, but still skateboards nonetheless. If you can’t bring yourself to agree, then go cry yourself a river somewhere and shut up. This is a skateboard magazine, and those are skateboards. That means we’re covering them. All of them.

 

The Periodical Paradigm

Everything Skateboarding is published monthly. Every month will be a new “issue”, just like a paper magazine. We’ll have regular columns and feature articles, just like a magazine. We’ll have advertisers, just like a magazine. We’ll have art, music, recipes, travel tips, trick tips, and product reviews, just like a classic skateboard magazine. We’ll have all the “back issues” archived on the website, even better than a magazine. But we’ll also be able to embed music and video into the mix, which is completely beyond the potential of paper media. The best of both worlds! See?! I wasn’t kidding around about that.

 

Advertising

Advertising at Everything Skateboarding is an astoundingly inexpensive proposition. That’s pretty revolutionary, in of itself. Fifty bucks; that was my baseline goal. The rationale was that I wanted any company, huge or tiny, to be able to afford to advertise here. Even the smallest of small companies, on the tiniest of threadbare advertising budgets. That was super important to me, because these small companies represent the very grass roots of skateboard marketing and manufacturing. They bring a lot of new ideas, novel perspectives, and fresh air into our otherwise stale skate industry. I obviously support that sort of stuff. So, naturally enough, I intend to support them in any way I possibly can.

Achieving that preposterous goal was made possible by architecting a paradigm that allowed for these companies to participate on an unusually even footing. Web publishing is far less expensive then paper printing by nature; our costs are far lower, so we can pass those savings right on to the advertisers. We saved even more money by using a readily available content management system, only slightly bastardized to suit my warped and twisted tastes. It may not be the glitziest and most market-savvy presentation around, but it fully allows us to do it by and for ourselves, to do it independently, and do it extremely inexpensively. Say whatever you want about our methods, the bottom line is that they do the job. And that’s all they ever needed to do.

Advertising Ethics

I have also seen, first hand, what can happen when the media is forced into a position where we have to pander to the advertisers… the journalistic integrity and honesty of the media suffering all along the way… to make ends meet, and to keep themselves in a plushly profitable position. It’s not pretty, and it’s definitely not honorable. That had to change, too. I simply wouldn’t have it any other way.

Everything Skateboarding is independent and revolutionary in nature. And any entity that seeks to remain independent and revolutionary must remain staunchly and diligently independent of monetary influence and control at all times. This manifesto mandated that we remain essentially and perpetually not-for-profit. All advertising proceeds will go toward paying the staff, and paying them reasonably well, while the rest is earmarked for various skate-related charities and causes. Everything Skateboarding strives to break even every year; no more, no less.

Naturally, not-for-profits get all the free advertising here that they want, no questions asked. It’s the very least that we could do to help their noble and charitable causes.

This not-for-profit paradigm also allowed us the unfettered freedom of being extraordinarily selective with who and what we allowed to advertise here. From Day One, any company that wanted to be represented here had to be independently skater-owned and operated; mega-corporations and non-skater-owned entities are universally and unapologetically unwelcome here at Everything Skateboarding. If we’re going to subject our readers to advertisements at all, we felt that at the very least we could do is make damn sure that the advertisers (and their products) are at least credible in the eyes, hearts, and minds of the intended readers. That core credibility might well preclude us from being multi-zillionaires anytime soon. Oh, well. So be it.

Core skate shops get the knock-on benefit of seeing advertisements from the newest, hottest, and most cutting-edge brands in the marketplace. The readers see the same thing the shops do. And those brands get the benefits of being seen by a discriminating readership. Everybody might want to make a mental note of that.

 

Promotion

Again, this is pretty neat, new, and novel. Most websites rely on “search engine optimization” to drive traffic to their website, and their content. The articles at Everything Skateboarding are pretty SEO friendly, but the contents page definitely isn’t. That was intentional; we don’t give much of a shit about “internet performance metrics”. I’m not gonna drive traffic to pages that aren’t relevant to the reader, just so my readership numbers go up and I look like a publishing stud. I have too much respect for the readers for those sorts of shenanigans. If they want to read it, then they’ll find it and read it.

We decided early on to focus the bulk of our promotion efforts on social media (as you might expect); getting out of the office, traveling around, meeting people, and being sociable (which you might not expect); and via promotion through the traditional, stand-alone, independent brick-and-mortar skate retailers (the old-guy way). I’m not going to apologize for any of this, especially that retailer bit. It seemed like the right thing to do; somebody, somewhere, has to show some outward solidarity and support for this critical industry infrastructure. This is our humble, understated way of telling skate shops around the world, “Hey, you still matter to us. Even if everybody else has forsaken you along the way”.

At the end of the day, a search engine can only do so much to cultivate real enthusiasm and passion, and develop deep, lasting interpersonal relationships. Analog still wins one every once in a while, and that’s precisely what we’re banking on with this project. You can take your online metrics, your virtual “friends”, and your faux internet “community”, and stuff ‘em. We’re in the reality business over here, and building real relationships is what we’re all about.

 

The Illusion of Impartiality

Media these days is very quick to claim “impartiality”, but woefully slow to actually demonstrate it. Everything Skateboarding makes no claim of being impartial in regards to pertinent current events; to claim impartiality would be a waste of time, energy, and effort for everyone involved. Everything Skateboarding is activist in our coverage… and our stance on the brick-and-mortars that I referenced in the last paragraph is an excellent example of our stance.

One of the most pertinent problems plaguing our industry today is whether we should do anything at all to assist the core retailer in surviving the current competitive storm. And if so, what should it be? Everybody seems to be talking about it (privately), but nobody’s really saying anything about it (publicly). Seems kinda hypocritical, doesn’t it…?

Like most “industry insiders”… and probably just like most everyday skaters… I’m personally torn on the issue. On one hand, I desperately want to support the brick-and-mortar retailer in any and every way that I possibly can. On the other hand: that’s oftentimes a lot easier said then done. Especially when you’re faced with the paradoxical situation (like I do) where your “local, core skate shop” right up the street sucks asshat dingleberries on the customer service front, while your “local brick-and-mortar skate shop halfway across the country”… in my case, that would be Mike Hirsch over at SoCal Skateshop… treats you like a goddamned prize every time you call him up to place an order. I’m sorry, but that’s just totally fucked up. Something, somewhere, has to give. The Core Shop up the street needs to be better than this to survive the competitive retail slaughtering that, sad to say, is far from over.

To that end, we have not only focused our promotion efforts on those very shops; we have brought a regular column called “Let’s Talk Shop” to the forefront of our regular features in order to discuss, openly and honestly, core retailer issues in the public square from a multitude of perspectives. Sure, it’s pretty ballsy, maybe even “prohibitively risky”… but we’re not stopping there. No, sir, that’s just the beginning of our activist ambitions.

We are also working hard to eventually curate a condensed “Skate Shop 101” handbook that can be freely disseminated amongst all core retailers. We are actively calling on skate shops to band together within the mutually supportive sphere of a free-to-join, mutually supportinve skate-shop association. We are challenging individual brands and brand managers to take a skate shop under their wing, and actively mentor them in the interests of offering their experience and expertise to help those shops survive and thrive in today’s harsher-than-ever business environment. And we are calling on the industry to take clear, swift, unified, and decisive action to support this vital link between our industry, and our local skate scenes and communities. All of this is in the interest of helping core skate shops become far more customer-friendly, community-engaging, economically sustainable, and fiscally profitable businesses.

That’s activist journalism at work, right there. If the ends justify the means, then we’re totally okay with looking “mean” from time to time.

 

“Liking and Commenting”, The Old-School Way

You’ll soon find that the “comments” function has been disabled all across the site. Again, just like everything else, that was absolutely  intentional on our part. The ability to leave a lazy, half-baked, horridly spelled and grammatically tortured soundbyte on every fuckin’ web page on the internet planet has only served to dumb down the very conversations that the media should be raising the bars and the standards on. If you want your voice heard here at Everything Skateboarding, then you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned-magazine way: compose a thoughtfully articulated and skillfully written letter to the editor, and send it in the ‘ol e-mail. If it’s thoughtful, skillful, and insightful enough, then we’ll be more than happy to publish it, and let you have your moment in the sun busting my balls. Anything less will be summarily File Thirteened; consider yourselves warned on that one. We’re the media, after all, and we take the media pretty seriously around here. At the end of the day, we exist to raise the bar on intelligent discourse, not to lower it.

 

Giving Voices to The Voiceless

I did something really brilliant last month, even though it didn’t seem like very much at the time. I hired an intern! I haven’t had an intern in eons, so naturally enough, I was a little shy at first… but Claudia really impressed Jeanette and I in her interview with her smiling face, her keen intellect, her enthusiastic energy, and her all-around positive vibes. Jeanette loved her practically at first sight; I don’t think I could have turned Claudia away, even if I had wanted to. But, I definitely didn’t have any intentions of turning her away at all. Her infectious enthusiasm apparently wins everyone over. Even old, fat, jaded bastards like me.

Claudia represents a voice that you will never, ever hear in the mainstream skate media. I doubt that any other skate magazine (or website, for that matter), would have ever given her the time of day. A young, intelligent, energetic, and endlessly enthusiastic college-aged lady that loves skate culture, she predominantly skates recreationally, for no other reason than the sheer pleasure of it. She is not at all what we would consider a “hardcore skater”, by any means. So, I immediately brought her into the fold; I never seriously considered doing anything else.

That might seem, like so many other things I do, to be a bit stupid and senseless at first glance. Isn’t this industry, after all, practically owned and operated by the most hardcore contingent in skateboarding? Ahhhh! As you can see, there’s a keen and calculating method to my apparent insanity bubbling just under the surface.

Again, I foresaw an opportunity to break yet another long-standing rule, and craft one more immensely productive cog in the big-picture paradigm. Although her voice has historically been horrendously underrepresented in our industry and our media, the fact still solidly remains that she is far more representative of the end reader than almost anybody else here. As such, she brings a fresh, new, wide-eyed perspective, and a big breath of fresh air to Everything Skateboarding. She has already started to make me look at skateboarding, our industry, and our retail infrastructure in a far different light than I would have originally imagined, while critiquing my articles like a true champ that doesn’t pull any punches with The Boss. Although technically an “intern”, she has assumed a de-facto staff position here at The Project. Welcome to the crew, Claudia. You’ll fit in really well here.

 

 

I think that’s a pretty good start for one night. I hope you find the introductory issue of Everything Skateboarding as informative, insightful, evocative, and entertaining as I have, putting it all together. I really do have the best job in the world, working with such an intelligent, talented, energetic, and passionate group of individuals that collectively curate such great stuff. Here’s to everybody… the staffers, the contributors, the advertisers, the promoters, and the readers… that made it all happen. See you next month.

 

Best regards, as always.

Bud Stratford, Executive Director, Everything Skateboarding

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Because this is the very first issue of the re-launched Everything Skateboarding, the news flow was (understandably) a little bit slow this month. So, instead of posting “the usual news” this month (because there wasn’t any), I decided to scrounge around the internet and highlight some of the cooler things that I came across in my weekly web wanderings. Here they are, the coolest of the coolest newsbits that I could find on the ‘ol www:

 

Seismic has a new lineup of decks and completes, available in a wide range of wheel and truck combo options. Built with some pretty exotic materials (including bamboo, biax fiberglass, carbon fiber, and exotic hardwoods) and adorned with sleek, futuristic graphic treatments, these boards are solid lookers that are engineered to be solid performers as well. While I’ve been waiting for my test sample to arrive, I’ve been skating the 97a Focus wheels all over The Valley’s micro-sized mini ramps. Tough, surprisingly resilient, and super quick, these “freestyle” wheels are actually quite adaptable to all sorts of terrains, with the added benefit of stopping your axles from getting bashed to shit. See them all at www.seismicskate.com.

