Rip Grip

Dear Readers: Remember the reader who was having an argument with his bro about the proper way to carry his board? He was certain the right way was with the trucks and wheels facing inward, toward his waist. His bro insisted the trucks and wheels should face away from the body. Boil the Ocean sided with his bro for reasons elaborated upon below. The letter nearly didn’t get printed because it seemed so inconsequential. Well, that couldn’t have been more mistaken.

In short order this blogging internet Web site page was bombarded with letters from the four corners — including Samoa, Guadalajara, Athens and Mexico City. You’d have had no idea so many people cared about the ‘right’ way to carry your board. Here’s a sampling of how passions were stirred:

Dear Boilie: Obviously, you come from a wealthy background. The chief reason for carrying your board ‘griptape out’ is to avoid shredding one’s t-shirt, belt, limited edition swishy jacket, and various other undergarments to pieces on the griptape. Maybe this isn’t an issue for ‘silver spooners’ such as yourself — especially in a day when all your favorite ‘small’ board brands float themselves on sales of $35 t-shirts — but the rest of us have to think a little harder. Maybe you should try the same in your next column!
Yours sincerely, Crown Connect

Dear Boilie: Nice try fam. The way to carry your skateboard is under your feet. Get killed.
-Grumps

Dear Boilie: u fucked up again lol no surprise smh but as usual it took you about 2000 words and a bunch of trips to Thesaurus.com i bet haha. hate if u want but actually i mall grab haha no shame in my Game. think about it trucks are designed to fit your hand and u never know when u might have to Swing on some body!!! u wont catch me slippin …. or reading ur stupid ass sight smdh
-Rudie

Dear Boilie: Numerous studies have demonstrated that carrying your board griptape side in throws off the Earth’s rotation and incrementally slows its spin. A more slowly spinning Earth relaxes its gravitational pull on the Moon, letting it slip further and further away. Eventually we’ll lose our Moon, fucking up the tides and crippling natural surf spots. Just another example of your grotesque and bizarre anti-surfing agenda. Thanks a lot asshole.
-Haole Hater

Dear Boilie: I’m actually with you on this one, but for a completely different reason. Since the wheels and bottom of my board sometimes become wet from the oceans of blood that I push through every day, I prefer to carry my board graphics-side out. May the darkness guide you.
-Dan Watson

Dear Boilie: You are right about the way to carry a skateboard and for a very good reason. The skateboard, when cradled in the fingers, pivots around the line of support between the knuckles and the opposite edge of the board; the weight of the trucks and wheels, attached to the *bottom* of the skateboard under traditional configurations, creates imbalance. When carrying the skateboard with the griptape side facing away from the carrier, that imbalance forces the skateboard to “lean” against the carrier’s torso, which can be a source of annoyance, discomfort and any number of dirty streaks across otherwise crisp white Ts. To compensate and hold it straight, the carrier will have to exert more force with his or her fingers and hand. When carried griptape side in, however, the board’s “lean” goes against the interior of the carrier’s forearm, which moves in tandem with the skateboard, leading to less uncomfortable motion and rubbing for both parties. When properly balanced, this method also minimizes any griptape rub against the carrier’s torso and leaves the carrier’s arm freer to move, making it easier to climb stairs, shift grip or run from the spot.
–Your Friendly Physics Prof

Lords of Tha Rings, The Magic Castle, and The Magician’s Secret

This week skateboard wheel magnates, action sport coaches and boardshort flame embroidiers linked hands to rejoice and toast a magnum of OE Ice 800 to Zeus, Hera and various lesser Greek deities who first copyrighted the Olympic Games and then agreed to various franchise rights that thereby bound mortals in commerce and athletic competition across the centuries. Just as an ashen altar hosted numerous animals sacrificed in the name of the dashing god of thunder and all skies, so too does skateboarding now ready its own fatted goats and oxen to sate a decades-long lust for Olympic golden doubloons, alongside hard- and softgoods vendors who have selflessly given of themselves for over a decade. These worthies reluctantly but heroically steered skateboarding into the blingy embrace of roller-hockey regulators and the International Olympic Consortium, a group of straight-up bros focused on creating the greatest sports entertainment knowed among the known universe.

