Friday, October 31, 2008

New York, New York Big City of SCREAMS!!!



So I have finally finished the Halloween clip. I present the cinematic debut of...wolfman and friends!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Just posted, but...

Taji just showed me this clip of him, Charles Lamb, and Billy Rohan from the Acapulco Gold/Instant Winner trip to Europe from this past summer. Check it!




Oh yeah, and Black Dave got a Check Out on the Transworld site.

Ras Trent

Watch this:



Tell me that wasn't amazing...especially when he walked by the real Rastas. Haha.

SkateNC put up a new clip:




Brett Abramsky! Blunt-front pivot-fakie!!! (52 seconds in)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Better without a costume

So much skating went down on Sunday for this Halloween clip that my right leg has been so sore since. Do your thing, Tiger Balm. The good news is that we have plenty more footage for the clip, which is to be completed by Friday.

So I came across this new site: Beware of Sasquatch. I think these guys are based out of Seattle, but they have some sick stuff on the site. I like this teaser a lot:



Watch the Check In with Alex Moul (from Strangenotes) below.



Kickflip late shuv?! I had to replay that a couple times. The blunt backside kickflip out on that weird sculpture playground thing in AZ was legit too. Too bad you don't see more footage of him these days.



This event looks mad fun. Hopefully it doesn't rain because I would love to throw down in costume!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Skate Recap

So I am slacking in getting all my photos from my trip to the northwest half of the country organized, so I will just follow suit with what I did for my last trip. Since this was not a skate trip and skating was very minimal, here is a short recap.

I didn't really get any pictures of skate spots in Portland. I did get a chance to skate Burnside for a little bit, as well as this nice bank close by it. Some photographer b-boy that was walking by with his camera and stopped to shoot some photos of me skating the bank. If he post them up then I will share them here. Either way, here are the two photos I did get in Portland.


This spot was super hard to skate, but now it has been skate stopped. While it was hard, it was a pretty fun spot. RIP. Oh yeah, Alan Siegler got a trick on here that you probably wouldn't even think to try...just saying.


This is one of my favorite spots in portland. There are all these rock formations that make for some fun wallrides, nose bonks, and wallies. Last time I was skating here with Leonard, Chet Childress rode by on his bike. This time Camille and I were there and an AIDS walk went by us in route. No correlation between the two...just saying.

We decided last minute to make a quick trip up to Seattle to check it out since we squeezed a lot into the Portland trip in a short amount of time. Since we weren't in Seattle for long, we only went by one skate spot. I have been wanted to skate that bank to wall spot with the pebble handrails for a long time and took advantage of this opportunity. I didn't skate the handrails because I was too tired from skating the wallride, but the wallride was really fun. It is much taller and steeper than I had imagined, however. I was pushing as fast as I could to get less than halfway up the wall. How Gravette wallrode over the corner is a mystery to me.






I slide one out down the bank on my ribs. Ouch.





These are some funny shots Camille took of me coming down. The first one looks like an abstract painting of me zooming past her and the second one looks like a cartoon. I ran that one out and my legs just looks crazed.

While there were a couple other destinations, they were not skate type of destinations. Let's move on the San Francisco.



While we weren't looking for Pier 7, we stumbled on it while walking by the water.



It was skate stopped, however.




No skating here.



Someone tried to liberate it, but I don't think anything is going down here.



The main spot that I wanted to see in SF was Third and Army. This is definitely my favorite spot now. I wish that I got more pictures of the rest of the spot, but, unfortunately, I did not. This section is the highlight of the spot anyway.



Doing ollies on this was so fun, but it is not easy to get up to that railing. Props to Drehobl on that.



After a bit of searching, we finally found the China Banks.



Too bad they were closed off...



My one attempt at bombing a (sub-par) SF hill.



Went to The Embarcadero. It was knobbed like crazy.




Found two semi skateable things in the area to skate for a minute.

Overall, all three of those cities have some amazing things to skate. Portland is one of my favorite cities to skate in general, though I hardly did on this trip. I wasn't in Seattle for nearly long enough to get a grasp on the scene at all, though I did see quite a bit of potential spots in passing. San Francisco definately has many possibilities and spots that would make for some epic skating (no wonder so many companies are based out of there). I also forgot to mention that I got to skate the new Potrero Del Sol Skatepark they built there in July. That is, by far, one of the best concrete parks I have skated. Just watch this clip to get a grasp!

Unrelated to this trip, you should check out the new Jake Johnson interview on the Alien Workshop site.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Offer

If you live in or around NYC are feel like skating in a costume on Sunday, possibly ending up in the Halloween clip we are working on, shoot me an email by Saturday afternoon or so (xeroetc@yahoo.com).

