The Importance of Being Sk8legitimatebusinessmen

Throughout history, the dance of death between the sensitive artist type and the rake has surfaced in several different cultures. Beatles vs. Stones. Michael vs. Prince. Hosoi/Alva vs. Gonz/Blender. As we have seen in recent years with dylan., for example, a combination of the two often proves interesting as fuck. Not sure how Joy Division vs. New Order fits into this, but if I were pursuing a PhD in Pop Culture Studies I would probably write a thesis on “New Order people,” vs. “Joy Division people.”

ANYWAY, this dichotomy surfaces again in the recent year-end onslaught of skate vids. On one hand, some dudes play acoustic guitar, take analog photographs, and sip wine on estates overlooking expansive vineyards in Steinbeckian northern California. On the other hand, other companies, like the Shake Junt outfit and the young men of the Omerta-free Sk8mafia, occupy their time skating, altering their consciousnesses through various substances, and taking liberties with ladies of questionable moral standing.

There’s Never Been So Much At Stake

"I don't fuck losers"

I recently sifted through an old CD binder on account of having to drive a car without satellite radio. In addition to some old Spitritualized b-sides ‘n  shit, I came across the cd single of “Every Me Every You” by Placebo, known to all skaters as “the first of two horrible songs that Mark Appleyard skated to transcendently in the early 00’s.” Indeed, if one were to grade Appleyard’s skating on a three-criterion rubric of power/style/control, few dudes would score higher. On the other hand, one would be hard pressed to think of a dude with a higher quality-of-skating to quality-of-music supervision ratio.

coming soon…

le petit prince

statue in Lyon. skatable?

While contempleting your favorite pre-skating celebrities, have you ever considered which of them would probably have skated? Although I have not yet had the opportunity to turn this into a barstool conversation, I have incorporated it into an intricate mental game. Criteria? Dude must have been born before 1950. Besides that, I value badassery as the main indicator. Theodore Roosevelt, a staunch advocate of outdoor activities and an active lifestyle, probably would have had a mean f/s grind.

COMING SOON: “Fresh ’til Death” Live Tweet Event

Demos are few and far between ’round these parts. Vis a vis Thursday’s DGK/Zero in-store/demo, I am going to attempt something web. 3.0 and try live-tweeting it. More importantly, this will enable me to add social media strategist to me resume.

In addition, I have an interview tentatively lined up that should be interesting. What else should you expect? Definitely fanning out over seeing Rodrigo Teixeira skate in real life. One of the highest compliments one can pay an artist is reaching for his cd/video part when one comes home after a night out, as a bridge between whatever went down that evening and what awaits behind the wall of sleep. Of late the piece in question has been TX’s parts in the Firm vid.

ANYWAY, follow or lurk @carbonite1994 for the aforementioned content.

Major Priority of the Summer

A cult of sorts surrounded the film Dazed and Confused amongst the dudes I hung out with in high school.  Aside from the usual incessant quoting, there was a drinking (or whatever) game in which one chose a character and did everything that character did for the duration of the movie.  For example—if that character drank a beer, you drank a beer. It should be noted that I never saw this game in play, just heard about it apocryphally.

Backpackers of the World [Park] Unite

Dig, if you will, the denoument of a seemingly endless Thursday afternoon and night of skating. After skating up to midtown from Union Square, fucking with CBS and/or Time-Life and possibly the Huf ledge, you ascend the steps of your building to a narrow multi-roomated apartment. One’s sole lifelines to the outside world? Dial-up UseNet and the Strech and Bob show on 89.9 WKCR.

For anyone that came up in the Nineties and fucked with hip-hop to any extent, The Stretch and Bobbito show on Columbia University’s WKCR 89[tec]9 held Torah status. Furthermore, in the DJ Clue era of mixtape yelling, the shows were also cool to listen to on one’s walkman.* They usually started out with some rare groove type shit, like “Uzuri” by Catalyst or some shit. Knowing, to list but one example,  that the latter song was sampled on “Lefleur Leflah Eshkoshkah” was a particularly nerdy form of apocryphal pre-internet knowledge, similar to memorizing esoteric skate video soundtracks. This is the main reason why the soundtrack to the first few Girl/Choc. vids killed it so hard.

Girl/Chocolate video music supervision functioned as a nexus point for my hip-hop and skating nerdery.

Lonny Peoples Interview

In the collective mind’s eye of early-Nineties skating, every metropolis housed an Embarcadero-like plaza, over which presided an EMB-like hierarchy. Indeed, one of the most evocative moments of the recent Kalis Epicly Later’d was his ridiculously long line at that Dallas spot–City Place I think it was called.  As city center plaza skating recedes into the sands of time, the value of pre-internet documentation of its practice increases exponentially.

ANYWAY, in Richmond, VA,  Shafer Court was the spot–the first place we went after the oldest dude in our little crew got a driver’s license. The first place in which I felt that primal “fight-or-flight” response of being in a heavy session with some heavy dudes. There was only one way to do it; in that moment, I realized the true meaning of Danny Way’s personal philosophy. I had to move it or lose it.

Truth be told, I think I lost it.

ANYWAY, Lonny Peoples became one of the main dudes in the Shafer hierarchy and one of the few from VA (not counting Northern VA) to “do thangs” in skating out west. His career spans the golden age of vert to the weed-hazed heyday of Pier 7. The interview that follows is a window into a largely undocumented era.

[interview] coming soon…

…with one of these dudes.

A Real “Since Day One” Video Premiere Report/Review (in verse)

left work early
erupted down 95 like a hollowtip from the barrel of an AR-15
straight through the heart of the olde city
pre-premiere meetup spot
first-day-of-summer-type heat on the dome; no snapback
early
only dude at bar
that old feeling surges back
a bicycle girl rolls up, textual tattoos scrawled over her frame
who reads those shits?
this is the time when
I explain why a skateboarding "video"
resembles moreso "film" than video clip
or some shit
same impossible routine as explaining to someone
how Astor constituted a spot