 

Speedlab announced news that they’ve added Andre Young to their ever-growing roster of sponsored ams by sending in this invert photo by JJ. Speedlab has a few new wheels in the lineup as well, including the Checkmates, along with their classics (such as the Bombshells, above). See them all at www.speedlabwheels.com.

 

While I was checking out Speedlab’s lineup, I noticed their second collab wheel with American Nomad (the Minis, above), and decided to check out what the Nomad guys were up to these days. This Chopper Chick deck was definitely the eye-catcher of the bunch, with that ’70s retro feel. See the rest of the Nomad lineup at www.american-nomad-skates.myshopify.com

 

Auby Taylor has released a line of decks on Black Label with a timeless, classic spoon-nose concave; don’t worry, his double-kick notch-nose is still in production right beside it. Although it’s a “tribute” (read: rip off) of the late, great Jeff Phillips graphics on Sims, it’s still the most original of the “reinterpretations” that I’ve seen in the last few years. God Save The Label, visit them at www.blacklabelskates.com.

 

While we’re at The Label, we might as well show off the original 1988 “Racing Stripe” John Lucero graphics that they recently re-released. That size, that shape, that wheelbase… Lord, have mercy. 

 

Collectors will surely rejoice at Blind’s decision to (finally) re-release a proper “Fucked Up Blind Kids” series (minus the “Jerkin’ Jordan” Jordan Richter model), complete with the period-correct, hand-pulled silkscreen treatment. Or, if you’re one of those cheap, tasteless bastards that wants to save a measly five bucks (off of the $79.95 MSRP), there’s a heat-transfer version available that’ll save you almost enough coin to buy a few McDoubles, which are kind of like the heat transfers of the burger world. So, there you go. You are the company that you keep. Support quality shit. See the series at  www.blindskateboards.com, and for heaven’s sakes, buy silkscreened.

 

In other Dwindle news, somebody at Enjoi very wisely decided to turn Samarria Brevard pro. With that, every single guest girl from last year’s King Of The Road outing has now entered the pearly gates of the pro ranks. See more at www.enjoico.com.

 

Somehow, somewhere, Brand X resurfaced with a small (but sweet) collection of reissues. How I missed this, I’ll never know; maybe it has something to do with me spending far more time these days traveling around and skating concrete than surfing the f’n computer every hour of the day and night. It might seem like a stupid strategy, but it’s workin’ for me, buddy. Patrick Truitt (the son of Dorsey Truitt, the original owner) is the guy behind this outing, as well as the Toxic wheel reissue teasers that we’ve all seen floating around. There’s no website (yet), but Patrick and Brand X are both on Facebook; I’m guessing they’re probably on other social media platforms as well. Look ’em up, friend them, follow them, and score one of your own. We’ll be following this one really, really closely; I am, after all, the proud owner of a couple of the OG’s. I’ve always wanted to ride one. Apparently, this is my chance. Life rocks so hard right now, it’s almost scary.

 

The next issue of Concrete Wave Magazine will be featuring a change in format. Gone will be the days of big, glossy paper; they will be replaced by a smaller, 5.5″ x 8.5″ “‘zine” format, and available via a far more discerning distribution system that means that you’ll have to be at exactly the right place (namely, a trade show) at exactly the right time (namely, before they’re gone) to get one. Ask Mike more about these most interesting plans at www.concretewavemagazine.com.

Ron “Fatboy” Barbagallo (of Longboards by Fatboy fame) has a new program out called Jersey Boards. I haven’t seen them up close and personal (yet), but this Surf Van Pintail looks pretty sweet from afar. Congrats, Fatty, from your friends here at The Site. The link that you’re seeking here happens to be www.jerseyskateboards.com.

In my “things I just couldn’t pass by” segment, I decided to spotlight the Duane Peters graphic reinterpretation on the Cockfight Beer Champ deck, and the Assault Mark Heintzman re-pop of his first pro model on G&S. While his G&S board featured the legendary C-90 Series concave, the re-pop has a much more mellow (and modern) double-kick that is well-suited to current street skating. I was lucky enough to meet Mark a few years back somewhere in Ohio; he’s a super humble fellow with a smooth, clean skating style. There’s just a few of these left, so hurry up and score one while you can; the Ricky Windsor SSD models look pretty outstanding, too. The sites are www.cockfightskateboards.bigcartel.com and www.assaultskates.com/shop.

 

 

The Friendship is one of my favorite small companies. They have a really great, fuzzy-warm name, and they have Ryan Gallant; what more could you ever need? That’s exactly what I thought, too; great minds do think alike, don’t they? Ryan’s graphics are an obvious swoop of Matt Hensley’s first H-Street “Swinger” graphics, but with a Bart Simpson twist. The photo is yet another up-and-coming female skater, Sam Narvaez, shot by Zorah Olivia, and subsequently stolen from The Friendship website by me, at www.thefriendshipskateboards.com.

 

 

The Matt Hensley Swinger graphic jogged my memory to stop by the H-Street website to see which series of The Magnificent Seven they’re running these days (it happens to be Series C, if you didn’t know that already); while I was poking about, I also spotted these Deathbox Dave Hackett models (in three colorways) that somehow manage to simultaneously strike me as both strikingly futuristic, yet curiously retro at the very same instant. For those that prefer a far more traditional Hackman shape, H-Street still has a few of the legendary Purple Hearts in stock as well. www.h-street.com

 

 

In case you completely biffed it, the biggest reissue news of the fall was the extremely limited (and historically accurate) reproduction of the Jim Muir Dogtown Triplane Model. The first of the big and burly concave bowlriders, this board literally changed the shape and the feel of skateboards forever. The first release was let loose to the public on November 9th; there will only be two more limited releases before these boards are gone forever. Expect the flipper market on these to be hot as hell for the next decade or so, www.dogtownskateboards.com.

 

 

Speaking of biffing it, one of my all-time favorite humans, Dennis Martinez (right), advises (via Facebook) that stocks of the original, Bo-Tuff versions of the classic G&S Flying Aces pig reissues are slowly dwindling away to nothingness. Buy one now or forever rest in regret, www.gordonandsmith.com. As far as the current Flying Aces offerings go, hit Mr. Martinez up on Facebook; he posts there pretty frequently these days.

 

 

Instrument out of Cincinnati has had some of the very best art direction going on anywhere for years now. Season after season, they never fail to produce something truly beautiful, as the newest Ackels Series (above) illustrates so vividly. The new boards aren’t up on the site just yet (www.instrumentskateboards.bigcartel.com), but you can always hit up Gary Collins on Facebook if you need to find a dealer near you.

 

 

Skaterbuilt has recently released a classic shape of their own, the Navdrecht II (middle). Based on the original Sims Dave Andrecht model, it’s also recently been re-worked by the aforementioned H-Street (right), and in a thousand different subtle varieties by custom quemaker Danny Creadon over at Factory 13 (who was hugely inspired and influenced in his current work by the late ’80s Sims classics). If you’re wondering who that stylish bloke is on the far left, that’s the original hero, Dave “The Raver” Andrecht at Marina Del Rey Skatepark, circa 1980. I swooped the photo from Pinterest “for educational and newsworthy purposes”, so only The Good Lord Himself knows who took it, or who should get the credit. www.skaterbuilt.com

 

 

?>

“Hi Bud, what would you like me to do with this? Do you want me to put up at my site? Let me know. Cheers, Michael”

Thus it began, one of the strangest days in my entire life. Somebody, somewhere, and for some odd (and unknown) reason, had sent lengthy rant of a letter over to Concrete Wave Magazine. Even better: this joker used my name and e-mail address as the return reply address. Apparently he (or she) didn’t realize that I was the Executive Director of the magazine. As if I wouldn’t immediately find out about it or anything.

This guy was pretty good, though! He certainly had Mikey fooled. And my impostor was, if nothing else, totally fired up. Here’s what he had to say:

“Skateboarding What A Joke! From the first time I saw a skateboard I was in love! But as time has gone on things change, people change, and skateboarding has surely changed. Now this isn’t me slamming on the industry, people, or companies. This is just how I see the things from my point of view as a skater, shop owner, previous industry person myself.

The current skate scene SUCKS! Plain and simple. But who is to blame corporate America for trying to get a slice of the pie and taking it from the small skate shops that have been their supporting the scene since day one ? Maybe it’s the small board companies for pushing back against the big skate companies selling them selves out.

Want to know what I think? IT’S US THE SKATERS! We fucked our selves and the industry. When we stopped making it about having fun and doing it because of the passion we had for it. Skating went from being a way of life to a lifestyle. What I mean by that is that most of us who grew up skating started because it was fun. Because we enjoyed it. Its what we did and who we were. Now kids are skating because they want to be rich and make it big and see skating as an opportunity for that. But pro skaters and the people that pay them are to blame for that. Wait did I just say the pro skaters are to blame??? Yes some of us are! I understand having to support your family and being paid to do what you love is great . But how many stopped to think about the effect leaving the little companies would have on the industry, I bet none. But when big companies buying in to the industry offers you more in one month then you make in a year you take that shit and run!

More and more core skate companies are going broke, core skate shops are closing due to corporate mall stores and not being able to afford the buy in with the big brands or maybe because they are trying to be true to themselves and what they believe skateboarding is. Either way it sucks!

Want skating back like it was?? Good luck! Because unless something changes the skateboard scene is screwed…

Yes I could just live out my life and skate the way I want and ignore this shit but lets be honest a lot of us have been thinking these things for a long time and would love things to got back to the way they were. It’s up to us as skaters to boycott the Big industries and mall shops. It’s up to us to force the companies that we all considered core but are now sell outs to support the core shops. Shop loyalty went out the damn door and didn’t look back! For fuck sake find a local shop you like and support the hell out of it! And only it!

So to you industry companies that have been supporting the skate industry for years then decided to sell out… Pull your head out your ass and do something about it!!!! We need you help to get scene back to or at least close to where it should be. Will finances hurt possibly but do you care more about the skaters and the scene living on? Or do you just care about your wallets? Helping the scene means helping your company! Remember you have to spend money to make money. Here are a few steps you can take to help.

• Start a shop program where small shops are offered something corporate stores aren’t. This way if people want the stuff they have to go to their local shop to get it. In other words something that they can’t get at a mall store or online.

• Skate Tours .. It’s great that you guys do tours kids get to see the team and get stoked on the product. But how about hitting things a little harder here in the good old USA where it all started. Yes I know there are several tours going right now. But these are usually only in large cities and at the highest grossing shops. And usually only consist of 4-5 stops. Load up the damn van and drive stopping at every shop or local park you can find along your route rather they support you or not. Guarantee you that after a trip or 2 like that you will see a return in sales. Happened a lot in the 80’s and in to the 90’s. Yes social media wasn’t there I get that. But there is something about seeing live demos or autograph signings over them talking on social media.

• Try and flow at least one kid in every shop some type of product. That will make the other kids start going there I hopes of getting flow and will help with building shop loyalty.

• Make it so kids have to be shop sponsored before getting flow! Just hooking up every kid that posts up some crazy video on you tube or hooking up a skater because there friends with one of the pros is bullshit. And trust me, a lot of people getting product in the industry are just getting it because of who they know not because of their ability.

Now let me talk to all the skaters out there. First off we fucked up! I say we because we are guilty of supporting a big chain store at one point in our life weather we are ordering from one online or shopping in the store directly. If you haven’t then I’m proud of you and thank you!