Time was, a flabby oxen and a lunar cycle’s worth of fervent prayers to Poseidon, Hades or any number of other supernatural figures could get your javelin onto the podium, if you catch the drift. Nowadays, bovine growth hormone and illicit blood transfusions have angered the gods and transformed Mount Olympus into a $12 billion concern. Now, for the first time, skateboarders will prostrate themselves before these mighty gods and their painful thunderbolts with an official nod for the 2020 competitions in Japan, promising less actual prize money than at Tampa Pro but carrying a strict rules regimen functioning as a sort of ‘Infinite Jest’-length footnote to the 10 Commandments, except in Greek and prayed over by an international battery of lawyers.

But now is not the time to try and apply valuations to a cultural transaction in which participating skateboarders will be held to globally regulated drug guidelines, dress themselves in national sponsors’ chosen ensembles and ensure that all their relevant Instagram posts carry appropriate hashtags so as to comport with requirements of advertisers and broadcasters that have plunked down for the rights to Mt. Olympus-related communications:

The International Olympic Committee may not be able to stop doping, but it will be damned if it will let athletes or the companies sponsoring them tweet terms such as “2016,” “Rio,” “Medal,” “Games,” “Summer” or “Games” if the mention doesn’t benefit an official Olympics business partner.
…
If the context of “Rio de Janeiro,” “Effort,” “Performance” “Challenge” or “Victory” mentions on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram tie unauthorized “Sponsors” and “Olympians” they support to the “Olympics,” the IOC will intercede.

In return for all this, there are certain efforts and vague aspirations for skateboarding not be portrayed foolishly or in a wack fashion before a worldwide audience sought by advertisers, organizations erected to throw sporting events, and companies peddling skateboard-related goods, but few others. Vert vet Neal Hendrix, who has bushwhacked through a certain amount of bureaucratic underbrush on this long, strange Olympic expedition, offers a demo of sorts in Kevin Wilkins’ recent interview, gently replacing his ‘fucks’ with basic cable-friendly ‘Fs’ and ‘freakins.’ Gary Ream, whose background in gymnastics and BMX hospitality helped create the Woodward Skateboarding Camp chain, says not to sweat stuff like uniforms and other stuff because it’s still four years away. As for Tony Hawk’s famed observation that the Olympics needs skateboarding more than the other way around?

“Come on—skateboarding is all about commercial. It’s all about sponsorship. Look how many skateboard companies… It’s cool. It’s free enterprise. It’s OK. If somebody makes out a little bit more than skateboarding does, so be it.”

Now, with committees of icon advisors, international event coordinators and women toiling under the observation of the Roller Sports Federation to shape a 2020 Olympic skateboard event, the time is upon us to turn away from the bawdy and blaring spectacle of Rio, Zika-carrying mosquitoes and toxic sludge. It is an hour for anthem humming and reflecting upon the values, truths and yes, occasional sacrifices, that brought skateboarding to this hallowed juncture. Via the KOTR Thrasher:

How did you learn to hypnotize chickens?
Jason Jessee: It’s a talent you’re born with but you may not realize it until your best friend’s dad tells you how to do it. My homie Manuel Hernandez’s dad is a Watsonville legend, so I learned it from him. You just have to be really sure of yourself and hopefully you have a girlfriend and everything’s cool with that. Hopefully you have the relationship side handled. You go in there with a solid relationship and you attack them. You don’t even really touch them. You don’t squeeze them or anything. You’re just really gentle with them but you’re not gentle mentally.

Are they like pit bulls in that they can sense fear?
Yeah. They’ll wait until you’re off guard and they’ll attack you from behind — attack your balls and cheeks. They’re just hungry. They can’t help it! They’re just hungry all the time. So you’ve gotta be gentle with them but mentally fierce. You don’t want your mind to wander. You don’t want to be thinking about other problems.

So what about the part where you swirl your finger in their eyes and make them play dead?
That’s a magician’s secret. That’s only known to the brothers of the Magic Castle. I can’t really talk about it. You want to swirl your finger in their eyes. You don’t really want to talk about it, though.

Okay. Sorry. And then after he was hypnotized, putting him on the back of the stuffed dead rooster, that was just to shame him, right?
Exactly. Let him know he’s the lowest man in the barnyard.