Limited edition garbage
#AndrewReynoldsWeek, Torey Pudwill skated a Cybertruck and wants your money, the shifting mood of the pedestrian, everyone really does have a podcast now, 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.
#AndrewReynoldsWeek
Rank: 933
Mood: 👟😌👟
There is something in the air, isn't there? Sure, the fetid stench of rotting empires hangs all around, but there's also some other familiar, more pleasant notes. Take a deep whiff. Recognize it? It's been a while, so take a moment if you need.
That's right, what you're experiencing is a real-life, full-throated promotional push for a signature model skateboarding shoe. To celebrate the launch of New Balance Numeric's longtime effort to give Andrew Reynolds the shoe of his dreams, we can now both behold and soon buy the 933.
If you've been paying attention, this marketing activation has been percolating for months, from the first tease of the 933 on the cover of Thrasher to ads dating back to January of this year. In this day and age, it almost feels absurd to work a traditional marketing campaign, where in the face of social media-zapped attention spans and a fragmented media space, capturing and holding the public's attention is increasingly difficult.
Or, it should be asked, is it? Has it really become too much of an effort to put genuine care and attention into marketing a product you want people to buy? Of course, this is a unique case because not every skater will warrant a cover story from Highsnobriety.
Or a deep dive by 'sletter friend Josh Sabini for Sneaker Freaker.
Josh Sabini
Or even generalized coverage in Hypebeast, Sneaker News, or House of Heat — but that's just a taste of the New Balance marketing department's official and unofficial efforts in the "secular" media space. What about this week's great Skate Bylines podcast from 'sletter friends Farran Golding and Kyle Beachy, where they discuss Beachy's excellent 2012 article on The Boss himself.
Farran Golding
To various degrees, these all tell the story of Andrew Reynolds and why we should care about him and his signature product. We'll see how well the shoe sells, but if the existing conversation around the 933 shows us anything, it's that it's still okay to try. To make a real effort to convince people to care about the thing you want to sell them.
That might seem like an obvious or even boneheaded statement, but we don't see brands try this hard anymore. PRO surprises and shoe launch events are one thing (good things!), but those are limited in reach. "Trying" can also take different forms and doesn't always have to be an assault from all media fronts. A number of brands, front of mind being Limosine Skateboards, put out a new video to correspond with every product drop — something to get people excited about the thing you want them to give you their hard-earned money in exchange for.
Something more than an Instagram post or a four-page catalogue in PDF form. Something that can live for longer than a week in the algorithm, and not due to its continued "virality," but because there's simply more to say. It's also about considering your audience.
At this year's Slow Impact, Andrew Reynolds, Jeff Mikut, lead designer at New Balance, and Nick P, senior product manager at NB#, got in front of a large audience of nerd-ass skateboarders and described in great detail the process behind getting Reynolds on board with New Balance and what went into designing his shoe. At one point, Reynolds appeared to tear up when describing the care and attention to detail that the New Balance team showed him. That team even brought a detailed 933 display to Tempe, Arizona, for us all to gawk at. Before the presentation began, they hammered home that this wasn't meant to be an advertisment, just a look behind the scenes, but I'll be damned if that wasn't one of the best skateboarding-related advertisments I'd ever witnessed.
Again, a marketing effort of this degree isn't commonplace because there's only one Reynolds and New Balance has deeper coffers than most, but shouldn't all companies try to treat their sponsored representatives — their living, breathing marketing arms — with as much import as they can?
Yesterday, April Skateboards finally and officially welcomed Australian phenom Chloe Covell to their team with just an Instagram video of some (very good) iPhone clips. Doesn't an Olympian and next-gen superstar deserve more than a simple hard post? April should be rolling out the red carpet. Can you build future legends of the sport if you don't treat those in our present with the same reverence as those from the past?
Limited edition garbage
Rank: 155
Mood: 😵💫
In fairness, incurring damage for no justifiable reason seems to be the primary purpose of the Tesla Cybertruck. Whether that's having its axles snap while engaging in low-level off-roading, owners perforating it with bullets in an attempt to prove its resilience to gunfire, or its operating system shutting down immediately after purchase, the Cybertruck is made to fall apart as quickly and dangerously as possible.
That's likely one of the primary reasons the vehicle's sales have been historically abysmal, along with the blanket recalls and its cheap polygonal rendering being an aesthetic affront. It has also become a symbol of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's techno-fascist ideals, devastating rampage through the United States government, and hate-fueled influence campaigns around the world, making Tesla dealerships the target of massive global protests.
Considering all that, it is pretty off-putting to see the sharp steel edges and inclines of the Cybertruck used as a skateable obstacle. Antonio Durao broke the windshield of one last year, and a few weeks ago, Torey Pudwill convinced a Cybertruck owner to let Leo Romero and himself skate it as a ledge off a loading dock. Romero's tricks would surface first, with Ed Templeton of Toy Machine using the resulting photo as inspiration for a Musk and MAGA-critical ad.
Pudwill would later backside-tailslide the truck; his battle with the trick then turned into YouTube content by Storied Skateboarding, who slapped the corresponding photo on a limited-edition board available for purchase.
If there's any deeper philosophy around why Storied and Pudwill would do something so indisputably wack, it's unclear. It's not like either are paragons of taste or political enlightenment, so it's most likely that these are just bros who thought it'd be dope to skate the weird-looking truck, as the board's product description points toward:
Torey took one of the most interesting looking, controversial and straight up gnarly vehicles on the planet and turned it into a skate spot. His vision came one day at a gas station when he stood next to a Cyber Truck and thought, “damn, that looks like a sick backside tail slide.”