How many of you have seen your favorite shop close? Im sure a lot of you. That could have been happened for a couple possible reasons.

1- We failed to support our local shops and they couldn’t afford to stay open.

2- They couldn’t compete with the big chain stores.. but why couldn’t they? I mean if we were supporting our local shops and not the big chain stores I’m not sure how that would have happened… hmm

3- They were just plain shitty at controlling their finances.

What you can do to help.. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SKATESHOP!!!!

To the Pro skaters out there. Skating for smaller brands wont get you multi-million dollar paychecks but I promise if you put in the work and support the core brands you will be able to survive. The more you help the core brands grow the less the big industry businesses will have control over skateboarding, And the scene will grow again. And when it grows you get paid.. if that’s what your worried about.

Final thoughts… Some may say the industry was dying and the corporations have helped it. Honestly that’s bull shit and you know it!! It started to die when they bought in to the industry and we as skaters started supporting them and not the local shops. That is why the industry started a downward spiral. Also what happens when that one big company .. I’m sure we all know who I’m talking about decides to pull out of small local shops that had to buy in to their corporate bull shit just to stay afloat. Hmm no more local shops!! Now fast forward a couple years down the road when there isn’t money to be made in skateboarding or they see a decline in sales. Think they are going to stick around because they love skateboarding?? HELL NO! They are going to save their asses and bail on us. Leaving a disaster in their wake. Brands gone shops closed. Then what? It will be like these natural disasters we keep seeing. We are going to have to get back to the basics and start over again from scratch. But shit I’d almost be ok with that if it got people back to skating for the love and passion they hold for skateboarding… Sincerely, A skater keeping it real!”

Sent on: 22 September, 2017″

I immediately shot a reply off to Mike:

That’s hysterical! Apparently I have a ghost writer now, because I did not write a single word of that. Whoever did write it is pretty good, though. Maybe I just found my pathway to retirement…

It is missing a lot of the “Bud Stratford style”, though (as I’m sure you noted). Nobody beats the original, Mikey…! Signed -The Real (Not The Fake) B.

WOW! That is incredible. 1400 words, and it’s NOT YOU???? That is fucking insane. You gotta, gotta, GOTTA expand and comment!!! Seriously amazing! That has never happened to me.

Me neither, buddy. Me neither…

You know, it’s pretty funny…

I’m pretty stoked, actually. If somebody wants to use my name and identity to speak their mind, and say what they’re really feeling and thinking… in some way, that’s progress. At least they’re talking, y’know? It’s kinda weird for me to be the vehicle for that. But if it gets something done, then I’m cool with it.

I wonder who else our “Ghost Me” sent this to….? Interesting question, isn’t it…….?

I think I will encourage him to write again.

How? Didn’t he use my e-mail address as the return address…?

I never thought about that. Yeah. How strange.

Ah well, at least we got a chuckle out of it today. Maybe he’ll write again. Especially if we give this chap a little publicity along the way.

Even better: maybe he’ll go balls out, and start e-mailing IASC and BRA. Wouldn’t that be the tits…? Then I really could retire!

As far as commenting on the letter is concerned… I don’t think that’s really necessary. I published it as the first letter to the editor on my website. At the end of the day, I think that says it all, doesn’t it…?

Until the next issue-

Bud Stratford, Executive Director, Everything Skateboarding

 

?>

One of the cornerstone philosophies behind Everything Skateboarding is that we should, when we’re at our best, be a conduit for everyday skaters to find, hone, and magnify their own voices. To give a platform to those that might not otherwise speak up, or be heard by the curators, producers, editors, or readers of the mainstream skate media.

I’ve known Lew for years now. He’s an exceedingly principled fellow, with a lot of stuff to say (as you’ll soon see). Lately, he’s been talking a lot (on social media) about sexual harassment in skateboarding: the causes, the effects, and the ultimate ramifications for our culture, our scene, and our industry. We thought that this was a topic well worth spotlighting; the conversation is certainly well overdue. So, we gave Lew a neat new soapbox to play around with. He did not disappoint.

At the end of the day, Lew’s piece ended up reading far less like a traditional essay or think piece, and much more like stream-of-consciousness, free-form poetry. That was an unexpected bonus. Without further ado, here’s Lew:

So…

When are allegations of sexual harassment going to start to affect skateboarding?

Maybe the better (and more accurate) question is: When are we going to start openly discussing the sexual harassment that has always existed in skateboarding?

I have already fielded more than a fair share of same-story, different-person complaints- both direct, and third person- about sexual harassment in the DIY community, at skate parks, and in skate shops.

This is a thing. This really does exist.

 

However:

When I have raised the question among ‘lifer skateboarders’ in those circles, the conversation has been shut down, every time, with “boys will be boys” rationalizations…

Seriously. We have picked our heroes, but some of them are the wrong kind of person, off the board.

Think about this. Talk about this.

Thinking. Talking. Two things that have not been welcome, or allowed, to a great extent, within our culture. Our ‘counterculture’ that should, by rights, be far better than this.

We’ve all been there.
Pull up to the spot. There’s a heavy session going.
Wait by the side to size things up, see where we fit in the flow.
Just a normal, everyday session suss-out.
We’re here to skate. We’re here to have fun.
We’re here to enjoy.
If it’s just a bunch of boys, then everything is cool.

If there are women present, then it will almost always happen.

 

”One of the heavies in the scene— a real ripper— well known and well loved, sidles up to chat me up.
’Wanna smoke?’
’Wanna come to my car and smoke?’
’Do you have a boyfriend?’
Once. Twice. Three times they ask.
Once. Twice. Three times I politely decline, more apprehensive with each pass.
I am shaking a little now, and I’m breaking eye contact…
because we know what happens if I get in this guy’s car ‘to smoke’…
His buddies leer. They know all about it, too.
At this point, thwarted, this well known local talent turns to insults, or veiled threats, to keep me from ‘shit talking’ about him, about this…
I skate a little more, then I leave.
Maybe this just isn’t for me…”

 

Or:

 

”Skating and drinking, I overstay the session.
It is late and now, and I’ve lost my ride home.
The one skater with a car left is well known for a certain ‘prowess’….
Asking him for a ride is a risk… but I’m not sleeping outside tonight!
Besides, this is my local scene. This guy is a leader here. And we’re a family, right?
’Can you give me a ride home?’
’Sure!’
Then, the knowing leer and a couple provocative comments…
and the economy of the situation is revealed.
’Hey dude, if you drive me home, I really don’t want to give you a blowie for it, or have you come upstairs, okay?’
What happens next is not shock at the insinuation. It is not a clean-up on the communication of intent. It is a clarification, if anything:
’Oh, so you’re just USING ME for a ride?’
He counters with the offer to drive me to his house to sleep, but not all the way to mine. What should I do…?”

I have fielded multiple complaints of this kind of thing, over the years, from female skateboarders.

But in my travels, these have been the stories of enough young women in skateboarding for me to wonder… how common has this been? How common it is today?

Usually, influence and leadership in the scene falls to whomever skates the best, rips the hardest, and has the biggest pop. Young, athletic, alpha-male types. Not exactly the profile of positive social awareness… no offense intended…

 

I have spent a lot of time rubbing elbows with shops, scenes, park locals, small company owners and on and on…

These folks like to make an ado about their service to their community, and their leadership in making skateboarding better. Whether that be by getting parks built, or “holding it down” by “raising the level”, or what have you…

Some of them legitimately score pretty high on making things bigger and better. Some operate like bullies.

Very few of them are well-known for taking responsibility for the long- term effects of their words and their actions. This level of adult introspection is not common in the resume for scene leadership in mainstream skateboarding. You only need to look at the most popular skateboarders to see examples of some real doozies.
Some of the married “industry leaders” are even well-known for public drunken idiocies… idiocies that oftentimes include creepy behavior toward women.

When will the other shoe drop? When does the tidal wave of social consequence begin to hit the skate industry, and culture…? Maybe it’s always been here. Maybe it’s been hitting us the entire time, and we’ve just failed to see it for what it really is through our alpha-male eyes.

At this point in a discussion of such topics, there usually emerges the opinion that “It’s skateboarding, man”, as some kind of wet blanket to darken the fire we are starting. Others may use the “shut up and skate” sticker as a comment in the thread, calling into question whether or not anyone interested in getting into and dealing with this is a “real skateboarder” at all.

Well, kiddos, the thing about being an adult skateboarder, is that you’re an adult first and foremost, and then a skateboarder. An adult human being with responsibility for the consequences of actions…

And the consequences of inaction.

The consequence of our corporate and cultural failure to make sexual harassment far more difficult, far less popular, and far more costly, is the obvious stunting of female involvement in skateboarding. We might address the lack of women in the scene as being, to a very large extent, a direct result of this very bullshit.

So, here’s the answer:
Make it difficult,
Make it costly,
And make it unpopular
For the “leaders” of your scene
To be creeps
To women…

People all over the country will read this and think, “Jeez, Lew. You’re way off base, man. None of this happens in our scene!”

Ask yourself: “Is that because there are no women in your scene?”

“Is that because the women in your scene have endured it so long they’ve ‘got past it’?”

”Is that because the women have simply left, never to return?”

Ask yourself…
and talk to each other.
Ask a woman. See what she actually has to say. Hear the words for yourself. Just as I have done.

And, please.
Make it difficult,
Make it costly,
And make it unpopular
For the “leaders” of your scene
To be creeps
To women…

Do it.

?>

I’ve been aware of Carver’s existence as a design and manufacturing entity for quite some time now. But as strange as it may seem, I had never seen any of their products in person. That changed just a few weeks ago, when Josiah and I swung by Action Rideshop in Mesa, Arizona for a quick window-shopping expedition. Among their wide selection of snowboards stood a solitary skateboard rack, stacked tall with Carver completes. As I stood there a bit surprised, a super-friendly sales chap materialized out of the shadows, and asked me if I needed any help?

 

This is the Carver CI, with the C7 truck. This is the setup that I tested for the article.

“Could you tell me more about these boards?”, I inquired.

“Oh, I can do even better than that! I can let you try one for yourself!” With that, he walked us right up to the front of the shop, handed us each a board, and encouraged us to go knock ourselves out for a while. This guy was one smooth operator. I liked him immediately.

Carvers are the types of skateboards that really need to be experienced to be believed. They are insanely and immediately enjoyable; I was totally in love with them within the first few swivels. With this sort of setup, it’s entirely possible to pump yourself up to a pretty brisk pace, right from a standing start, and to keep propelling yourself forward almost infinitely with remarkable ease. The only limitations are the endurance limits of your thighs and calves… and be warned, it is a real workout on the ‘ol muscle bubbles. That aside, this is “sidewalk surfing” perfected into it’s pinnacle paradigm. This is what ’60s era skateboarders dreamed about; this is how skateboards were supposed to feel. It just took fifty years or so to figure it all out, and to get the geometry just right.

The secret is in the front truck. Whether you choose the C7, or the CX… the rear truck is basically a tall, “standard” truck that matches the ride height of whichever front truck you choose… the net result is the same: a de-stabilized front truck that turns sharper than anything else on the market, past or present. It’s the same exact effect that slalom racers go after with “wedged” riser pads: making the front truck turn sharper than the back truck increases pump efficiency and forward speed, with far less physical effort. Carver boards simply take that basic principle to its logical engineering extreme.

 

 

This is the Carver CI, with the CX truck.

