Respect Authority

IPATH, the skate shoe brand that you can always rely on for a stash pocket, recently put up some new footage from Australian emissary Richie Jackson. Aside from representing the proud former prison colony, Jackson also seems to be sponsored by the 1960s. Like, the entire decade. So his outfits may look a little silly in 2009, and I feel like I might be able to smell him from here, but his trick selection is incredibly unique and with perks like free love and experimental drugs, who could really say no?

It’s cool to see a relatively unpopular trick, such as the hippie jump, getting adapted to modern skating in a way we haven’t seen before. Perhaps more impressive than the ludicrous hippie jump flip combos, though, is the fact that Jackson pulls them off (for the most part) without looking like a total dork. And I mean, that’s fucking tough to do when you’re wearing a tasseled vest made out of an old couch.

Something tells me this probably won’t be the next big trend in skateboarding; but just because something isn’t fashionable as far as the skate media is concerned, doesn’t mean it isn’t fun anyway. Fuck, plenty of people still do pressure flips and slappy grinds when they’re goofing off with their friends, even if they’re not including them in their video parts. And considering how regularly we hear from disenchanted pro skaters, relating to us the tortures of getting paid to wake up at noon and skate every day while filming for a highly anticipated video, it becomes clear pretty quickly where the real heart of skateboarding lives. Maybe not necessarily in pressure flips, but wherever it is that skateboarding and fun collide most gruesomely for you.

And these weird hippie jump variations are definitely fun to watch; they’re innovative, they feel fresh while still calling back to fundamentals of skating, and most of all, they’re probably hard as fucking hell to do. Especially while tripping on mescaline for days on end, so I really have to hand it to the guy.

At this point in our country’s mad dash to the great big finish line in the sky, you’ve probably been forced to sell your car and are now effectively living out of your iPhone, so you might as well make your completely gratuitous fashion accessory as functional as possible. And for those of us who already spend a good portion of our time on the street, Peter Fahey, founder of Sneaker Pimps, has developed the iSkateboard application. It’s sure to be almost as popular as 2008’s fiendish iMLookingForADealer app.

iSkateboard harnesses the daunting, mystical powers of Google Maps for a purpose even more useful than trying to look in your ex-girlfriend’s apartment window with Street View. The application currently boasts a directory of 30,000 skate spots, skate parks and skate shops worldwide, with more listings being added every day. So much for that secret spot you and your buddies used to never get kicked out of.

Additionally, iSkateboard has a streaming news feed that pulls content from Thrasher, The Skateboard Mag and Transworld, amongst others, making it even easier to, you know, not support the industry by actually paying for the magazines.

While this font of information is certainly awesome to behold, clearly I have a few reservations about it. It’s a little bit like when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. My face is kind of getting melted off here, but not in a good way. Read More ›

Ima keep it short because it’s a Saturday, so I’m feeling a little “dehydrated” to say the least, and have been wasting away on the couch all day watching skateboarding videos online. And guess what, now all of you are too.

Ever been parched after an exhausting session at the skate park? Why not choke down a thick, gooey snickers bar to relieve your thirst? Well… because that would be retarded. Just like this commercial:

If you’ve seen Lakai’s epic exercise in melodramatic slow-mo mixed with interspectacular skateboarding, Fully Flared, you’ll immediately realize what a bunch of bullshit this Spanish Snickers commercial is. Aside from the creative swashbuckling and shameless lack of originality displayed in the ad, as someone who has never once reached for a Snickers bar after sweating it out riding my board on a hot Summer afternoon, watching this makes me want to perform a fucking “hungerectomy” on the agency who spawned this foul abomination.

And there’s the real deal for those poor unfortunates who haven’t seen it. Alas, its only flaw is the conspicuous lack of a Mexican Colin Farrell.

Next week on Zero Tolerance: When sites become YouTube blogs :\

Despite the fact that I don’t shave all that often and drink heavily on the weekends, surprisingly, I still don’t know the secret to being a great skateboarder. After all, if I did, I’d be one by now and would be getting sent fat checks for drinking Mountain Dew and acting like an asshole on MTV. But I can tell you that whacking off a little less often and actually going skating instead can only help. And I can also tell you the secret to staying in love with skating after years and years (especially if they’ve been spent being a not great skateboarder). It takes, go figure, a little something called “heart.” Like, duh.

Over the past week, most of the country has been experiencing a weather phenomenon commonly referred to as an “Indian Summer.” Apparently India has its Summer in February? I have no idea… I’m not an Indian. Nonetheless, with even the drifting iceberg of a city that is Chicago reaching temperatures around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, a whopping 60 degrees warmer than it usually is this time of year, every respectable skater has been taking to the streets. And as for all you little fuckers living in LA where it’s always 60 degrees, well, I just hope cars full of laughing teenage girls run over your legs. Read More ›

Thanks to the Nintendo Wii, children no longer need to go outside in order to play sports or senselessly beat on giant cartoon gorillas. They can now do it from the comfort of the couch. And as the years pass, technology will continue to provide us with wonderful new reasons to stay inside, overstimulated eyes fixed to a screen while the muscles in our limbs atrophy (except, of course, those needed to click a remote or dig around in the bag of Cheetos). Obviously, a necessary step on the part of the machines in order to better rise up against and enslave their human masters.

