State of Skate

Bad things happening with the Maloofs and their Kings in Sacramento.

Before the skateboard became a viable tool with which to strive for fame, fortune, and hot blonde babes with annoying valley girl accents, much of its appeal lay in that a skateboard seemed to be a pretty effective way of sticking it to the man. Not an extreme, jihad-a-funeral-type sticking, or an overthrow-the-government way. No, sticking it to the man with a skateboard was rather a means of expressing that mild but persistent (writers block- adjectives taken from the lamisil on my night stand) desire to rebel, but just enough, that I think sits especially hard in young American males.

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I remember when I was a kid, I couldn’t figure out what the hell the Wu Tang Clan was. The Wu bat was everywhere- on skateboards, on CD’s, on Wu Wear clothing. It was all very confusing for a kid without much knowledge of branding. I remember skating a parking lot with a kid a year older than me. I asked him what he was riding and he flipped up a Wu Tang skateboard. OK, that solves it, I thought. These dudes obviously make skateboards. But later that week I saw a video for Shimmy Shimmy Ya and was confused all over again.

Eventually I learned that 36 Chambers is one of the greatest rap albums of all time, and that The Wu was just a group that started off on the islan’, AK Shaolin, willing to lease their name and logo to whoever came callin’. Their endorsements ran the gamut, from appropriate (St. Ides) to shameless (Method Man’s endorsement of Right Guard). In the end, I can’t blame any of the Wu for using the success of a few albums as a platform to try to get filthy rich. After all, they had kids to feed- in ODB’s case, 15 of them. Continue reading

“The skateboard revolved slowly under his feet and seemed to freeze for a moment, waiting for gravity to catch up. Then the skater’s back foot flicked the board, and again it spun. He landed with a satisfying thump and rode away.”

This description comes from NY fashion reporter Justin Porter. Read more on on how to ollie flip!!!