Back From The Dead 3 or, The Great Power And Great Responsibility Behind The $50 T-Shirt

Among the several mystical, shapeless energies coursing through the unseen universe, the credit card of the bored, childless and semi-moneyed 18- to 34-year-old is among the most powerful. Unencumbered, persistent and rarely satisfied, when successfully harnessed, it can pay dividends in hard currency and arcane spheres of influence little grasped by the current human race. To those who achieve mastery over it — multinational corporations, parmesan-crusted resellers, brands with friends — it can bestow great might indeed.

Here and there over the last millennium or so, skateboarders have tamed and ridden this beast. For a certain period of time, ‘I Heart Haters’ t-shirts vended by DGK helped fill Kayo Corp coffers, and kept bread flowing into the baskets of Expedition and Organika team members. Alien Workshop successfully competed against Spencer Gifts in the early rave years for Greys-themed merchandise sales. International thirst for flamey Thrasher logo hooded sweating-shirts has funded numerous Skate Rock escapades, and adjacent travels and prizes.

Further along the apparel food chain, the hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around what once was knowed as the ‘streetwear’ subsector has made the $50 t-shirt supplier into a kind of posthumous skate-industry kingmaker, flush with cash and views to direct toward those subcultural veterans who may never have received their full due, or at least a fat paycheck. Supreme’s longrunning support of Mark Gonzales, making a 40- and 50-something loose cannon into some type of brand lodestar, is an early and consistent example; bringing Paulo Diaz out of the wilderness and into ‘Cherry’ is another, as well as securing a post-AWS dissolution bag for Mike Hill. Resurrecting Metropolitan wheels was a passion project for Keith Hufnagel before he passed.

Palace for a while has had some type of 90s pro bingo card going that at various points placed boxes upon the stoops of Chico Brenes, Mike York, Tom Penny and others. They’ve gone further, briefly bringing back SLAP Magazine — or at least the merch page, with help from OG PALS ranging from Matt Field to Josh Kalis — and this week, Aesthetics, recently returned to Sal Barbier’s hands, laying out a full range of shirts, sweats and jeans in era-appropriate color schemes. The product descriptions teach the youth: the beauty of the 7.625-inch pinner board, the enduring legacy of ‘Ryde or Die Vol. 1’; ‘CLYDE SINGLETON CHANGED MY LIFE.’

To what extent may a seminal talent of yesteryear to resurrect themselfs, sans the platform and bankroll and goodwill of an international clothing vendor? This week Danny Renaud poses the question in Politic’s cracking new ‘Brass Tacks’ vid, which challenges the astonished observer to recall that less than 15 years ago this dude tumbled out of a 9-story building and had to relearn how to walk, much less switch backside tailslide or nollie kickflip. Here, though, a viewer doesn’t need to squint so much to see Danny Renaud’s old form and snap in the switch backside kickflip, the switch varial heelflip over the flat gap, the nollie frontside flip to switch manual; marvel over how he’s doing new stuff like the switch backside noseblunt while pushing 40, never mind the fact that it’s a some type of miracle the dude lives at all. Then trip off how he doesn’t really need to be doing any of this — his Politic deal has in the past been described as a no-strings, no-expectations arrangement, and given the company doesn’t seem to have any Danny Renaud boards or shirts or flame-embossed belts for sale right now, it’s doubtful he’s relying much on the check.

Which $50 t-shirt seller is gonna step up to pay Danny Renaud his outstanding career reparations? Shoot, what about the things that Henry Sanchez has been doing on IG the past year? Would Palace move $148 Aesthetics hoodies more quickly with a John Igei 360 flip up a stair set in the promo video? Was the heartwarming Mad Circle reunion an invitation for apparel potentates of the world to compete to create a capsule collection?

Switch Frontside 180 Watch: Rowan Zorilla And The Case For The Fixer-Upper Trick

Little loved, often for cause, the switchstance frontside 180 nevertheless remains one of the more exacting barometers for skill, form and trick deployment available across nearly the entire spectrum of pros, ams and bros of any persuasion. Whereas it’s a daily affair to observe and commentate upon a particularly commanding 360 flip, and a rainbow of flavours and fillings of backside tailslides has long been available, a well executed, strategically positioned and pleasurable-to-observe switch frontside 180 remains a rarity indeed, even in this jiggling and footage-drenched age.

