forgot to cancel Hulu Plus

The homie Galen has the skate book review game locked down. However, the following three things recently happened at the same damn time. First, after a year and a half, I finished the Keith Richards bio, which I had borrowed from my old man. Concurrently, @byroncrawford (one of my two favorite currently active writers) came out with a new book and hooked up an e-copy. A day or two later, Fat Thumb Publishing hit me up about reviewing Better If You Don’t Come Back – probably the first novel that addresses skate culture in a micro sense. So there you go. Check back in a week, I guess? This post is taking an extra long time cause I actually have to read stuff instead of formulating a thesis based on a video with some crooked grinds ‘n shit.

In the meantime, hit me on (in descending order of my activity) that twitter, on that insta, or that tumblr.

“What are you, some kind of masochist?,” as the one-shot intro to Pretty Sweet appeared on a drop-down screen at a local bar.

My friend posed this question to me after I told him that I had still not seen the vid almost a month after its digital web-based release. There is a good reason for this.

My 2001-era heavy-as-fuck tube tv had died, so I acquired a high definition tv as a replacement. Knowing that the release of Pretty Sweet loomed, my other friend recommended a blu-ray player because of all the aps that come with it, like Netflix and shit like that. So I had this whole new setup–just a chill place to watch physical skate vids, the NBA, and “Girls”(natch). I mean, if this is the last vid part for Carroll and them, I’m gonna watch it on my own terms, not like some suburban tri-state area hedge fund manager watching pRon in his upstairs office.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Therefore, to iTunes it would be, effectively, flushing money down the toilet. I waited for my local shop to get the shipment, then drove over there after work. However, I went to the beach for the weekend the next day, so had no time to set up a  proper Girl/Choc viewing experience. Subsequently, I waited another week. Time is meaningless to me. I am a very patient person–hence the amount of time it takes me to write something for this site.

But consequently, I became ensnared in a “Modern Seinfeld” -type scenario* in which I found it literally impossible to go about my daily business without coming across spoilers. Minor spoilage on the internet is par for the course, but I went to the shop to set up a deck and they were watching Olson’s part. Went to the aforementioned “Skate Night” monthly? Showing it at the bar. I needed a Michael Jackson sensory-deprivation chamber to preserve the sanctity of the watching-a-highly-anticipated-skate-vid-for-the first-time experience.I had transformed into a disconnected acolyte of a bygone age.

The age of physical media.

Ironically, after selling off my analog physical media collection during a move, I had spent the next 10 years downloading every vid I possibly could via every possible technological method –p2b, Bitorrent, megaupload (RIP), mIRC, usenet. Now, however, though I still watch internet videos by the truckload, I take pride in my physical media collection.**  I obtained some classy metal bookends from work to display it. Maybe at some point I will construct an even classier wooden shelf or even a physical media room–like a  skate version of Steve Buscemi’s character in Ghost World. ***

ANYWAY, the time finally came to watch the vid. My girlfriend agreed to view it with me. We heated up some fried aps, (via the “we got aps” scene in Beautiful Girls). First of all, skate vids on blu-ray look fucking awesome; you can almost feel the grit on that Cali schoolyard asphalt. As QS noted in their review, Jesus skates to the best possible song, and one would be hard-pressed to think of better #musicsupervision for Cory Kennedy, Olson,**** MJ (more on him later) or the “New L.A. Guy” Stevie Perez. Indeed, it seems as if they consciously attempted to deliniate the LA lineage from Perez to the first-gen. L.A. guys by selecting a song that maintains the same key (I think? any musicians out there?) and beats per minute as Gabriel’s song in Paco. Indeed, that would be a sick blend had I both tracks on vinyl, plus a mixer and some tables.

In addition, the aforementioned Kennedy busts out one of the most esoteric bank-to-ledge tricks of all time (270 nollie flip to b/s 5/0), while proving that it’s okay to blow off a game of s.ka.t.e. if one has just released a transcendent video part. Eldridge has it figured out, on some one-filming-mission-every-five-years shit. However, the concepts he demonstrates on that otherworldly Chinese marble are clean as fuck, like that 360 flip noseslides and long-ass frontside bluntslide (super hard trick to lock into). It would have been sick if Raven’s part was just him skating a bowl for three minutes; personally, it’s interesting as fuck to watch someone so adept at skating bowls kill one, cause I’m learning how to skate that shit.

It’s a process.

Which brings us to MJ and Guy, two of the final three parts and most culturally significant. MJ hasn’t appeared this clean (concept-wise) and just fuckin’ on it since the Tiltmode vid. Schoolyard lines, white button downs (#trendwatch2013?), and a complete absence of slow-mo lifestyle footage give this part a completely different feel from the rest of the vid, on some Wes Anderson shit, almost. Dude also throws the first legit 360 flip out of a frontside bluntslide. I had thought Rob Welsh did one in the Mad Circle era tho(?).

Much has been made of Guy’s song choice, and I guess it was explained well in that one article that appeared on the Worldwide Leader’s web site. Truth be told, it would have been sick if Guy skated to “Common People” (Shatner cover, natch, because PJ already skated to the orig. in a pre-PHWHL Coliseum vid).

However, if one takes the macro view of the song choice, two aspects stand out: one–it is a live recording, and two–it is by a female singer. At first, it seems like an obvious choice to juxtapose the last song in in artist’s set to the last part in a video. However, think back to the handful of times a live recording has been used in a skate vid. Then, try to pare that list down to the instances of using the opening song in a set as the opening song in a video.

I am 99% sure that you are left with “I Don’t Know” from the Virtual triple-screen intro.

These two songs bookend the Guy/Carroll/Koston/Howard era. The Osborne/Rhoads composition emphasizes the the existential quest everyone must undertake, while simultaneously championing the free will to determine whether one “wins” or “loses,” whatever that means. The Lissie performance, on the other hand, mirrors the consequences of twenty years on said quest, coupled with the inevitable breakdown of #sevendayweekend, or some shit like that.

In addition, the frenetic, nervous vibe reflects Guy’s new narrative. In the Mouse era, he [apocryphally] chilled, smoked weed, and played Playstation 1 until Tim Dowling called him up and he was like “Oh word, we gotta go film?” Fully Flared had the whole redemption/12-step vibe. In Pretty Sweet , though, he seems to be trying to do everything all at once to make up for lost time,***** almost as if the anxiety of the looming deadline affected him physiologically by literally making his hair stand on end.

As for the content of the part itself, switch b/s noseblunt to frontside heel out is almost crazier than his ender,****** and dude deserves credit for just thinking of switch laser flipping out of a b/s 180 ng on a bank-to-bench. If you gave me a yellow legal pad and three hours to brainstorm “crazy” bank-to-ledge tricks I doubt that would be one of them.

Truth be told, though, I don’t think about laser flips that much, even when I think about skating, which takes up a large percentage of my day. Like, in a meeting, when someone’s talking I’m usually skating EMB.

Oh yeah–Kostons b/s tail 270 out is sick; kinda like something he would do on a double-sided curb in NEXT. Still trying to figure out if that wallride was ironic though. Also tripped out on Sheff/Carroll/Way in the credits.

***

Over the past three months, I probably heard “Bands A Make Her Dance” in the car 90% of the times I went to pick my kids up from their mom’s house. This is due to the fact that the minivan lacks satellite radio, and I am to lazy to transfer the satellite radio unit for only one trip. Subsequently, I end up listening to the local terrestrial “Urban” station, which plays edited versions of current popular rap. If you have ever heard an edited version of a current rap song, though, you know that the editing process, whatever that entails, renders the song borderline unlistenable. However, listening to the edited version is ostensibly the right parental decision, even though my kids already know literally every curse word.

