Epicly Later'd - Penal Code 100A

Part 6 of Carroll's Epicly Later'd. Meza talks about making the classic 2nd video from FTC, imo one of the best videos of all time. Carroll talks about asking Huf and Keenan to quit Fun to ride for Girl. Amazing...

Make sure you also watch Part 7, where Carroll pressure flips over a picnic table LOL

Schmitt Stix Bryce Kanights

These two Bryce Kanights Schmitt Stix gargoyle boards are really memorable to me primarily because a lot of the older skaters that I looked up to around town were riding them. I never had one myself (never really liked pointy noses) but I'll always remember dudes flying off jump ramps rocking the gargoyle. Graphics from Disposable and Wheel Bite. Kevin Ancell was the artist.

I've been having a really hard time finding an actual copy of Disposable at any of the local book stores. I ended up borrowing a copy from a friend of mine last week and I gotta say, it's super awesome! Not only do you get to see lots of graphics from the artists but you also get their stories. Hope everyone has a great holiday and New Years!

Powell Peralta Tommy Guerrero

I learned to speak Spanish this past year and I can't believe how badly I butchered the pronunciation of Guerrero for the past two decades. Gotta roll those double r's! Classic TG flaming dagger graphic. This board was really popular when I first started skating... as a matter of fact, all Bones Brigade boards were popular. Never owned any of them. I did have a Powell Bug at one point that I got on sale and it chipped into a million pieces in way too short of a period of time. I also had Frankie Hill's first pro model with the bulldog, which I totally ended up hating. That was the last Powell board I ever owned. Two Powell boards in 20 years of skating! Graphic pillaged from Disposable. VCJ was the artist.

Emerica Warranty: Thumbs Up

So last week, I wrote about the really bad Emerica Hsu experience I had. In the end, everything worked out. Timebomb coordinated with The Boardroom to get me a store credit to replace the defective shoes. I ended up grabbing a pair of Supra Vulk Low's in Black/Gum, which IMO is one of the best colorways for any shoe style.


They look and feel, at least to me, to be one of the beefier vulkanized shoes available, which is fine by me. Neither the distributor nor the shop wanted the defective Hsu's so now I have two pairs of shoes. I'm going to try and Doctor Frankenstein the Hsu's with Shoe Goo to the point that they don't look like crap but will be skateable. A big thanks to Timebomb and The Boardroom.

Etnies brings back a Classic

This news comes from Rob Brink via YouWillSoon. I first saw Nike GTS's in the spring of 1994 at the first Slam City Jam contest.

This was a huge year in the changing of the guard for skateboard shoe companies. Airwalk was pretty much falling off, Duffs was just getting established, Etnies was already a few years into their North American invasion and DC didn't exist yet. During the vert contest, Danny Way was wearing tan/white Etnies Raps (even though he was sponsored by Airwalk at the time) and Sal Barbier, who was MCing, joked about "loaning" them to him because all of his Airwalks were stolen.

Back to the GTS's... all the Vancouver locals were skating them in navy with white vulc and gum sole, no visible swoosh, just a standard sized navy stitched swoosh camouflaged on the side. I was told they were only available at the Metrotown Nike store so I went out there only to find they were sold out in my size. I ended up getting a pair at some random shop over the summer. I'm not even sure what the original target sport was for these shoes. Regardless, they were great for skating, simple, easy on the eyes and the feet. The problem for me was they were never easy to find.

Fourteen years later, Etnies has released their own version of this shoe, called the ETNS. I'll definitely be getting a pair.

101 Gabriel Rodriguez Drill Kill

I rode Gabriel Rodriguez boards for the majority of the summer of 1992. I rode at least 3 or 4 drill kills and when the shop ran out of those, I started riding Gabe's The Penalizer slicks that had the same shape. Neither of those graphics were particularly appealing but the shape was on point! Art by Sean Cliver.

Triple Bogey = snowman on a par 5

I gotta give a huge thanks to the peeps at Triple Bogey for hooking me up with some gear. Everything about the shirts is on point: screens, material, stitching and construction. Get out there and find your balls.

Emerica Hsu: Thumbs Down

Back in July, I ended up buying a pair of Emerica Hsu's. They're obviously Half Cab inspired. Regardless, they're a great looking shoe. I was only walking around in them for a month, walking on asphalt and concrete no less than an hour a day, never skated them, and they got worn down a lot faster than any other shoe I've ever owned. fwiw, I'm not a heel dragger. I'm actually a little obsessed (thanks to my physiotherapist) with posture, arch supports and proper walking technique. Then one day some time in August, the heel started peeling off. At this point, I was really pissed. I paid good money for these shoes!