However, with a newly sprained ankle and that little fucker Punxsutawney Phil using his evil groundhog magic to make another six weeks of winter, I have to admit Touchgrind for the iPhone looks pretty fucking awesome, even though every fiber of my being is begging me to realize it was made by dorks for dorks. Nonetheless, while playing with Tech Decks at 23 is about as respectable as eating one’s boogers, this, on the other hand, is probably my newest excuse to never read a book on the subway again. And think about how cool I’ll look doing it!

Plus, the commercial’s soundtrack is sooo awesome, that’s like, totally what I listen to when I skate. Rock music, yeah!! Drugs!!!

Making a sponsor me video can be tough, especially today as skateboarding progresses beyond the limits of human understanding. Want to know what it takes to make the cut? In the video below, DJ Dogpound grinds his way through an educational glimpse at what you’ll be up against as a budding amateur skater. All you have to do right now is press play, and maybe grind your teeth.

Pursuing skateboarding isn’t exactly the same as embracing an activity like soccer. For one thing, it’s not like you’re going to get a scholarship for being really awesome at it. Plus, all the drugs you’re supposed to do while skateboarding are illegal. Meanwhile, every suburban town has 5% of its land federally mandated to be soccer fields (the other 95%? Reserved for Starbucks); whereas finding a skatepark in your town at all is a lucky break, finding one without its ramps buried beneath a swarm of Ripstiks and Razor scooters is basically no more than urban myth at this point. And instead of being proud of your accomplishments, your parents loathe your hobby and treat you like some kind of hooligan (note: because you are one).

But hey, let’s think of the the relative benefits of skating in a developed nation, like being able to drink clean Mountain Dew when you’ve worked up an xtreme thirst. You also don’t have to worry about getting blown up by terrorists on the way to your favorite spot, which is pretty convenient. And in America, we have MTV to turn you into a skater if you’ve always been more of a sexy princess, while your Afghan counterparts are getting their legs whipped with wires for even stepping on a board.

The skate scene in Kabul, Afghanistan is, understandably, a struggling minority to say the least. After all, the Taliban probably puts skateboarding up there with “Jewish High Holy Days” on their list of reasons to get out of bed in the morning and continue the jihad. Nonetheless, 34-year-old Oliver Percovich is attempting to start a skateboarding school there called Skateistan when, to be honest, if I were stuck in Kabul with only a skateboard, I’d be using it to skate the fuck out of Kabul. Read More ›

Last month, skateboarding blog to rule them all, Crailtap, hosted a contest calling for edited video compilations of a bunch of unused footage from skateboarding’s first epic poem, Fully Flared. A couple weeks ago they announced the winner, so if you live in an area of the world where skateboarding is actually possible this time of year, it’s entirely likely you missed it since you weren’t frozen (heh) to your computer screen the whole time like some of us poor unfortunates.

Apologies to those of you who have seen the following video already — but hey, the Internet’s a big place and there’s always plenty of free low-quality pornography to look at! …Frankly, the fact that you’re here as opposed to looking at shitty porn already indicates something considerably abnormal about you (potentially either a good or bad thing).

Winner Cosme gives the outtakes a delightfully light-hearted animated treatment, turning them into skate video and art piece alike. The sketchy, flowing rotoscoped animation is a perfect fit for the laid back, line-heavy style of many of Lakai’s riders, although there’s certainly nothing sketchy about any of the tricks performed. Skate puns! …I literally can’t imagine those appealing to really… anyone, actually. I’ve finally discovered something unmarketable in the marketing blackhole that is the skateboarding industry! And they dared to say punk rock is dead.

One of my favorite things about the Girl, Chocolate, and Lakai teams is that there has always been such an emphasis on clean, effortless style masking the absurd difficulty level behind the kind of tech wizardry all those fuckers seem inherently good at. It’s always impressive to regularly produce some of the hardest tricks ever performed on a skateboard and still somehow make it look fun. And fuck, what’s more fun than cartoons?

Oh yeah, that would be cartoons and marijuana at the same time. I think I’ve said all I need to here.

Now, everybody knows that ESPN is the authority when it comes to skateboarding news. So, naturally, they recently interviewed Bobby Worrest, part of the legion of living cartoons riding for Krooked and probably one of the least likely candidates for an interview with a mainstream ultra-corporate bloodsucker like ESPN. I mean, shit… not even ESPN2… and that’s where they usually put all the “sports” none of the bloated ex-jocks who make up 90% of ESPN’s audience want to watch.

The interview itself is as compelling and rich as Q&As with skaterbois usually go, which is to say, you can pass that shit as easily as some Grey Poupon. However, the video they put together with Worrest is a great midday diversion for all you skateboarders out there who actually have jobs.