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Long Video Review

On my trip to the Northwest, I bought a grip of new videos that I could not find locally. While I have not watched them all yet, I have watched a few and will begin to write some reviews of the respective videos. We will start with the Last of the Mohicans video.



Now I don’t know much about The Killa Tapes or the guys that made the video, but I have been looking forward to it for some time now. The premise is something along the lines or these guys being the last of a dying breed of raw street skaters or some garbage like that, but that is not why I wanted to see it. Obviously, I simply wanted to see some new Fred Gall and Danny Renaud footage. What I can to find is best summarized as a low-rate Static knock-off with throwaways from all the big names. Ouch, I know that sounds harsh but let me counter that with this: was it worth the money I paid for it? Yes. While it didn’t quite meet my expectations, there was some pretty amazing footage in there by some dudes that you hardly get to see any footage of (namely Frankhouse). The video was good overall, for what it was. Let me give some specifics.

Jon Newport had a good opening part chock full of well-balanced nose grinds and solidified by the perfect nose grind in the beginning of his part. Watch that, then rewind and re-watch. Repeat as necessary. Also, he nollie crooked and backside tailslid the marble WTC ledge. The crook was nice, but the tailslide was fully legit (though already used in his Mag Minute part).

Alex Davis skated fast and smooth. I haven’t heard of this guy before but I will definitely look out for him now. Don’t miss that backside flip over the Wall Street Gap!

Todd Jordan got rawer in the footage he had, Dan Pensyl is as burly as ever and Dave Mitchell’s backside slip across the FDR barrier was fully proper in the montage. Wish I got to see more from those guys.

The Loose Cannons shared a decent-sized part next. For those of you out of the know, the Loose Cannons are: Fred Gall, Ed Selego, Joel Mienholz, and Steve Durante. Fred skated as fast and sketch as usual, which is what I love about him. His bigspin backside disaster on that brick transition was super sick, but it seems as though the rest of his footage was mostly throwaway…which was pretty disappointing. Also, as usual, Ed’s part was mostly unmemorable, with the exception of his kickflip over the bump to bar. Mindbender (Joel) has an amazing kickflip nose pick thing on this steep wedge that I had to rewind as well as a precise nosebonk on a bump to bar…on the actual bar! Steve was consistent as well with (what I like to call) his “dirt tech” style. I think this can be best summed up with the nollie backside heel on that brick bank in his opening line and his switch backside tailslide kickflip out. Dirt lifestyle, clean tricks.

Jimmy Lannon has definitely put in the hours with his flatground game. Seems like he can throw anything into a line and not miss a step. He skated some interesting and hard looking spots, which always gets bonus points from me. However, overall his trick selections were kind of boring (with exceptions of course). My favorite thing he did was when he ollied over that rail into that curved bank thing and did a perfect kickflip out over the rail on the other side.

I have come across some photos of 80’s Joe a couple times via Allen Ying’s photography, but I haven’t really seen footage of him until now. I think his name overshadows his skating. It kinda makes you expect something more or something unique or something that stands out, yet he skates like a second rate Lurker Lou. He even kind of looks like him. His part wasn’t really memorable and he seems to me like one of those lazy skaters that only skates when it is convenient for his lifestyle. I could be wrong since that is just a vibe I got from his part. Skill-wise, he is good. I will leave it at that.

Ross Norman did a solid three block nose manny with nollie over the gaps between the blocks, but the frontside blunt on the Barcelona trannies was not really ender worthy. I feel like so much amazing footage has come out of Barcelona that it has lead to some sub-par footage leaking in the wake or smaller videos…a trend that I have seen in many video in the past couple years.

Danny Renaud skated to Smog, which got me psyched right away. Couple that with his frontside heel over the bump to bar and I was satisfied…enough. Yet something was missing. I wanted more. There wasn’t enough to quench my thirst for his footage and a lot of what was there (I would assume) was throwaway. I will let this slide, however, seeing as though he fell off a balcony. I will assume that cut his filming down.

F.O.R.E.’s backside nosegrind going up the Miami Ghetto Banks and Stefan Janoski’s tre flip over that ditch pyramid was nice touches to the next montage. Give us more!

