History is posted | Simply Ranked
Plus: The names in "_SOUL_CRUSHER_" crush, GX1000 frightens, Braden Hoban ascends, and more.
The definitive weekly ranking and analysis of all the skateboarding and other things online that I cannot stop consuming and how it makes me feel, personally.
Names!
Rank: 1!
Mood: 📛
Let's get this out of the way before we begin: Daniel Wheatley's first entry into his "Blanket" video series, _SOUL_CRUSHER_, is fantastic. The quality of skateboarding is incredibly high, and it has a clear artistic vision and voice, which makes it a fun, cohesive, and satisfying watch in a way something like the firehose-o'-clips approach of Nike SB's recent production QuickStrike is not. Even the foundational conceit is interesting, as the entire video was filmed in Los Angeles, California, and London, England, with skaters from each locale visiting the other in their respective off-seasons.
However, one of the most compelling parts of the video to me wasn't any of that. It was the names. Not names as in big-name stars featured in it (though there are those), but the eminently unusual names of the skateboarders involved, which, if anything, is one of skateboarding's overall strong suits — promoting people with cool-sounding names. Let's take stock of my favourites from _SOUL_CRUSHER_.
In the top spot, the clear winner is Mingus Gamble. Mingus! Gamble! That sounds like a hex to spit at someone who's crossed you. It's a perfect name. Matlok Bennett-Jones? Beautiful. Convince me that's not a law firm. And, I mean, just look at "Judah Bubes." Even on the page, it's a satisfying distribution of vowels and consonants. I'm not sure if Bubes is pronounced like "pubes," "boobies," or "bew-bess," but I love any and all realities. And what else can you say about Billy Trick? That's like going by Johnny Touchdown or Frank Dunk.
So yes, _SOUL_CRUSHER_ is a great video, and I can't wait for Wheatley's next, but if we take anything away from this one, it's that we, or at least I, need more good names on screen.
I'm scared
Rank: 1
Mood: 😱
I'm scared. Be careful. Please don't. Uh oh. How? No. What do you mean? AHHH!
Those are the things I generally say or shout to myself during the first watch of any new GX1000 video. That was no different with their Japan 2024 edit that dropped on Thrasher this past Monday. Without fail, I was more worried about each skater's ever-so-fragile corporeal form than the trick they attempted — though the appreciation sets in once I know they are alive and (mostly) well.
The hills bombed and multi-tiered accessibility ramps hurled into are much more precarious in Tokyo and Yokosuka than in most North American cities, where the streets are wide and accommodating for all manner of giant, ugly automobiles. This increase in danger comes with an aesthetic boost, a worthy trade-off if you're willing to risk your waking life for this type of thing.
Taihou Tokura is willing.
As is Eddie Cernicky.
The ease with which they commit to their futures being decided in an instant is misleading. It almost makes a non-Tokura or Cernicky think they can do the same. And hey, maybe they can. But if you watch a GX1000 joint and assume that you'll survive a plunge down several city blocks at a speed where it is impossible to stop, consider this first:
I'm scared. Be careful. Please don't. Uh oh. How? No. What do you mean? AHHH!
You know you're good when
Rank: 2
Mood: 👟👟?
About a year ago, on the release of Leo Baker's signature Nike SB shoe, I wrote that it's not often in the contemporary professional skateboarding landscape that a career skateboarder gets honoured with a signature model shoe.
The professional model skateboarding shoe has become somewhat of a rarity in recent years. Sure, you have your Tiagos, Crocketts, Sablones, Joslins, and the immortal Janoski, but compared to the 2000s and 2010s, not only has the number of shoe brands declined (Deklined?), but there’s been a notable uptick in shoe brands’ unwillingness (or inability) to give a PRO skater a PRO shoe.
This manifests most clearly with the “colourway,” a marketing gimmick where a sponsored skateboarder is given the opportunity to pick new colours and, potentially, the materials for an existing shoe model. It’s an obvious move to save money while still getting to market to consumers with a skateboarder’s name. A Jenkem article from last year stated that a “pro can expect around $5,000 flat for a colorway deal or sometimes $1 per shoe sold.” If accurate, that is a paltry sum. I’d even consider it insulting to the high-level professional athletes who sacrifice their health and safety to promote these brands that their ultimate reward is two months’ rent and their name printed on the insole of a Janoski or Old Skool.
Since then, it's still much the same. In April, Lucas Wisenthal looked deeper into this phenomenon for Jenkem, talking to figures from Nike SB, New Balance Numeric, Sole Tech, and more who chalked it up to everything from the influence of the "athletic brands that entered skating" and whose appeasing rider salaries and focus on safe, consistent selling models was adopted by the market as a whole.
Don Brown at Sole Tech thought the marketing viability of the PRO had simply waned and it was too much of a financial risk to design a whole new shoe and hope the name on its tongue would help it resonate.
“I’m probably wrong on this, but I kind of feel the ’90s was the last of the living legends... because everything was still so small and not so blown out, and magazines were the main medium to really communicate, and then team videos. But it feels like there isn’t someone on the same level today as a Muska, as a Koston, as a Jamie [Thomas].”
Whatever the case, to receive a signature model shoe in this day and age is a feat unto itself and means that a skater must not only be good and marketable but perceived as viable long-term. That's an elusive trio of traits in an industry as fickle as skateboarding. But if anyone has them, it's Braden Hoban, who both received a shoe and premiered a new video part over the weekend.
Hoban, a wünderkind who is as wild in the streets as he is on the competitive circuit, is an easy choice for a career accolade like this. Yet, it makes one wonder, is this now the bar to achieve it: being a singular, standout, generational talent?
