On Saturday, May 5, 2012 skateboarders, sponsors, and hundreds of fans joined Ryan Sheckler and the Sheckler Foundation at the etnies Skatepark for Skate For A Cause. The event, held to help raise money for A.skate, collected $86,000 in total, $57,000 of which will fund A.skate’s 10-stop Be the Change tour this summer. It was a great day of skateboarding, friends, and doing something good for kids on the Autism spectrum.
For photos and the official word, follow the jump.
New Zealand’s Stuff.co.nz has a great catching-up profile on skate legend Lee Ralph that is worth a visit.
THINK of how the Sex Pistols, with all their shooting star aggression, changed modern music, and you get an idea about the impact Ralph has had on skateboarding, a 20 million-strong nation these days. . . . . . ”He was aggressive, but had a really good style. Just so flowing,” film-maker Andrew Moore, director of the documentary No More Heroes, which focuses on the rise of Kiwi skateboarding in the 70s and 80s, says. . . ”He did a lot of tricks that no one had seen over there, and the Americans just loved it. To this day, any American skater you meet will always ask about Lee Ralph.’ . . .”Lee’s more hardcore than any sort of hardcore rock and rollers I’ve met. He’s almost Bukowski-like.”
That’s just the start. Click the link to read the rest.
We rolled to the Ryan Sheckler FoundationSkate For A Cause event at the etnies Skatepark in Lake Forest, Califronia on Saturday May, 5, 2012 and it reminded us what skateboarders and skateboarding can do when pointed in the right direction.
And example of being headed proper is filmmaker Ben Duffy. He’s working on a film titled Heartchild that tells the story of Crys Worley, her autistic son Sasha, and the work Worley has done creating A.skate to help kids with autism through skateboarding. Duffy is raising money for the film on Kickstarter. Click here to help him get the movie done right.
Rob Brink and Erica Yary discuss Kyle Frederick’s large reproductive organ, kayaking with Chris Cole and the all-new season of Street League on the Weekend Buzz. It’s a good one.
On Wednesday, May 2, 2012 the Los Angeles City Council voted to approve a “motion aimed at outlawing recess skateboarding or “bombing,”” according to a story in the LA Times.
On a 12 to 0 vote, the council instructed City Atty. Carmen Trutanich to draft an ordinance that would prohibit “unsafe” skateboard activity and limit riders to a speed of 25 mph. . . The proposal was initiated by Councilman Joe Buscaino, who described it as a response to the death of two skateboarders over the last year. Buscaino, the council’s newest member, said he wants to end downhill skateboard “bombing” — the practice of riding at high speeds, sometimes while weaving in and out of traffic — in his harbor district.
Ordinances that specifically single out skateboarding are bad for all kinds of reasons. Rather than create special rules that apply only to skateboarders the LA City Council should simply apply the rules of the road the govern bicycles and cars. Of course, that would be too simple and not nearly as headline grabbing.
Tony Hawk speaks to Entrepreneur Magazine about selling things, selling out, and not being a sellout. On the way he discovered this bit of business wisdom: “People don’t call you a sellout until your stuff finally sells. And it’s finally selling out.”
James Smith, the executive director of The Kona School has a pretty cool idea. Since it seems few school districts have time for anything other than improving test scores, let alone help kids learn the skills they’ll need to work in the world, Smith has come up with a better idea. Build a school at a skatepark. Plans for the first one are underway at Jacksonville, Florida’s Kona Skatepark.
By incorporating the most innovative instructional strategies with progressive technology, a focus on healthy living, and green campus construction, the mission of Kona School is to inspire in each student a desire to learn creatively, think independently, and act responsibly.
Can’t imagine that parents could ask for much more than that. Check it out.
Just a reminder: On May 5, 2012 (yes, it’s Cinco de Mayo) Laguna Beach, California’s AR4T Gallery will host an opening reception for Ben Brough’s new solo show, Lights Out Beach City.
Lights Out Beach City expands on the highly vagrant work imagined by Brough over fourteen years using space, color, cartooning, collage, and painting techniques. Screeching imagery of food, music, coastal living, cinema, sex and landscapes in styles and mediums selected to clash by intention.
The Fred Water Legends Bowl Contest will have an ordered jam session format in the Shark Bowl. It is a black backyard style amoeba pool with a four-and-a-half foot deep shallow end, six foot deep pockets and a nine-and-a-half foot deep end. It’ll be amazing to see the legends dominate the bowl’s death boxes, shallow-end stairs and Tedderstone pool coping. . . All of the day’s events give skateboarders, sponsors and the community a chance to have fun while giving back to raise funds for A.skate. The A.skate Foundation is a non-profit that allows kids with autism to be a part of the social world through skateboarding. They hold clinics for kids with autism at no cost to the families, give grants to kids with autism for skateboard gear, as well as promote awareness and education.
For all the details and a full list of all the bowl skaters who will be ripping the coping out of Shark Bowl click the link. [click to continue…]
Angry, golf cart driving, skateboard grabbing, kid choking, smart ass Baltimore Police officer (and Internet Celebrity) Salvatore Rivieri is thankfully still fired even though the Baltimore Police Union thinks he is such an amazing officer that they are fighting his removal from the police force all the way to Maryland’s Court of Appeals (and maybe the Supreme Court), according to a story in the Baltimore Sun.
Maryland’s second highest court on Friday upheld the firing of a Baltimore police officer who was caught on video berating and pushing a 14-year-old skateboarder at the Inner Harbor in 2007. . . The Court of Special Appeals ruled that Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld III had the authority to terminate the 19-year veteran officer, Salvatore Rivieri, despite a recommendation from an administrative hearing board that he be suspended for six days and lose six days of leave.
For those following along this is the second time a high court has upheld Rivieri’s firing. The last time was in March of 2011. To anyone who watches this video (even five years later) it is almost laughable that Rivieri ever had a badge in the first place. He is a disgrace to anyone who wears a badge and the the Baltimore Police Union should be ashamed that it spent the last five years in court trying to keep him on the force.
