Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Bam Margera #3.



SSBSTS.

Bam had to have been one of the first to throw down the switch backside tailslide in the mid 1990s on a regular basis, although this particular one drifts more into Suski grind territory.

Landspeed was a wheel company created by Rob Erickson and distributed by Tod Swank through Tum Yeto. Rob had been doing Wheelie Co. before this new venture. The team was heavy on East Coast talent and featured Donny Barley, Kerry Getz, Kenny Hughes, Mike Maldonado, Brian Seber, and Elissa Steamer. Landspeed started in the summer of 1998 and was only around for about a year.

For only being around such a short time, Landspeed released a single video that would be the launching point for Bam's celebrity outside of skateboarding. The video was called Camp Kill Yourself and was released in early 1999. There was minimal skateboarding from the team. The bulk of the flick was the antics of Bam and his friends having fun doing stupid stuff in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The name was taken from the band Bam's brother Jess played drums in, Camp Kill Yourself. This was later shortened to a more marketable CKY.

Camp Kill Yourself introduced us to the cast of characters in Bam's life that would be staples of his videos and assorted TV shows in the years ahead. This included Chris "Hoofbite" Aspite, Brandon DiCamillo, the late Ryan Dunn, Chris Raab, Art Webb 1986, Rake Yohn, and more. Also in the video were Bam's parents, Phil and April. Those two have to have the patience of saints for dealing with all the hijinx he put them through. I always thought the Landspeed video was a fun watch.

The Landspeed logo:



Ryan Gee was the photographer.

Transworld - September 1998 Volume 16 Number 9

5 comments:

rnc said...

Rad skater to be sure. His Evol stuff in that 411 blew me away.

I think he contributed to the whole mainstreaming of skateboarding / skate culture in the 2000s. I never saw CKY but guessing it's out there somewhere.

nonickname said...

without the caption I'd never of guessed that was Getz in the mini photo.
new high school a few blocks down from my house just put in, waxed a curb for the first time in years (those horrible chalky-cement one), very fun.

Justin said...

I would say he did help with the mainstreaming of skateboarding. I'm going to mention that a little on Friday.

Nice, watch out for the fuzz. I'd feel like an idiot getting arrested for waxing a curb.

nonickname said...

That's an actual thing, as in happened to you or you saw it happen to someone? crazy.I was just worried about a janitor yelling at me.

Justin said...

It hasn't happened to me, but I could totally see it happening. It's better to leave the minor vandalism to the minors.