Apex specimens can be cracked high and spun late, or floated and slowly turned; like a melonchollie or certain other moves it is a trick that often must be grabbed by the face and ripped to pieces in a primal, commanding display. Those not hip to the teachings risk offering up lazy-scraping crop dusters that have come, sometimes rightly, to render the switch frontside 180 unto the realm of skatepark QP deck jumpers, and aging tween crooner Justin Bieber. Most these days opt to dispense with the whole thing and incorporate a switch heelflip, or kickflip, or make it into a bigspin, and can they be blamed? Even brawny editions such as yung TJ Rogers’ El Toro fling can come off like settling after better ‘basic’ tricks already have been chiseled into the stone tablets of the landmark gaps.

In a heady and histrionic time, there is a whiff of renaissance around the switch frontside 180, and rumours of things yet to pass. Quartersnacks recently observed in its year-end video part rodeo how Kyle Wilson’s booming version, which holds a firm position in his regular rotation, looks like he could take it over a house. His ‘Portions’ and ‘Beyond Tha 3rd Wave’ switch frontside 180s, paired with Kyle Wilson’s globally and correctly recognized ‘boss status,’ have in turn helped elevate the trick to a ‘cultural relevancy’ reminiscent of the late 1990s, when Tim O’Connor flexed a serrated, tweaked-out take in the Element World Tour video that solidified his status as the best to ever spin it.

The excitements continued this week with an abruptly uploaded Baker video, wherein after an inspiring and invigorating part from fortysomething Andrew Reynolds (who his own self once sailed a slow-mo-ish switch frontside 180 over a handrail whilst wearing a bucket hat in Birdhouse’s ‘The End’, released on the cusp of the Lewinsky affair), many astute switch frontside 180 watchers likely slumped back into the couch cushions, drowsy and sated by Kader Sylla’s textbook entry during the line that made up the bulk of his footage — the type that cemented this trick as a reliable line-linker in the mid-90s SoCal schoolyards wave.

This turned out tho to be a warm-up for Rowan Zorilla’s spin on the trick halfway through his blazing and ramshackle closer, flying one over a rail and into a bank that synthesized most of the premium versions available for this trick — high and lofty, a little bit of tweak and late rotation, over a handrail — to push up the switch frontside 180’s power rankings on the west side. The jazzy intonations and kink count make it an easy mirrorable of Danny Renaud’s CA sweep in ‘Mosaic’, and given Rowan Zorilla’s assortment of lesser-seen switchstance tricks and loose-fitting executions it is not surprising he’d have a good one, generating tingles as to what may come next in the still-building 2020s switch frontside 180 wave.

Did Rowan Zorilla opt not to bother to tighten his trucks on that rocky hubba ride or did his fuzzy, vaguely animalistic Supreme sweater bestow some poorly understood, primal powers? Do Supreme dudes really need to go that hard on the handrails? With Kader Sylla now of an age to lease luxury autos, does onetime Shep Dawg hot shoe Rowan Zorilla register as a Baker old head? What does that make Andrew Reynolds, here with footage that suggests no measurable decline since ‘Made 2’? Who is gonna be the next one on the switch frontside 180 Summer Jam screen?

Scenes From The Spring 2005 DNA Distribution Catalogue

Six Pictures Of Danny Renaud Skating Again, And One Other, Cribbed From Various Instagram Entries

“The recovery process was hell. I was confined to wheel chairs and walkers. I had a halo around my left leg for about 6 months and one on my right for two years. I had to sleep on my back, coffin style, the whole time. Talk about taking tossing and turning at night for granted. I had to learn how to walk all over again. I couldn’t start my recovery until the halo’s were off. The day I got my second halo off, I walked around a lake that was about four miles. It wasn’t until last August (2011) that I got my last surgery where I had my Achilles heel lengthened and scar tissue removed for more range of motion in my right ankle.”

“I’ve been skating a lot, trying to get this footage for Mike Atwood’s upcoming video, Incognito, which should be good. All the Florida homies and then some. So far I’ve got a small part, but you know how it goes. It’s a nightmare trying to film, but I’m working on it. I’m also taking some business classes in New York because eventually I would like to start up my own small company.”

Thanks to those users from whom these photos were yanked. For rewatching purposes.

