To Have And Have Not

The mildest U.S. winter in decades has helped reduce reliance on private indoor facilities rented for the purposes to safeguarding 360 flips from rust and cobwebs in recent months, but deeper strife may yet lay ahead. Zered Bassett, raised in one of the top five richest U.S. states that has in the past witnessed the decline of the once-lucrative whaling industry and other turmoils, suggests in the Appleyard TSM that skateboarding may be watching the rise of its own so-called 1%, and an inevitable widening of the income and performance gap between two increasingly disparate camps:

The Skateboard Mag: To go back to Street League, why don’t you compete in that contest?
Zered Bassett: Why are we talking about Street League? I’m not a contest skater, man.
TSM: I think you’re capable of doing really well in contests.
ZB: I don’t have a skatepark that I can skate and learn tricks at to take to a contest and feel confident enough to skate the contest well. If I had a skatepark that I could skate with my homies every day and learn shit, not in the public eye, I’d feel way more confident.

It’s a well-worn chestnut that for every Mark Appleyard, switch backside flipping in finely tuned leathers and pushing a Jaguar, there are a half-dozen less-fortunates manning liquor-store tills and filling large dump trucks full of debris and then dumping them at a dirty dump. Heath Kirchart, receiver of several signature shoe payment deals, took to delivering pizzas and servicing snack machines upon his self-directed retirement, though these have been described equally as labours of love as well as of economic convenience. Things are tough all over out there and keep in mind this isn’t some fly-by-night youtube hot-shoe we’re discussing here, this is Zered Bassett, who’s either a Red Bull energy beverage contract player or a consistent chooser of its embranded hatwear.

Yet Zered Bassett goes wanting when it comes to private parkdom, a challenge to developing the sort of machinelike consistency that makes Nyjah Huston, Chaz Ortiz and Ryan Sheckler such riveting competitors to watch amass those hard-to-follow Street League points, and bring home the big moneybags (or the chance to fall victim to high-profile jewelry heists). While Paul Rodriguez parlays his Fuel TV heroics into sponsorship arrangements with Target Corp., in turn providing branded obstacles with which to expand his personal training ground, Zered Bassett moves to Brooklyn and farms his beard.

While Nyjah Huston blows tens of thousands of American dollars on hot cars, Ricky Oyola spends his winter driving a truck in Philadelphia. And as Rob Dyrdek lays peacefully asleep on his yacht off the shores of Key West, the bullet-riddled body of some unknown onetime pro ‘boarder, stone dead, is borne ashore by friends and well-wishers in the still of night after a lifetime of hard choices and short chances finally caught up with him on that one last run back from Cuba.

Tags: 2fort4, backgammon, chazwazzers, cubano sandwich, Harry Morgan, hatwear, inequity, Mass, Nyjah Huston, privacy, Rich Uncle Pennybags, TFs, the 99%, the Skateboard Mag, Zered Bassett