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.

Boil the Ocean SOTY Short List 2009

Just throw it in the bag

This year seems like last year, kind of, as far as there not being any type of clear front-runner for the most hallowed of skateboard awards that is not distributed in buckets by the Maloof brothers. There’s no Daewon or Danny Way or Arto Saari no-brainer, and while there are several semi-brainers (useful for commentors such as myself), the politics and squishy qualifications and completely opaque selection process makes it all the more interesting and fun to pointlessly speculate. And so we jump in.

Leo Romero: I kind of feel like if that Skateboarder cover had been a Thrasher we wouldn’t even be bloviating on this, but the uphill path of the inscrutable Leonard is part of his appeal – jumping ship from Baker to Toy Machine years after several former bloodsuckers headed headed the other way and left Ed & co. with their hands in their pockets, alongside a general negative attitude that many have favorably compared to Emerican elder Heath Kirchart. Leo has a potentially ground-shifting video part in store with “Stay Gold,” and while it will not drop this year, Phelps and his buddies have been known to move pre-emptively, and who doesn’t like to look smart?

Heath Kirchart: The buzz is that the Thrasher camp may not have enough love for the brooding bro with the red-carpet disses and vending machine business, but I don’t know. It’s not like the dude goes around handing out cookie bouquets to the other mags, and to a certain degree you could imagine the Thrasher powers that be digging a devil-may-care mode of operation. It would sorta be a safer pick too, since Heath K brought a show-stopper video part in 09 and potentially another one next year. Cons, he hasn’t done much for Thrasher and he skated to Morrissey.

Sean Malto: A teen heartthrob who lives his own reality show, baffling security guards with nollie frontside feeble grinds and shredding the Pacific Northwest with Julien Stranger. Green but his Thrasher cover was among the year’s gnarliest and the non-stop skateboard mission seems to always have room for a stop or shoutout to his beloved Kansas City; a pro model shoe is not far off and he’s had enough footage drizzled out here and there to mold a passable follow-up to “And Now,” but Malto’s 09 slow burn has yet to fully flare, and I’m not sure the cover, rowdy as it is, would get him over.

Dennis Busenitz: The current Slap Board messiah would seem to have SOTY at long last sewn up, with an internet-smashing video part, talked-about contest runs, many good photos and a pro shoe to boot.* He’s a Nor-Cal gnarler who can schralp transition and/or spit out switch 360 flips, he’s with the right companies. If there’s a downside I guess it’s the lack of any super-handrail heroism or mega-ramp fireworks or some type of singularly groundbreaking trick, but then again, maybe that plays to his advantage. In ten years a Busenitz SOTY win would probably come to be seen along the same lines as Chris Senn, which is to say those who know would know, the rest would be wondering “why not P-Rod” and there’d be a certain amount of “you had to be there”

Lizard King Mike Plumb: Let’s put him on the list. The zaniest Wallenberger with a stupider tattoo/carving every month, and he’s a decent interview. Kind of a long shot maybe but one could argue he’s fairly representative of where skating is these days, which is to say, both trick- and movement-wise.

Anthony Van Engelen: The odds might be stacked against him but to my mind the case has never been stronger for an AVESOTY and the brow-furrowing AWS decks it would probably produce. He has a couple magazine covers, a blazing video part, a harrowing comeback story, a bunch of tattoos and he wears Vans. As one who birthed the current fascination with speed and successfully fused hesh grime with precision tech skating he’s for sure a contender from the career standpoint and probably a SOTY everybody could agree with on some level.

Torey Pudwill: Just throwing it out there, Jake Phelps knows who he is and he’s given it to fresh-faced pros before. But, the lack of follow-through on the Wallenberg nollie flip might cost him precious support in the Yay area.

Zered Basset: the King of Zoo York coulda won it the year he made the “Vicious Cycle” part as far as we’re concerned but he nearly hit that mark again in the “State of Mind” video (still thinking the MOP was totally brilliant) and he has been on the Thrasher radar for some time. The drawback might be that he’s been kind of below the radar compared to some of the charge-happy spotlight grabbers like teammate Brandon Westgate, but an elder statesman might be the one to usher the tradition into the next decade.

It seems like there should be some kinda transition dude in here so, I don’t know, Lance Mountain. Insane as Bob’s mega-ramping has been, our view is that he’s a little bit too TWS/Fuel TV these days for Thrasher’s taste. While on the topic it seems like Justin Brock has whatever “rookie of the year” awards wrapped, unless Grant Taylor gets em.

*get it

P-Rod, Girl and the Enigma of the Mobius Strip

Innocence, destroyed

While the planet, nay, galaxy awaits the already-classic “Street Dreams”, featuring the long-awaited debut of durag enthusiast-turned-auteur Rob Dyrdek and guest starring Ryan Dunn with the evil mom from the O.C., Paul Rodriguez isn’t waiting around for some Decenzo brother to hand him his daytime Emmy. No, P-Rod is blazing ahead with another star turn in the upcoming “Vicious Circle”, which for purposes of this post I choose to view as a complex, feature-length metaphor about his years skating for Girl skateboards.

Some of this is fairly overt: “Boy meets girl,” a nod to the days before the honeymoon ended, when P-Rod was still the next Koston, Plan B existed only on DVD and nobody ever heard of Sean Malto. Paul had a more innocent view of the world then, as you can tell from the nifty suit he wears in early scenes.

However: “Girl has past… past won’t let her go.” P-Rod here is suggesting here that Rick and Mike are akin to the child of an abusive household: determined not to repeat Rocco’s excesses and transgressions, they succeed only in driving away their young stars (P-Rod and Jereme, represented here by P-Rod and “Angel”, a reference to Rogers’ Christian beliefs and pasty pallor).

Paul Rodriguez does a bit of gun-waving, perhaps channeling the unrefined anger of Sal Rocco Jr., and soon the film takes a disturbing turn as P-Rod seeks catharsis via revenge fantasy: the “Girl” dies, and as fingers point in his direction, Paul is determined to clear his name.

Whether this suggests that Rodriguez believes Plan B (portrayed in the film as life after Girl) will bury his former employer is open to interpretation. It’s a disturbing thought, nearly as troublesome as P-Rod Senior expounding on his son’s numerous attractive qualities.

The title certainly plays off the resurrection/rebirth themes that Plan B has mined since Danny and Colin brought it back, and P-Rod’s gracious comment on the role – “I was blessed to be given it… I have to do the best with my opportunities” – is easily applied to the offer that wooed him away from Girl in the first place.

In short, a troubling and fascinating picture of the fractured worldview of a young man, frustrated, consumed with revenge and constantly battling against his own crushing talent. Also, “Street Dreams” coming soon.