One week, however, they began to ask me some questions about the song, like “why does he keep saying the name of the song over and over again?” and, of course, “what is this song about?”

I replied that it is about a group of ladies that dance–professionally.

This is what happens when one grows up listening to ignorant-ass hip-hop and never stops listening to it. It’s okay though; kids don’t really think that deeply about explicit content. Like, when I was a young’un, my dad used to rock out to that Eric Clapton live tape, the one with the sick version of “Cocaine.” I think that was his favorite song on it; he used to rock out to it so fuckin’ hard that, when he came home from work, he would stay in his car until finished. I didn’t think “whoa, this song makes cocaine sound really cool, I’m gonna go try it,” nor did I conclude that “whoa, this is a really effective cautionary tale about the dangers of doing the drug cocaine, I’m never gonna try it.” I just thought it was a word that sounded cool in the context of the song. Kinda like the phrase “bands a make her dance.”

Circles, bro, life fuckin’ moves in circles.

ANYWAY, along with committing to ignorant-ass hip-hop until I die, I am also committed to the Nineties template of  loose-fitting clothing x ledge/schoolyard line skating. Therefore, as you could probably imagine, I am amped on the DGK full-length vid Parental Advisory, which I have yet to obtain in physical form. ******* The DGK camp utilized their budget to synthesize  more polished skits than Trilogy, yet also pay homage to the era in which skating, hip-hop and graffiti coexisted organically. Wade continues his immaculate evolutionary-Rudy Johnson phase from that “Da Playground” part, and can you think of a more perfectly leveled out nollie heelflip than Marcus’ off that bump? Also, did Kalis make a conceptual choice to film his part entirely in ‘merican plazas? If so, the Korean Orthodontist Plaza’s sick on-film aesthetics surely influenced this decision. Keelan Dadd pulled a Jovantae Turner by going pro after a transcendent video part and deserves a lifetime achievement award for coming out the gate [nullus] with a switch double heel and switch 360 flip on flat–just for the fuck of it.

Indeed, the way Dadd casually 270′s out of stuff reminds me of Tae 270ing out of noseslides at EMB, kinda. Along those lines, it should be noted that in almost every Stevie interview he references Love Child and Tim and Henry’s as conceptual touchstones for PA. It’s also safe to assume that his 5/0 to f/s nose at Parallel is a Sanchez homage, kinda like 1/3 of MJ’s part in Fully Flared. However, in terms of the shit I like to write about, the two focal points of the vid are Texeira and Curtin.

Oddly enough, when Texeira first came out onto the scene, I dismissed him as another Brazilian contest robot. However, over the past few years and consistent viewings of his The Firm part[s] and his ridiculously consistent output, it’s clear that he’s in the conversation for Best Dude Out, alongside Lucas and them. In my mind, the Brazilian tech dudes all have the same narrative; learned to skate in a patch of dirt in some City of God-esque shantytown and triumphed by sheer force of will [no Niezche]. In reality, Brazil probably has a more chill scene and better parks than most of ‘Merica. For example, that one super-open plaza with a few ledges that they all skate looks fuckin’ perfect. If there is a park in ‘Merica that has wisely incorporated open space like that, I have yet to see it.

Funny thing, if all the Brazilian dudes–including Pedro Barros, whom every transition skater i know sweats mad hard–started their own team, and partnered it with some legit marketing and branding, it would be the most #elite super-team ever. More #elite than Plan B 3.5 or Plan B 2.0, for sure.

ANYWAY, Texeira has developed into an international ledge assassin, sticking to a part-a-year schedule and handling his business in a highly professional (via the Portman flick, natch) manner, influenced by a potent combination of Alchemist beats (in the same way Rza influenced early Gino) and late-#90s ledge-tech. Didn’t see too much Barcelona in this one, but he shreds the usual China marble in addition to more esoteric locales such as Macao (I think) and staples such as Lockwood and The Korean Orthodontist Plaza. He may not jump down those ridonkulous Euro hubbas anymore, but a whole section, for all practical purposes, of picnic table and ledge NBD’s at the end of his part will do nicely, thank you.  Has anyone ever mixed a song with the track it sampled in a video part before? Shit’s dope; hopefully this practice will #trend in 2013.

Which brings us to the best Jackson Curtin video part since Pack A Lunch. As soon as the camera pans up on the white marble stairs–Pulaski is still the coolest-looking skate spot out–it’s obvious this is going to be one of those “watch before skating” parts. In addition, this section is notable for two reasons: as Pilot Light noted, Curtin demonstrates a functional sartorial template for thirty-ish white dudes who still listen to ignorant-ass hip hop, and the use of a posse cut. Regarding the former, dri-fit™ technical shirts are super effective for skating (or running, via #whitestylez). About the latter, my rudimentary internet research failed to dredge up the use of a posse cut in a skate vid since “Live at the BBQ” in that montage in Let the Horns Blow. 

I mean, it kind of blows my mind that, in the mid-to-late 00′s no one edited a montage to one of DJ Khaled’s hood anthems, with a different dude skating to each verse. Furthermore, was there ever a more effective use of conceptual #musicsupervision than in the aforementioned montage? Looking back, it’s hard to verbalize how fuckin’ on point Mad Circle was in terms of art direction–like a more stylized version of Howell’s early flirtation with hip-hoppery, or a more hip-hop Stereo, back when Stereo had cool art direction and actually paid people, if only $500 month or whatever pro’s made in 1994. I still watch Scott Johnston’s part like once a week, as an archetype of chill, low-impact tech skating. It’s okay that he only released about two minutes of footage over the subsequent 12 years, because that part is so fuckin’ chill. So chill, in fact, it warrants a rudimentary re-edit to “Music Sounds Better With You.”

ANYWAY, when Waka’s verse come’s on at the start of that one line at The Korean Orthodontist Plaza, it’s hype as fuck–as if the viewer is a skate commando on an urban assault mission. I think I’m making that connection because it reminds me of the two or so times I took the Peter Pan bus from the city to PHILA; it was only like $20 at the time. Granted, with the small banks, Newport, and BAM all active, there wasn’t really a pure skate reason to make the trip, but I was courting a Bryn Mawr chick at the time so you know how that goes. But the Philly bus station was only a couple blocks from City Hall, so when you arrived it was if you had been dropped in off a C-130 or some shit. 

Finally, just as modern hip-hop has changed since the Trilogy era, so has the narrative element of hip-hop video productions. Ostensibly, this was something that Stevie set out to keep pace with in PA. At first viewing, the skits may appear corny. However, like they said in the Bones Brigade doc,******** skits in skate vids need to be corny, otherwise they’d be too sentimental or whatever. If you go for emotional gravitas you’ll end up with Street Dreams, or even worse, Hardflip. Along with the increase in narrative, there has been this movement to make everything in daily life like a #movie, or as club promoters would have you believe, “IT’S A #MOVIE!!!” Off the top of my head, there’s that one T.I. vid that’s like 8 minutes long with the narrative voice over and, of course, the recent Young Scooter “visual” for “Columbia.” Truth be told, the teaser for “Columbia” –which also features voice-over narration– is more narrative in essence than the “visual” itself. Indeed, the full-length kind of reverts to rap video cliches like rental Ferraris and rapping in front of an old house. In addition. it leaves (no pun intended) us with a slew of unanswered questions: what becomes of the Isabella? Who is Hector? Does Young Scooter actually develop a system for fabricating drugs in his literal backyard, like a hood version of Breaking Bad or some shit?