 

The CX achieves this effect with an aggressive geometry that’s not quite a standard truck, and not quite a reverse kingpin truck… but really, a hybrid of the two. Many skaters that see a CX mounted on a deck insist that it’s mounted “backwards”, but that’s not the case at all. What it really is, is a reverse kingpin truck where the kingpin is mounted at almost 90 degrees. It might look a bit strange, but it turns really fast. In short: it works.

 

Closeup of the C7 truck system.

The C7 option adds another mechanical dimension to solve the tight-turning truck problem, in a slightly different way. Here, there are two kingpins; one where you would expect the “usual” kingpin to be, and another at the front of the baseplate that connects to a swivel arm, which carries the hangar. The swivel arm is free-castering, with an internal spring that creates adjustable resistance, much like a bushing would in a standard truck. When you lean into a turn, the truck pivots in two dimensions: it turns about the pivot axis, while it also casters from side to side. The result is quick-carving nirvana, enabled by a tiny turning radius that can’t be matched by any other truck on the market.

 

Closeup of the “bottleneck” tapered wheels. These increase gripping power, and propel the riser out of quick turns, increasing pump efficiency.

 

The wheels are also technically innovative. They have a slightly “bottlenecked” shape; the outside edges of the wheels are slightly taller than the centers. This forces the wheel to deform as it rolls, creating more grip; this is to keep the wheels from breaking free and sliding out during those sharp-carving turns, while the rebound propels you forward out of the pump. Again, it’s not an entirely new concept; the slalom guys have been using tapered wheels for years, and for the same exact reasons. But here, the concept has been perfected for a far more pedestrian pastime, fine-tuned for the everyday recreational surf-skater.

 

Here’s the video that illustrates just how fun this bugger really is. It’s pretty accurate. Still, nothing beats rolling one of your own.

 

This board is not only an addictively fun engineering marvel; it’s also quite a looker. It’s beautiful in its elegant simplicity. The fact that it’s designed to look just like an Al Merrick squashtail (or swallow tail, depending on which model you choose) is absolutely brilliant; “sidewalk surfing” has really been taken to its literal limits with this board, and it’s f’n fantastic. It has become the prize of my quiver virtually overnight, and made me the envy of my entire neighborhood.

That’s not the end of the innovation, either. Carver also offers financing for their new boards, via their website. Yes. Financing. Twenty-something bucks a month nabs you anything from their wide selection of sizes, shapes, and options, delivered right to your doorstep, paid for in easy-to-afford installments. That’s totally unheard of, an “industry first” to be sure. What else will these guys think of next…? I can’t wait to find out.

See more of the Carver lineup for yourself at www.carverskateboards.com

 

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The Small Company Field Guide was a regular feature that we used to publish on the old Everything Skateboarding blog. It was so popular that we decided to keep it around for the newest iteration of Everything Skateboarding. Why? Because these small companies are infusing a hell of a lot of creativity, originality, and energy into the skateboarding scene right now. They are part of a wider grassroots effort to take skateboarding back from the perceived big-business moguls that have had far too much control over our industry, for far too long. This month’s featured interviewee is Jose Maldonado, the co-founder and co-owner (along with his wife) of Phoenix, Arizona based Nemesis Skateboards. Without further ado:  

Hey Jose! Bud here from Everything Skateboarding. How you doin’ today? Are you ready to answer a few questions…?

Fuck yeah, Bud! I’m stoked for the opportunity to be in the mag!

First up: what’s your position at the company?

I’m the Founder/Co-owner and Team Manager.

How’d you get into skating? How long have you been doing it? What kind of stuff do you like to rip?

I started skating when I was in the fourth grade. I used to play soccer, and I had always seen the older dudes in the hood shredding, and it looked like a lot more fun! I personally like skating street, and handrails. But if I have to skate a park, I prefer bowls and tranny. Something about hauling ass and boosting huge airs makes me feel alive.

How long has the company been around? What year was it started?

We just launched this year in September, so we only been open few months, but the business is growing faster than I ever imagined.

Here’s the most important question, right here: Why did you guys decide to start a small company? What was missing in the marketplace that made you ultimately say to yourselves, “Damn, man! We need to get up, get our asses going, and do this ourselves!”…?

I grew up on Zero, Baker, and the rawness of skateboarding. With all the commercial/corporate companies coming into the game, I just wanted to make a company and brand that is unprocessed and untainted like all the commercialized brands. We wanna take skateboarding back its roots.

 

Photos, left to right: Jose Maldonado, classic backside smith; the Nemesis logo; two of Nemesis’ most recent graphic offerings.

 

Who’s on the team (if you have one), and why did you pick those guys to represent your product/brand?

We have a pretty big team that consist of two groms, Keagan Jepson and Steel Donahue; two lady shredders, Jessica James and Christina Pantea (who is also our Assistant Team Manager); and eight dudes: Ethan Doty, Stephen Enright, Garrett Deroche, Calvin Debruler, Scott Vancil, Matt Suncin, Nathan Glenn, and Jesse Williams.

We picked everyone on the team carefully because we see our team as our skate fam!

Both Kegan and Steel show true heart and dedication; it was important to us to support the generation coming up. My wife and I talked about how women in the sport do not get enough exposure, and we decided to add two ladies to the team. Jess and Christina were added after looking at a grip of girl skaters. We went to meet them, and my wife knew right, then, and there that they were it for us. All of our guy skaters are rad in their own way, we appreciate how different they all skate.

What are the goals of The Company? Rock star status? International distribution? World domination? Corporate alliances, aquisitions, and mergers? Hookers and Blow?

Honestly, I just want things to take off enough to quit my day job keep the company alive and growing! I’m not going to sell out to make a shit ton of money, or to be famous. Skating is life, man. I just want to be able to give my riders what they need and to make enough money to shred every day.

 

Photos, left to right: Giving back to the community at the Locals Only Phoenix contest, fall of 2018; flyer for the upcoming grom-friendly “Hesh Sesh” at Kids That Rip in Chandler, Arizona, February 11th, 2018. Jose says, “There aren’t enough events these days that are well-suited to the groms. But without the groms, there will be no future of skateboarding”. That’s positive perspective and activism at work, right there. Love it.

 

Do you, or would you, sell direct-to-consumer? If so, do you have an MSRP pricing structure to protect the retailers?

Right now we are more focused on direct to consumer, and plan to keep it that way as we have hopes of opening our own shop one day. We will have our boards in some shops around Arizona, and back home for the shredders that like to buy decks and gear in person. 

Are you guys in shops? If so, which ones?

We are currently working on getting in some shops, and we have our stuff in the local skate shop out here in Surprise, AZ, called The Sk8 Haus.

Have any distributors picked you up yet?

We are in talks right now, but not yet!

Have you advertised in any magazines lately? If so, how and why did you pick those mags…?

Nope, this is the first one. I’m super stoked!

How crappy are my questions? Is there anything that I forgot to ask, that you’d like to talk about? Famous last words, perhaps…?

Crappy? Naa, they are good questions. I think you nailed it bro. All I gotta say is Nemesis is Makin’ Moves, so be on the look out!

Thanks, Jose. This was a lot of fun.

No, thank you for the opportunity Bud. Hopefully I’ll see you soon!

See the Nemesis website for yourself here, or surf in to www.nemesisskateboarding.com

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In the annals of skateboarding history, there is no woman that has dominated skateboarding in the way that Lynn Kramer has struck “The Fear Of God” into the world of slalom skateboarding. Ever.

This is a bold statement that, I’m quite sure, will ignite it’s fair share of debate and controversy. Many skate-historians will surely point to such luminaries as Laura Thornhill (in freestyle), Carabeth Burnside (in vert), Elissa Steamer (in street), or even Brianne Davies (in downhill), and state that these women broke down many barriers in their respective heydays, and paved the way for other women to follow. And I’m not gonna argue with that one bit. These women truly did make vast and important strides toward making skateboarding a much more gender-neutral pastime, and shattered many a glass ceiling along the way.

However, note that I carefully chose to use the word “dominated” in my introductory paragraph. Which implies not only respect among men… but also, fear. Fear that “the boyz” might just get their puny little asses thoroughly mauled by the female contingent. Laura Thornhill, Carabeth Burnside, Elissa Steamer, and Brianne Davies… these women were, and still are, respected. Respected for the ground they broke, and the hurdles they had to overcome to pave the way for future generations.

But, “feared”…? That, my friends, is something altogether different. Most guys that I know, probably wouldn’t be too petrified of having to go head-to-head with a Carabeth Burnside, or an Elissa Steamer… or even, a Brianne Davies… in a competitive setting. If for no other reason, than out of either ego, or out of arrogant ignorance. Because for all the ground that they broke, the final lesson has always been that although they can run with “the guys”… it’s still pretty difficult to imagine actually getting beaten up by one of these women. If not, impossible.

 

“If you’ve been to any major race in the past few years, you’ve certainly run into Lynn. And, you’ve probably been beaten soundly by her. She’s “The Queen”, no doubt about it…!”

– Fatboy

But a few years back, I was hanging out at one of Kenny Mollica’s “Buckeye” races, quietly lurking in the timing tent (which is truly the place to be, at the climax of any slalom event- take my word for it, kids), and watching the brackets fall when, all of a sudden, some dude looked over my shoulder… noticed that his next challenger was Mrs. Kramer… and forlornly sighed something to the effect of, “Oh, my gawd! I have to go up against Lynn…?! Shit! That’s it. My life is now officially over.” And, I just kicked back and laughed my ass off as I realized, for the first time ever, just how scared the “average guy” is of having to meet Lynn Kramer… and, go head-to-head against her… on a race course. I laughed, because I suddenly realized that there’s a whole contingent of fully-hardened slalom racers that apparently feel the same way. And I laughed because I was so, so glad that it wasn’t me that was about to get my ass kicked.

Simply put: Racing Lynn Kramer is a proposition where somebody loses- regardless of their gender- and Lynn wins, almost every time. That’s probably why she’s a nine-time World Champion, and still harder to beat than ever.

When future generations of skate historians finally get their act together, and write the complete and comprehensive history of skateboarding… I think they’ll end up agreeing with me on this one. No woman, anywhere, has dominated any field of skateboarding, more than Lynn Kramer has dominated the world of slalom.

Our slalom editor, Fatboy, recently turned in this crafty interview that illustrates the “lighter side” of Lynn Kramer. That is, the side that we only get to see when she’s not busy chewing up dudes on the hill:

 

Our gal…! Photo by Maria Carrasco/Sk8Kings.

 

Why skateboard racing? Why not bullfighting? Or, ice fishing? Or, something else?

I already tried those, but failed miserably.

Are you real gear conscious, or like me: “F@%K it! I’ll just run what I have bolted up”?

In my head, I am overly gear conscious. But in reality, my husband is the one who makes sure I have extra axle nuts, and I’ll ride any wheels the Brown Bomber throws at me.

Tell me one weird fact about you that folks might not know?

If I told you, then they would know.

Why won’t any of you race in a skirt, like me?

We only need one skirt in slalom.

 

 

Note just how far back “the competition” is in this photo. WCS 2011. Photo by Maria Carrasco/Sk8Kings.

 

Are people generally surprised when you tell them you race skateboards?

My customers love it! I used to be afraid if they knew I was taking time off their project to go skateboard, they wouldn’t take me seriously. But when I play up the whole World Champion thing, they love it.

Pie or doughnuts? And, what flavor?

Maple Bacon doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, Oregon.

What was your first car?

Audi 5000.

What was the approximate date that CMC first hit on you?

Who…?!

 

    

A picture of speed. Morro Nationals, 2008. Photo by Maria Carrasco/Sk8Kings.

 

Which discipline do you prefer: TS, GS, Hybrid?

