Skateboarding

Willy Staley puts down a great profile of Thrasher Magazine mascot Jake Phelps in California Sunday. And the photos by Andrew Paynter make Mr. Phelps look every bit the lovable punk that he has become over the past two decades of putting a face to the Thrasher ethos.

Here’s the start:

I had spent only a few minutes with Jake Phelps before someone called him an asshole. It was a balmy October morning in San Francisco, at the tail end of the city’s reliably tardy summer. I found Phelps outside of a corner store at 24th and Valencia at the appointed time, dressed like half of a magazine editor: On top, he wore a crisp white oxford and a gray sweater vest, chunky black glasses, and a few days’ worth of graying stubble. But his pants sagged to mid-ass; his shoes had pentagrams stitched into the tongues. At his side he held his skateboard, which had dried rivulets of blood in the griptape.

Click the link for the rest and think about just how happy the rest of the Thrasher staff is to have a guy like Jake to dive on all these media grenades for them.

[Link: California Sunday]

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The design of a new addition to the skatepark in Rangiora, New Zealand apparently has some of the locals feeling like they’re getting the shaft, according to a story on One News Now.

“To roll with the pun, it’s [been] a bit of a cock-up,” local skater Mark Pijnenburg told Fairfax media. . .It’s already been labelled “the dick bowl” by some locals, he said. . . Public submissions against the design have been made including one saying it “looks like a giant doodle”.

Not sure what they’re pissed off about really. Certainly some skaters will find the new bowl fun to ride. Plus, it appears to have a lot to grind. We just hope it’s not too hard for the kids. Locals need to nut up and remember that sometimes a bowl is just a bowl.

[Link: One New Now]

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