Frankhouse was a pleasant surprise to the line-up. I didn’t even know he has a part until it came up. If you have ever skated with him, you know that Frankhouse goes FAST! This is pretty apparent in his part. I really wish my regular ollies and kickflips were as nice as his switch ones…one can only dream. His ollie over that stairs and that fence of death was amazing and even made me a little scared for him in the process. He did a surprising noseblunt 180 down the Miami Ghetto Banks, but what really impressed me was his switch crooks and switch backside tailslide on the Roosevelt Island ledge. That thing is pretty tall and I can’t image how he did that. The crooks may not have been the prettiest thing, but the tailslide was as solid as it would get. Props.

I used to get wary of Dave Caddo footage. I am not quite sure what it was, but I wasn’t quite feeling him until recently. The event that triggered this change was finally getting to see Seasons Two (review to come eventually) and watching him in another element. This leads me to suspect his has to do with him in New York, but maybe not. Either way, I definitely have more favorable outlook on his skating now. While he didn’t have a lot of footage in this video, the stuff he did have was pretty good. A while back I read an article that Allen Ying wrote about a Creation or Satori or something trip that included picture he took of Caddo skating this model of (what looked like) the Forbidden City (in Beijing, China). The footage of this skating made it into this video with him pulling an ollie and nosebonk on one of the building. It is also worth mentioning his inward heelflip from that bump over the barrier. Legit.

Paul Desliveira (don’t know if that is spelled correctly since I am reading from the sloppy notes I wrote while watching this on the plane back from SF) doesn’t have any real footage but it a standout based on his riding through some drunken girls legs on his skateboard. This leads into a whole party/drunk montage, which I guess is appropriate (given the video), though I wasn’t feeling it and will probably give it the vert button on next viewing.

The last part went to Josh Dowd, which I think is questionable (but isn’t the last part usually that way?). The third spot he skated (that brick bank) looked amazing. If anyone knows where that is, holler. Josh does a lot of switch trick in this part, but (unfortunately) they all look switch. I feel like, if you can’t do it as well switch as you can do it regular, just do it regular. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should (if that makes sense). Anyway, the 50-50 across the stairs to wallride wow’ed me, as did the switch frontside crooks on the Front Street Ledge.

I would recommend the video if you are looking for a new video, but if it came between a choice between this and, say, Static 3…get Static 3 (unless you don’t have Static 2, then get that). It was cool to see a lot of the Dobbin Block dudes in here, but where was Puleo and Sweet Waste?

One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be “happy” is not included in the plan of “Creation.”

I went skating this place last weekend. Finally. Whatever.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Empty Promises?

I am back from my trip to the upper half of the left coast. Expect many new updates to come very soon.

Friday, October 10, 2008

mourning and melancholia

last night caireen and i watched this show called "never mind the buzzcocks". It is a celebrity music-quiz show. The kind where it doesn't matter what anyone says or if they win because they are only on to promote their new movie or album or whatever.

The only reason I even thought of this as a blogworthy subject is because of the two c-grade celebrities flanking the charming but kind of grossly Oxbridgish Stephen Fry (like, it seems the whole point of his being so apparently educated is so he can talk in a posh tone and be pedantic about trivia). So anyway, look at these two chiefs.



What do you notice? The guy on the left looks like who? Yes, Leo Fitzpatrick. The girl on the right looks like, who? Yes, Carrie Brownstein from Sleater Kinney.

Except both look like crap versions of them.

So I am left to wonder: do they know? Is the dude a big fan of Leo Fitzpatrick? Is the girl a big K-records, NW indie-music fan? Do they even realize how derivative they are, or is this some bizzarre thing that happens in the UK where these US originals are (like the death star) some kind of unrecognized gravitational force that makes them bleach their hair, cut it floppy in the front, or wear 2nd hand shirts and grandma cardigans instead of the usual thin, quality wool ones?

I don't know. I am still sorting out a lot of culture shock of living in the UK.

Shapes



So Camille and I are flying out to Portland tonight, where we will then make our way to SF in a few days. I am psyched to be going back and psyched to take Camille there for here first visit. I can't quite put my finger on what it is that I like so much about Portland, but anyone that I know who has visited it feel about the same. Perhaps it is the aesthetic or the ambience? The skating is great, but it is more than that. I will try to post from the road, but I think Leonard is going to step up to do some updating too (today even).


I saw this posted on Quartersnacks. Billy is hilarious and I am stoked on him doing that. I mean dogs really do not have any comments on how they will take care of their sons. It is true.


Well, I rough edited the Halloween footage from last week, but we are still planning something for the 25th to get more footage, so if you want in on t he action...look out for the update. The plan is to have something completed by 10/31.

Well, I will go out from here since Leonard is going to post and my time is limited. Here are some photos:









Oh yeah, watch this video and love America...

