ESPN can eat a crate of barbecued donkey dung, and the X Games, well, they can slurp up the left overs with a stainless steel straw, but getting to listen to The Nine Club’s Chris Roberts on the other side of the questions, and to have them delivered by Chris Nieratko, is a pretty good set up. Which is just another way of saying that this interview is worth watching.
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We’re done riding boots that don’t have Boa closures. Once you’ve experienced the click-click smoothness of micro adjustments on the fly and perfect distribution of hold it would be silly to go back to other retrograde lacing systems. Apparently, Bryan Iguchi feels the same way because his new Vans Verse signature snowboard boots feature not one, but two BOA loops to hold everything together.
The Verse is Vans most responsive and supportive snowboard boot model and utilizes the precision and power of the Boa® Closure System. Employing the Custom Focus Plus construction, this particular routing showcases the micro-adjustability of Boa® in a dynamic, dual-zone configuration. The result is unlimited flex control and superior heel hold, meeting the standards of the most demanding riders.
The Verse also features the V3 UltraCush North Face Flashdry liner, an elevated option that moves moisture to the surface layer for hyper-fast evaporation. The collection also includes the UltraRange MTE Hi Gore-Tex, a waterproof high-top that serves as an all-conditions must-have for before and afters. Seems like the perfect set of footwear for most all-mountain ripping right? For all the details, please follow the jump.
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Nyjah Huston’s new pad in Laguna Beach, California was an architecturally significant place even before he remodeled it up to his personal steez. Old media stalwart Architectural Digest was invited to take a tour. Always the proper host, Nyjah showed it all off quite nicely. Watch the video. It’s good.
[Link: Architectural Digest]
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Vans is excited to announce the return of our annual international snowboard competition, the Vans Hi-Standard Series. Kicking off 2020 in Canada and journeying around the world, the tour invites riders of all ages from around the globe to showcase creative expression in a fun, open-jam format.
Next year’s iteration will see the Hi-Standard series land in China, South Korea, Russia and Italy, in addition to several stops in North America. Each event features a big air session, where participants are judged solely on their individual style, with no inverts or spins over 720 allowed. This format taps into creativity, awarding only the most innovative competitor who shows pure style and originality. Regional MVPs win an all-expense paid trip to the grand finale at Brighton Resort for a chance to snowboard with the Vans snow team and battle it out for the 2020 Vans Hi-Standard Series MVP title.
For all the details, including the full schedule, please follow the jump.
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Former pro skateboarder, MMA tough guy, and Sirius Radio host Jason Ellis, one of our favorite early 90s skaters, reportedly reaffirmed his bi-sexuality in October 2019. Now according to essay for Advocate, he says the LGBTQ community is completely unaccepting of him, according to a story in the New York Daily News.
In a touching opinion piece published in the Advocate Tuesday, the Australian-born record-breaking skateboarder — who’s “lucky enough to be able to have sex with men,” and that who’s now “married to a woman I love,” slammed the LGBTQ community for not accepting — or even believing in — bisexual men. . . I just don’t feel like I’m welcome in the community right now. When men I have sex with find out I’m married to a woman they tell me things like, “it’s just a phase,” and “you’ll be gay eventually.” They tell me bisexuality doesn’t exist. They tell me what I do and how I define myself don’t exist,” he wrote.
It appears that no matter what his venue Ellis continues to be a solid outsider. For more details on the man, check out his most recent autobiography Still Awesome: The Trials and Tribulations of an Egotistical Maniac.
[Link: New York Daily News & The Advocate]
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The last time I saw Mark Anthony “Gator” Rogowski in person, he was dancing around on our “Some Guys Who Skate” doormat like he needed to piss. He’d knocked on the front door nonstop until he heard my hand on the knob. When I opened the door he bounced into the entryway saying, “Hi, I’m Gator.” I said, “Yes, you are.”
He was on the downside of his fame bubble, but still a pretty big deal in skateboarding. Gator called out past me for the skater he was hoping to visit. I don’t remember who it was. On not finding the person home, he said, “Ok, thanks,” and left as quickly as he had arrived.