Yeah, probably.
Cross-discipline flex
Rank: 1
Mood: 💪👶💪
Even if you're not a fan of competitive skateboarding, it'd require some high-level mental gymnastics not to appreciate how impressive it is that 17-year-old Gavin Bottger can go from competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics skateboard park event to releasing a street part on Thrasher's website a few weeks later that is comparable with or better than most others in its vein (big scary rails, gaps). It's even set to an emo track! Is there anything this kid can't do?
...what? Is there more to say about this? The kid is good at skateboarding, that's all. While this might contradict the base operating function of this newsletter, not every single piece of content requires further exploration, has some deeper meaning, or represents some wider cultural trend —
History is posted
Rank: 3
Mood: ⌛🗣️📚💻
The evolution of memory, or what it means to be remembered, is one of the more interesting developments of the digital age. For most of human history, a person's actions and works were the totality of their legacy. If they were not recorded, they were forgotten. The details of the reign of some syphilis-addled king from centuries ago were meticulously written or orally passed down through the eons with such determination and import that we know (or believe) that king was stricken with syphilis. The works of the great Russian writers became classics at a time when that meant something and are printed and reprinted ad infimum and will likely continue to be as long as we read books. These are people who managed to live long in history as we know it.
With the internet and social media, legacy can change, become clearer, muddled, or even be deleted in an instant.
Contemporary figures still manage, on occasion, to settle in humanity's collective memory in the old ways; their existence so impactful, instructive, damaging, or bizarre it begs to be remembered. It's why someone like Ross Perot can inspire such curiosity and is worthy of continual examination decades after they piqued the cultural imagination.
But things are different now. The infrastructure of knowing has changed and become infinitely prismatic — a single, cohesive narrative on any subject is hard to come by, making legacies difficult to form. If a person's achievements weren't cemented in some past yonder decade, the winds of the world wide web will decide it. Ben Affleck is a wildly successful actor and director, right? Sure, but for many on one side of a haphazard generational divide, he may simply be the guy from the sad memes. Even the distance of time isn't always enough to maintain a legacy. The premium on keeping those legacy-defining memories cocksure in amber has declined, warping our previous understanding of notability, celebrity, and infamy into trivialities.
It could also be that there are just so many of us that reach some level of indeterminate celebrity, that to be foisted into the public consciousness became routine. Commodified. Rote. A thing to pick at, like an ingrown hair. That would explain why someone who put together an influential and respectable career in both skateboarding and Hollywood, like Jason Lee, gets reduced to the subject of engagement farming posts.
"This dude" is the best anyone can hope for anymore. That's just the nature of our digital world, where art, actions, memory, history, and anything else found once you click through on a URL becomes content, and content is, by its nature, fleeting.
To be clear, despite the nauseating impermanence of how we've come to handle history as it happens — digesting once-monumental things like political assassination attempts through memes until it's forgotten in a fortnight — in a way, the result is probably for the best. As a species, we haven't really handled legacies in a particularly healthy fashion. No one deserves to be revered like a king or held up as a paragon of anything. We are all "this dude," in some sense.
Even Kirsten Dunst. Watch as she watches Kirsten Dunst, remembering herself in the way we do. Separate and distinct, whole and happy.
Video via "Film Updates on X"
Or maybe these are just posts. Content that shouldn't be given further thought. But, and perhaps this is the root of all things, where's the fun in that?
Something to consider:
Hoda Sherif
Good thing: Andrew Murrell's deep-dive into the Static series from Closer #6 is now live on their site.
Andrew Murrell
Andrew Murrell
Andrew Murrell
Another good thing: Marie De Courcy got a very sweet PRO AF surprise from There Skateboards at the "Unity Through Skateboarding" exhibition opening at SFMOMA on Saturday, and then shared "An Open Letter to Skateboarding" on Instagram that's very much worth a read.
That's right, another good thing: "Nine African Skating Communities Championing Women and Girls" from OkayAfrica.
You want it, you got it. Another good thing: Natalie Porter of Womxn Skateboard History helped facilitate a feature on PJ McKenzie in the Nelson Star.
Tyler Harper
Some good pod round-up:
Another GX1000 thing: Jonathan Smith interviewed the GX1000 crew for Hypebeast.
A good catching up on some video parts thing:
Until next week… if you happen to be packing to go on vacation to a far-off locale that happens to be in its hottest season of the year and realize that you don't have walking-around shorts, you'll have to make a choice. What pants are going to fall to the blade? Hurry, your flight leaves soon.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS, available April 1, 2024
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My new collection of essays is available now. I think you might like it. The Edmonton Journal thinks it's a "local book set to make a mark in 2024." The CBC called it "quirky yet insightful." lol.
Book cover by Hiller Goodspeed.
Right, Down + Circle
ECW PRESS
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I wrote a book about the history and cultural impact of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that you can find at your local bookshop or order online now. I think you might like this one, too.
Here’s what Michael Christie, Giller Prize-nominated author of the novels Greenwood and If I Fall, If I Die, had to say about the thing.
“With incisive and heartfelt writing, Cole Nowicki unlocks the source code of the massively influential cultural phenomenon that is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and finds wonderful Easter-eggs of meaning within. Even non-skaters will be wowed by this examination of youth, community, risk, and authenticity and gain a new appreciation of skateboarding’s massive influence upon our larger culture. This is my new favorite book about skateboarding, which isn’t really about skateboarding — it’s about everything.”
Photo via The Palomino.
