Thursday, October 14, 2021

Nyjah Huston.



A fine Joy Division song turned into a board brand.

I feel like picking on Nyjah is low hanging fruit. It's too easy to do, so why bother? There are other things to gripe about. Of course, skateboarding has a natural tendency to be critical of other skaters for whatever reason. Sometimes these reasons are valid and other times they are somewhat arbitrary. Perhaps this is a good thing overall. I thought after the Heroes & Heavies of Black Skateboarding issue of Thrasher with Clyde Singleton's introduction for Nyjah's interview, we were going to dial it back a tad.

I don't remotely keep up with all that Nyjah does, but I've always given him a free pass because of the family discord he went through and and that he kept on skateboarding. His interests and skating don't really appeal to me. He's great at what he does. I'll gladly watch a Dakota Servold skate some rails, but when Nyjah does a gnarlier trick on a bigger rail, I'll pass. I'll give him his credit for sure. It's weird how that works.

Was this the first stand alone part you had to buy?

Thrasher - December 2011 Volume 31 Number 12

2 comments:

Warm Up Zone said...

The first standalone part available for purchase was Shane O'Neill's "Pro Debut" part, which was released through the Berrics on May 15, 2010 for $2.99. Berra did a press release/rant in defense of charging for a part a couple days later.

Nyjah's "Rise & Shine" part came out in November 2011. Other purchasable parts that were released prior to this we're P-Rod's "Me, Myself, and I" part on iTunes (November 2010), and Daewon Song's "New Years Dae" part through the Berrics (Jan 2011).

The Dylan. part (2010) and Torey Pudwill's "Big Bang" part (July 2011), both released online for free, hurt the whole concept of charging for a standalone. And I would say Mark Suciu's "Cross Continental" part (Jan 2012) was the nail in the coffin.

Yes, I researched this stuff.

Also, despite his difficult family situation as a kid, Nyjah's comment that women should not skateboard made him a villain and basically set the stage for him to be considered, at best, a douchebag - an image he has continued to reenforce.

Justin said...

I didn’t forget about Nyjah’s remark that women shouldn’t skateboard, but it slipped my mind when I made this post. It definitely made me hate on the dude.

Skateboarding let him know he was wrong at the time, if I recall correctly.

Figured it might have been dragged up out of the past when he went to the Olympics, but I guess that didn’t happen. I probably should have mentioned here, but work has been super busy.

Dylan and Torey also had free DVDs of their parts. I think Dylan’s came with the Skateboard Mag and Torey’s was with Thrasher. I’ve got both of ‘em.

Thanks for looking that stuff up. I appreciate it when things get cited.