Several weeks later, I had read on the Slap forum that this sole peeling phenomenon is a manufacturers defect. I ended up contacting Timebomb, the Canadian distributor. They said it was indeed a manufacturers defect and they were going to coordinate with a local shop to see what they could do for a replacement. Still waiting to see what happens.

Blind Ronnie Bertino

I had this Ronnie Bertino Mr. Butts board in the spring of 1992. The board actually came with a cigarette in a bearing tube. The shop manager at the store that hooked me up smoked it and said it was stale. Rudy Johnson also had a board in the same series but it was Mr. J. It didn't come with a joint though. Graphic borrowed from Disposable. Sean Cliver was the artist.

Skateboard Durability

I found this video while randomly perusing the internet. This guy Tim Piumarta works for NHS/Santa Cruz and he's created this contraption for testing the strength of boards. I think it's pretty damn cool. I've never really been into Santa Cruz or Creature (I've only ever owned one SC board in my 20+ years of skating and that was back in the late 80's). Who knows if I'll ever get around to ride one of these "strong" boards. I doubt any other board companies put this much research or engineering into their board testing.

Joey Bast: Golfer.

Joey Bast, one of the most under-rated stylish pro's from the mid 90's, is now a Denver golf pro. Scan courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood Spider Chrome.

World Industries Randy Colvin

This was a weird one when it came out. All the black on the bottom of this board was a velvet-y texture. Similar to those posters from the 80's with fuzzy black and flourescent colours... or am I the only one who remembers that? Surprisingly, I watched Two World Industries Men for the first time ever just this morning. Never got this short promo at any of the shops in Ottawa. I know what it feels like to push mongo normal stance. Looks brutal! Art by Mark McKee.

Rob Dyrdek Fantasy Factory Tour

Video tour of the Fantasy Factory here. Dyrdek's hilarious. Some people hate him, call him a sell out, washed up etc etc. He's been in the game for an awful long time and I enjoyed his skating way back in the early 90's. I figured he would fade out by now and be a washed up wannabe white gangster guy... milking it a la Vallely. I was totally wrong. He can definitely still skate. Of course, he's not throwing himself down 14 stairs or rails.

Vision Ken Park

Nobody is going to care about this weeks graphic. This was the first pro model skateboard I ever owned. Krapnek represent. This bad boy was white dipped and had flourescent green griptape, blue 60mm Bullet 95A combos and Tracker Ultralites. I was in grade 8, what can I say!? Art my Andy Takakjian. Graphic from Disposable.

Koston Golf Invitational

Koston's annual golf tournament sponsored by Active. Photo coverage here.

Kyle Desaulniers

I was skating the Plaza a few weeks ago in between rain falls and it was totally dead. This kid shows up and proceeds to 360 flip the big stairs 8 out of 10 times. No sweat. Turns out it's this guy Kyle who rides for Geoff Dermer's Kitsch Skateboards.

Anthony Pappalardo

"In 1995, Anthony Pappalardo was a great golfer who barely skated. In 2000, he's a great skater who barely golfs."

His first Lakai ad. He was pretty tech back in the day in comparison to how he skates now.

Remembrance

Menace Blunt Series

The first series of Menace boards released: White Alomar, King Eric and Suriel Sweets. Nice clean graphics. Definitely the best series they had. I couldn't find any actual pictures of the graphics so the above are Dill and Pupecki riding the boards, yanked from chrome ball incident.

Woodchuck Factory Tour

Woodchuck is Canadian pro skateboarder Max Dufour's woodshop. Their boards are 100% Canadian Maple, made in Quebec and they have a warehouse in California as well. Premium and Avera skateboards are their own brands but they do press for Ben Chibber's Vancouver-based Monke Skateboards as well as some for Alien Workshop, Habitat and Baker. Their identifying marker is similar to PS Stix but instead of a PS#, it's a WCK#.

Pressure flip to bloggage

This dude does some weird ass pressure flip variations but he's got a few goodies on his blog. Check out his entries on OG DC ruler Chris Hall and Dyrdek's rare Neil Blender board.

Barack Obama

Good Luck today.