The world may never know. #pitchideas (?)

it doesn’t get much more #90s than a 40 in a brown paper bag at an active skate spot

The conclusion of Parental Advisory also leaves the viewer with a series of cliffhangers; when Stevie emerges from the ambulance, is that the afterlife, or whatever? Does he gain the ability to stop time, via Zack Morris? In any event, the video provides somewhat of a working philosophical template for#90s dudes, who will appreciate the cameos and visual references, while the youth of today will dig the ignorance.

Moving forward, though, what does the future hold for hip-hop white guys? Is there an age limit on wearing loose fitting sportswear? How long can one continue listening to ignorant-ass #current hip-hop? There are a couple examples/theories that can help clarify this.

Firstly, Welsh. A couple years ago, I noted that my propensity to both walk like I am at war and talk like I am at war (not necessarily in that order) increases my value in the modern-day workplace. Indeed, for the past decade, Welsh has served has the patron saint of white dude skate hip-hoppery. Recently, though, he has entered a Waylon Jennings phase or some shit. That’s okay though. He follows in the footsteps of Kid Rock, who started out on Jive, touring with Ice Cube ‘n shit, and later became an evolutionary Bob Seger-type dude, but more country or whatever. His country songs, like “Single Father” and the anthem “Only God Knows Why,” are legitimately tight as fuck. I’d say he started mining that vein when he was 33-35. So let’s say, for arguments sake, that 33-35 is when white dudes, generally, veer away from hip-hop aesthetics.

HOWEVER, (via Stephen A,), this New York Mag article offers evidence to the contrary:

“There’s no reason why, at the age of 60, I should still be listening to the [ignorant-ass hip-hop],” Steinberg says. “Yet no matter how old you are, the music you listen to for the rest of your life is probably what you listened to when you were an adolescent.” Only extremely recent advances in neuroscience have begun to help explain why.

It turns out that just before adolescence, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that governs our ability to reason, grasp abstractions, control impulses, and self-­reflect—undergoes a huge flurry of activity, giving young adults the intellectual capacity to form an identity, to develop the notion of a self. Any cultural stimuli we are exposed to during puberty can, therefore, make more of an impression, because we’re now perceiving them discerningly and metacognitively as things to sweep into our self-concepts or reject (I am the kind of person who likes [ignorant-ass hip-hop]). “During times when your identity is in transition,” says Steinberg, “it’s possible you store memories better than you do in times of stability.”

Indeed, I remember quite clearly that, on the day the oldest of my little crew got his driver’s license, we listened to the first Redman tape on that first trip to the local yellow curb. That tape was red, right? Or was that just Dare Iz a Darkside? Anyway, based on the above analysis, I am physiologically predisposed to listening to ignorant-ass hip-hop, just as I am physiologically predisposed to gravitating towards the type of skating in the first three Plan B vids.

This makes a lot of sense. I mean, I like country alright–although, truth be told, my appreciation for country is directly proportional to how drunk I am. But it’s not part of my identity, or whatever, cause I didn’t start listening to it, in any context, until about three years ago. I like learning to skate transition–it’s fun as shit, but I feel most at home, psychologically, street skating because that’s what I was doing when my brain was forming.

You was before you was ‘fore you got here, or some shit. This is why it’s kinda weird when 30 year old dudes who didn’t grow up skating start tryna skate. Not bad, or whatever, just kinda weird or disingenuous. Similarly, it’s kinda weird when dudes who didn’t start listening to hip-hop until someone in their third year of college told them Illmatic was good start writing about/reviewing hip-hop. That’s my take on the whole Chief Keef/Pitchfork thing.

Also, if you grew up in the suburbs and didn’t listen to ignorant-ass hip-hop super loud in your car you missed out; I heard that kids today don’t even have systems in their cars anymore because they spend all their disposable income on iPhones ‘n shit.

***

So, that’s my take on this season’s major physical DVD releases, more or less. But what’s the takeaway? How, as a grown-ass man, can I justify my physical skate vid hobby, or whatever (which, according to the New York Times, I have more time and space to practice out here in the burbs!)? Well, there are life lessons to be learned. MJ and TX are like dudes who have a job that keeps throwing more and more on their plate (the pressure to get new tricks year after year after year, with increasing internet coverage, dwindling spots, etc.) on some “do more with less” shit, and they stay killing it. Anyone that has a job –especially “in this economy”–can relate. Just another reason why skaters are more workplace-effective than the average shmoe.

ps. @carbonite1994 on that twitter, @frozenincarbonite on that insta

*I don’t claim to be a Seinfeld expert like @quartersnacks or @mattmoons , but the humor of @seinfeldtoday decreases exponentially once one figures out the formula, which is “Seinfeld character+ anything that modern people do in modern life.” This is usually something topical regarding the internet,  like “George starts a tumblr, Kramer has wacky misadventures attempting  to jailbreak his iPhone” or some shit like that.

**are there any dudes out there who scoff at internet skate vids as a “thing,”and solely watch physicals?

***Yes, I know it was a comic book before it was a film.

****shoutout to the Mets fitted; pitchers and catchers reported like 3 days ago!

*****as he noted in that Thrasher interview

******performed on a very similar handrail to that SF State one on which he performed his ender in the Virtual friends section

******* “Deluxe Edition” #comingsoon tho?

********That doc is alright, except for the one part where Lance said the only reason dudes got hammered and banged groupies on the vert circuit was because they were frustrated they couldn’t beat Tony. I mean, not everything has a deep-seeded psychological motivation.

self-imposed deadline–end of the month

click to enlarge

“Videos are dead! No, wait! STOP THE PRESSES! Full-length skate videos are back, bro!” That’s what Transworld said, in paraphrased form. Finally, after obtaining a physical of Pretty Sweet, I carved out a chunk of time in which to view it, approximately a month after its premiere. However, with my local shop still awaiting shipment of the physical DGK film, I said “fuck it” and downloaded. More content based on these two films #comingsoon, but for now, I concluded that the occasion called for another Venn diagram. Indeed, this expansion into the realm of cinematic production values opens up a pandora’s box of new angles for skate video deconstruction. For example, does the narrative in Parental Advisory take place in the same alternate universe as every other skate video narrative?* Are Fabes and Minnick on the same police force as Hosoi from Blind What If? Do they serve the same law enforcement entity as the nebulous surveillance team from the A-Team section in RVD2?

ANYWAY, more content both relating to these vids and dealing with other stuff coming next year–maybe sooner. For now, I offer a year-end list of THE TOP 5 FROZEN IN CARBONITE POSTS OF 2012:

March – “Biebelism 101″

May – “A War to End All Wars”

July – “A Brief History of Anglophilia”

September – ” ‘Bookmark Me, Maybe?’–2012 Song of the Summer/Video Part of the Summer     Retrospective” 

November: “Freudian Shoe Review: Nike Challenge Court”

*This is a Klosterman concept–the question of whether works of fiction take place in separate universes or one fictional alternate universe. However, can’t remember which essay in order to properly cite.

Megan used to answer when you called the 800 number, right?

Is there a Gino of psychiatry/psychology? During my handful of visits, I should have asked my shrink this, but just explaining to her why Gino is Gino wouldn’t have been worth it, @ $200/hr.

Or would it?

Which leads me to this post. Like many dudes, that McEnroe x Gino Nike ad struck a chord a couple months ago, leading me to purchase the shoe itself. I’m usually pretty zen about skate shoes; that is to say, I’lll skate whatever my local shop–or whatever shop I happen to visit in my travels in the mid-Atlantic–stocks. It happens that the shoe’s quasi-mid top design alligns with shit I usually skate, even though I never skate white shoes besides coke-white half cabs.

