Sitting around, seeing the world
Secular opinions of Supreme, W.G. Sebald enters Tampa Pro, Skechers, you downlow dirty dogs, 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.
Sitting around #1: Fiction, History, Travel
Rank: 1
Mood: 📚🏆
On Sunday morning, I sat on the couch with the Tampa Pro finals live stream muted on the television while I drank coffee and read W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. In the novel, Sebald's narrator, some apparent approximation of himself, hikes along the coast of England's Suffolk county, while using his anguish in the present as a way to explore the past. He visits the ruins of a once grand estate, laments the loss of Britain's ancient forests, contends with Belgium's vicious colonial history in Congo.
As a novel, it is famously and purposefully hard to categorize, as writer and critic Madeleine Watts details in an essay for Lit Hub:
Indeed, it looks completely unlike a conventional novel: no characters, no climax. In German, his publishers gave it a subtitle, “An English Pilgrimage,” which Sebald felt limited the scope of the book; he wanted it to contain everything. When the book was released in 1995, Sebald wanted it to be published in every category imaginable. His English publisher, Harville, agreed to do away with the subtitle and publish it in three categories: Fiction, History, and Travel. A bookseller could look at the back of the book and choose to shelve it in any of the three.
Watts herself categorizes it as a "climate change novel."
While walking, the narrator spies a hare. He observes it for a long time, beginning to feel the hare’s panic, and so closely does his perspective meld with the hare’s that he “becomes one with it.” Within moments, the future begins to collapse into the past, so that Sebald imagines himself “amidst the remains of our own civilization after its extinction in some future catastrophe.” This collapse of division between human and animal, between present and the past; they felt important to me. How else to hold together the nature of our present moment, of the world as the climate changes, when so much is strange and unknown?
I sat on the couch, living my present while the past and future played out before me. Yuto Horigome, Japanese skateboarding superstar, two-time Olympic gold medalist, and two-time Tampa Pro winner, was poised to claim his third straight victory, having just completed a typically spectacular run. For a moment, it seemed it would be so.
Then Horigome's countryman, Sora Shirai, clad in a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey, channelled the namesake on his back, finishing his equally superb run with a Caballariel-kickflip-backside-lipslide — a walk-off home run if there ever was one in skateboarding.
I looked down at the smaller, glowing screen on the couch beside me and the posts scrolling past: S&P 500 futures crashed further as the American administration continued its self-immolation. A tried-and-true socialist won a seat on Vancouver's city council, routing the incumbent party's conservative candidates, including a mewling tech bro and the head of the police union. Wayne Gretzky's all-time goal-scoring record was beaten by Alexander Ovechkin, a once-unthinkable feat, now as real as a statue of Gretzky getting smeared with feces. A petition to save the world's largest dinosaur.
If Sebald had a smartphone, would he still have traced the Suffolk county coast, or just scrolled the timeline as a means to branch into the infinity of others? Because on days like this, just parked there on the couch, you can Travel through Fiction and History all at once.
Skechers, you downlow, dirty motherfuckers
Rank: 3
Mood: 👟👹👟
Skechers, do you think this is funny? Debuting your reentry into the skateboarding market via Kelvin Hoefler at Tampa Pro just a few months after I predicted you would in Simple Magic's annual "Betting on the future of skateboarding" column, ultimately leaving me with a big fat L on my prediction?
You're lucky I only bet pretend monies or I'd actually be upset. Still, I've suffered irreparable reputational damage as a result, which can only be remedied by you sending me a box of shoes so I can get a closer look at what the hell y'all are up to. There isn't a defined "skate" section on your website, which seems like a marketing blunder as you're now paying someone to promote Skechers for skateboarding, but from the looks of it, Hoefler appeared to be skating either the "Hotshot" or a "Court" offshoot.
Those shoes remind me, in spirit, of the Airwalk knock-offs my older brother and I used to get from the Saan Store when we were kids. Send them to me, as penance — and for a lil nostalgia kick — and I will forgive you.
Sitting around #2: Secular opinion
Rank: 2025
Mood: 🟥🟥🟥
On Wednesday evening, I took myself and my laptop to a local bar, sat down, and got to work on this very newsletter. While doing so, a man at a table near mine struck up conversation. A bit nosey, and certainly a tad tipsy, he eventually asked me what I was working on. I mumbled something about a skateboarding newsletter, that's about the internet and other stuff... you know?
He said he didn't skate, but was big into fashion and liked skateboarding brands. Evisen was, surprisingly, the first he mentioned. Then he brought up an expensive pair of Polar pants he purchased down the street and a bright green pair of Polar Happy Sad socks that he loved, but is bummed they don't make in such fun colours anymore. Then, as if engaging in a titillating bit of gossip, he leaned in and asked what I thought of Supreme.
As best I could without sounding like a complete dork, I attempted to articulate that the brand is not what it once was in both its station in skate culture and the culture at large. Supreme's financial worth, once projected in the multi-billions, was a boon and a burden, respectively, for its last two owners, a war-profiteering private equity entity that flipped it and VF Corp, which sold it at a loss. Now owned by EssilorLuxottica, an Italian sunglass brand conglomerate, Supreme has, at least in my view, continued to shed what was left of its relevance. The brand as a cultural signifier now belongs to whatever vape-filled dungeon exists below Hypebeast.
I asked the man at the bar for his, as a non-skateboarder — and to paraphrase the great Mike Munzenrider — "secular" opinion.