Not hybrid.

What’s your most memorable skate moment?

Beating Judi [Oyama] by .007 seconds combined in the Tight Slalom at the 2003 Worlds in Morro Bay.

Do you also skate:

A) Downhill?

Yes, but only if I have to.

B) Ramp?

Yes.

C) Park?

Yes.

D) Ditch?

Yes.

E) Freestyle?

Not so much…

Are you stoked that more girls are racing these days?

I would be stoked if more girls were racing these days…

 

Same ‘ol story: Lynn skates, and the guys watch. 2010 Nats. Photo by Maria Carassco/Sk8Kings.

 

Regular, or goofy? Normal push, or Mongo?

Goofy all the way.

Favorite pizza topping?

Artichoke hearts.

Favorite race to attend?

There was one Sizzler that held top honors for a long time, until I went to my first Farm.

Ever think about doin’ roller derby?

Sure.

 

Being a world-class, world-champion skater means lots of camera-time, and fat guys from Jersey chasing you down to do interviews. WCS 2011. Photo by Maria Carassco/Sk8Kings.

 

Is David Beckham really that dreamy? Posh was really cute in the day, but now she looks kinda fake and plastic. Ginger was always my favorite!

Who..?

Favorite skater to watch?

Chris Miller.

To race against?

Jonny Miller (no relation).

Favorite cartoon character?

Emily, Stewy, and Wile E Coyote because he always gets smashed, burned, or otherwise mutilated, but never dies.

Do you watch the X-games, or who gives a shit anymore?

If they’re on.

Do you snowboard?

Sure.

Any other sports?

Sure.

Do blondes really have more fun?

I had fun being blonde.

Favorite bands/music?

80’s Punk.

Dumbest thing you remember doing back in school?

Pouring beer into an empty coke can, and taping over the top. I never even made it to school before my parents smelled it.

Does your Mom still give you shit about skating/racing, like mine does?

I was never allowed to skateboard growing up because my dad was an orthopedist. He thought it was just a way to pay the bills until they came to see the 2004 La Costa Open. Then he told me “Wow, that’s really a sport. And wow, you’re actually good at it.” Now, my mom likes going to races.

Furthest you’ve traveled for a race?

Czech Republic. Twice.

Would you prefer male racers to treat you as an equal, or as a lady?

Equal what?! I kick most of their asses. Then after the race, they may open the door for me.

Hobbies?

Reading, gardening.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a Mechanical Engineer. I try to convince people (such as yourself) that they can make more skateboards for less money, if they have a CNC router to help them. Then after they buy the router from me, we help keep them running.

 

    

Make it “World Champion of Slalom Skateboarding”, and you’ll have it right. Sure, she might smile a lot off the course…

 

…but on the course, she’s all business. Maria Carrasco/Sk8Kings photos.

 

Ever ridden in an ambulance?

Yes.

Ever wear KISS makeup?

No.

Would you ever wear shoes that hurt your feet because they looked cool?

Not on purpose.

Is anything (car, laptop, refrigerator, etc.) in your home covered in skate stickers?

Most everything.

Do you look at things (curbs, ditches, hills) differently than others because you skate?

Of course.

Favorite skate t-shirt?

All my shirts that Chicken made.

Skate companies that have been cool to you?

Sk8kings, Khiro, Timeship Racing, Nitro, Pocket Pistols, Abec 11, Fibreflex, Turner, 3dm/Seismic, Dregs, Sector 9, Radikal, Pleasure Tools, G&S, Powell-Peralta, Oust, Airflow, Skaterbuilt, Asphalt Playground, and Indiana.

Racers/Skaters that have been cool to you?

All slalom skaters are cool.

 

Fatboy (the writer) is a great chap that also owns a small company called “Longboards By Fatboy”, which can be found at http://www.longboardsbyfatboy.com/.

Maria Carrasco (the photographer) is a lovely lady that also runs the day-to-day at Sk8Kings, which can be found at http://www.sk8kings.com/.

Lynn Kramer is a kick-ass slalom racer. But you knew that already, ‘cuz you just read the interview.

And Bud Stratford… the guy that art-directed the piece, and wrote the intro… is still an asshat.

 

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During my 10 years working in the skateboard industry, I shot countless thousands of photos. During my early days as a skater, I only shot negative film. I then switched almost exclusively to slide film (Kodachrome 64) after being hired as a staff photographer at SkateBoarder magazine in January 1978. Though I later went on to work as the general manager and team manager at Gullwing, then as managing editor at TransWorld SKATEboarding magazine, I continued to photograph skating as time (and energy) allowed.

Most of my slides were stored at the SkateBoarder and TWS offices, so the photo editors would have easier access to them for publication. Many of the slides were left at those magazines, even long after I quit, in the hopes of them eventually being published in the magazines. I had also loaned many of my slides to the skateboard manufacturers to be used in product ads. Since I didn’t keep close track of those photos, many of them were either lost or stolen over the years. The worst instance of the unnecessary loss of photos happened when SkateBoarder magazine was bought by a large corporation, and they threw many former staff photographers’ original photos in the trash without bothering to contact anyone.

After leaving the skateboard industry in 1986, I estimate that I had less than five hundred of my original slides still in my possession. Then, starting around 2000 when the old-school craze took off, several skate industry companies and individuals contacted me to let me know they still had some of my original slides. Many hundreds of photos came back to me that I had thought were forever lost. Billy Ruff was one of those skaters: the slides I’d given him eventually ended up in a box which was stored at his mom’s house until he got them back just a few years ago.

Another source of my old photos came from Monty Little, who I had loaned many of my best photos to decades ago so he could make copies. Since many of those original photos were later lost, those duplicates became the only surviving form of my old photos. Then, earlier this year, Tracker discovered a stash of my photos during production on their book. The largest batch of photos came from Grant Brittain, which he’d found while clearing out the photo archives when he left TWS magazine to start The Skateboard Mag, and had long been forgotten in the TWS’s file cabinets for decades.

I estimate that over the past few years I’ve had at least a couple hundred slides returned to me. Some were of skaters and locations that I had no other photos for, which made them irreplaceable to skate history, and especially to me personally.

 

 

Billy Ruff, Frontside Air. Oasis Skatepark, San Diego, California, 1980.

“Billy Ruff was a regular at Oasis skatepark, which was one of the most popular Southern California parks for many years. Along with his other G&S team riders, he ruled the park from the day it was built.”

 

Brad Bowman, Early Release Frontside Air. Del Mar Skate Ranch, Del Mar, California, 1978

“Del Mar was one of the most popular parks with the S. California skaters for many years. Brad frequented the park often and ripped it as if it was his own home park. His smooth style was a standout even among the locals.”

 

 

Christian Hosoi, Lien Air.Del Mar Skate Ranch, Del Mar, California, August 1985

“Del Mar skatepark was once one of the most popular parks for the skaters in Southern California, and soon became the battleground between Christian Hosoi’s aggro style and Tony Hawk’s technical proficiency, who both consistently dominated the contest scene in the 1980’s.”

 

 

Ellen Oneal, at Knott’s Berry Farm. Buena Park, California, February 1978

“This was at a skate demo at the park’s Good Time Theater during a break in the skating to sign autographs for the many fans who attended. Other notable skaters, such as Paul and Dave Hackett, were also in attendance performing at this demo.”

 

 

 

Mike McGill, Frontside Channel Plant. Lynnhaven Ramp, Virginia Beach, Virginia, June 1985

“Lynnhaven Ramp, along with the nearby Mt. Trashmore ramp in Virginia Beach, VA, were among the favorite spots for locals, and the scene of a major vert contest in 1985 with all the top skaters attending.”

 

 

Paul Hackett, No-Handed Backside Air. Reseda Skatercross, Los Angeles, California, 1978

“Reseda Skatercross was one of the most popular skate spots in the San Fernando valley north of Los Angeles, which was built on the former site of an A&W drive-through. Paul ripped the park, along with many other top skaters of the time.”

 

 

Darren Ho, Pearl City pool, Hawaii, August 1978

“Hawaii was famous for its multitude of local pools, ramps and ditches, and Pearl City pool was one of the most popular in spite of its small size and tight transitions. Skating here is local, Darren Ho, with Doug “Pineapple” Saladino sitting on the deck waiting to skate.”

 

 

Steve Olson, Backside Air. Lakewood Skatepark, Lakewood, California, 1979

“Steve Olson was famous for his solid and aggressive skate style, and one of the most popular skaters in the ’70s and ’80s. Lakewood Skatepark was located in the central Los Angeles area, and was a popular spot for many contests and frequented by the top skaters of the time.

 

 

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Tony Magnusson, aka “T-Mag”, aka “Tony Mag”, aka “The Maggster” (I totally just made that last one up), was a founding member of H-Street Skateboards, making him one of the first pro skaters to form and run a successful rider-owned board company, along with longtime friend Mike Ternasky.

 

Tony Magnusson at Osiris HQ, Carlsbad, California, Fall 2017. Photo: Chad Thomas

 

Their brand “H-Street” featured innovative designs like the ‘Hell-Cave’, a deep concave running from tip-to-tail; a feature that has become the standard among top street and vert skaters.

On the topic of ‘origins’ Mag had this to say:

“H-Street was born in the early 80’s, just as skateboarding was coming back from being all but dead. I had worked at the UWS [Uncle Wiggley Skateboards] board factory in San Diego and learned how to build all sorts of cool and hi-techy boards, which I still ride to this day. Lots of carbon, and other fun stuff.”

Tony on his early years:

“When I was a 13 year old kid in Sweden, and I found skateboarding, a whole new universe opened up for me. And it was not just the riding; it was more of the lifestyle and the attitude that I regarded as an American culture that was kind of foreign to us. Both American and British music played a huge role in this culture also, with the introduction of punk rock and heavy metal.”

When I asked Mag how he discovered skateboarding in the first place:

“At the beginning of 1976, nobody had ever heard of skating. By the end of the year, everyone had one…. literally overnight in Sweden, it spread like wildfire. It was great to have a front-row seat. Along with punk-rock, skating helped the youth take back their country in the course of one year. Alph Erikson also opened the “New Sports” sport complex, which was Sweden’s first indoor skatepark (fashioned after Southern California parks & culture), complete with graffiti-filled walls. By the end of the year, I was pretty well known.”

(Not too bad for a kid who’d never seen a skate deck 12 months prior!)

 

Left to right: Tony in 1977 (14 years old) on a board he made in woodshop; footplant in Gothenburg, sweden, Circa 1977; frontside air, 1978. All photos from the Tony Magnusson archives.

 

“When I was 16 and I made it to California (in 1980), I found that skateboarding had been left for dead; parks were closing, many of the classic 70’s companies were gone. Yet in a way, it left skateboarding with only the most dedicated riders and industry types. It was a time when you felt like all of skateboarding was a brotherhood, and a sacred secret we all shared. I also thought that skateboarders were the gnarliest and most hardcore people around, thus the most real and honest people. Everyone else was kind of a fake and a phony. Skateboarders just said it the way it was, no games, spin or other bullcrap.

“In a way, I thought everyone else was wearing a mask, hiding who they really are. But not skateboarders. When it was time to figure out a graphic for my first Pro board, I searched long and hard for something that I thought was meaningful to me and perhaps would mean something to someone else too. I found the tragic-comic masks, often symbolizing theater drama and reflecting the tragic and happy aspect of life in general. To me, they are also a good metaphor for the masks people wear.”

Upon his return to Sweden, he got a job and saved every dime he made for a year and a half. The now seventeen-year-old sold everything he had, and bought a one-way ticket back to San Diego in 1980. This began what would become one of the most prolific careers in professional skateboarding.