Why, then, the Challenge Court ? The answer lies in the psychological nexus point where skating, tennis, and the “it’s like a CAROUSEL, MAN!” * nostalgia that fuels #marketingandbranding collide.

Therefore, in this post, I will deconstruct the psychic connection between tennis and skating, break down some of the psychology of Nike’s extremely effective #marketingandbranding, and engage in a very brief qualititative review of the shoe itself–a task best left, of course, to dudes like the homie over at Ripped Laces.

***

Skating tennis courts has functioned as a rite of passage (via Maple, natch) in the ‘burbs since the early Eighties, probably. In most suburban areas they are the only flat area for flatground. Furthermore, a slew of legendary spots have appeared on tennis courts, such as those banks in Berkeley and that one bank spot from Markovich’s Fight Fire With Fire and Clyde’s 411 Rookie section. I think 12th & A is located on some abandoned tennis courts as well. On the local tip, we used to drive for an hour to skate this setup on some abandoned tennis courts near Fredericksburg,VA. It was actually pretty tight, I think dudes from DC used to come down there as well; like that dude Adam Graham of EST fame supposedly sw b/s nosegrinded (ground?) the rainbow ledge, or some shit.

Along the same lines, I think at one point there were 5 or 6 seperate setups at abandoned/ill-used tennis courts in this town. The closest one is about a football field away from my house, in the middle of the most ordinary apartment complex one could possibly imagine. Like the #TF, it has a giant crack traversing its width. Unlike the TF, it is adjacent to a pool. However, even when I went there to skate flat in the middle of a 110 (or whatever) degree summer day, hot chicks were nowhere to be found. Melrose Place, this complex is not. In addition, the main quasi-legal skatepark in my town was, until recently, located on some unused tennis courts. This leads to the existential dilemma of a thirtysomething grown-ass man skating some boxes on tennis courts. Is bringing a box to a street spot (such as the local schoolyard with hip)  more or less lame? I guess if Busenitz does it it’s cool. But so did McNatt in the Evol vid, kinda?

ANYWAY, from an NY perspective, the Challenge Court is also  interesting because it references the history of skating in Reebok Classics tennis shoes, a common practive of dudes like Ivan Perez. A light, basic cupsole philosophically alligned with the Fila FX500, their ubiquitous distribution facilitated copping them at pretty much every and any sneaker store. Indeed, on one of the handful or so times I actually skated the city with the benifit of a motor vehicle, the driver stopped at such a store, copped some Reebok classics, then proceeded to noseblunt slide a Paine Webber bench. Of course, this happened over a number of hours.

***

Did this shoe enable me to channel this nostalgic energy into learning backside noseblunts on ledges? Unfortunately, it did not, but it’s a decent lightweight cupsole shoe, for what it’s worth. Note: while thinking of an angle for this review, I decided on a more narrative approach, as opposed to the criteria-based reporting of Ripped Laces or that German Weartested dude.  As background for said narrative, I have been on some shit recently where I skate cups in the streets and vulcs on transition. Jumping on ledges in vulcs feels like skating in mukluks or some shit. Like someone once said, “I know where my board is; I don’t need the ‘feel,’ ” you know?

While the shoe facilitated noseslides on the local version of CIA ledge, i wished for two revisions: A) a thicker tongue and B)tongue straps. A tongue sliding to one side sends my OCD into overdrive. Nevertheless, after acclimating to the slightly different shape–the heel goes out, as opposed to in with half cabs or whatever–shit was tight.

Next session, I headed down to the local miniramp, where my skill set is much more limited than on ledges ‘n shit. However, I soon found that I needed the “feel” and freaked the fuck out mid-frontside-ollie, kicking my board away. Why are vulcs better on transition anyways? I mean, Hensley and Steve Saiz and those dudes used to kill miniramps in Airwalk 900° ‘s or whatever the fuck. ANYWAY, if this shoe reminds me of any classic model from yesteryear it’s the e’S Creagers, with the Challenge Courts offering a little more increased ankle support, which is tight. Like I said, in the interests of full disclosure, I usually skate mids (DC Rick Howard 2′s are my favorite skate shoe of all time).

***

And there we have the qualitative, narrative shoe review. However, in order to deconstruct the complete portrait of its marketing and branding, we must delve into the history of skating and tennis’ symbiotic relationship. In recent years, one could easily triangulate tennis’ point of entry into the contemporary zeitgeist via Luke Wilson’s role in The Royal Tennenbaums.** Furthermore, over the past year or so, tennis has been so hot right now, what with that Gino Mighty Healthy internet web clip ad, the Challenge Court x McEnroe, and that  FTC x crailtap demo thing, at which you could play tennis with Carroll (!), or some shit. Did anyone go to that?

I wonder if Carroll serves overhand [nullus]. This brings us to another common thread between skating and tennis: a series of seemingly impossible movements, committed to muscle memory, that can only be learned through solitary repetition. Serving overhand. Frontside grinds. One-handed-backhands. Switchstance 360 flips. Same shit.

Also, when tennis began back in ye olden tymes, the aristocracy considered it to be a basic component of the skill set of a gentleman. and to this day, it remains a tight second date option; you’re doing something the whole time so you don’t have to talk too much, the chick, in all likelihood, rocks some tight outfit, and it sets the stage for the third date, which is traditionally the sex date.

Of course, not according to Meek Mill, 50 Cent, or Too $hort.

 ANYWAY, Skating maintains a similar unwritten code. Every dude should be able to set up his own board and exercise proper spot etiquette, regardless of relative skill level on ledges, flat, or transition. And just like skaters, tennis dudes obsess over the most minute details of their “setups,” like the type of nylon with which they string their racquets, the tape with which they grip their handles, shoes, all that shit. ***

Tennis, like skating is also distilled into a series of transcendent moments, differing from other sports because it’s just one dude versus one dude/spot/trick. Case in point: the 2008 Wimbeldon Men’s Final, which combined the stylistic and technical prowess of Gino in Trilogy with a level of Ternaskian emotional gravitas that was like Soldier’s Story to the power of Questionable. The only thing in skating that even approaches this level of impact is watching a highly-anticipated video for the first time. #prettysweet #patientlywaiting [50 cent singing voice]

And although skating has teams with a team “identity,” most skaters back and identify with individual dudes, just like in tennis, where sponsor teams aren’t really that big of a deal. However, I have nothing to base this on; like, maybe there are “welcome to SLAZENGER” web clips out there. ANYWAY, when said dude makes an impact, it can last for generations. When Jovantae pops up at on the crail couch or some shit, or when they show Bjorn Borg**** at Wimbeldon in a powder blue suit drinking a mimosa, it’s fucking majestic.

This is the common thread of skating and tennis with which I resonate the strongest on a personal basis; in the same way that some families are die-hard Steeler or Yankee families, my family is a tennis family, and they back the dudes they back to the death. Everyone still watches and follows the shit, including my grandmother who just turned 86. And just like with skating, the tennis players one backs communicate something about one’s personality. For example, if you claimed McEnroe over Borg in the early Eighties, that made a statement, like if you claimed Julien in the early Nineties (or today for that matter).

Along those lines, my grandfather claimed Federer literally until he died a couple years ago. If I recall, he did so because of the way dude was so fucking cool in the way that he handled his shit and took dudes out (I’m paraphrasing here). Maybe I identified so strongly with the Challenge Court in order to validate skating in the mindset of my parents and grandparents, something I consistently failed to do verbally. Kind of like that one episode of In Treatment when the Gabriel Byrne character subconciously initiated hand tremors –a symptom of Parkinson’s Disease–in order to complete the self-fulfilling prophecy of getting Parkinson’s just like his father.