He more or less agreed, saying he liked a lot of their campaigns, but the Supreme logo had become oversaturated. The brand's subversiveness, once a hallmark, now fell flat. He brought up the scandal the company faced after its creative director, Tremaine Emory, quit, alleging "systemic racism" within the company.
I noted that their skate videos have made a legitimate impact within skateboarding itself, even if the erratic camera panning of William Strobeck has since grown tired, almost a parody of itself. That doesn't mean the skateboarding they feature, when you can make it out between Strobeck's wild swings and nausea-inducing zooms, isn't good. It certainly is, as Thursday's release of "HEADBANGER" attests.
But as far as Supreme the brand goes, the man at the bar was in tepid alignment with the aggravated security guard in "HEADBANGER" who Strobeck asks, "Do you like Supreme?"
"What, the brand? It's alright."
Being different by doing the same
Rank: 1
Mood: 🌫️
In a way, it's admirable to treat your professional skateboarding career in the fashion of Giorgi Balkhamishvili. He appears to be just as committed to being an incredible talent on a skateboard as he is to being a silly little guy. These might seem like conflicting goals, but for Balkhamishvili, they've helped elevate him, or, at least, place him in a unique space in the professional skateboarding landscape.
He can be both the guy who gets the cover of Thrasher doing a frontside-crooked-grind down the Cardiel Hubba in San Francisco and also, as I read it, lampoon his achievement by comprising the majority of his recent BRAINFOG video part of frontside-crooked-grinds and variations of.
Admirable. Commendable. Kind of nuts. Filmed and edited by Dan Schulz, a well-produced independent release like this also raises the question of whether Balkhamishvili is still a professional skateboarder. Since the implosion and team exodus Skate Mental skateboards suffered last year, it's unclear if he still has a board sponsor. Balkhamishvili does thank April Skateboards frontman Shane O'Neill twice in the credits of BRAINFOG, so perhaps something is cooking there.
That aside, it's just nice to see someone bring something different to a largely homogeneous sea of skateboarding "content." Even if that difference is the same trick over and over again.
Faux-outrage cottage industry
Rank: Blergh
Mood: 🤢🤮
s. baum
Not that it needs any reinforcing, but the anti-trans athlete grifter schtick is so well-trodden at this point that it's become a faux-outrage cottage industry, as a story from last week, reported on by Erin In The Morning, details:
When 31-year-old Stephanie Turner read an article claiming that her would-be fencing opponent, 20-year-old college student Redmond Sullivan, was trans, she said it was “God’s will” for her to take a knee in protest, record the interaction, and spread the video far and wide—earning Turner an award for “courage” and a hefty $5,000 check from an anti-trans group with extremist ties.
"It will probably, at least for the moment, destroy my life," Turner told Fox News during a now-viral interview, adding that she has many friends in the LGBT community. "It's very hard for me to do this."
That's essentially the same game plan that Taylor Silverman used back in 2022, when she decided to be upset that she had competed, and as she would frame it, was robbed of a large cash purse after competing against a trans skater in a local contest. This bigoted turn was confusing to many of her fellow competitors that day, as was the fact that she managed to place second, as one would tell Motherboard.
“I did think it was a little odd that Taylor’s style of skating won her second place. She likes to do freestyle flat ground tricks. Hardly any use of park and very, very, low-risk, low-difficulty tricks. She also did the same routine for qualifiers the day before, and then all three runs of finals.”
Gita Jackson
Silverman parlayed the subsequent attention she received from the right-wing media sphere into a career of sorts, doing the rounds on Fox News, appearing at CPAC, and starring in a series of videos for PragerU. She would even become, what appeared to be, Tim Pool's live-in transphobe correspondent, and receive a "pro model" skateboard from Pool's vanity brand.
It's such a tried-and-true strategy that, as the Erin In The Morning article lays out, there are now multiple organizations that will give cash and a platform to people willing to both debase themselves and demonize and endanger specific trans people. Clearly, that encourages this vile behaviour, as does the entire right-wing cultural apparatus, including, and especially now, the White House, who continue to malign and threaten the existence of one of society's most marginalized, at-risk groups for nothing more than sick, soulless and openly fascistic political posturing.
What this should reinforce is that you can't give an inch to these snivelling monsters, or they will immediately squeeze themselves in and try to figure out a way to monetize the suffering of others. So, ultimately, fuck these people.
Something to consider: Attending the virtual book launch for Skate/Worlds on Monday. (Might be happening a little early depending on where you are in the world.)
Good thing:
Dominique Teoh
Another good thing: Lee Yuan sent over a link to his new zine project out of Shenzhen, China. Check 'em out.
访问个人资料
YES! Another good thing!!: 'sletter friend José Vadi's superb book, Chipped, is out in paperback next Tuesday. Pick it up! Read it! Love it! Attend his events!
José Vadi
A good BTS thing:
You bet, another good thing:
For all the Tims and Als out there: If you don't subscribe to the Secret Base Patreon, I would suggest throwing them $5 so you can watch Jon Bois' latest Pretty Good series, "Fool Time." A masterpiece.
What, you want one more good thing? Okay:
Kyle Chayka
If you like, you can follow the Skatetwitter feed on Bluesky.
Wow, got you. One last good thing: The pals at Village Psychic talked to the guys at Village PM, whose efforts I campaigned for last week.
Village Psychic
Jesus Christ, there's actually another good thing?:
Until next week… there's never been a better time to make small talk with your bookseller.
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.
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