I'm Outdated

I figured that I had a lot of old, stale footage that I don't want to use on anything legit, so I decided to make a clip of it last night. Some of the footage is fairly recent, but was more throwaway, fun footage than anything. You can tell the age of the clip this way: oldest = dreads, then short hair. The more recent footage is me with longer hair pulled back.

And this little girl right hurr ain't scurred of nobody

I just got back from visiting my family in Charlotte, NC this past weekend. There was typical family drama, lots of 2nd hand smoke, and a lack of skating, but it was good to see everyone and play with the kids. I got some footage of the little ones and will probably post something later, though that will mostly just be for my family. I think it is funny that my nephews and niece still think that I live in an airplane and just fly around all the time until I visit them. On my way to the airport yesterday my oldest nephew (turning 4 in a week) asked me if I live in the big plane with all of my friends. Haha.

Anyway, I watched three of the many videos (that I recently got) during the trip: Beez Vol. 1-3, Shake Junt, and Why Wouldn't You.


The Beez videos are made by a group of guys in Wisconsin or someplace as equally irrelevant as that, however, their videos are amazing. They have lines that involve them not even standing on their boards! Think handboarding with a real skateboard. These guys are definitely have more fun filming that anyone you know, and I can say that with great certainty...even if you are in the Tiltmode Army! One of my favorite tricks in the video is simply someone dropping their board into this tube thing and jumping on it as it shoots out the bottom. There are 4 videos included on the DVD and each one just gets more bizarre and more amazing. I was watching this on the plane on the way to Charlotte and the guy sitting next to me kept looking up puzzled, like he didn't know what was going on. This video has opened my eyes up a bit and has given me some ideas for expanding my horizons when it comes to skateboarding. While the skaters in the video were not the most skilled (there were some exceptions), they are some the most creative bunch I have ever seen. Good job guys. Beez 4? Anytime soon? Can I please have a part?! Hahaha.


Next I watched Shake Junt, a video of Baker Beagle's crew. This video had a Baker section and parts for a lot of the Baker flow guys. I was pretty disappointed in this video. Granted, I had little kids climbing all over me as I was watching it, it just didn't impress me. The Baker section was better then the rest of the video in sum, which is kind of sad since the Baker section was fairly short and had mostly throwaway footage. The video was edited in a Baker-ish style, which is unfortunate since it just resulted in a low-grade knockoff that probably would be lucky to survive the Canal Street of the skate world. There were a lot of bangers and big tricks, but that was mostly boring and nothing really stood out to me. I will leave it at this: not worth the money.


Lastly, I watched the Why Wouldn't You video out of Portland. This video made me want to move to Portland even more. It may not have covered all the basis of Portland skating to be completely representative, but it came closer than an other video (yes, even the Pharmacy video...obviously). Josh Falk had a decent part (it started slow but unfolded into something sick at the end), Ben Krahn had a sick part, Wildcard had a part (which is sick since he is deaf park rat that used to live in the park), Brent Atchley had a part better than his Element part, Red got ridiculous in his full part, and Mikey Chin had the last part. I think I actually witnessed his ender a year and a half back too. The introductions in the video were pretty weird and I would get uneasy when the chainsaw came out...especially when he was trying kickflips while holding it (on). The video totally could have been a bit shorter, but was worth the money by far. Now to figure out the next trip to Portland!

If you want to bump, let's go...



If you have time to waste, click through to the YouTube page and watch some of the video replies in the "related videos" area.

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.

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...

In this way the first instinct came into being: the instinct to return to the inanimate state.

Happy Easter everybody! I hope that Jesus rose from the dead in all of your hearts. To celebrate, i bequeath to you a Bible quiz! How did you score?

Apropos of the Bible, did you know what Jesus' last words on the cross were? Many people think that they were:

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.(Mt 27:45-46)

Actually, Jesus' last words, as recorded in the synoptic Gospels were:

Yeah, I got some last words. Fuck all y'all. (Mt 25:26, Mk 26: 10, Lk 30:21)

and in the Gospel of John:

I really hate you guys. (Jn 34:18)



Anyway, as mentioned, Eby visited.



I got a lot of this sort of thing.



Then, Eby, having left, i hope for him, sufficient destruction in his wake, his legs shown--by way of a series of hammers dropped in close proximity--to be much stronger than mine for the extended weekend filiming mission, returned to New York with the pictured bag--containing two dozen-donut-boxes of various vegan, "voodoo" donuts for his, one could say, special lady-friend, Camille.




Today I skated Lincoln HS and Burnside.

I have also been reading Henry James' The Golden Bowl. I decided to read it because Žižek wrote about it. But, whew! I read a chapter or two and I need to take a nap.