Or some shit like that.

Continuing on the psychoanalytical tip, while back at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner, I found an old notes packet–a bunch of Freud writings in one photocopied bundle, which I assume is done 100% via the internet now–from college. It proved useful in this post, but only by directing me to Chapter III of Totem and Taboo, entitled ”Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thought.” In this chapter, Freud breaks down (via cocaine, I guess) the psychic processes of “Animatism” (the attribution of ideas and mythos to inanimate objects) and “Magic” (the strategies used to do so and to transfer them from one place to another). One can easily apply this to to modern marketing and branding–Jordan, Gino, dylan., even Magik Inc.

Trip the fuck out. The above insight fully reframed my perspective on our “waiting-in-line-for-shit culture,” to recycle a Dill quote.

So, to sum up, #marketingandbranding is a form of sorcery just a few steps removed from the most primitive pre-civilization shamanistic rituals.

That would be tight if that’s how Paul Rodriguez came up with the name for his shop, but I doubt it. Well, see you dudes later; Ii’m going to go work on developing my personal brand.

ps. @frozenincarbonite on that insta, @carbonite1994 on that twitter. also fb.

pps. shoutout to Mad Decent for producing the mix tape trilogy that I listened to almost exclusively while writing this. I recommend checking it out if you are looking for some music to get you amped enough to charge a fuckin’ machine gun nest.

*for the record, I have never watched an episode of Mad Men, I have just seen that clip a couple of times. 

**a similar phenomemon occurred with orange beanies via Steve Zissou

***I know this because, a couple years ago I think,  someone directed me to what could only be described as the tennis version of the SLAP messageboard

****whom many, according to that HBO doc Fire and Ice, accused of being robotic long before a certain Australian cyborg

I started this site (on the old blogger domain, before porting everything over to wordpress) five  years ago today. Shoutout to anyone that has ever read, linked, or commented on my shit. Also shoutout to bobshirt and police informer (RIP) for inspiration. New content coming soon–a shoe review, or some shit.  Within a week to ten days.

Summer 2012 fucking killed it. I skated a bowl, then got hammered on the beach and jumped in the ocean–thus getting wavy in both a literal and figurative sense. I skated the TF in the rain, drank a beer across the street, skated the TF some more, then skated the World Famous Lenox Ledges. All things considered, this might have been the best summer since 1999, aka The Summer of Newport, when a busload of Brazilian girls rolled up on that most late-Nineties of spots as Wenning switch 360 flipped into the rays of the rising sun. The only thing missing was a consensus slam-dunk no-brainer Song of the Summer.

Why, may you ask? Several factors were in play here, such as the residual hangover from “Racks”‘s domination of not only the Summer 2011, but the year itself. Katy Perry’s divorce cast a pall over her 2012 singles, restricting their themes to, like, how tough she is and shit like that.

Without a clear-cut #SOTS, one had to dig deeper, derive those elusive summer #vibes from different sources. Similarly, Summer 2012 lacked a standout Video Part of the Summer. This Summer’s Transworld Video came out in mid-spring, and no blockbuster solo internet video parts hit the internet. To clarify: some may well have, but, like everyone else, I can only recall content that was linked on twitter within past 24 hours. However, I have been bookmarking vids and songs all summer long in preparation for this moment. So here’s the 2012 Song of the Summer x Video Part of the Summer post.

Alien Workshop section in “Cinematographer Project” / Drake & The Wknd “Crew Love”

For the record, I have changed my stance on Drake. He alright. He makes some smooth shit to listen to when I’m driving home from work, or contemplating my relationship. It’s like urban contemporary or smooth jazz for hip-hop folk, or some shit like that. You’re not quite at the point where you listen to classical music in the car, and you had a college radio hip-hop radio show in college or some shit, so you listen to Drake. I have accepted this. At this point in my life, I’d rather listen to this new style of  ambient beats/r & b type shit than some punchline rapper. That’s just me though.

It still baffles me, though, why the Jewish community doesn’t back him harder. He reps our shit hard as fuck. Truth be told, if/when I plan my oldest son’s Bar Mitzvah, I will without a doubt use the “HYFR” vid as a reference point, in addition to retaining the DJ services of #NPBS, if possible. Along those lines, I saw on twitter the other day that that dude Action Bronson is also Jewish(!!).

Why he and Drake have yet to collaborate on a Jewish “Best of Both Worlds”-type project is beyond my comprehension.

ANYWAY, a song that utilizes an unconventional structure, or lack thereof, reflects a video part with lots of random shit and an unconventional structure, showcasing two dudes who are fucking killing it. Gilbert skates how he wants to; I have seen him stick completely fucked tech ledge lines on a spur-of-the moment whim, but his current “power skating” motif is tight as shit. Jake continues his trajectory of applying the most esoteric of switch ledge tricks to structures that dictate otherwise. Hopefully in 2013 he will bring back the 360 flip noseslide, via Chapman vid part.* And of course, this site will forever back Dill/AVE schoolyard lines. Every generation has that one montage that encapsulates the moment, with the one crew with whom everyone wants to be down. In the mid-Nineties it was the Menace section in Trilogy. For today’s highwater brown pant/vulc shoe/photography kids, it’s The Workshop (via Dill).

Ronnie Creager Berrics solo video part / “Call Me Maybe”

In his classic tome The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal, Martin Popoff relates how the Foreigner song “I Want to Know What Love Is” “seeped into American homes not unlike sewer gas” over the winter of ’84-85. Similarly, in the summer of 2012, “Call Me Maybe” oozed down from Canada like some greenish-blue chemical warfare (via Slayer, natch) type shit, slowly infiltrating every facet of American life–a song tailor-made for a generation that communicates primarily via meme.

Much has been made of the catchiness of said tune. Truth be told, though, this facet may be slightly overrated. For example, there are three or four songs in the Camera Obscura catalog that are at least as catchy as CMM, and I would also contend that “Never Say Never” by that dog.–which fuckin’ powered the summer of ’98–surpasses it in catchiness.

ANYWAY, for a song that has been remixed and memed to death, the metacognitive element of the lyrics remains under-discussed:

The bitch knows she is crazy.

Indeed, few things scream “crazy” like a girl giving a dude her number apropos of nothing. To highlight the differences in social interactions between the Nineties and the 10′s, this phenomenon is the inverse of the song “Steelo” by 702. Whether it less mentally unstable for a chick to just straight-up ask for a dude’s number, as in the latter song, is still up for debate.

ANYWAY, what CMM has going for it is timelessness. Accounting for production, Pro Tools and all that shit, it would not seem out of place on the radio in 1966, 1986, or on one of the more twee latest Belle & Sebastian lp’s. In the same way, Creager has stayed in the same lane since approximately 1994. Early grab, firecracker, and vulcanized shoes notwithstanding, most of the tricks and gear herein would fit seamlessly into Trilogy or RVD2. Is non-ironic use of Tom Petty** the next big music supervision trend? Also, I relate heavily to the use of yellow legal pad. Yellow legal pads are for winners. And like Mr. Creager, I write a to-do list at work on mine, and cross off each task upon completion. At the end of the work day, this makes me feel like I accomplished something. Maybe someone should tell him about Evernote, though. Shit is tight.

