The message boards have been packed with this news for months, but yesterday (January 2, 2012) DC Shoes officially announced that they had made two “massive additions” to their skate program with Mike Mo Capaldi (formerly of Lakai) and Nyjah Huston (footwear free agent).
As usual, this announcement was followed by a flurry of comments from industry insiders and skate kids who don’t believe the publicly traded Quiksilver has skateboarding’s best interest in mind when it signs up major players.
One long-time skate industry head said:
Again skateboarders have sold themselves to a corporate giant who doesn’t care about skateboarding, just money. Happy 4 the skaters, though.
Another fired back:
. . . as long as that company funds skateparks, pays skaters well, makes cool videos and puts on cool events I’m backin’ it.
The first replied:
I know. Getting harder to hate buying credibility. I know it’s not rational but stills feel weird. Happy for skaters though.
Before getting all emotionally involved just remember: skateboarding and skateboarders are just the little donkeys who help drag the footwear marketing machine to the masses.
We at Snowbasin Resort had an incident yesterday for which we have received much deserved criticism. We are frankly embarrassed by this situation and have taken measures to prevent this type of incident occurring in the future. Snowbasin strongly believes in treating all of our guests with respect. We strive to deserve the respect and exceed the expectations of everyone visiting our resort.”
The patroller, seen above, told a snowboarder to “shut his fucking mouth” after one of the snowboarders friends had his pass pulled for what appears on video to be absolutely nothing. Patrollers obviously have a rough job during the holidays, but there really is no reason for them to act like Baltimore Police officers. To his credit the patroller did apologize later in the video.
Matthew Box is an watercolor artist who has created a skateboarding video by using his brushes to paint every single frame of some Jason Dill footage, according to a story in The Atlantic.
It’s an old animation technique called rotoscoping, but I didn’t know that at the time though. It’s essentially tracing over stills of footage. While I was experimenting with this technique I used different colors and really enjoyed how it had a psychedelic feel. That’s when I came up with the name Acid Drops for the project. It was a lot of painting but I’m kind of an amateur insomniac. It gave me something to do when I couldn’t sleep and it’s quite addictive seeing something you’ve painted come to life.
The short is called Acid Drops. For the rest of the interview, click the link.
For the past year photographer Julian Bleecker has been documenting women skateboarding with the hope collecting the photo in a book titled, Hello, Skater Girl. Like many independent artists, he has turned to crowd source funding site Kickstarter to raise money for the project.
I’ve been working on this project since November of 2010 and plan on finishing by the end of 2011. I’ve already made two “prototype” books as a way to experiment with design, layout and to communicate my intent for the project and to test the way that the photography works within the context of a book.
With 11 days left in his Kickstarter project Bleecker is only $1,800.00 short of his $13,000 goal. If you’d like to support the book and the girls in it, click here. For a pledge of $60 you’ll get a 16 x 20 archival quality print plus a limited edition Kickstarter art edition book.
