by The Editors on March 2, 2009
Terry Schroeder, the owner of Midwest Skate Park in Rochester, Minnesota says if business doesn’t turn around he’ll have to close the park next year when the sub-lease agreement for the warehous ends.
The 4,000-square-foot park at 1020 Seventh St. N.W. is no longer making enough money from skating fees and merchandise sales to support itself, Schroeder said. Business declined sharply this winter, he added, as the novelty of the park has worn off and a shaky economy has made parents less willing to give kids money for skateboarding. . . “It hurts to think that the kids won’t have a place,” he said recently.
Yes it does.
[Link: Post-Bulletin]
by The Editors on March 1, 2009
We met Dirk Vogal, Daniel Schmid, and Jürgen Blumleiu (the guys responsible for Made For Skate; The Illustrated History of Skateboard Footwear) at The Berrics last night. They’d just finished a book singing at HUF LA. And when we said we were bummed we missed it they told us about this signing on March 7, 2009 at the Skatelab in Simi Valley.
Made For Skate is required for any skate book collection. And you can pick up the Mike V. issue of skatebook while you’re there.
[Link: Skatelab]
by The Editors on March 1, 2009
A Pensacola Florida skate spot was the scene of a robbery last week when Mark Furches, 20, found himself “looking down the barrel of a shotgun” instead of his video camera, acording to a story in the Pensacola News Journal.
He had been filming some of his friends skateboarding at a makeshift skate park on Massachusetts Avenue, and he didn’t notice when two men, one armed with a shotgun, approached from some nearby woods. . . “By the time I turned around, he already had a gun on me,” Furches said. . . . After a few tense moments, the men made off with Furches’ $3,500 video camera and another skateboarder’s cell phone.
Kind of reminds us of walking back to our car at The Berrics. Okay, not really.
[Link: Pensacola New Journal]
by The Editors on March 1, 2009
If you’re wondering where XX Wins The Berrics War story went, here’s the deal: Danny Bickerstaffe wanted us to pull it down saying:
We would greatly appreciate the removal of your Battle At The Berrics winers post since we have not yet posted the video on the site.
Nothing like trying to pound a big, fat, blue Genie back into a bottle, huh? But since we were invited guests plus the fact that easily half the people who saw the results were pissed that we “spoiled the whole thing for them” we have pulled our two sentence post. Danny did say that “The final game will be posting on Monday.” So we can all quit hitting reload on The Berrics site now and give those servers a break.
See what happens when you invite a bunch of wired, social media connected people to your private TF?
by The Editors on February 27, 2009
Looks like Op isn’t the only company with Walmart dreams of global domination. The Skatelab in Simi Valley, California and Alantic Beach, Florida has announced that they now have product displays in 450 Walmart stores and by the end of April they will be in 1,750 stores.
Killer T-shirts and hats only $7.50. Support SKATELAB and go get your kids some of the new gear today!
Just wondering. . . will this make Skatelab the world’s largest selling skateboarding T-shirts and hats? If not, it will certainly increase Skatelab’s brand awareness in the all-important “uneducated, foul-mouthed, fat, ugly, and unemployed” demographic.
[Link: Skatelab.com]
by The Editors on February 27, 2009
Miss skateboarder Biebel’s Firsthand on Fuel TV last weekend? No worries. The entire show is now up (in HD) on the Fuel.TV website for viewing any old time. Funny how good HD looks and how we’re already starting to take it for granted.
Sadly the Fuel player isn’t embeddable or we would have put it right here. Maybe someday. . .
[Update: Thanks to Rowe, we’ve got the HULU.com version after the jump.
[Link: Fuel.TV]
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by The Editors on February 27, 2009
Steve Nesser’s Familia Skateboard Shop has made the cross-town hustle from St. Paul to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is celebrating the move this weekend, according to as story in the City Pages.
Check out the store’s ‘Grand Re-Opening’ this Saturday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., featuring a special in-store Todd Bratrud art show and hang out with the Familia crew at The Red Stag later that night, with tracks from DJs Millions Billions and Tendercakes.
Sadly, we’re not going to make it to that freezing Midwest skateboarding hotspot this weekend nor any weekend in the near future.
[Link: Citypages.com]
by The Editors on February 27, 2009
We’ve been talking about how The Berrics has been blowing up lately, but we never thought it would be something The Wall Street Journal would be interested in. Wrong again. Today, writer Conor Dougherty kicked the lid off skateboarding’s little secret like only The Journal can.
This aggressive minimalism renders the Battle almost unwatchable to anyone who hasn’t spent time on a skateboard. But it’s addicting to skateboarding purists, who find a contest of smaller tricks more relatable than the skate competitions on television, where grisly falls and jumps as long as 75-feet get much of the attention. . . . At the stroke of midnight PST on Saturday and Sunday mornings, skaters around the world will log on to watch.
Yep, The Berrics has gone global. No doubt. Tune in this weekend for the finals.
[Link: The Wall Street Journal]
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by The Editors on February 27, 2009
When a new Pepsi skateboarding display went up in some far away land, The Berrics Design Group jumped right in to offer the caffeinated sugar water company some help:
Why the arm of Pepsi’s marketing group is way hipper in other countries than here, in America, where skateboarding is really popular, is beyond me. Hey Pepsi! If you want the Berrics Design Group to help you out in the U. S. of A, let us know. Seriously. We’ll charge you a lot less than what those guys charged you for your new logo. I promise, a lot less. The Berrics; everyone’s doing it, why should you be left in the dust?
Way to hustle. Maybe that’s why The Berrics is continually on the up.
[Link: The Berrics]
by The Editors on February 26, 2009
In preparation for his Fecal Face Dot Gallery opening tonight, February 26, 2009, skate artist and former Think Skateboards art director Jeremy Fish has painted a 30-foot-long mural with three dimensional characters in it according to a story in the Xpress.
The mural-in-progress, which covers two of the Fecal Face Dot Gallery’s four walls at Gough and Market streets, depicts a wooded scene of half-finished cartoon animals and trees. Fish carefully draws the perky lips belonging to one of the trees that overlooks what seems to be a future battle scene. . . . The artist has been crafting the mural for 25 hours, but states he only has a few hours left of touching up the details. World-famous skateboard filmer and photographer Dan Wolfe is in the room shooting time-lapse photographs of the process while old-school East Coast hip hop bumps from small speakers in the corner.
The Ambush opening party is tonight at 6 p.m. at Fecal Face Dot Gallery – 66 Gough St. (@ Market St.), San Francisco, with an after party at The Uptown, 200 Capp St (10-2am).
[Link: Xpress and Fecal Face Gallery]
Terry Schroeder, the owner of Midwest Skate Park in Rochester, Minnesota says if business doesn’t turn around he’ll have to close the park next year when the sub-lease agreement for the warehous ends.
