"switch backside 180 kickflip"
Heath looks so young in all the old magazines. I don't think he gets as much credit for all the massive switch stuff that he does either. He would have been riding for Foundation at this time and those look like Duffs on his feet.
Three things I saw at the skatepark over the weekend:
3. A kid was riding a DGK board. Not that rare, but it doesn't happen very often around my town.
2. A kid was wearing a pair of Ice Cream shoes. They looked like a pair of adidas Stan Smiths that had been spray painted green. It took me a few minutes to figure out what they were. He probably got them because they were on sale somewhere since the company has melted away.
1. A kid was riding an Expedition board. That right there is like seeing Big Foot.
The picture is by Chris Ortiz.
Transworld - November 1995 Volume 13 Number 11
12 comments:
What happened to Heath grinding rails? In his Foundation days he was grinding them (even had a TWS cover doing a front feeble). From Birdhouse on it's been nothing but slides; boardslides, lipslides, bluntslides. I watched The End, Sight Unseen, This Is Skateboarding, Mind Field, and even Destroying America this weekend, and that was the common thread (aside from the kf 50-50 front and back in TIS, and kf nosegrind in Mind Field). No Smiths, no feebles, no crooks, no 5-0s, no nosegrinds. Nothing.
I'm always surprised at the kids in my town who ride DGK. It's usually white kids around 13 or 14, and where I live is a college town where the university is a flagship school of the state and a very major player every year as far as NCAA basketball is concerned. There is nothing remotely ghetto about this town. Drive 10 minutes out of town and you'll be surrounded by lush farmland and horses.
As for the Ice Creams, those were the ugliest shoes I've ever seen, so no wonder they failed; you might find them at Marshall's or TJ Maxx in the sale bin. And the video was even worse. There were a couple good tricks by Jacob Walder, Anthony Williams and TK, but everyone else is garbage, especially Jimmy Gorecki.
I don't know how Expedition manages to survive. I haven't seen any substantial footage from Chany and Richard Angelides since the Rhythm video.
—Rikku Markka
Unfortunately, at my local POS they call a park, the kids all pretty much ride blanks, so it's like a Sasquatch sighting when I see an actual pro model board. (Last known sighting--a Zero Chris Cole while taking my son to McDonald's about two weeks ago)
I know the economy is in the toilet right now, even if the Govt is trying to blow sunshine up our collective anal pores and saying it's getting better--but I just always had the pro board mentality ingrained in me from a young age.
While I never bought a board from the same pro twice (I did ride two Jay Smith spoon noses, but just paid for one of them--what an awesome HUMONGOUS board that was!), I would spread the wealth by buying the board by the pro I thought was cool at that minute, if the shape and graphics looked cool. My Schmitt Stix Monty Nolder foam was my favorite for shape and feel, super useful pipe and park deck, although parks were few and far between back then...you kids have no idea how good you have it in that regard.
I'd love to go back an re-buy some of my old decks for nostalgia sake, but according to the known sales according to the amazing book "Disposable," I would have to take out a second mortgage to do it, some of my old decks are well over $2,000 a pop nowadays---yeesh...
And yeah, those Ice Cream shoes were pathetic looking, another reason Pharrell should stay away from skating and skate culture---they looked like training shoes for Clown College...
Maybe after that 50-50 to slam in This Is Skateboarding Heath was done with grinding rails. I'm going to watch a couple of his parts tonight since it is raining.
The kid riding the DGK board was not trying to be fresh or anything. He was just a regular kid, slightly dressed more toward the Warped Tour punk rock side of things. That's probably why I noticed the board.
It got me to thinking and I realized that there aren't really any skateboarders that dress fresh in my town. It makes me wonder if that is a dying lifestyle choice. Most of the skaters here wear the kind of tight pants, Fallens or Circas and the appropriate t - shirt - either skate, band or something random. It's more or less the generic skateboarder look for 2009. It lacks a little variety, but they aren't going to be cringing when they look back in twenty years at photos of themselves. There are still those that wear baggy pants, but nothing too extreme. They probably just don't care much about what they are wearing. I do live in a small town and that probably has a lot to do with things.
I'm sure they are bumping some hip hop on their iPods, but overall everything seems to be more punk/metal/classic rock side of things. My town has always been much more on the punk rock side of the fence. I see more of the kids that play sports into the hip hop and its appropriate fashions, especially in the smaller schools out in the country side. It's pretty much all farms around where I live, too.
How exactly does Kayo keep having two page ads for all their companies? I get Fallen and Girl doing multiple page ads since everybody rides their gear, but it has been roughly eleven years between sightings of somebody riding an Expedition board for me. Maybe they are big in Japan.
And for some reason, the Osiris Bronx hip tops are popular. I don't get that one at all.
About half the kids here ride shop boards for the local shop. The current model has this ugly red/yellow/blue tie dye graphic. The other half ride various pro models. Zero, Girl and Deluxe are big. Alien used to be popular, but that has faded lately.
