It really transcends skateboarding and becomes a story about this group of six guys who weren’t the cool kids. They weren’t the hipsters. Some might say they were borderline nerds and, for many of them, it was a real struggle to attain the position they eventually attained and we deal with that in the film.
Click the link for the short yet interesting interview with Stacy.
Tyler De Martini, the 18-year-old Berkeley, California skateboarder who collided with a car on Monday night (January 30, 2012) died on Wednesday, February 1, 2012 from his injuries according to a story on Berkeleyside.com.
[De Martini]who lived in Berkeley but attended El Cerrito High School, was hit by a 54-year old man driving a Prius around 7:05 pm on Jan. 30. The driver was heading eastbound on Marin negotiating a left hand/northbound turn onto Tulare when the two collided, according to Berkeley police. There was no alcohol involved in the collision and the driver was not charged.
Sadly, “Berkeley police have determined that De Martini was in the wrong in the collision.” Our thoughts are with De Martini’s family and friends.
For those who assumed that maybe after breaking his pelvis and, let’s face it, being old, that Tony Hawk would would slow down, get off his skateboard and coast off into the sunset on his wallet, here’s a little proof to the contrary.
Tomorrow night, (Saturday, January 27, 2012) Praxis Footwear will celebrate its official launch party in San Francisco, California at Gallery 1307.
Karl Watson is the lead skate personality and foundation for marketing of the Praxis brand. The Praxis Launch Party is brought to you in conjunction with the following co-sponsors: Organika Skateboards, FTC, Tech Vector design, Foundry Supply and Creative Edge Public Relations. Live music for the event includes DJ DSharp and Atlas.
In his story A Chronicle of Doing It: Nike and DestructionKyle Beachy (an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Chicago’s Roosevelt University) rolls through the history of Nike and skateboarding pointing out the obvious dichotomy between corporate cobbling and the core skateboarding market along the way.
Here’s a sample:
I submit that Grant Taylor is one of perhaps three skaters recognizable more by his shoe sponsor than board company. It is the same sponsor who weathered the PR nightmare of sweatshop injustice, elbowed themselves into golf and soccer, supports SOPA, and might, though they have no reason to, someday manufacture their own skateboards. Because why not. The same sponsor whose strategy will clear away the clutter of poorly- and skater-run, middling footwear companies, the inept and frail and upstart alike, acting as our free market’s grand systematic broom. Whatever Nike’s next step is, it will be, like Grant Taylor, bigger and faster. We will ignore the rubber gloves and hear the parrot’s squawk as our own. Bigger, faster, bigger, bigger, bigger.
The aforementioned quote is in fact the conclusion to the piece, but read the whole story anyway because Beachy pretty much covers every angle of the Nike vs. Core discussion and ends up where we all do: with the realization that the winning brands are the ones who do it better than everyone else. And while it sometimes sucks to admit that, it is so true that we’re almost embarrassed even mentioning it.
The Vans Skateparkin Orlando, Florida celebrated one last Steve Van Doren grill and Tony Trujillo and Omar Hassan skate session on Friday, January 20, 2012, before the bull dozers roll in and remove the entire mall, according to a post on the Vans site.
After 10 magical years in our skatepark in Orlando we are sad to have to say goodbye. The mall that we occupied for the past decade is being leveled to the ground to build…another mall. . . All of the wooden ramps were broken down over the weekend with the wood and Skatelite being divvied up between The Skatepark of Tampa, a number of local area skateparks as well as being being driven up to our House of Vans in Brooklyn for a facelift and resurfacing.
We’re glad Vans stuck with it as long as they did and they found good homes for the ramps.
Truth: we can’t really get enough of the wooden artwork of Haroshi. And because of that we’re posting this video from the HUF x Haroshi x DLX opening party that happened a whole three weeks ago at HUF LA. That’s all.
On Wednesday, February 8, 2012 Hurley will debut Craig Stecyk’s new short film Fin at the H Space Gallery in Costa Mesa, Callifornia.
FIN, the first installment in an evolutionary series of digital film shorts, details Stecyk’s method of working with a wide variety of personages in the southern California region and reflects the social and sonic landscapes in which these creators inhabit. People whose work has been documented so far include Von Dutch, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Evel Knievel, Dave Sweet, Julian Ness, Tom Blake, Dale Velzy, Tyler Hatzikian, Scott Anderson, Mitch Abshere, Scotty Stopnick, Mike Ness, and Roland Sands. The featured soundtrack is also a nod to West Coast visionaries, with Social Distortion, Breakdown, Tommy Guerrero and Steve Alba and the Powerflex 5 contributing to the project.
Along with the film will be a series of four T-shirts featuring artwork and still photography created during the making of the film. The H Space Gallery is located at 1945 Placentia Ave, Costa Mesa, California. Follow the jump for the T-shirts and more info. [click to continue…]
From early pioneers such as Jay Adams, Tony Alva, and Steve Caballero through the giants of the 1980s and 1990s, including Tony Hawk and Brian Anderson, to such legends of the scene today as James Hardy and Justin Figueroa, every icon of skating has graced the cover of Thrasher, captured in mid-air and mid-action by the sharpest shooters around. . . Organized chronologically, and including every cover published in Thrasher’s first thirty years—even long out-of-print and hard-to-find collectible issues—the book at last reveals the stories behind these legendary cover-photo shoots, as told by the skaters, photographers, and editors who made these the most iconic mementos of skate culture.