I asked him about the ‘California attraction’ as a young kid in Sweden. His response:

“It was inherently known that skateboarding was born in Southern California. Magazines, and brands like Sims, Santa Cruz, Powell, and Kryptonics were all pointing us toward Southern California.”

 

Left: The Uncle Wiggley Skate Team at the famous Del Mar Skate Ranch, (L-R) Mag, Adrian Demain, Peter Percosan & Doug Ring, photo from the Tony Magnusson archives. Right: A recent H-Street reinterpretation of Mag’s Uncle Wiggley pro model, photo courtesy of H-Street Skateboards.

 

Before the co-creation of the H-Street  ‘super-group’, Mag joined Uncle Wiggley’s, a San Diego based skate company that operated in the early ‘80s. After testing some boards that a few Del Mar Skate Ranch rippers had designed, Tony came on board and put every dime he had into the company. Unlike many brands at the time [and since], Uncle Wiggley actually made their own boards; because of that, they were able to produce and market some extremely progressive deck constructions, including foam/kevlar and epoxy/glass models. But after a few years of printing boards instead of skating, Tony decided to leave Uncle Wiggley for his own division (Magnusson Designs) at Sure Grip.

 

Left: Magnusson Designs Ad from 1986. Center: Magnusson Designs Ad from 1987. Right: Gullwing ad featuring Mag’s sky-high McTwist, Houston, Texas, circa 1988.

 

When asked about the shift from Magnusson Designs to H-Street, Mag replied:

“Steve Steadham started Steve Steadham Designs (SSD) through Sure Grip, and invited me along to start my own. In 1985, I ran into Mike Ternasky at a skate camp. He was like the parking lot cop, monitoring where we could and couldn’t skate. I wasn’t big of following rules; it was a little contentious. We quickly found common ground, as we came from different backgrounds (Mag pro skating, Mike was college educated)… through brainstorming we decided to ‘reinvent the wheel’ in terms of how a company should be ran, and that became H-Street.”

 

Left to right: Tony Mag and a young Danny Way pair up for an H-Street ad, 1988; H-Street contest standings ad, 1989; H-Street’s groundbreaking “Shackle Me Not” VHS video cover, 1989.

 

Mike and Tony built what would become one of the most respected, stylish and progressive teams we’ve ever seen. With riders like Matt Hensley, Ron Allen, John Schultes, Art Godoy, and Eddie “El Gato” Elguera, as well as a 14 year-old wunderkid named Danny Way, the team was stacked and became known as “The Magnificent 7”, Mag being the seventh.

It was during this period in which the two partners (Tony & Mike) began experimenting with filming and editing videos themselves. They didn’t have the budget of companies like Powell-Peralta or Santa Cruz. From this act of DIY ingenuity (which Tony fully credits Mike for the idea/inspiration of) and creativity, a new style of video was born –a style which is still emulated today. Pick a skate video, any skate video, and you’ll see the H-Street signature “follow cam/riders-eye” approach pioneered by this group.

When I spoke with Mag about this topic, he recalled:

“We were looking at the Powell Bones Brigade -with their full film crews, pro-grade cameras, and lighting- and just thought, ‘We don’t have those kinds of funds, but there’s gotta be a way’. So we found some hand-held consumer video cams, and taught ourselves how to edit. We just did what we had to do.”

In 1991, Mike left H-Street to start Plan B.

“Mike wanted to go do his own thing. The band broke up”

On May 17, 1994, Tony’s friend and co-conspirator Mike Ternasky was hit and killed when an elderly woman failed to stop at a stop sign. Mike died as a result of the tremendous impact; he was only 28 years old.

After the end of H-Street, Mag kept rolling… right into Evol Skateboards, which he founded in 1993 with Niko Achtipes. Evol evolved from skateboards to clothing, snowboards, boots & outerwear. This is probably a good time to point out that Tom Sims himself taught Tony how to press snowboards. So you know they were legit, not just some cheap knock-off.

 

Left to right: Tony at Mountain High on one of the first Evol snowboards, 1988; Evol logo; original shop ad, courtesy of Sk8supply.com; an original (never mounted) Evol Personals 154. Photo: Chad Thomas

 

In 1995 they introduced the Evol Casuals line of shoes, which quickly became Evol’s most profitable category. Due to conflicts with other deck & clothing sponsors, Tony and Niko found it difficult to get non-Evol riders to wear their shoes. In 1996, the boys came up with, as it turns out, a very effective and forward thinking marketing solution: the shoe division was re-branded as Osiris Footwear, with the original team of Gershon Mosley, Dave Mayhew, Tyrone Olson, and Adam McNatt.

 

Clockwise from top left: Original Evol and Osiris catalogs, courtesy of Sk8supply.com; Osiris Hi’s at Osiris HQ in Carlsbad, California, 2017. Photos: Chad Thomas

 

The Evol Skateboards brand continued on until 1998, while Osiris continues to this day producing high quality kicks with creative graphics and styles for all types of riders and outdoor enthusiasts.

Be sure to check out part two of our Mag retrospective, “Resurrection”, coming next month, featuring the original H-Street crew and a reunion out on the high-seas, complete with live punk-rock and floating half-pipes.

Until then, skate everything!

 

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Tucson is a really fascinating place. Established by Jesuit missionaries in 1692, and incorporated in 1877 (making it the oldest incorporated city in Arizona), Tucson is lush with southwest lore and history set against a backdrop of colonial Spanish and Mexican influences. It is also a verifiable cornucopia of roadside attractions and oddities, as my favorite websites, Roadside America and Atlas Obscura, pointed out so extensively. More importantly, it is a modern metropolis of nearly a million people that live squarely in the shadow of the military-industrial complex. The infrastructure required to support this unlikely desert oasis means that the skateboarding opportunities here are simply outstanding. The best part of it all is that Tucson is a mere two hours away from my Phoenix home, maybe three if I manage to hit some traffic along the way. That allowed me the luxury of spending a few relaxing weekends in and around the city exploring the environs, and all of the colorful attractions that they had to offer. Tucson appealed to both the skater and the unapologetic nerd in me in really huge ways. It was, quite literally, the very best of both worlds. This is my photo-journal diary of my exploits and my many misadventures.

 

Photos, top to bottom: A-4 Skyhawk, illustration by the author; the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, AZ; F-4C Phantom II at the museum; P-51D Mustang, illustration by the author; F-4E of the Thunderbirds; B-58/B-57/B-52 panoramic. Saturday, July 30^th, 2017

 

Tucson is probably best known to the outside world for the sprawling Air Force “boneyard” on the city’s far south side that serves as the final resting place for all sorts of advanced military aircraft.

Here, multimillion dollar jets are parked, slowly disassembled for their precious parts, and finally cut up and force-fed to the fiery smelter to be reduced to inglorious aluminum ingots. Sure, I may be an avid skater… but an aviation nerd (like me) does have his own set of peculiar priorities. This had to be my very first foray into the city, my inner geek simply wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, I had evening dinner plans with Mr. Gesmer to discuss some pretty serious skateboarding business. The last thing I wanted to do was to show up at some swanky eating establishment all sunburned, sweaty, and stinky from skateboarding all day long.

Thankfully, the Pima Air and Space Museum that rests right across the street from the fabled boneyard has four air-conditioned hangars, all filled with amazingly historic aircraft, that offer extended respites from Tucson’s blistering sun. Unfortunately, they also have acres… maybe even a couple of square miles… of outdoor exhibits as well. Nothing ever really goes as planned for me; I managed to show up sunscorched and stinky for dinner, anyway. Sorry about that, Dan.

 

Photo: Boeing B-29 “Sentimental Journey” and the quiet solitude of an aging admirer; Boeing B-17 “I’ll Be Around”, 309^th Group Museum, Pima Air and Space Museum. Saturday, July 30^th, 2017.

 

Photo: The Corona Calibration Project, Casa Grande, AZ. Saturday, October 28^th, 2017. Art by Juan Paris, courtesy of Premises Skatepark in Tucson, AZ.

 

Back in the 1960’s, spy satellite technology was still in its infancy. Satellites were pretty stupid back then, and were prone to getting lost and/or out of focus.

The answer for the US Intelligence Agencies was to arrange a series of concrete focal points and optical targets in the Arizona desert for spy satellites (and their masters) to use to orient and position themselves before proceeding on their clandestine sleuthing missions over the Soviet Bloc. These concrete targets are huge… at least a couple hundred feet square… yet oddly invisible to passers by due to their extremely low profile, and how readily raw concrete blends into the desert landscape. With a little bit of hiking through overgrown cactus thorns, I somehow managed to track three of them down in the span of about twenty minutes. It felt like something of an accomplishment.

 

Photo: The Domes, Casa Grande, AZ. Saturday, October 28^th, 2017. Art by Juan Paris, courtesy of Premises Skatepark in Tucson, AZ.

 

Just up the road from the Corona Calibration Targets was another abandoned technological wonder…

“The Domes” were erected in the late 1970’s to offer an advanced, climate-controlled structure where micro-electronics could be mass-manufactured out in the unforgiving, arid desert. Huge air bags were inflated, and a mix of concrete and insulating foam was sprayed over them… a foot thick in places… before the air bags were deflated, leaving the caterpillar-shaped buildings to stand solidly on their own. The factory was never completed; The Domes were soon abandoned, their subsequent owners vainly looking for a lot in life and a purpose for them. Ever since, they have attracted vandals, squatters, graffiti enthusiasts, visual artists, intrepid partygoers, photographers, conspiracy theorists, academic researchers, and fringe religious fanatics (including a rumored satanic cult) to their gracefully, yet mysteriously, arched interiors. When you talk inside The Domes, the reverberating echoes relentlessly bash away at your eardrums; the acoustics of this place are absolutely mesmerizing.  Jen, Chris, and I spent quite a bit of time yelling gibberish at the walls like crazy people, and listening to the crumbling walls loudly mumbling back. We are, if nothing else, easily entertained.

 

Photo: The mellow ditch I found near Continental Ranch; Franklin motor car illustration by the author; Continental Ranch Skatepark, Marana, AZ. Saturday, October 22^nd, 2017

 

Now, this is the sort of service that I expect from a publicly owned skatepark.

The landscapers are here, kicking the little Razor scooter bastards out of the skatepark, so that they can blow all of the dust and the debris out of the bowl with their high-powered air compressors. While they’re tidying everything up, I have a rare opportunity to shoot a few photos of the park for Jeff over at The Disciples without any snot-nosed little pukes mucking around in there. It’s a great start to an inevitably awesome day.

This is not a city-owned skatepark. That surprised me. It was built by the homeowner’s association (HOA) for the neighborhood, and it’s professionally maintained by the HOA as well. Thus, the landscaping crew that comes by every day to kick out all the Razor kid riffraff and clean the place up for skaters like me. I never liked the HOA concept very much in the past. But today, I am fuckin’ lovin’ it.

The razor scooter kids are intimidated by my sheer bulk and aloof attitude, just the way I like it. Because of that, I get a bunch of scooter-free runs all to myself in the bowls. The place is quite a handful: steep transitions and tight corners abound everywhere. The roll-in bank also has an abrupt kink right at the base that makes it feel much more like you’re dropping into a janky ditch. It was hard on the ‘ol knees, but it hurt really good.