Off Parole/As The Three-Striped Tentacle Turns

Around this particular corner of the internet a virtual candle remains lit for the skate career of Danny Renaud, filthy Floridian, and any signal that he is back aboard in whatever capacity is welcome. In recent decades Fred Gall has helped bring many great things into the world, including top-tier sponsorship deals for Steve Durante and the mid-90s catchphrase “skuhhh!,” and his Domestics clothes blog this month offers up a web clip that mostly features Paul DeOliveira but surprises with a Renaud cameo at the end that finds the dude not looking too much worse for some pretty serious wear. Any waft of this dude’s brand of swaggering grime is welcome, however fleeting.

Elsewhere in Florida, you could say fleeting to talk about PJ Ladd’s footage output these past eight or nine years, a minute or two here and there and a lot of it in pretty antiseptic park environments devoid of the kid-flipping-his-board-down-the-street soul that jazzed his Coliseum arrival. But there’s a gem now and then and if you look past the is-he-or-ain’t-he footwear choice in this Orlando demo clip that went up a couple weeks ago there are some. The kickflip noseslide shove-it rewound in my head for a day or two after first seeing this clip, partly because it’s the type of unassuming tech move that made his old footage so fun to watch, and maybe too because it’s a trick that tons of other people would make look like shit. Cool to see the bluntslide too.

Fred Gall Attempts To Wallride Heavy Machinery While Under The Influence Of Being Fred Gall

Serial New Jerseyan and IRS scofflaw Fred Gall long ago cemented his status as one of the most compelling magazine featurees with his legendary interview in Strength. There, he discussed courting police batons at Ozzfest, fighting in Ohio, going to jail abroad and Lenny Kirk. Fred Gall has been an odds-on favorite to pile out at any given moment for more than a decade now and he continues to surprise us, so maybe it shouldn’t have caught me so off guard when flipping through the new Skateboard Mag there is an account of Fred Gall applying his classic blunderbus approach to what sounds like it would be one of the more jaw-dropping tricks all year and maybe of all time.

When we got to the “spot” the first evening, it became apparent that traffic was moving way too fast for him to … Oh my god! He just jumped on that bus. Well, with the first attempt out of the way and the bus going 30 or so, Fred, who was spun around in the gutter laughing and slightly spooked, looked up and said, “I think that’s too fast, ha ha!” He is a maniac. Everyone was thinking, “We’re going to watch Fred die here and now. Wonderful.” He dusted himself off, grabbed his board, and set up for the next one. You see you have to wait for the right bus with the smooth back end. Maybe one out of every five was the right kind and maybe one out of every twelve was the right speed (anywhere from ten to twenty miles an hour). Needless to say, for the next two nights we spent a lot of time at this spot.

The full-bleed photo on the opposite side is pretty ridiculous, not only for what Fred Gall’s aiming to do, but also that there is a dude A. about two decades deep into his career B. willing to work several nights straight trying this particular move C. at risk of significant bodily harm D. and arrest E. in a foreign country and F. laugh about it. After mulling it over a while I was reminded of the opening seconds of this part where Fred Gall had a brief cameo and pondered the tribute angle, but I’m guessing this was all weighted more toward for the fuck of it. Or fully paying off the federales.

What a Fool Believes

From somewhere back in his long-ago

I’ve been lagging on the new Stereo “Field Report” promo for a while here, but a few things. Dyson Ramones, getting good, something of a springy spaghettio thing going on with his tricks, powerful backside heelflips and a kickflip backside 360 on flat, in a line, which for some reason seems way more impressive than when it’s done down a gap. See also: Jesus Fernandez.

Renaud has some clips and they’re all blazing of course (most in particular the opening backside flip over the Carroll rail) and Supa cracks this amazing fakie inward heelflip on a hip sort of a thing. Also well notable is Benny Fairfax, John Lupfer (who some have suggested could serve as a temporary stand-in for the Dirt) and the welcome return of prodigal agent Matt Rodriguez.

And then we have Jason Lee, whose participation in Stereo may or may not be entirely governed by his NBC contract at this point, but apparently leaves him free to ham it up with Dune to whatever extent the agency deems necessary. I think I get the greasy playboy airhead angle they’re going for, but to me it doesn’t jibe with the founding aesthetic of Stereo, which is basically jazz music. Cool, sophisticated, but also sorta dark and melancholy.