Do they understand why the Cybertruck is controversial? The fact that they can't even format "Cybertruck" correctly would indicate that they didn't think very hard about any of this, because, and I mean this with the greatest disrespect, who is this garbage for?
Is it a board to purchase and ride? Is this a wall board? It costs $155 CAD, so if anything, it's pretty similar to the Cybertruck itself: another over-priced piece of shit.
"Yahoo!"
Rank: ...1?
Mood: 🌸🌸🌸
As a purely anecdotal observation, one that is specific to my friends and me, more often than not, any pedestrians we encounter while street skating are either outwardly kind, supportive, curious, or ignore what we're up to. That's a pretty significant shift from even a decade ago, when people would regularly become possessed by the daemon of Private Enterprise and aggressively scold or physically confront us for skating ledges outside storefronts or simply riding our boards in shared public spaces.
The caveat around this change is that we're all relatively chill, not overly confrontational, and live in Vancouver, a city that is flush with skateboarders, so there is a general familiarity and growing appreciation of our kind here. Over the weekend, as we attempted and mostly failed to get clips, we had a mother and her young daughter cheer us on, an elderly couple literally shout "yahoo!" after I attempted a trick, and multiple people gave us thumbs up from their vehicles as we skated alongside a busy road.
Skateboarding's continued entrenchment in mainstream culture is surely at play here, too. We're participating in an Olympic sport after all. That said, not everyone is sold.
"This is why everyone hates skateboarders." One particularly ornery senior muttered, unprompted, in our direction as we tried our hand on a bench out front of a local bank. In a measured tone, I asked what she meant by that.
"You destroy everything!" She shouted, pointing to the worn wood of the bench, which, to be fair, was not being helped by our efforts. We tried to initiate a conversation about reinterpreting the urban environment, building community in shared spaces — all that good stuff, which has historically been superseded by superficial damage the average person rarely notices — but we were swiftly cut off.
"Idiots!" Why couldn't we think of the poor financial institutions? I asked why she was being so rude to us, people she has never met and knows nothing about. "I don't care!" She spat before walking away, cursing us under her breath.
I felt pity for the woman. Such anger is a rot that eats the soul. Couldn't she see that it was a beautiful day? There was sun, cherry blossoms, and genuine camaraderie all around us. Life becomes so much more if you allow yourself into that warmth. If you hoot and holler ("yahoo!"), dap up, crush some cans, ask questions, and simply be open to the world and its people in front of you.
But, most importantly, it's not like you were sitting there anyway, lady.
To podcast is to post
Rank: 45
Mood: 🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️
Did you know that ranked UFC bantamweight Marlon "Chito" Vera started an interview-style podcast? Did you know that there have been 45 episodes? Or that the recently resurgent new Birdhouse PRO Greyson Fletcher was a guest this week? Did you know that both Riley and Tony Hawk were previously on the show?
It's interesting to watch the evolution of what it means to be relevant, or to stay relevant as an existing or aspiring public figure in the online space. Instagram accounts in the early 2010s were candid and casual, a place to post oddly-filtered photos of your friends and forget. Now, for the individual, the Instagram timeline is a repository for carefully curated monthly photo dumps and sponsored content with detailed engagement data to fret over.
Being a YouTuber was once a scarlet letter; now, the vlog is commonplace and encouraged. It used to be a joke that everyone had a podcast; now it's nearly a verifiable fact. Remember Talk Tuah? The podcast has become the vehicle of choice for those concerned with cultivating a fan base, even if they are devoid of personality and interesting things to say. Which is most people, and that's okay.
At what point do these podcasts become just another timeline update, a means to stay in view online? Vera is not a compelling interlocutor, and his interview with Tony Hawk proves as much, garnering just over 4,000 views. Those are minuscule numbers, especially with a guest of Tony's stature. Shows like this have no structure beyond aimless, often hollow and painful "chat." At most, they're background noise for those who've keeled over in their living rooms as YouTube continues to autoplay. At worst, they're a disservice to podcasts that try, have purpose, or are actually entertaining.
There's a desperation to all of this. The podcast has become merely a brand extension and a way to farm social content, which, honestly, makes sense. Maintaining a personal brand is now integral to the survival of many people's careers. If they are not seen (or heard), they will not be paid by their sponsors — a person must remain in frame, logos out. This environment creates an infinite web of hosts and guests who trade roles and occasionally cause drama, which gets clipped and used as slop to feed social media. Who knows what the endgame is for all these lacklustre podcasts, but they always start the same.
"Uh, what's good, bro?"
Something to consider: Donating to Kevin Wilkin's GoFundMe for his cancer treatment and care.
Speaking of podcasts (good ones!):
I'll be a guest on Mostly Skateboarding on Sunday to talk about what's up with the skateboarding industry in relation to Mike Munzenrider's excellent new piece he penned for Quartersnacks:
Snack
And this one that I wrote a couple of weeks back:
Cole Nowicki
Good thing:
Another good thing:
Blackbird Spyplane
Another good thing, but about a bad thing:
Naomi Klein
An old-ish good thing: Jono Coote reposted an interview with Mia Roberts from a couple of years back.
NoBeerOnADeadPlanet
Good thing about an all-time thing:
Ben Fowlkes
Until next week… sometimes to make right with the world and yourself, all you need to do is make a loaf of banana bread.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS
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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.