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

No clothes on Sunday

My cousin had his wedding this past Sunday somewhere in New Jersey, so I rented a car and Camille and I were off. We decided to stop by a Walmart in (I think) Bergen County only to find it closed. Now being a Florida boy, this was unheard of. Walmart hardly ever closes. It wasn't Christmas day or anything. We decided to stumble into this other store in the same plaza to discover a rope hanging over the section where they sold clothing with a sign that said "No Clothing Sold on Sundays." I asked the cashier why that was, if it was a religious thing or something, and was amazed to hear that it was a local law: clothing cannot be sold on Sunday. Wow! I have heard of alcohol not being sold on Sunday, but clothing? "We don't want women getting intoxicated with the desire to shop on the Sabbath." I mean, how do they justify that? I think they are called the Blue Laws. Camille looked it up but I am too lazy to find a link.

So I was clearing some stuff off my computer and came across some screen shots of these IATs (implicit association tests) that I took a while back, after reading Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell. Essentially, what they tests do is gauge your unconscious by evaluating your answers AS WELL AS your reaction times. It concludes any biases you may have that underlie your consciousness. You can take them on the Harvard website. I took a couple and here are my results:


The first one I took was the Three Countries IAT to figure out which countries I had more of an affinity for or which countries I had a negative perspective on. I think they populate random countries when you take it, in this case it was China, India, and Japan. As you can see, all three of those countries rank the same in how I perceive them. Boring, I know. I was hoping to uncover something amazing, but I guess I don't love or hate any of them.


Next I took the Fat - Thin IAT. Now we have some controversy here! As you can see, I have a moderate automatic preference for thin people as compared to fat people. With most people falling into this category, I guess I am the norm in that respect...though I would have figured as much.

Anyway, if you haven't read Blink (or any of Malcom Gladwell's works), I suggest that you do. His books are both written well and dynamic. The Tipping Point is a must, but he does have a new book (Outliers) coming out soon that I am looking forward to. There is a video in that link with him speaking about it, but it is essentially a dive into the background of those people who deviate from the norm (in success, etc.) and what made them that way, where they came from, etc.

Anyway, skateboarding...there is a contest coming up the day after Halloween:


It isn't what I was referencing in my last post, but it should be fun anyway. I think I am going to try to make it out to this one.

I'll leave you with these pictures:





Monday, October 06, 2008

What are you supposed to be?

Do you like Halloween? Do you like skateboarding? Well, this past weekend I met up with some homies to get suitted up in costumes and skate some select spots. Obviously, 1/4 of who said they might came out actually showed up, but it was fun and we got some footage (to come soon). Well, now we are planning a second part of this (which will culminate in super rad Halloween clip). So if you are in NYC and down to skate in a costume (BYOC), keep your calendars open for October 25th. Details to come soon-ish.

In skate spot news, have you ever skated the white ledge spot on Water Street (across from Pyramid Ledges) only to be kicked out the minute you step foot there? Well, whatever business was there before must have went under with this impending stock-market crash, leaving the building boarded up and an open season for skateboarding (and apparently BMXing, scootering, and werewolves too[*hint]). I'm not sure how long this will be like that, so get yours in while you can.

So Crailtap had an Alex Olson Caption Contest for a photo of him yelling. Here is a gallery of the submissions (the last one won). This is the one I submitted:



In case you are confused, watch Eric Koston's Lakai part (or at least 2:14 in):




But OJ isn't.








Okay, break it up, break it up.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Embarrassment



I am not usually too down with PSA involving celebrities, but I though this was actually kinda cool. I know, I am lame now. I'm still not voting democrat or republican though, does that give me some credibility back? I do want one of these buttons though:



In (somewhat) skate related news...



What do you get when a little dorky kid thinks that foxy brown (as pointed out by Bob D.) is a legitimate emcee and grows up listening to a lot of lil' wayne? This!

"I don't rap for the money, I rap for the music. Got too much skill to just not use it." - from the song "Killen em out here."

"It's obvious the quality of rap/hip hop thats out right now is at an all time low, with usually zero substance, just ignorance. I will be changing that." - from the MySpace bio.

Are these tracks supposed to be demonstrating examples of the low quality, zero substance, ignorant rap/hip-hop that he is talking about? When is he going to "change that?" Are we waiting on him to put out his real songs that will revolutionize the genre? I have so many questions.



"Too much money, too much time" for sure, dudes! Travis, show me that fire dance I heard you got. Word on the streets is it's hot!

On a more positive note, it only took me 2 hours to get ready for my midnight Walmart trip last night!



Speaking about parties, my friend left a group on Facebook...