We all know the art Stacy Peralta has created on his skateboard, on video, and film, but now he’s creating paintings about skateboarding. In this documentary, Against The Current, he explains it all.
Stacy shares his various inspirations from childhood to present day, and the challenges and lessons learned while working to develop this new visual language in his iterations of these tools of joy from the past. . . The work also explores his temporal and obsessive relationship to the skateboard collection that intrinsically holds the memories of those ephemeral halcyon days. As well as the decay and degradation that entropy and time have on our prized possessions, and even ourselves.
Spend a couple minutes to watch it. Then, roll up the coast to Cambria, California and check out his art show at Cruise Control Contemporary gallery.
Last week, three-time world and four-time world cup halfpipe champion (and singingheiress impregnator) Scotty James released a book with Penguin Australia titled Mooki vs The Big Scary. Here’s how they pitch it:
Adventure has a new name, and it is MOOKi! MOOKi vs The Big Scary combines thrilling adventure with valuable life lessons, all wrapped in the imaginative world of Scotty James. . . MOOKi embodies the spirit of dreaming big and overcoming hurdles, inspired by Scotty’s own life. . . You will laugh out loud at the results of MOOKi’s bravado. . . This book is a page-turner for young readers, each page filled with excitement. . . Vivid and eye-catching illustrations bring MOOKi’s world to life from beginning to end.
Do we believe this? Not really. But if you’d like to check Mooki out yerself click the link.
PS: Yes, a great way to get over writer’s block is to hire another writer to write your books for you. Genius.
Lucas Beaufort spent his downtime during covid putting together a big book of skateboard shops called Heart. We should all check it out, according to a story in Brooklyn Magazine by Colin Kirkland.
“You need a big heart to run a skate shop,” says Lucas Beaufort, a French visual artist, filmmaker and life-long skateboarder who turned his quarantine confinement into a years-long quest to document and celebrate the world’s most iconic skateboarding hubs. . . Across 428 pages, readers will find personal interviews and classic skate-mag photos, which help make the case that amidst an onslaught of digital retail and social media, skate shops remain an essential analog to harnessing the soul of skate communities worldwide.
For more on the book and an interview with Beaufort, click the link.
We’ve said it before, but when it comes to doing contracts with artists, and designing products with them, it seems many brands find it’s easier to get deals done when the artist is dead. Roark seems to agree as they’ve launched a new collection of clothing featuring the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who sadly died at 27 (he’s in the club) from a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988.
“It’s beyond special to present this collection inspired by the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat and share it with Roark fans,” said Roark Founder Ryan Hitzel, “We explore the merger of rhythm and flow with his iconic symbolism, raw creativity and challenging of the status quo. We find the best version of ourselves in that state of mind, whether we’re surfing, running or adventuring through the world.”
Obviously the collection looks great. As it did when Billabong did the same thing in 2018. For a complete overview, please visit Roark’s website . . . which we’re assuming is on the Internet somewhere.
The Berrics is reportedly moving. And in the process of returning their warehouse to its original warehouse condition they’ve chopped the park up into little pieces. Feel how you will about that. The oddest part is that (in association with ABD Collectables) they have encased signed pieces of Berrics concrete in plastic blocks and are selling them for $99. But there’s more!
Every pre-order will have the chance to get a free flight and hotel to BATB 14 Finals Night.
No joke. Want a Berrics paperweight? (Can’t imagine why you would). But if you do, please click the link and shop away. You never know who might have signed the piece you get. And maybe, just maybe these will be even bigger than NFTs one day!
Congrats and happy birthday to those stalwart Aussies hipsters who keep the action culture print dream alive with their parties, promotions, and pop-cultural sensibilities printed on actual paper and distributed the old fashioned way–by truck.
Twenty years is a long time to be at the wheel swerving this way that that to avoid the potholes most other print publications have fallen into on their profit driven roads to ruin. To celebrate the staff in Sydney threw a monster party and apparently it was rather large.
It was huge. We’re still hungover. Was it a dream? Thank you to all of our friends, staff, contributors, and fine people who work so closely with us now and throughout the last twenty to make Monster Children what it is that came out to celebrate. After all this time, it is you who keeps us in the game.
If you’re in NYC stop by Saturdays NYC on Crosby Street tonight (Wednesday, November 29, 2023) for the stateside version of the birthday party. Free everything will be provided apparently. For photo proof of all the Sydney festivities, please click the link.
A new exhibition titled Skateboard at the London Design Museum investigates the roll skateboarding has played in the world of youth culture, fashion design, and sports in general. Currated by Jonathan Olivares, the show is sponsored by Converse and will feature a book by Phaidon (Paul ‘The Professor’ Schmitt wrote the intro).
Skateboard examines the fundamentality of its namesake device. The show is an object study at its core; it tracks the backstory of the board across generations’ worth of iterations (one 2000’s deck features baroque squiggles called “money shapes” on its edge, for instance). Yet it also provides a crisp, clear flow of the world-building that has occurred around the apparatus. . . Over 100 chronologically advancing decks, their widely varied graphics, images sourced from over 40 photographers in multiple decades, and spin-off ephemera (such as zines and decals) illustrate this rise of skateboarding not only as an athletic discipline but also as an aspirational lifestyle. A 1960s-era Life cover, for example, shows a woman in neat white trousers riding against a big blue sky–while doing a handstand on her board, no less.
For more info on the show which opens October 20, 2023 (and how to visit if you’re in London town) please click the link.
Shaun White’s ascent from snowboarder to cultural zeitgeist is perfectly represented in his new book from Rizzoli titled Airborne. See photos from when he was just a SoCal kid who loved skateboarding and snowboarding. Watch as the fame machine grabs hold of him and sends him into the orbit of rockstars, fashionistas, and Hollywood girlfriends. Here’s how Rizzoli sets the scene:
Some of the world’s best action-sports photographers capture White performing his extreme snowboarding and skating tricks around the world–from his groundbreaking aerial maneuvers such as his Double McTwist 1260 on Olympic half pipes, to his radical skating tricks such as his Frontside 540 Sky Hook at the X Games. White exceeded the imaginable limits of snowboarding and raised the bar for other snowboarding competitors to try to keep up with him. Narrated by White with detailed commentary throughout, this book is an autobiography in images and an intimate glimpse into the life of a celebrity athlete: training, competing, on the road and in the spotlight.
It’s obviously another Shaun White celebrity product, but if you’re a fan then this is the book for you. Click here to buy it.
Legendary skate and music photographer Glen E. Friedman has a new collection of images coming out in book form from Akashic books on October 3, 2023 titled: Just a Minor Threat.
JUST A MINOR THREAT is a book of Glen E. Friedman’s most outstanding photographs of the Washington, DC, band Minor Threat, one of the most influential hardcore punk bands in music history. While the book offers Friedman’s best-known photographs of the band, most of the pictures in this volume, shot in 1982 and ’83, have never been seen before. . . The book has writing by Jello Biafra, Alec MacKaye, Guy Picciotto, Zack de la Rocha, Jamie Shanahan, and Ian F. Svenonius. Friedman’s own introduction explains how he initially met the band, and the lifelong friendships that grew from there.
If you are a fan of Minor Threat or just someone who collects rock photo books, click here to buy one and get all the info.
Last week, three-time world and four-time world cup halfpipe champion (and 
Shaun White’s ascent from snowboarder to cultural zeitgeist is perfectly represented in his new book from Rizzoli titled 