As I was leaving Continental ranch and making my way through the maze of residential development, I spotted the first of the many ditches that I would discover scattered throughout Tucson’s rich environs. It was a super mellow ditch, but one that required the bare minimum of sweeping to skate… so why not take a moment out of my day to sweep and skate that bitch? There were no fences, no walls, no signs… okay, there may have been a sign, but I probably ignored it because signs are for dweebs and so easily disregarded… and spent about an hour boosting Boneless Ones and sliding Berts around in my serendipitous solitude. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but that little ditch would prove to be the Big Bang Moment for my exhaustive series of seek-and-skate ditch missions. Tucson does, after all, get a lot of rain in really short downspurts. Turns out, all of that wayward water has to get redirected somewhere.

 

Photos: 22^nd Street art, under the I-10 overpass; Santa Rita Skatepark’s bowls; art by Juan Paris, courtesy of Premises Skatepark in Tucson, AZ.

 

I must be at the wrong place. I’m at a city park… or what appears to be a city park, at least… driving around in circles through mobs of homeless people, looking for a skatepark. My map tells me that I’m at the right place, but my eyes aren’t really believing it. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Who in their right mind would put a skatepark right in the middle of an overpopulated homeless camp…?!

Well, apparently, the city of Tucson would. Because that’s exactly what they did. After a few more minutes of navigating through and around an army of meth tweakers, I finally found the skatepark. Solidly surrounded by ten-foot-high, wrought iron fence. It made me wonder to myself whether its real intent was to keep the skaters locked in, or the homeless wanderers locked out…?

As I was walking toward the bathrooms… they were locked down, as it turns out, because of the homeless orgies that were going on inside back when they were open… I heard somebody behind me talking, repeatedly inquiring about skateboard lessons for their son. I wasn’t really sure who they were talking to, at first; when I finally turned around, I was kinda surprised to find that it was one of the homeless contingent, talking to me.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m not from around here. So I don’t have any idea whether this park offers skateboard lessons for your son. I just don’t know anything about it. Sorry.”

“Fucking fatass!”, she replied. “I’ll bet that if I had a goddamned cupcake, you’d be a lot nicer to me!” Then she stormed off, right back to the homeless camp.

Wow. That was a pretty rude bitch trip, right there.

On the other hand: I was kinda starving. So “cupcakes” did sound really good all of a sudden. Maybe I’m a fatass after all. Cupcakes. Yum.

It was a pretty rough start to the day, but the skatepark itself more than made up for the bad-attitude homeless gauntlet. Lots of big, gnarly bowls: an egg, a kidney, and a sprawling, mini-sized amoeba with hips and corners all over the place. I didn’t skate them very well, of course; my feeble mind was still pretty preoccupied with peeing and cupcakes. I did manage to pinch it up and get in a few runs, though. Smooth early-morning concrete shall never be passed by without at least a quick roll.

 

Photo: Kevin Coulthard standing solidly atop a backside tailslide, Santa Rita Skatepark; one of Tucson’s many boneyards that lie quietly in the shadow of the aircraft sprawl at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base; panoramic of Purple Heart skate park at Rita Ranch. Saturday, October 22^nd, 2017. 

 

Another long drive across town, and through Tucson’s infamous aircraft boneyard, brought me to another HOA-funded facility, this time on the extreme southeast corner of the city limits at a development called Rita Ranch, and a skatepark strangely named Purple Heart.

Purple Heart was a real departure from most of the skateparks I’ve visited this summer. Very large in terms of square footage, but very small in terms of obstacle size, this park is clearly built with the beginner skateboarder that is learning the basics in mind.

It’s roomy, mellow, and entirely unintimidating. Turns out, it also appeals to the aging, cupcake-eating fatass that is trying [in vain] to re-learn a few basics of his own.  The scooter kids here were unusually clingy… they were dead, set, and determined to be my best friend in the whole wide world… but once they left, the park was a lot of fun. I stayed for quite a while, and learned a few new tricks along the way. It’s been a while since I’ve said something like that.

 

 

Photos and illustraitons, clockwise form top left: Felix Lucero bust, Garden of Gesthamane; overview of Tucson from Windy Point Vista on the Santa Catalina highway; detail of Roadside Glowing Cocoon; C-130 “Tail on a Sidewalk”; Boondocks Lounge giant concrete bottle; Datsun 280Z; Rattlesnake Pedestrian Bridge; Little Anthony’s Famous Diner. Saturday, October 29^th, 2017.  

 

Photos: BLX, inside and out. Saturday, October 22^nd, 2017.

 

There are ten “skate shops” in Tucson and vicinity. Nine of those “shops” are either Zumiez, Tillys, or Vans outlets. That leaves a grand sum of one core, independent, brick-and-mortar skate shop anywhere in Tucson. It’s a stone’s throw from downtown, in the culturally rich Fourth Avenue arts-and-entertainment district. I was pleasantly surprised, even before I got to their front door. The neighborhood deserves a day of its very own to go and explore.

BLX… aka, “The Blocks”… is extremely skate-boutiquey. Lots of hipster “skate shoes”- Adidas, Nike, et cetera- and lots of east-coast urban street-skating flavor, circa 1996 or so. Ricky Oyola and Matt Reason would have found themselves right at home at BLX in their heydays. Slightly strange, considering that uptown Tucson is a world away from Philadelphia, geographically. But philosophically, they’re practically next-door neighbors.

 

Photos: Grijalva  Skatepark (above) and St. Johns School Skatepark (below). Saturday, October 22^nd, 2017. Art by Juan Paris, courtesy of Premises Skatepark in Tucson, AZ.

 

Prefab skateparks do exist in Tucson, for better or for worse.

The first one that I stumbled into, Grijalva Park, was the poster park for fucking uselessness.  I suppose that the ledges might have been functional enough… any idiot can build a simple box, after all… but the “quarterpipe” felt like it was way less than three feet wide, which threw a real monkey wrench into the cogs of my skating ambitions. I could envision a million means of getting thrown off the sides and into the air, but only a few functional ways of landing on a skateboard at the end of the battle. I settled on doing a few frontside rocks, just so I could say that I skated it. They scared the shittasticness right out of me, every single time. I’m really surprised that I managed to survive the experience.

St. John’s School was a million times better. Bigger, better maintained, and not nearly as deathly, I actually managed to get a little bit busy here. The ramps are silky smooth; with 92a Bullets under my feet, my board barely made a “whoosh” as I rode up and down the ramps. But black-painted steel isn’t the best surface-finish choice for the searing Tucson sun; my first slam felt like I was being tossed straight onto a sizzling frying pan. This park is probably really great for talented skaters that can bang out long lines of tricks, and never fall. Old farts like me that bail on every third trick, and land on my ass with a splat? Not so much.

 

 

Photos: The enemy of core skateshops everywhere; classic VW Bug, illustration by the author; a memento of thoughtful customer service. Saturday, October 22nd, 2017.

 

My entire afternoon was a blur of mall-shop mystery-shopping…

Nine mall stores in six hours, whew. The only good thing about mega-malls are the neat cars that you sometimes find parked outside; today’s lucky find was a cherry red, lowered VW Beetle with a nifty roof rack. But once you step inside The Merchandise Mega Matrix, it’s all straight downhill from there.

There was one Zumiez, though, that shocked the shit right out of me. It must’ve been my lucky day, because I got this really great sales kid named Cam that actually knew his stuff. For Zumiez, this is tantamount to witnessing an army of pigs flying straight over a freezing hell. It just never happens. Or at least, it’s never happened  to me until today.

Cam knew decks. He knew what old guys like, and what old guys like are big boards with even bigger wheelbases. Cam pulled a sweet Welcome deck off the wall, and advised me that it might be something that I might wanna check out. He was right; that board was straight up my alley. If I’d had the fifty bucks at hand, and a compromised enough conscience to stoop down and support a mall shop, I might’ve broken down and bought the bugger. Thankfully, my perpetual peasant status precluded me from getting too spendy. That’s how I avoid most of my moral dilemmas these days: by maintaining an empty checking account at all times.

Then, Cameron went even bigger. I asked him if he knew where the area skateparks are. Of course, I already knew where they were; I’d just spent ten hours of my morning skating them, and beating up my own ass in the process. So I would definitely know if Cameron knew his stuff or not. He did. And what’s more, he even wrote them down for me, just so I wouldn’t forget where they were and what they were called. I was shocked plum stupid. I’d never had a Zumiez employee treat me with such friendly competence, ever. Hell, most “core” shops can’t even bring themselves to treat me with that level of genuine customer care and competency. Yet, here it was. Right at the mall shop.

Good job, Cam. Hats off to ya, kid.

 

Photos: A sampling of Tucson ditches, just waiting to be discovered, cleaned out, and skated. Sunday, December 10th, 2017

 

The Big Ditch Mission

Somewhere in Tucson, a quote-unquote “Super Ditch” lays patiently in wait. Cameron didn’t know where it was, although he knew practically everything else. The guys at The Blocks got me pretty close. The guys at Premises Skatepark put me in right touch with Liam Pace… he was out back skating the park when I called… who got me a little bit closer. But nobody seemed to know exactly where it was. And if they did, they definitely weren’t sayin’.

A not-so-quick search of Google Maps got me more data than I could have ever hoped for. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ditches peppered throughout the greater Tucson Metro Area. Some small, some big, but all pretty super-looking from the sky-high view, it became increasingly clear that ditches might well be Tucson’s greatest single skateboarding resource. Yet, the real-deal “Super Ditch” still remained as elusive as ever. Armed with a few dozen printouts of various ditches in and around Tucson, my last weekend foray was at last underway. The thrill of the unknown and the promise of high adventure was beckoning me back south for one last great escape.

Once again, Mr. Gesmer factored heavily into my day, just as he had on my first foray into the city, creating an unintended (but extremely fortunate) bookend to my Tucson travels. We had another business meeting set up, this time over a hearty breakfast at Omar’s Hiway Chef Restaurant on the far south side of the city limits. Apparently, this is the second-best truck stop in the entire country, if their promotional propaganda is to be believed; for Dan, who has never eaten at a truck stop in his life, this seemed like a grand adventure. It looked, and tasted, like a throwback to the fifties; I have rarely eaten so many fats and carbs at one sitting, and damn did they taste good. Dan opted for the healthy-livin’ variety of garden veggie omelet, which got him a little bit of suspicious stink-eye from our tougher-than-the-ages waitress, who also managed to admonish my fat old flabby ass for not eating fast enough for her rushing-trucker timetable. It was a pretty tough crowd, but we weathered it with a few chuckles, and generally had a grand ‘ol time. After a few hours of discussing the finer details of skateboard wheels, socioeconomics, diesel (and skateboard) trucks, and slalom racing, it was high time for me to start on my massive ditch adventure. The concrete was waiting, and I was feeling pretty impatient.

There were twenty-four ditches on my itinerary. That represents more ditches in one day of skating than I’ve previously skated in my entire life. They came in all shapes, sizes, and forms, from uber-crusty, steep walled bastards to smooth, mellow, fast megaliths. A few were absolutely unskatable, a whole bunch of them were filthy… good thing that I brought my own broom, or I would have been sailing straight up shit’s creek all day long… but all were surprisingly accessible to the semi-determined, fun-loving skater. A couple could even be driven straight up to and parked beside, which was the ultimate in lazy lawbending convenience. And the only thing that ever stood in my way all day long were a few vertical poles (that were easily defeated by walking between them), and a couple of pipe fences (that were just as easily crawled through). But those small impediments aside, they were all freely accessible, as if I had an clear open invite to go skate them. Clearly, I took them up on that open invitation.

I intentionally started with the smallest and crustiest of ditches, and slowly worked my way through the city, and up to bigger and more intimidating ditches as the day progressed. When they got head-high, I started getting a little scared; by the time they topped out at ten, twelve, maybe fourteen feet, they were mortifying. Still, The Super Ditch lay in wait, silently awaiting my serendipitous discovery.