“Money” Mike Fiti Wild Power Part/ E-40 “Function” remix (French Montana’s verse)

Cars and #SOTS were made for each other. Along those lines, this SOTS candidate slid onto my radar screen while driving. High-speed merging at night, I heard Montana’s verse over my satellite radio. This was a pleasant surprise because, as you well know, in the world we live in the remix has the same beat as the original. Even before the remix, though, “Function” served as, for the most part, the only West Coast-centric song of the summer.

That Wild Power vid is on some similar shit. Think of it as an evolutionary Filmbot Files– a legit west coast independent vid with a wide stylistic variety of underrated dudes that rip. If you know this site, though, you know that–with a few exceptions– I back a very specific subgenre of skating: menace_tech, low-impact ledge lines/ schoolyard type shit. Along those lines, Money Mike’s part herein is the most menace_tech part of the year thus far.*** Revisiting that one low-impact ledge spot from Filmbot even, Fiti either bigspins and/or flips and/or 270′s out of 98% of his ledge tricks accompanied by non-ironic MC Ren music supervision. Also, I’m going go out on a limp here and interpret the picnic table 5/0 360 flip out as a 20 shot homage, and Ron Knigge would approve of the f/s halfcab double heel down some stairs. Hopefully this dude will soon escape the Krew/Supra and Kayo flow vortices, but who knows with, like, the industry these days ‘n shit.  In addition, the vid as a whole warrants checking out for parts from everyone’s favorite Forrest Edwards, Love Park alum Tony Montgomery, and Sean “Dammit” McNulty.

Brad Johnson “Pier 7 pt 2″ internet clip/Meek Mill “Amen”

sax solo

Hard to believe Fully Flared came out almost five years ago. I went to see M83 with my girlfriend last night, and although the FF intro song was not on the set list, the dude busted out a saxophone at the end of “Midnight City” and performed a non-ironic sax solo. That one line “the city is my church,” subsequently and almost instantaneously turned into a meme by that site Hipster Runoff, reflects a similar theme to one of this summer’s SOTS candidates. In 2012, one of the major contenders conceptualized not the city itself, but The Club within said city as religious ceremony/destination–a place one goes to pay homage, celebrate the important things in life, and reset for the upcoming week. In the same vein, Brad Johnson continues to pay homage to one of the long-dormant cathedrals of North American plaza skating by releasing this series of Pier 7 edits.

Indeed, even at a seemingly non-spot like the TF, there is a quasi-religious feeling upon rolling up to a celebrated spot for the first time. You feel it in three dimensions, sense how rounded-off the ledges are, see how fucked up the ground is. For example, after skating Lenox ledges this summer, Antoine Asseline’s line there in the Real vid fucking blows my mind.

ANYWAY, even though Pier 7 devotees will recognize most of this clip from Chomp On This, Sight Unseen, the 411 Pier 7 Spot Check, or even the ICS promo, the nuances of music supervision add a new dimension. Indeed, it doesn’t get much more #summertime than that moment when the vocals kick in during the “My Name is” part, juxtaposed with the image of Wussler drinking a 24 oz can of Budweiser by the bay–fuck a brown paper bag.

Added #phatstylez note: Johnson skates in Jordan 11′s and a Carolina jersey at 2:30. I think it is safe to assume these were color-coordinated. Truth be told, I have mad respect for those St. Louis dudes. They were just some kids that grew up worshipping World vids like the rest of us, and they went out there and made it happen. #salute

Kyle Nicholson & Jereme Rogers #MiAmor parts / David Guetta (and some other dudes, I guess) “Wild One Two”

via @furrycalamari

DATELINE: IBIZA – FEBRUARY 2012

David Guetta invites LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, FLo-Rida, and Paris Hilton to a weekend retreat at his Ibiza villa/compound.The mission:  create the Song of the Summer to end all Songs of the Summer. Aided by various substances, they stay up for 52 hours, eventually producing a rough mix of a single that will eventually soar to number one in 220 countries, reach two billion digital downloads, and most importantly of all, reign as #SOTS.

This never happened, but it should have. However, as far as #euro vibes go, “Wild One” was pretty tight; it’s the song that was stuck in my head the most while I vibed out at the Outer Banks a couple months ago, waiting to take skimboard runs as groups of girls strolled by. As far as #euro skate vibes go, the old standby of the “Euro Tour Vid” has fallen by the wayside with the advent of China, but Jereme Rogers. Kyle Nicholson and them brought it back this summer with #MiAmor–a vid that intentionally or unintentionally, captures those #summer

First, some background. After repeated attempts to obtain a physical copy or download a digital copy through Google Play™ (does anyone else use this shit?) I finally installed iTunes™ on my Windows™ computer. The only thing in my iTunes™ library, however, is the Selfish vid. All my other media streaming needs are served by Google Play™, such as streaming music through my miniscule phone speaker while skating mini by myself like a mental patient. I gotta tell ya though, I am not too psyched on whatever code they put in iTunes™ content that prevents one from, say, putting the vid on a flash drive and playing it with VLC Media Player. Information needs to be free, bro.

ANYWAY, the Selfish vid is tight because it is 100% post-irony. They strived to create the best vid they could. There are no #vhs / #tracking / #meta layers of meaning here. The wind noises and groovy instrumental keyboard music are what they are. If anything, #MiAmor reminds me of Two Industry Men or some shit like that; a time when every video was, to a certain extent, a tour video. This unorganized, weed-infused, low-concept bro-cam #vibe defines #summer.

Kyle Nicholson’s whole approach fucking kills it. By all accounts, he should have gone full am for Habitat like six years ago. I guess he couldn’t be bothered to learn analog photography or the acoustic guitar, because that never happened. Indeed, subscribing to the same South NJ/Philly/Eastern PA mindset as “skuh”-era Gall, Nicholson appears to give a shit about nothing other than ripping. In addition, he apparently wears the same all-black kit and high-top cupsoles the whole trip, encrusted with varying amounts of dirt. Has anyone else ever flipped out of a tailslide over a whole ‘nother block?

Which brings us to Jereme.

***

Once–just once in my lifetime–I want to attend one of those dinner parties that Jereme describes on Twitter. You know the ones. The intimate affairs with just him, one other dude, and like ten models. I imagine they would be something like this full-length extrapolation of the Jesse Pinkman/Omar/Puffy Ciroc commercial.

I dig that “international man of leisure” type shit that Jereme is on these days. He still rocks 2006-era XL t-shirts. Furthermore, truth be told, I have always thought that Jereme’s skating was some cool shit–specifically, the Skate More part, A Time to Shine,  and this Plan B intro part, the song for which Danny Way probably hand-picked. He has also cleaned up his style of late, chilling out on the signature “what? who, me?” landings.He leads off this latest offering with a noseslide, the building block of modern skateboarding.

I believe that this is 100% intentional and extremely significant.

Indeed, the noseslide serves as the basis for his entire repertoire. This is the main thing he has going for him in 2012. Shit is relatable; it’s still the first trick I do in any session. Dude also does a lot of switch tailslides, which are, of course, an inverted mirror-image way of getting into a noseslide. And whether you are switch inward heelflipping into one or f/s switch bigspin kickflipping (or some shit like that) out of one, a noseslide is still a noseslide. His ender even incorporates two different noseslides into a three-trick ledge combo that the editors of Transworld probably hate. More importantly, as we have seen in the recent Gino x McEnroe internet video clip, noseslides are highly relevant in 2012 because most people can do them, but few can do them well. Like pilot light said regarding f/s halfcab noseslide shove-it outs, if you see a dude execute a noseslide with speed, nollieing out of that shit like a man, there’s a pretty good chance he knows what he’s doing.