Alien Workshop Duane Pitre Olives

There's something so simple about this graphic, yet so amazing at the same time. Two videos that had a huge influence on me in grade 9 and 10 (1990/1991) were G&S Footage and Alien's Memory Screen. I clocked many hours watching Rob Dyrdek and Duane Pitre's parts. In the grand scheme of things, the latter's skateboard career was quite short lived in comparison to his teammates. I was down for Alien Workshop back then and I'm still down to this day, regardless of the Burton takeover. Mindfield is going to be sick. Graphic yanked from Disposable. Art by Neil Blender.

Paul Machnau

Paul Machnau apparently likes to golf. The bets for a day with him could be something like closest to the pin, long drive and a game of skate. From Concrete Powder mag.

Men's Health Habitat

Every week, my wife goes to the library and picks up magazines for me to skim through whilst sitting on the throne. For whatever reason, she picked up this issue of Men's Health... maybe she's subtly suggesting for me to get more exercise and get into shape. Pretty sad to see Habitat in this mag. That team model is the board I rode prior to my current one. It was a PS Stix, and it lasted me at least a dozen sessions at the Plaza prior to snapping.

Plan B Sean Sheffy Monkey

Plan B has re-issued one of Sheffey's old boards from 1992. You can get it in a modern 7.5" or 7.75" shape or you can get it in its original 9" shape. I think I can get behind this. All proceeds go to Sean Sheffey. Art by Sean Cliver.

Jason Lee

I'm being lazy. Go to chrome ball incident and check out the new Jason Lee post.

PS Stix Factory Tour

Here's a factory tour of PS Stix's wood shop. As far as I can remember, the company started as Schmitt Stix back in the late 80's, then became New Deal in the early 90's (under Giant Distribution that included Underworld Element and Mad Circle) and they pressed boards for several other companies in that decade including Girl and Alien Workshop, the latter (along with Habitat) is still primarily being done by them and are the only boards I tend to ride. PS Stix also does Element and Black Label. The identifying markings for boards from PS Stix are generally SN# PSxxxxx like below.



As for which country they were pressed in, I've seen 3 different variations: no country, USA and China. They are soon to, or already, have a factory in Mexico. For more info, here's a photo tour and another video tour.

Plan B Star Wars series

This was a great series of boards from the original Plan B. One of my favourite teams and one of my favourite movie franchises. I honestly can't say I'm a fan of the new Zorlac version of Plan B. Image from bobshirt.com. Make sure you check out the new Andy Stone interview there.

pig snitch # o

This is from Thrasher June 1996. Jody Morris, who grew up in Ottawa and was part of our crew back in the day, was doing a cross country article. He rolled through town and took a bunch of photos. Two pictures from Ottawa got in. One of me (fs 180 to fakie nose grind) and one of my friend Christian (switch bs tail, they missed the switch in the caption), who's last name is not Sluthunter. That's just what we called him.

Years later, when I moved out to Vancouver, I used to skate this underground parkade at UBC that has a 100 foot knee high ledge. I met this one guy skating there and one of the first things he says to me is "were you in Thrasher?" Turns out he was on the same page as me but his shot was in Calgary. Small world. The magazine did screw up his name and captioned him Brian (his actual name is Ben). He ended up becoming one of my good friends. He's now at some Ivy League school studying to become a doctor. Also on the same page is Jesse Sorenson, who was part of Weiss' crew and rode for Change.

Thanks to Dylan at police informer for the scan.

Johnny Drama vs. Chad Muska

Muska was relevant in skateboarding for a minute in those early Shorty's Skateboards and Circa days. He must have made some serious dough back then. So many little groms loved his shtick. I was never a fan. Johnny Drama, on the other hand, is one of the best characters on TV, period.

Powell Peralta Lance Mountain

I always liked this Lance Mountain doughboy graphic. I'm pretty sure this was shortly before the Powell exodus. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in Canada!

Scott Johnston: shoe designer

Here's a Vapors Magazine interview with SJ, one of my all time favourite skaters. He's always had such a great skate style and his gear always looks so well put together.

Skate & Annoy ebay watch

This is a hilarious section of skate and annoy's website with ebay auctions of skate stuff each month along with commentary. I assume that the writer 'House of Neil' was a skater from the 80's due to his lack of love for the Rocco era. It's amazing what people shell out for old skate crap from the 80's and 90's. I can remember seeing a nerdy kid at my local skate shop back in the late 80's/early 90's and he would buy decks. He was clearly not a skater.

me: "You skate?"
nerdy kid: "no."
me: "What are you gonna to do with all those boards you're buying?"
nerdy kid: "I'm gonna save them and sell them in 20 years for tons of money"
me: "Whatever. They're not like Spiderman comic books from the 1960's... they won't go up in value."
nerdy kid: "we'll see about that!"