I always buy pro decks. I feel better about riding them for some reason. Part of it is to support the pros I like that are riding a shape I like. Sometimes I end up buying boards by smaller companies just to support them, even if I'm not a big fan of the pro. Shop boards can vary in quality, although the local shop has decent wood. I haven't been too into their graphics. I remember back in the late 90s when blanks got popular. A lot of dudes would always ride the shop blanks, but they would break more often or have other problems. The initial cost savings is lost when you have to replace your deck more often.
I'd like to go back and buy different boards from back then. I always bought dumb shit.
I don't know where you guys live but the tweens love DGK out here in California as far as I can tell. Not just boards, but hats and shirts as well.
We get mostly the generic jeans, black T-Shirt, DC's/Fallen/Vans type of kid here in my town. We are hardly a small town, but we aren't a large one either, although our local Mall has a Zumiez, so it's not like the kids can't find product. There's no core shops in town, the last one who tried to open up seemed to think that drug sales were somehow tied to skateboard sales, which drove the customers who weren't interested in both products away pretty quickly.
He also suffered from having a lousy distributor who forced his closeout product upon him, which I think is a pretty despicable thing for a distributor to do, because the decks he had pretty much all sat on his shelves until he closed out the prices on them. I think a distributor would have more sense than to shove a bunch of out-dated crap on a new shop, instead trying to foster his business and help him build it by getting the stuff that would actually sell out to him. I guess there's scumbags in all facets of the business, sadly.
I tried to get a nice foil Indy Sticker for my Jeep through the guy, and his distrutor didn't even carry those---ridiculous....
I live near Buffalo, NY. DGK sightings are few and far between. I figure they are the one Kayo company that does have regional appeal, just not around here. A few kids have rocked those shirts with the giant eyes on them.
Switch bs flip photo looks great. Stoked on Heath! Never really paid attention to his lack of recent rail grindage.
re: Kayo, they are huge where I live (Vancouver) primarily because Wade D and Spencer H live here. As far as skate style, there's everything from tall tee's/huge pants to tight pants/Eras and it's not just one segment that rips. There's skaters all across the spectrum that kill it.
It's funny you mention Ice Cream shoes cuz I just saw my first pair yesterday... some old non skater Asian guy was rockin' them. God are they hideous.
Blank boards are pretty much extinct in Van. Haven't seen one in ages.
Rikku, you are right. Heath just doesn't grind stuff any more.
This Is Skateboarding:
that monster hubba 50-50
kickflip frontside and backside 50-50s
Mosaic:
one switch nose grind on a picnic table
Mind Field:
180 to fakie 50-50 down a rail
half cab crooks
back 50-50 a big hubba
kickflip nose grind a rail
50-50 that curved hubba
He must like his trucks. But if you need a backside lipslide on some rail that ends well before the sidewalk, he's your go to man.
Our town has a core shop. I know the owner, he's one of my best friends, and I even work shifts for him when he needs it. So I know what comes in and what sells best. But they have to compete with a mall shop. You know when a kid bought a board from them because they have their logo in the grip. Basically it's a sign that the kid doesn't know any better, and will most likely not be skating in a few years. And the mall doesn't have cheaper prices.
The core shop carries maybe five blanks at any given time. The rest is all pro decks, and a few price point decks, also know as team decks or logo decks. So at our park, brands you'll find regularly are from Deluxe, Tum Yeto, NHS, Blitz, Workshop/Habitat (DNA), Girl/Choloclate (Podium), Zero, and sometimes Plan B.
There are plenty of kids who dress fresh in my town; but it's an even mix with Baker clones/punk rockers, and those who are in plain jeans and Ts. There's a fair share of fitted caps, ghetto gowns, wife beaters, and big puffy shoes that aren't tied, the tongues up as high as possible, and of course all of that gear is color coordinated. But the kids don't segregate based on clothing. A typical game of skate at our park will feature a fresh kid, a Baker clone, a tranny dog, and a kid dressed like Clark Hassler (in brown highwater Dickies, Adidas, an ill-fitting faded thrift store T-shirt, and an unkempt mop haircut). Sorry, but I don't know what to call that look. And when the game's over those kids will all sit down together, drink sodas, eat snacks and talk shit to each other. Good times.
—Rikku Markka
That's how it should be. Variety is a good thing. It occured to me that there really aren't any fresh kids at the local park and that struck me as being very odd.
ANONYMOUS
"What happened to Heath grinding rails? In his Foundation days he was grinding them (even had a TWS cover doing a front feeble). From Birdhouse on it's been nothing but slides; boardslides, lipslides, bluntslides. I watched The End, Sight Unseen, This Is Skateboarding, Mind Field, and even Destroying America this weekend, and that was the common thread (aside from the kf 50-50 front and back in TIS, and kf nosegrind in Mind Field). No Smiths, no feebles, no crooks, no 5-0s, no nosegrinds. Nothing."
if you are retarded then u probly didnt notice the 5050 on that cuved kinked 20 hubba, 180 sch 5050 that HK did
and for verification feebles r way easier that lip slides and blunt slides
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