But does Jereme have any kind of path or direction in the infinitely more controversial facet of his career–the #rapgame? Although this type of seemingly delusional endeavor is an easy target, the standard argument of “You suck at rapping, bro! give it up!” holds no weight, because some of the most successful rappers out there qualitatively suck at rapping. Sounding cool, though, is still super important; it’s still “mostly the voice” like my man said. Jereme still sounds like a ninth grader.

Holistically, though, rapping effectively is probably the least important criterion for success in rap. Take a look at Riff Raff, for example. He has funny tattoos, tweets funny #rapgame tweets, gets profiled in the New York Times, and says cool shit like “Sarasota baking soda.” But is Jereme really _that_ much worse at rapping than he is?

 Riff Raff excels because he is more self-aware, leverages social media more effectively, and manipulates pop culture elements (i.e. MTV/BET tattoos) to add value to his brand. However, Jereme’s doubleset b/s flip attempt to kickaway hints at potential for a new, more nuanced direction. Is this bail a metaphorical statement about the industry? About the human experience? Is this whole post-retirement adventure some kind of Joaquin Phoenix-esque sociological media experiment? This remains to be seen. As the dude wisely reminds us in the intro to his part, “Just ’cause I could don’t mean I would.”

Or would he?

HONORABLE MENTION: Manolo Jovantae mixtape/ “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”

*in conversation for best trick @ pyramid ledges

**someone should totally skate to this song tho

***Sammy Baptista’s Skate Sauce part is up there, tho. #mnc_tech back?

ps. hit me on that twitter @carbonite1994 and on that insta @frozenincarbonite

switch 360 flip up

note: Nautica shirt

Dig, if you will, a journey into pre-civilization celtic vibes. One wanders for days across a shroomed-out version of the default Windows XP desktop background. Time loses all meaning. Sustenance: shrooms and the blackest of black tea. Guidance? vibes.

This is the journey upon which one was thrust upon hearing the opening bassline of “Fool’s Gold.” This is trippy music in both the literal and figurative senses.  It makes on feel like one is on a trip, and the lyrics narrate a trip. Where? The hills in Wales where Stevie Nicks honed her witching skills, or some shit like that. In any event, the Stone Roses took whatever house/Paleozoic-era rave music beats that were the shit at the time and fused them to one of the most infectious basslines ever and some chill-as-fuck Donovan-type vocals.

This is something that British people, collectively, have excelled at since pretty much the end of World War II—synergizing seemingly disparate influences into some new shit. The Beatles took the Everly Brothers, Little Richard freneticism and some suits and haircuts from France and made some new shit. The Stones—depends which phase tho—took Chuck Berry, whatever old blues dudes they looked up to, and whatever country-rock shit they were hip to in the early Seventies, cemented it together with a herculean amount of drugs, and made some new shit.

ANYWAY, shit was rough aggregating content in the early 1990’s, when “Fools Gold” hit.  One could A)record content onto magnetic tape, via a videocassette recorder, or off the radio or B) accumulate compact discs, audiocassette tapes, and vinyl on some kind of shelf. You knew a dude was a legit content aggregator when he had one of those balsa wood cassette shelves. Every so often, one compiled individual songs onto a compilation tape to listen to in one’s automobile or on one’s personal cassette player. Sharing video content verged on the impossible. The most effective method was to just mention to someone “Yo did you see that NWA vid?” and hope that it aired on Yo! MTV Raps the next Saturday. Sharing skate video content operated on a similar faith-based system. If the show sold out of a particular vid, one had to hope that a friend or loose skate-spot acquaintance had it and offered to let one dub it.

This is probably the genesis of  my anglophilia—taping 120 Minutes every Sunday nite. I had perfected this technique taping Headbangers Ball a couple of years previous. The most important tactic to remember was to program the recording to start at either 11:59 or 12:01, because one never knew for sure if the videocassette recorder would actually start at the right time if one set it for midnight.

Like I said—maintaining an authentic content farm in the early 1990′s was rough as fuck.

120 introduced me to those bands like Swervedriver, Ride, and most of all, the Roses. However, I never really got into them until my first bout with nostalgia around 1997, when I ceased being straightedge and got into shit like Stereolab and Oasis.

I’m not sure if Stereolab had a couple English dudes in addition to the French chicks or whatever, but one of my skate bros left a compilation tape of their shit in the car and I was hooked. Another key element was that one e’S ad in 411 with that one song off the first record. Oasis, though, I ended up seeing like 4 times. Not sure if I was still taping 120 when Definitely Maybe came out, but I remember part of “Supersonic” being prominently featured in My So-called Life (?). It warrants mentioning that Oasis’ ascent coincided with that of Tom Penny. It’s probably impossible to write something about England + skateboarding without mentioning that dude, but he’s been analyzed to death in every EL with which he was at all associated, so I will save the Tom Penny deconstruction for another post.

BUT ANYWAY, in addition to contributing the epic “I’m going to camp tomorrow” quote from 411 #2, Penny, like the aforementioned British collectives, synthesized the most impeccable influences into a new entity. Along those lines, Liam and Noel—like that one dude said in the fucking awesome seven-part History of British Rock series that comes on VH1 Classic pretty much every weekend–synthesized the coolest elements of the coolest British bands that came before them with an extra dose of Mancunian introspection via The Smiths. The difference between the two bands, conceptually, is the following:  Both Morrissey and Liam go to the club alone. However, Morrissey stands around on his own and leaves on his own, while Liam ostensibly cops some low-grade blow,  rips it off his hand in the bathroom, drinks between seven and nine beers and leaves with a young lady of questionable moral standing.

From the Roses, Liam and Noel appropriated haircuts, #technicalouterwear, and that certain sense of communal #madferit-ism via raves ‘n shit. Case in point: the chorus to “Acquiesce”–pretty much the Gino-in-Trilogy of contemporary Britpop choruses. Furthermore, based on my rudimentary interent research, they allegedly adapted the “No snow, no show” mantra from Clapton. The key difference, though, is this: Clapton’s shirt was probably facetious in nature, based on his cocaine usage that facilitated his kicking of his early Seventies heroin usage precipitated by George Harrison stealing his girl. Or some shit like that.On the other hand, the Gallagher bros. are straight shooters; if there’s no snow, they’re going gorilla.

ANYWAY, what set Oasis apart from other bands was the fact that their best songs resided on import-only cd singles—the kind that one found in those super-skinny cd cases. Of course, these recordings needed to be physically imported from the UK, thus making their cost somewhat prohibitive. Fortunately, I worked at an operation that had a stash of said cd singles, which I was able to dub onto magnetic tape cassette. Again—similar to hip hop sample nerdery, just simply knowing what these songs sounded like was an exclusive, apocryphal type of knowledge that amplified how rad they were (and still are). Truth be told, though, after Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, the songwriting became increasingly mediocre. But for a minute there Noel wrote some of the catchiest tunes in the history of catchy-ass tunes. As I get older, that musical criterion becomes increasingly all-important.

As the Nineties came to a close, I started listening to Belle and Sebastian—a band notable for cover art depicting a sock puppet sucking on a bitch’s titty. For the life of me, though, I can’t remember who first used their music in a skate vid. Other UK bands started to creep into vids, though; whoever music supervised Modus included the opener of Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space—the record that fuckin’ powered the summer of ’97—in the obligatory “slam” section.