To this end J. Lee may turn to FanFiction.net, where an anonymous author by the name of “Dark.Morning” recently submitted an “Earl” script titled “Polar,”, containing no small amount of gravitas:

Carl had never imagined feeling like this. There was no way he could have foreseen kneeling in the dark of his living room, holding his eldest son, crying with him, kissing his hair. He was even rocking, slowly, and didn’t even notice the motion. Earl was limp in his father’s arms, shuddering and sobbing in pure agony. Carl rubbed his son’s back with one hand, and laid the other on his nape. And he realized, no matter what had happened, no matter what would happen to Randy, he would still love…Earl. He would love his son.

They used to polar opposites, clashing with teeth bared and heads held high. Not anymore.

Nothing like some stark reality to ground your private jet for a while. Think on it, agents.

Last of a dirty breed

Hit your burglar alarms

I got Joe Perrin’s heater of a video “Last of the Mohicans” a while back and after a couple weeks of watching it I’m basically left with a bunch of questions: Is Fred Gall the grindingest dude over 25 in the skateboard realm? Is he the grindingest dude period? Did Steve Durante skate to a Blues Traveler instrumental? How did Josh Dowd roll away from the last switch wallride in his part? How come so many of these Florida dudes wear beards?

There’s East Coast grime and then there’s Florida grime… sweaty, mossy, crushed glass and dead brown rat grime. And haze. I used to think it was just fogged up cameras but after watching “The Good Life” a billion times along with the older Statics I have come to understand that the air in Florida literally sweats, creating a sort of light fog. This is known to meteorologists as the Gershon effect.

In spite of my usual “too long” complaint, which in this instance I will amend to “just a little bit too long,” the “Mohicans” video knocks on pretty much all levels. The lineup has familiar dirts (Danny Renaud, Jon Newport, Jimmy Lannon, Joel Meinholz), lesser-known dirts (Dowd, 80s Joe, Ross Norman who skates sort of like Andy Honen) and a generous sprinkling of random others such as Durante, Jack Sabback and Todd Jordan, as well as Cincinnatianites Al Davis and Dave Caddo.

Skating-wise it’s along the same lines as Josh Stewart’s “Static” stuff, with maybe less cellar doors and more manuals. Also less reverence for mouldering brick structures. Highlights: Fred Gall’s meaty switch wallie in his opening line…Al Davis’ b/s 180 switch frontside crooked grind revert…Durante’s seen-it-before-but-bigger-this-time switch backside tailslide switch heelflip…Caddo’s frontside 180 switch crooked grind…Ed Selego’s towering nosegrind…80s’ masterful switch heelflip over the gap…Renaud’s entire section as usual but most especially the backside noseblunt revert. Man.

It builds to a sweaty, bearded crescendo, Josh Dowd’s closer part, which is pretty much one shocking switch move after the other. Switch backside lipslide to switch backside 5-0, that kind of shit. The switch frontside crooked grind up above. A big switch 360 flip at the end of a line. Hopefully somebody puts him on.

So right, this is one of the best videos of the year. Besides Josh Dowd it also features a lot of beer drinking, night skating and occasional gunfire. Buy it from Killa Tapes so Perrin can film Dango’s antics in HD next time.

Killa season

Joe Perrin’s Killa Tapes put up a new trailer for his new video “Last of the Mohicans” about a week ago and I’ve been meaning to post about it. From what I can tell the lineup’s really expanded since I first heard about it, which is to say, it’s gotten much more awesomer. Who knows how many tricks the big names will actually put into this, but either way, Perrin always gets the best Florida dudes and he has a way of putting videos together where there’s enough bullshit to keep things entertaining, but (usually) the pace of the thing doesn’t get all bogged down.

Sober or not, Fred Gall is on some kind of mission these last couple years, and footage from Jimmy Lannon/Al Butters/Dave Caddo/Steve Durante will kick off the summer pretty good, provided this production actually comes out in June. In the parlance of skate videos we can probably interpret that to mean August, and since we know how they do down in Florida, maybe back it up to November. At that point why not just wait for Xmas? Also Perrin seems to be sitting on some Danny Renaud footage, which tends to age like fine wine. Maybe he should just sit on it for another 40 years and put it all out when he feels like retiring. If people are paying thousands for old 80s decks on Ebay right now, who knows how much fresh Renaud footage could fetch in 2050. Don’t forget to factor in inflation and $125/barrel oil.