I talked at Gator one more time two years later. It was the spring of 1991 and I was looking for a new place to live. My pro skateboarder landlord was selling the house we all lived in, and I’d heard that Gator, who lived in a plush condo near the beach, was looking for a roommate. Friends who had rented a room from him the summer before cautioned me that he was “kind of weird” about stuff, but his place was right where I wanted to surf, so I left a message on his machine. He never called me back.
Later that year, when Gator confessed to raping and killing 22-year-old Jessica Bergsten, I was horrified, shocked, and relieved that he’d never returned my call. In 1992 Gator was sentenced to 31 years to life in prison. Now, 27 years later, the San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that on Tuesday, December 10, 2019 Gator was recommended for parole.
The finding that the 53-year-old was suitable for release came on the third try for Rogowski, who long ago admitted killing Bergsten, a friend of his girlfriend, in his Carlsbad condo. His previous bids for parole were denied in 2011 and 2016.
Tuesday’s recommendation is the first step in the approval process. The state’s parole board has 120 days to review the case. If it moves forward, Gov. Gavin Newsom gets 30 days for review — and he if wants to, revoke it.
San Diego Deputy District Attorney Richard Sachs doesn’t want Gator released from prison, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“We respect the board and the difficult decisions they have to make, but in this case we are very disappointed with the result, and feel he still represents a significant threat to public safety, particularly women,” the prosecutor said in an interview Wednesday.
Most people, Sachs said, “don’t have it within themselves to beat a young lady with a metal rod, handcuff her, cut her clothes off, rape her repeatedly, and murder her through suffocation.
“Most people don’t have it within themselves to do that. But he did. And anyone who can commit a crime like that — which is so horrific and monstrous in character — demands the highest level of scrutiny.”
It’s impossible to know for sure how these things should go. For most murderers I’ve felt it would be fair for them to leave prison just as soon as the victim returns home to their family, but I’m no professional. Maybe Gator is completely reformed. Maybe he is a new person who deserves another chance. We’ll see what the parole board says. They have 120 days to decide. For the rest of the story, please click the link.
[Link: San Diego Union Tribune]
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Jake Burton Carpenter, the father of modern snowboarding and so much more has died on November 20, 2019. He was 65.
There are no words. Our hearts ache for the loss Donna and the boys are feeling.
According to The Washington Post:
Officials from the company he founded, Burton Snowboards, confirmed his death to the Associated Press on Thursday. . . He emailed his staff this month saying his testicular cancer had returned. He had been diagnosed in 2011 but after several months of therapy had been given a clean bill of health. . . Carpenter brought the snowboard to the masses and helped turn the sport into a billion-dollar business.
[Link: The Washington Post]
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Thomas Campbell is one of our favorite skateboarding, surfing, artist people and we wanted to have his talk with Tommy Guerrero logged right here for future reference (like for the part about how Thomas introduced Larry Clark to Harmony Korine). If you didn’t already enjoy this on ThrasherMagazine.com, then by all means click play and watch them right here, right now.
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Call it a beacon of laziness, or a blinding neon sign of boredom, but we’re still at it. Putting up a list of headlines for stories we might have read over the past who knows how many days.
It takes us back to when we were just starting out. Each week we built an HTML page of links with a bit of commentary. Then the commentary took over, and now, it looks like we’re back to just blasting out an occasional list of links for you to chew through all by your lonesome. Just the ebbs and flows of action sporting news dissemination. Enjoy.
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Jenkem Magazine brings to light a cautionary story of how an accused pedophile infiltrated the Atlanta skateboarding scene beginning in 2009 and how long it took to bring the man to justice. The story begins like this:
The following story is something of Atlanta lore, repressed by most everyone who was forced to contend with it. It first started as rumors of pedophilia and sexual assault floating around that were surely too unsettling to be true, before spiraling out of control into a grotesque reality. Lots of skateboarders in Atlanta were peripheral to the events chronicled here, including my group of friends. At the time, many of us simply wrote it off as, “shit happens,” or “we didn’t know the full story.” It wasn’t until years later, when I mentioned the Atnalta Foundation to a group unfamiliar with the Atlanta skate scene, that I realized how disturbing this story was.
Click the link for the rest of the story.
[Link: Jenkem Magazine]
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