I had narrowed it down to three ditches. Only three ditches in the whole city looked like they might have “Super Ditch Proportions”. Surprisingly, all three were within close proximity to public greenways; shockingly, two of the three actually utilized the ditches themselves as part of their walking paths, which led me to believe that they might even be bust-free fun zones. I spent so much time sweeping and skating these smooth concrete monstrosities that I completely lost track of time, and nearly ran out of daylight in the process. As fun as they truly were, the Super Ditch (and its signature integral pipe infeed) remained steadfastly aloof and elusive. I was broken, sore, and exhausted. It was time to head home.

Before I left town, though, I decided to do a little bit of urban exploration. I wanted to see the city from the perspective of the bottom of a ditch, so I decided to follow it from one terminus to the other, just to see what I would find down there in the forgotten underbelly of Tucson’s infrastructural wasteland. A couple hundreds yards downstream, the ditch morphed from a slant-walled skate paradise to a straight-walled, featureless water hellway. The sand started to pile up, and vegetation began to grow in the flatbottom. It was a fascinating hike through the old industrial center of the cityscape, but it wasn’t any good at all for skateboarding.

I was just getting ready to turn around and head back to my comfy car confines when, all of a sudden, I walked around a corner, and surprised myself by finding that my mellow-walled ditch resumed just a few hundred feet further downstream. Not only that, but it looked like a far newer, and much smoother section than the well-weathered bit that I had just skated a half-mile uphill, a half an hour earlier. I threw my board back down, pumped up and down the sprawling walls, and started rolling very, very quickly to the distant footbridge that marked the concrete’s end. As I rolled up to the bridge’s shadow, I dragged my foot to a screeching stop, marveled at the massive cesspool in front of me, looked up toward the sky, and finally spotted my elusive quarry. Three distinctive mini-pipes that spilled into a micro-ditch, that in turn funneled straight into the massive chasm that I was currently standing in the belly of. Tucson’s Super Ditch, the prize of my day, had finally been signed, sealed, and delivered straight to my unsuspecting footstep.

I could finally rest, relax, take a deep breath, and take solace in the fact that my mental and physical exhaustion, my bumps and bruises, and my Tucson misadventures could finally be considered an incredibly resounding success.

 

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As an avid skateboarding tourist, I suppose that I might look at skate shops a little differently than most skaters would. In my humble little world of constant exploration and adventure, skate shops are absolutely critical to the success of my endeavors. I look at them much like the average citizen might look at a gas station; as a convenient place to stop, rest, recharge, to get directions relating to where I might find the local skateparks and skate spots, as well as being the best place to find insight and enlightenment about what’s going on, where it’s happening, and who’s hot in the local skate scene. Their importance really cannot be overstated, and there’s nobody else that can really do the job. The local skate shop, when seen through the eyes of a roving journalist, can single-handedly make (or break) the local skate scene. Turns out, they can make or break skate scenes just as easily through the eyes of the everyday kid.

I’m a relative newcomer to the desert southwest. In my brief time here, I haven’t had the luxury of having the spare time to go check out my local skate shop scene in much detail. And why would I, when I have a great online skate shop (in the form of Mike Hirsch at SoCal Skateshop) accessible to me, 24/7, with the very best of the best product selection and customer service anywhere? Simply put, I really had no incentive at all to go to any local skate shop, for any reason. For all intents and purposes, I was largely living the life of a happy (but isolated) skateboarding hermit, a solitary homebody, and a retired industry head, peacefully sequestered in a new and foreign city.

 

 

After Agenda, though, everything changed. Back in January [of 2017], I attended a spontaneous retail roundtable with my publisher at the time, Michael Brooke of Concrete Wave Magazine. At that roundtable, the retailers were looking to us for answers, although I have no idea why in the hell they’d look to us for anything of the sort. We’re not BRA (Board Retailers Association) over here, and we’re certainly not IASC (International Association of Skateboard Companies). Those are the industry groups that could really do something, and do something significant, to help the cause. As a magazine… and a fairly small, niche magazine at that… we’re helplessly powerless in comparison.

But I sensed that the reason they were coming to us, was that they really had no other option on the table. My assumption is that we were probably the very last industry contingent that was willing to sit down, pay attention, and actively listen to them. If we could do nothing else at all, then we could definitely do that. That roundtable set the stage for the rest of my year. From then on, I set out to visit as many skate shops as I could, in order to study the issues affecting skate shops firsthand, through the eyes of a fairly typical (albeit aged) skateboarder.

 

 

Skate shops are critical industry infrastructure… and trust me on this, you have never heard, and might never hear, anyone else in this industry refer to skate shops as “critical industry infrastructure”, but it’s still true nonetheless… that develops, nurtures, and promotes positive human connections. Yes, their primary practical purpose might be to sell you a skateboard; that’s how they subsidize their larger mission, by selling you stuff at a [pathetically small] profit. But “selling you stuff” is a pretty tiny part of their overall mission, in the grand scheme of things. Their real pride and purpose is to be the anchor of, and an advocate for, their local skate scenes. They promote participation. And in doing so, they cultivate and propagate a viable market; a viable market that, if all goes well and all goes right, ultimately becomes a consumer market that, in turn, supports the shop and its outreach activities with their purchases. The practical purpose of selling stuff sanctions the noble pursuit of cultivating community, and vice versa. If that circle of propagating, promoting, participating, and profit is healthy, then it grows. If it’s not, then it dies.

This is the core philosophy that makes core, brick-and-mortar skate shops that “critical infrastructure” that I noted above. And as a traveling skater, I can confirm that there is no other paradigm… outside of the local skateboard club (when and where they might exist)… that is willing, able, and capable of doing the job. The mall store will never care enough about the local skate scene to know jack shit about it. Or at least they haven’t, historically speaking. And social media and the internet are pretty useless when you’re looking for an obscure and little-known skate spot that might well be hidden under a bridge somewhere, and you need to know all about it right here, and right now. 

Nope, that’s what makes the brick-and-mortar so crucial; that local knowledge and homegrown wisdom is absolutely priceless. And nothing else in the world can really replace it.

 

 

Throughout the course of the past year, I have grudgingly evolved from being a steadfast supporter of the core, brick-and-mortar skate shop, to an adversarial advocate of the core, brick-and-mortar skate shop. Yes, this industry needs to do much more than it’s doing to support this critical industry infrastructure… because if it fails, skate scenes worldwide will turn into a no-mans-land-level Armageddon, and our industry as we know it will suffer a collapse of epic proportions. You may laugh at that, but be careful buddy: if you do not heed this advice, then the consequences might be pretty severe. You do not want me to have the last laugh over this one, fellas. 

I’ve seen firsthand what has happened to local skate scenes out on the road when their local shops die. Simply put: the scenes disintegrate, because the glue that holds people together evaporates. The glue that holds those communities together fails. And no amount of social media networking can make up for personal persuasion, or one-on-one enthusiasm exchange. 

The simple associations from my tired, traveling eyes, are pretty easy to see in all their clarity. Good shops, good scenes. Great shops, great scenes. No shops? No scenes. No scenes? No grassroots skateboarding excitement and engagement. No excitement and engagement? No skateboarding.

It’s really that simple. And that’s what I saw, over and over again, on tour this summer.

 

 

Skate shops, by and large, see things like the internet, Amazon, Zumiez, Tilly’s, brands that sell direct-to-consumer, and other core skate shops, as threats. That’s precisely where they’re misguided. They are not threats; they are alternatives. That’s the key distinction that everybody’s missing here.

Yes, the industry needs to do more to help the local brick-and-mortar survive and thrive. We all know that. And as we talk more about this issue, we’ll be challenging the industry to do just that, and putting ideas on the table in regards to how that could be done, done effectively, and done reasonably easily. 

But the shops themselves are not blameless in this equation. All of the problems they face cannot be summed up in a laundry-list of external “threats”. Some of the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the shops, themselves. If we can help shops recognize… and, fix… their own failings by looking at them, and talking about them, from the customers’ point of view, then we’ve probably accomplished something pretty important.

 

 

There is no “Skate Shop 101” handbook out there for skate shop owners. That’s part of the problem: everyone that has ever started a brick-and-mortar skate shop has had to learn every single bleedin’ thing the hardest way imaginable, via trial and error (mostly error). 

Instead of making 32-page booklets about how skaters drink their own pee if they buy a blank skateboard, maybe IASC and BRA could do their own industry a really big favor, and make a 32 page booklet on how to answer the phone properly and professionally; treat people with simple respect; actively include them into their local skate scenes; and throw inexpensive, fun, all-inclusive enthusiast events that encourage skaters of all ages, colors, races, genders, religions, sizes, and skill levels to get together, and have fun skating. Maybe we could even throw in a few paragraphs about the importance of not being jaded, apathetic, or complacent in the face of adversity, especially when the simple solutions can be found with a little bit of time, effort, and creativity. Maybe the simple solution to all of life’s problems, at the end of the day, is to simply learn how to care about the customer again. Maybe our solution, as an industry, should be caring about the shop again enough to open the dialogue, and help them along.

The best part is that none of these things cost much to do, in terms of dollars spent. Many of them are totally free. It just takes a little bit of time, enthusiastic energy, and caring initiative. That’s all.

 

 

Positive change can happen. Fantasies can become realities. Truly great skate shops do exist. One of my local shops… Sidewalk Surfer, over in Scottsdale… just celebrated their 40th Anniversary last month. Think about that for a minute: they have weathered every single downturn in the popularity of skateboarding, every single recession, every single war, and every emerging technology that has come along in the last forty years. Including rollerblades, razor scooters, the internet, e-commerce, and antisocial media. 

How in the hell do they do it? A great storefront, amazing merchandising, a huge selection of whatever the customers want (including street boards, cruiser boards, longboards, electric longboards, and old-school reissues), friendly and helpful employees, bulletproof customer service, and great grassroots engagement; that’s how they do it. They love their customers, and their customers absolutely love them in return. Their customers love them so much that they will happily pay a few dollars more to buy something at Sidewalk Surfer than anywhere else, and they’re proud to do so. I know this, because a bunch of their customers told me this directly. It’s not rocket science. It’s really simple stuff, but done exceptionally well.

If we can take some of that real-world experience and wisdom, from real-word retail success stories, and give it to shops that might be struggling on some of these fronts, then we just might be able to do something to save our retail infrastructure, our industry, and our grassroots skate scenes. 

 

 

These things are not comfortable to talk about. They’re definitely not going to make me any friends anytime soon. I fully expect that the hate mail that this essay generates will be seethingly entertaining, as it usually is. But the sad fact remains that these issues really do exist, these things really do happen, and that our “industry leaders”… if they were really “leaders” at all… would be doing the same exact thing that we here at Everything Skateboarding have decided to do: step up, stand tall, stand strong, do the hard research, open our mouths, attack these things head-on, and put the problems and the solutions squarely on the table where anyone and everyone can see them.

We will not progress one iota as an industry if we constantly run away from the realities, stick our heads up our asses, and wish all of our problems away. They’re not going anywhere until we resolve to do something, do something meaningful, and do something useful to correct them. If nobody is willing to write Skate Retailing 101, then we’ll do it ourselves, one essay and one article at a time. We are, after all, The Media. As The Media, we should be advocates for, and agents of, positive change. That’s our job.

And we need to do our job, do it well, and do it right, just like anybody else.

 

Best regards, as always,

Bud Stratford, Executive Director, Everything Skateboarding Magazine

 

 

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