Thursday, February 9, 2023

Jack Fardell, Toby Ryan & Alex Perelson.



Madness was the vert inspired company started by Bill Weiss in 2018. Bill was fired by the new owners of Dwindle to start 2023. In response, the team all quit after his firing. Bill was also the long time brand manager for Blind. I've seen Madness boards in the wild so they must have been doing something right.

I imagine most of the brands that Dwindle distributes will be kept around without pros or they'll find a new team that they don't have to pay as much. The riders will be paid in that dreaded empty concept called exposure. They will probably take the logo board approach since it means less paychecks to write in the end.

Does the average skater even care about stuff like this? You simply want a quality board to ride at a reasonable price and aren't overly concerned with who the name on it is. This approach has valid points, but it also ignores a large part of the history of skateboarding. With the current high value society places on nostalgia of all manor, it seems like history should be more important than it is.

The picture is by Ben Karpinski.

Thrasher - January 2019 Volume 40 Number 1

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