Discounted green fees across the country

Let's be honest... golf is not a poor man's activity. Sure, you can get good equipment for decent prices in the Ebay era but green fees in some parts of the country are spiraling out of control.

In years past, I used to go on an annual Phoenix golf vacation. It was a great getaway from the Canadian winter to hit the links, eat Bajafresh and enjoy the sun. Unfortunately, winter green fees in Phoenix are insane. I ended up finding this resource for discount green fees, which allowed for me to play lots of courses beyond my financial means... $100+ green fees for less than $50, I'll take it! They have lots of courses all across the country in their database. If you're lucky enough, courses in your area will be in there.

Vans

Remember when Vans were "hand made in the US of A"? That seems like a lifetime ago. I gotta admit, I loved Vans back in the early 90's. The history of Vans is being released in a book and this video of their old factory is pretty awesome, which includes the birth of the classic Vans waffle gum sole. Those look good enough to eat.

Sheffey's back

Sheffey and Jake Brown shoot the shit about his return to the scene. Plan B released a limited edition board for him. Sounds like Blind's was helping him out for a while. I haven't heard a peep from the Girl camp. Here's another Sheffey interview by some girl with a really annoying voice.

Chipping Creager

This is kind of old but I've never seen it before. Here's Creager exhibiting his short game. Carpet is a pretty tight lie. I probably would have bladed the chip right into those poor dogs.

Shots fired in my hood

Almost everyday for the past few months, there seems to be news stories about gang violence and shootings in the Lower Mainland. All of it has been in neighbourhoods far away from where I live and has little to no affect on my daily life. Unfortunately, that all changed yesterday. I walk within a block of this intersection daily. Not stoked.

Aero

My wife's favourite junk chocolate bar.

Blind Claudia Schiffer

This black and red portrait of Claudia Schiffer was a series of boards from Blind back in 1992. All the pro models in this series had this graphic and the only differences were the name in white lettering and the shape/size. I had the Guy model, which was a perfect board for me at the time. I remember riding it during a long Ontario winter in a shit hole skatepark in the basement of the local Boys and Girls Club. Sean Cliver was the artist and it turns out the graphic was originally intended for a Powell Adam McNatt board. Cliver ended up getting fired and took the art with him when he started working for Rocco. Powell's rebuttal was this. You can actually get the Mariano graphic on a hoodie at the Crailtap store and it turns out it was Guy's first pro model.


Board image from skateboardgraphics.com.

Epicly Later'd - Guy Mariano, Part 1

How can anyone not be stoked on this. I was in grade 10 when Ban This came out and I remember borrowing the video from some dude in my math class. That Guy/Rudy/Gabe/Paulo section and Frankie Hill's part really stood out to me back then. I was most surprised with what Stacey Peralta said... Gabe was the best skater of the four and was really the reason that any of them got hooked up with Powell, he didn't want to sponsor Rudy at first, he wanted to hold back footage of them because it would make the Bones Brigade pros look bad. No homo but Gabe is one sharp looking hombre.

eS team gets robbed

Holy crap this is crazy. Es team gets robbed at gun point in Lima, Peru. So happy to hear that nobody got shot. That's one scary ordeal.

Speaking of getting your equipment jacked, I read this Brian Caissie story at push.ca.

My newest camera is actually an old camera: a Nikon F3. It’s a super small 35mm film camera, and it looks less intimidating if I want to take a person’s photo. I put duct-tape all over it to make it look cheap so people don’t think I’m a photographer. It’s a good incognito camera for traveling where you might get robbed if you have tons of expensive gear with you all the time.

Feedburner Alternative

Feedburner was pretty sweet to keep track of traffic for your blog. Ever since Google took it over and forced your feed over to their server, it's been complete garbage. I found this StatCounter which pretty much does the same thing.

Archived Kalis and Stevie footage

Ran across this at the Alien website. Check out pigeon which contains Love park era Josh Kalis and Stevie Williams footage. Image from the one and only Chrome Ball Incident.

Vision Mark Gonzales "Gonz and Roses"

This post is for my boy Giles back in the Nations Capital. In my suburban neighbourhood back in the day, there were very few skaters. Tony Ferguson actually used to live around the corner from me. I remember watching him skating in front of his house on a Lance Mountain board and my 13 year old mind was totally blown away. That was probably 87.

When I first started getting serious about skating years later, there was this one older guy in the hood named Giles who was always skating the tennis courts at the local school yard. He was riding this Vision Mark Gonzales board and he taught me all the basics. We became really good friends and the dude is my homey for life. Years later, he helped me find my golf swing. If it weren't for him, I'd probably still be doing bonelesses and hitting a terrible slice. Peep the original ad at Chrome Ball. Board graphic from Disposable.

bs nollie backward nosegrind bs shove

Don't know a lot about Hype Skateboards or Jeremy Holmes but I'm really digging the execution of the bs nollie to fakie nosegrind bs shove out... and in a line to boot.

Griptape

Nowadays, you can always get a good black griptape whether it be Jessup, Black Magic, Mob or whatever other quality brand. When I first started skating back in 1988, the griptape that was available was pretty bad. In addition to black, coloured tape was readily available as well as clear, which was sharp as hell. I knew plenty of kids who shredded their hands with the clear stuff in those days due to the popularity of bonelesses, launch ramp, grabs and hand plants. All of the non-clear tape had a weird gummy white-ish translucent-ish backing, you could tear the tape with your hands like it was paper, sometimes the grit was chunky, other times it was super fine and the majority of the stuff wore out fast.

Then one day within my first year of skating, Madrid came out with two items that were instantly popular. Madrid fly Vans and Madrid fly tape. The former were high tops Vans with a fly pattern on the sides and the latter was super grippy, super long lasting, super thin griptape. As far as I know, Madrid fly tape was the first griptape with the rubber/plastic backing (like all good griptape nowadays: Jessup, Black Magic, Mob etc). You definitely can't rip it easily by hand. One of the best innovations for skateboards imo.

There was one company back in the day called Wooster that made the worst griptape ever. It had that weird white-ish translucent-ish backing, it wore out super fast, and was just all around terrible. Lots of shops in my area carried it because it was 30% cheaper by the roll than Jessup. Jessup on a roll was always paper backing facing out. Wooster was the opposite... grip facing out. So when you went down to the shop and the kid behind the counter grabbed the black roll, you told him to put that crap away and grab the Jessup. Today, I was perusing ebay and saw the Wooster name and was immediately horrified that this company was still in the business of making griptape for skateboards.

A big shout out to skatedaily for making Fairways & Flips the site of the week.

Girl Mike Mo Simi Valley

Love the homage to this Danny Way model from his brief stint on Blind. He went from Powell to H-Street to Blind, back to H-Street and then to Plan B. Keep an eye on Mike Mo in the Battle at the Berrics finals. Danny Way graphic from Disposable.