Anyway, I am going to London in two weeks for an interview at the Institute of Education. I need to present a written lesson plan for 12 year olds. I will also arrive for the opening of white grounds--an amazing 'adapted' skatepark in an unused service tunnel. So, there is is: teaching religion to high school students in the United Kingdom: my future staring back at me.

Stumptown Stumble

As Leonard alluded to, I took a skate/filming mission out to Portland. Lots of skating went down, and lots of pain and soreness resulted. Here is the escapade via the lens of my phone camera:

On the flight there, the guy the seat over from me looked like your typical middle-aged, middle-class, professional...reading a Harry Potter book! I was amused. I shot the photo when he went to the bathroom to release his magic potions.



We ate at this Creole restaurant in Portland where they wrapped my vegetarian jambalaya like a foil alien creature/crab (or something). We stopped by the same place to get some food to go on my way to the airport at the end of the trip and I was hoping that I didn't have to go to the airport with another one of these creatures...I got lucky (or maybe the waitress that first day was the one looking to get lucky ;)).



Leonard had to go to work the first couple days I was there. On the second day, I didn't feel like waiting for him so I took the bus to Burnside. While waiting for the bus, this guy stopped at the light in front of me...way to live in a mirror, dude!



I took these while crossing the Burnside bridge on my way to the park:





Chat Childress, aka Crooks/Luda Crooks/Ol Dirty Crooks/Crooked Arm/etc, was there RIPPING!



There were a couple spots that I was looking for (which I had magazine rip-outs of on me of him skating them) and he was able to tell me where they were. Unfortunately, one was gone and the other was outside of Seattle. Dude killed that park, as did all the other locs. I got hurt.



Apparently, skateboarding is awesomer than graffiti!



This sign follows Leonard around:



They love skateboarders in Portland! That skateboarder is totally going to punch that rollerblader in the face!



They also like to make food into animals!



Did you know that nicknames for Portland are Mudtown and Stumptown? Those are tougher names than the Big Apple (which is apparently rotten at its core).

Oh yeah, and everybody wears helmets...even tough looking bikers on their chopper bicycles they are forced to ride since they bikes were confiscated after their 5th DUI.

Portland Or Bust!

So two weeks ago I made a trip out to Portland, OR to visit the tranny technician, Leonard Houx (whom recently moved back from NYC), and skate the city of infinite spots. Mr. Alan Siegler caught a later flight out there.

Upon arriving at PDX, Leonard and his friend Chris picked me up and took me to a hand full of dope spots. Luckily, 8 hours of sitting in a plane did not hold me back too much and I was able to land a couple tricks. The next day was spent skating Burnside and scouting spots around the area. For those of you that haven't been to Burnside, it is a lot smaller and tighter than it looks in videos...and super hard to skate. The locals were killing it though. I was struggling to say the least. Alan showed up and began to bring the gnar pretty much right away. Back smiths and back tails on the steep trannies with ease.

The next day was the most productive, film-wise (though it looked doomed from the beginning). We actually got kicked out of one spot right as I was getting the camera out, and ended up at some abandoned school. I ended up snapping my board and busting my shin open, gushing blood pretty bad. I cleaned it up and once I started skating again, I could feel the blood starting to ooze out. Seemed like we were off to a bad start. But then Leonard came through in the clutch and pulled out a nice switch line (I don't think I saw him do one regular trick the whole time we were there). Then Alan started to work on a line and these Native-American meth-heads (a couple) were cheering him on. They we so psyched on him that they gave him the nickname, Strength. Also, they thought that he was 44 years old, like themselves. It is a wonder what a little bit of gray hair can do to estimates of your age.

This was me, filming Strength.




Cash, Money, Hoes!


Strength beginning his line.


The meth-heads wanted a closer look of Strengths lines than he did. They were psyched and kept saying "succeed!"


The woman tried to give Strength these gloves as a victory prize. He wouldn't take them and she seemed kinda bummed (pun), so I told her that he was vegetarian and they are leather. Then she tried to give them to me and I said I was vegetarian too, but that Leonard wasn't. So Leonard ended up with the gloves...rad!


Leonard said that she showed him a tattoo she had of an eagle that she got when she finished high school, the irony comes in the fact that she is currently living in an abandoned high school. I guess everything comes full circle. Note: she flashed us in the process of showing him that tattoo...you wish you could see my dv tape.

Here is my busted leg later that night. That dried blood is what leaked out after it was cleaned and bandaged.


They had toys at this place we were eating, so Leonard got artsy.






This was the illest Godzilla toy ever made, pretty much.


A Pabst in the water bottle holder? I guess that is how Oregon rolls.


That is a box of Voodoo Doughnuts that I am holding. Look it up!

Photos by Leonard.