Then came the most significant tipping point in terms of Britpop music supervision—the soundtrack to PJLWHL. It is hard to say whether the Coliseum dudes’ affinity for the genre is reflective of Boston in general, but it would be tight if that were the case. Although I have never been there, one can reasonably infer that the city functions as a nexus point where college kids, cokehead hipster types, Affleck-in-The Town types, rabid B’s/C’s/Sox/Pats fans, and 90’s-centric street skaters converge.*  The vid just wouldn’t be as cool if the dudes skated to trip-hop or whatever the fuck; it truly functions as an artifact of a certain time and place. In addition to the PJ Ladd song,** the use of “The Universal” warrants mentioning, if only because the one time I saw Blur the dude introduced it by saying “Here’s something  from a Broadway musical.” The dudes must have seriously gotten every Britpop cd that came out, because my ex used to have that Richard Ashcroft solo cd, and that “shelter me” song is seriously the only good song on there. Most of the songs were so obviously written about his girlfriend that he stole from the dude from Spiritualized, thus sending the Spiritualized dude into a vortex of substance abuse that was documented on the aforementioned Spiritualized lp.

Trip the fuck out.

ANYWAY, as PJLWHL recedes into skate lore, the narrative of how a couple dudes from Boston with impeccable musical taste founded a shop that produced the one of the most transcendent video parts ever remains almost as interesting as the video itself. Shit would be a sick movie. Kids meets Empire Records, if you will.

Attn: film industry people: this idea is a SLAM DUNK NO-BRAINER.

Eight years hence, enter Palace. Suffice if to say that Palace is the coolest company out right now. This is not a hyperbolic statement. Not the best, most elite, or technically proficient, but the coolest.  If one conceptualizes cool—as boyslifenyc does here—as a quantifiable entity, then Palace possesses the most. Admittedly, when I first heard of the squad, I somewhat dismissed them as “that Olly Todd post-stereo UK company.” However, their video output proved solid fucking gold. Specifically, the PWBC Global Skateboard News, in whch they reaffirmed the important things in life: skating in sideways caps and baggy-ass sweatpants. They followed this up with a series of brilliant webclips, paying homage to the Menace section in 20 shot and the Trilogy pager-check via a pre-line weed transaction. Indeed, The Palace dudes probably perceive Kareem in the same way that the Stones looked up to Blind Lemon Jefferson and all those guys—authentic practitioners of a distinctly American culture.  In a macro sense, the use of VHS harkens back to the Nineties, but with an extra dose of that British wit, perspective, or whatever you want to call it. The same shit that set the Stones apart from blues purists like the Paul Butterfield Blues band or whatever the fuck. Always coming up with some new shit. Palace has also made interesting personnel choices, pushing Chewy Cannon’s evolutionary-Quim Cardona style to the forefront, while adding a select couple of North Americans (Powers and Goodall).

Being a North American on Palace is some ill shit, like when the Stones collaborated with the Gram Parsons dude or some shit like that.

Along those lines, we live in a world where, as any social media strategist will tell you, “content is king.” Interestingly, though, Palace has solely made their video content readily available, leading to $500 sweatshirts on ebay (via QS). Recently though, some board were on Josh Stewart’s Theories of Atlantis site, and I heard through a homie that Humidity down in New Orleans recently started carrying some shit. An associate of mine maintains that the disregard for the law of supply and demand demonstrates a horse-before-cart business model. That is to say, if there is demand amongst the 2% of the North American skate population that “gets it” and fucks with Palace, then why not supply? However, it is undeniable, that, in this age of ubiquitous  ability to get anything, any time, perhaps this strategy plays into the whole #90s aesthetic in a meta sense. Their upcoming internet video sets the dudes in LA schoolyards and streetcorners—undeniably a power move, like when the Stones recorded at Muscle Shoals or some shit like that.

NOW, enter City of Rats—a video that, according to some internet comment the source of which I can’t recall, sets out to do for London what EE3 did for Philadelphia. That is to say, construct a resilient theater of the mind from its ancient, narrow-ass streets and gleaming marble office buildings, such as this one in Kevin Lowry’s part with sick under-bench mood lighting. Indeed, the juxtaposition of these two elements is what made PHILA footage so compelling, dating back to the Sub Zero vid. The aforementioned streets facilitate moves like Jensen’s switch 360 flipping street gaps—just like Pappalardo in that one EST vid. Mr. Jensen’s section also continues the trend of Hassidic Jews being the new homeless people—in terms of their utilization in skate videos, of course.  

That Karim dude’s part is the most relevant to the interests of this web site, as he conceptualizes downtown Londontown as his own private Chaffey, flipping over benches on quick succession. Initially, I thought his whole part was switch—bcause that would be more mnc_tech or whatever—but I did some rudimentary internet research and the dude’s goofy-footed. Truth be told, I think I subconsciously wanted all those 360 flip over stuff to be switch so I could make a Luis Cruz reference in this post. Steph Morgan’s guest appearance in Lucien’s part kills it, but I recommend his part in This Time Tomorrow for a more comprehensive performance. Rory Milanes concludes the film with tech-as-fuck lines on those cobblestones streets—a less-than-ideal environment that my friend who is depressed by UK vids often references.  Indeed, one doesn’t come away from the vid drooling over the spots of London; they all kind of blend together, bound by the realization that there has to be some shit like this somewhere in my town.

A “Suicide Girls” approach to spot porn, if you will.

Music supervision utilizes UK hip-hop non-ironically, eschewing that super-fast Tinie Tempah-style flow (what is that genre called anyway?) in favor of more tradition vocal stylists that use phrases like “mental stamina” a lot. I am not sure if these artists are Nineties revivalists, like that Joey Badass dude, or these recording actually date back to Nineties. Like, I got psyched at the beginning of one of the montages  when I heard that opening horn riff from ‘Shot Caller,” but it turned out to be some freestyle over the actual “Funky Child” instrumental.

***

A few months ago, I found out that the Roses had gotten the band back together and were planning some shows in the UK this summer. Immediately, I began making mental preparations to combine going to one of them with a skate trip to London, and maybe that train/bus station with the grey marble ledges if that is located somewhere else. These plans fell by the wayside as I failed to follow through on 100% of the necessary monetary and logistical preparations. However, City of Rats provides a ­not-too-shabby facsimile.

EPILOGUE: Before I get into the vid itself, a little background: I checked Unicron religiously for about a month for the vid to no avail.*** Finally, I ordered it via SS20 (Penny’s shop sponsor from the aforementioned “Wheels of Fortune”). In order to retrieve the content, I took the following steps:  A)receive Certified Mail slip in my physical mailbox B) take slip to my depressing-ass local post office and sign for the video C)a United States Postal Service postal worker handed my the envelope, with cool Royal Mail stamps with Queen Elizabeth’s head D) drive home and view DVD (only worked on the DVD I had purchased a few years ago specifically for viewing .mpg’s and .divx files)

I enjoyed this process.

It is way easier to fetishize content that has a physical form—which is probably why I have  yet to purchase an e-reader. That and the twenty or so physical books lined up in the “have yet to read” section on my bookshelf –enough to  last me until I physically die.

*This would be a cool Venn diagram.

**gotta tell ya, never got into Pulp, except for the William Shatner cover of “Common People,” which I am shocked that no one has skated to yet.

***Unicron has it now tho

ps. @carbonite1994 if you still use twitter, and @frozenincarbonite on the instagram

pps. I have also linked this site and the tumblr page cokewhitehalfcabs.tumblr.com (someone who hasn’t updated since 2011 took frozenincarbonite.tumblr.com) , so all new content on here should appear on there, probably rebloggable and all that shit.

photo via @theskatenazi ‘s instagram

…including, but not limited to, a City of Rats write-up type thing.