Sometimes, a stupid little video like this can be just as enjoyable as an eagerly-awaited, far-too-epic video part. For my money, this is where true skateboarding lives — not in the seemingly endless march of stairs some dude frontside flipped, or in debates over vulcanized versus cup sole versus boat shoes because you’re just too fucking cool to skate in actual skateboarding sneakers, or even in all the requisite drugging and boozing (although those are also pretty fun). Actually, scratch that. Even though I can hardly ride while sober, skateboarding definitely lives in the drugs and alcohol… and by that I, of course, mean playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 while seriously debilitated by cough syrup and marijuana is both entertaining and terrifying.

And while landing a trick can seem pretty fucking memorable considering it doesn’t happen all too often anymore because it snows every goddamned day here in The Seventh Circle Of Hell, Illinois, the moments that really defined the “essence” of skating to me were the times I spent riding around town aimlessly and goofing off with my friends. Imaginary or not, we had some genuine fun together, and it’s that precise word — fun — that too often gets left out of the average skateboarder’s set up.

If you’re not one to pick up your skateboarding gear at the local mall, then there’s really only one legitimate New York based skateboarding company. And Supreme doesn’t count, because they only make clothes for Japanese kids.

Of course, the brand I’m not talking about would be Zoo York, which has, in the past several years, undergone one of the most pitiful falls from greatness in all skate history — aside from maybe ex-meth-head Christian Hosoi becoming a preacher. Sorry, Christian, but 1) crystal meth is awesome, and 2) by the time Winter ends here in Chicago (which should be sometime around the June/July area) I’m going to be fucking psyched to go skateboarding in the fiery depths of Hell for the rest of all eternity. At least it’ll be warm. Read More ›

You should learn to skateboard.
It is cheap and fun.
It is something you can do when you are alone
or with friends.
Once you learn, you can hang out late at night in parking lots for hours and hours
(and you don’t even have to be high).
Also you can talk to others about skateboarding
and it will make them think you are cool
and they will give you things
like free stickers, or invitations to parties
with lots of guys at them.

If you get good
you can jump over all sorts of things
like cars, and European streets, and statues, and off small buildings.
and people will take pictures of you
which is nice (for later, to show your kids).

If you get really good,
maybe someone will pay you
to take pictures, and make videos of you jumping off all sorts of crap
and they will put you on billboards
and benches where homeless people sleep
and your name will be on thousands of pairs of shoes.
Maybe you will have a video game with you in it
or a TV show where you shoot your friends with weapons.

Or maybe not.

Maybe you will just keep doing it and no one will really care how good you are
and you will just use your skateboard to ride down the street
to buy some beer
when your “old lady” takes off with the car.

It’s up to you I guess.
Like anything else.

But you should definitely learn.
It will be worth it
in the long run.

I promise.

— Dallas Clayton

Santa can skateboard all the way up at the North Pole, so exactly what the fuck is your problem?

“This must be what fun feels like,” I thought, failing to come up with any other reason why I would be skateboarding back and forth in 30 degree temperatures under a bridge where there exist only two smells: the rotten remnants of spilled beer and, naturally, human shit. Of course, I was wrong — turns out it’s actually what the onset of mild hypothermia feels like. But hey, freezing to death, fun… they’re practically the same thing.

It’s easy to fall into the self-congratulatory (also known as self-high-fiving, or in other circles, clapping) trap in such circumstances. When your frozen nose falls off and you accidentally shatter it with a misplaced ollie, the skaters of the Frozen North (read: anywhere in the continental United States that isn’t California) really do seem pretty dedicated. They’re like the postal service — neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep the many wind-burned skaters from their appointed rounds. Beer though… now that’s a worthy adversary. In fact, maybe I’ll take six of them on now and see if it changes my mind.

In all seriousness, what else would an East Coast or Midwest skateboarder do in the winter? I mean… other than smoke weed and play Halo 3, of course. Just because there’s snow covering every patch of smooth pavement in your area code and the bone-chilling gusts of wind are like Jack Frost himself slapping you in the face with his frozen dicksicle, doesn’t mean you’re suddenly not a skater anymore. It’s not a seasonal sport — one of the most attractive aspects about skateboarding is the fact that you can do it almost anywhere in the urban/suburban landscape, at any time. Fuck, I’d do it right now if I could, but I’m sitting in my boxer shorts, and like I said… it’s cold out there, man.

So it’s not particularly admirable or even surprising that the skateboarders who aren’t privileged to live in the fairytale land of curling smog and stop-and-go traffic that is Los Angeles are willing to put up with horrendous weather conditions all for the sake of doing what they love. Other people go through much worse for their hobbies — hell, pedophiles go to jail for doing what they love, so a little bitter cold here and there really doesn’t seem all that bad. Plus, there are other upsides, such as not being a kid-toucher, which is always nice. Unfortunately, you’ll still have to deal with being a social outcast… that is, unless you live in New York City’s Lower East Side, where carrying a skateboard around when you go to bars is as chic an accessory as a Louis V handbag or a super ironic mustache.