Dwindle Factory Tour

I used this video in an earlier post but it was only recently available to be embedded so here it is. Dwindle had a press release in 2004 stating that they were moving their board manufacturing to China. One statement from the release didn't make sense to me:

The vast majority of pro US decks are pressed 4-6 at a time, yielding tremendous deviation in the stack. Consequently, most high level skate pros reject 60-80% of general production. All Chop Chop’s decks are individually pressed, yielding absolute consistency.

Why move production to China to save money if you are going to press boards one at a time, which takes longer and costs more? The video does illustrate how they pull this off and I can't believe no one else had thought of it. Gotta give props to the Mutt.

Unfortunately, I don't think the savings funnel down to the end user (skaters). It's just more profit for those further up the chain. Namely, retailers and distributors.

Ari Gold: golfer extraordinaire

I yanked this from my boy Brett's blog. What's not to like. Entourage and golf.

G&S Neil Blender

This post at Chrome Ball Incident inspired me for this weeks board graphic. Classic Blender art. Faces within Faces. I had department store skateboards for a few years before I started skating seriously in grade 8 (1988). This Blender graphic along with the Joe Lopes with the ball in the hand were two that really stood out to me. When you're so young, graphics meant so much as well as how light your board was LOL

Lakai 2009 Spring Catalog

Lakai's 2009 Spring Catalog. Love the re-release of the black/gum Staples as well as the all black Carrolls. Nice little company time line as well. A shout out to Chrome Ball Incident for getting into the catalog on page 7.

crailtap family

asphalt anthology is a great site which contains a video vault of all the Girl and Chocolate videos. So many sick skaters in that crew.

Epic Gino Iannucci 9

Part 9 of 10 is up. I don't know if my eyes are fooling me but it looks like a bs flip to backward nosegrind on the picnic table and a switch hard heel to manual on the sloped island. The video is so freaking small, I could be totally wrong.

Janoski Mosaic

Stefan Janoski from Habitat Mosaic. Amazing skater. Great style.

Blind Jason Lee

I just watched The Man Who Souled the World this weekend and inspired me to stick with a Rocco graphic. Lots of talk about cease and desist notices. Jason Lee was the shit back in the day. I believe this graphic was for the mini. Marc McKee was the artist.

Reese Forbes

If he can hammer his driver relative to how high he ollies, that'd be pretty damn far. Those Duffs are hideous IMO. Scan courtesy of E at chrome ball incident.

Epic Gino Iannucci 7 of 10

Part 7 of 10 Epicly Laterd episodes. Part 8 should be available later today (Thursday) or Friday.

Stereo Danny Supa

Agent 718, Danny Supasirirat. I remember an interview from back in the day and he said kids called him "Super Sewer Rat". I think this graphic is inspired from 1950s-ish European style advertisements. That's my best guess.

Epic Gino Iannucci 5 of 10

Part 5 of 10 Epicly Laterd episodes. Gino with the longest video grab sequence ever. Big Brother. I believe it was pre-101. Part 6 should be available later today (Thursday) or Friday.

shiny sphere occurence # 0

Shiloh Greathouse exhibiting his short game. It's not often you see a golf course that allows denims. He had some solid video parts when he rode for World Industries. For whatever reason I rode a lot of Gabe and Shiloh boards back in the day. This is my homage to the best 90's nostalgia skateboarding blog out there. Thanks to E for the scans.

eS in the United Arab Emirates

Sick video clip of Bobby Worrest, Cale Nuske, Rodrigo Tx and Javier Sarmiento in the Middle East. Some great looking spots. First time I've seen any skate footage in that neck of the woods. Talk about a rich country. Yanked from skateboard.com.

Vision Gator

Every poser back in the late 80's had one of these in pink or some other florescent colour. Regardless, I still think it's a classic graphic. Gator was a total kook and is now in jail. Art by Greg Evans.

shoes.com major sale

Just a reminder of shoes.com's massive Saturday sale tomorrow. Up to 75% off and free shipping. The coupon code SHOES15OFF should save you an additional 15% on your entire order. They have a fairly decent selection of skate shoes.