The best of what's left
Tom Schaar assures us that vert is not dead, Muska trademarks himself, I come to grips with a new superpower, a really annoying part of a superpower in decline, 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.
The best of what's left
Rank: 1080
Mood: 🚫🪦
At the end of Tom Schaar: Video Parts, 1080s and the Olympics, a mini-documentary of sorts that went live online on Thrasher last week in advance of Schaar's latest video part being released on Monday, Tony Hawk says this of his young charge and Birdhouse Skateboards PRO.
"What Tom has created and what he's doing in the vert realm, I can't even do it justice 'cause it's just on a completely different level. He's on a rocketship into [the] stratosphere. We did not dream of what Tom has created. He's the gnarliest. He's the best transition skater... yes, we're all apples to oranges here, and it's an artform, and no one's the best, but Tom's the best [laughs]."
That is absolutely what you should say when taking part in a piece of promotional material designed to hype one of your board company's top riders. It's the type of push that is often missing in the contemporary professional skateboarding landscape, as I wrote about last week.
...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?
While it is good marketing for Hawk to say that Schaar is at the top of the game, it's not just marketing. If you watch his Vert's not Dead video part, he is performing tricks — especially in the last section over the extended channel on Hawk's ramp — that should be beyond the reach of mortals. He does them with an alien confidence.
It's an achievement that would have been an excellent capper on Hawk's vert charm offensive over the previous months, which sought to make the discipline an official Olympic sport for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games — a surefire way to give vert an exponential boost in exposure if nothing else — but ultimately failed to get approved by the IOC during an April 9 executive board meeting.
Michelle Bruton
That rejection doesn't mean vert is dead, as Schaar and other young talents like Arisa Trew, Reese Nelson, Jimmy Wilkins, Shea Donavan, and a phalanx of spinning toddlers show us. But where it goes from here depends on the appetite. Hawk can hawk vert all he likes as a spectator sport on the world's stage, with his Vert Alert contests and stable of sponsored riders who excel in the form, but it's still the second least accessible style of skateboarding. It requires a vert ramp. For those lucky enough to have access to one, they can continue to push each other and bring the discipline to new heights. But, long term, if there aren't more ramps and skaters who skate them, what happens then?
In Vert is Dead, we get an answer of sorts by looking at the least accessible style of skateboarding: Mega Ramp. Schaar is one of the last few people on this planet who can skate it at a high level, and his tricks on the gargantuan obstacle are incredible — the tweaked switch-backside-air remains stuck at the front of my mind — but they are still easily eclipsed by Bob Burnquist in his 2013 opus Dreamland.
Schaar was the first person to land a 1080 on a skateboard, doing it in the Mega Ramp at 12 years old, just a few months shy of Dreamland's premiere. What's happened with the Mega in the 13 years since? As Schaar told Thrasher in a follow-up interview this week:
I’m honestly sad that it’s, like, completely dead now. There’s one [Mega Ramp]; it’s Bob’s, and it’s pretty much falling apart. So I mean, Mega is pretty much dead.
That's what will happen if you don't get more people on the ramps, and also build more ramps. Eventually, the spinning stops.
Mega, however, is its own singular beast, and fortunately, things aren't anywhere near as dire for vert as a discipline. Skateboarding's biggest star remains its most steadfast and committed champion. Talents like Schaar continue to change our understanding of what's possible at a time when it can feel like all avenues have been explored. What he does can feel more like stunts than skateboarding at times, but it leaves one in awe all the same.
Consider the 16' chasm in Hawk's ramp that Schaar executes several unimaginable maneuvers over. Focus on the frames immediately after Schaar's takeoff. They better resemble screenshots from Faces of Death than the first moments of tricks made. These are the acts of a miracle worker, one who's here to remind us that vert is not only alive, but ascending. It's enough to make you believe.
Alley-oop-270-lipslide | backside-360 | backside-kickflip | bigspin-backside-lipslide
Put a trademark on it
Rank: 1
Mood: 👟™️
While it doesn't seem to be a great time to launch a new shoe or apparel brand in the skateboarding market, credit to those who push forward despite the varied, howling headwinds, like Village PM and... Chad Muska?
In recent months, Muska, one of the rare professional skateboarders who can be accurately tagged with qualifiers like "legend" and "icon," has been selling miscellaneous Muska™-branded goods. Those include adult-sized skateboards, youth-sized skateboards, hand-sized skateboards, finger-sized skateboards, bearings, leftover stock from his éS x Muska reissues, pants, and now Muska™ Footwear, which we have yet to get a clear look at, but are likely some reimagined version of the Skytop.
What would you call an effort like this? A small batch shoe brand? Whatever it is, it would appear to be a foolhardy endeavour — for anyone not known by the mononym Muska. If Muska's remaining starpower and notoriety are enough to help him sell runs of a few hundred pairs of shoes at a time out of the carport of his farmhouse, why not? If anyone can do it, it would be him.
Granted, even Tony Hawk has tried, failed, and continues to try and sell self-branded shoes. But the Birdman operates on a different scale, one that looks to get into department stores. Muska, one assumes, will continue to go direct to consumer. While I, with all due respect, think the Skytop is a blight on sartorialkind, and I am not anywhere close to the target demographic for Muska™ pants, I do hope Muska succeeds. It seems important for the promise of professional skateboarding excellence to bear out into something longer-lasting — a career beyond the career.
Only a select few from Muska's generation and earlier have managed to pull that off, if any, if we're being frank. It feels cruel that the figures who helped define skateboarding for potentially millions of people, and helped generate many millions in profits, become mere footnotes in history. Surely they are owed more than wheelbite in the rain.
With great power comes great...
Rank: 2002
Mood: 🀄
I brought this upon myself. I don't mean that in a bad way — perhaps even the opposite — I'm not quite sure yet. What I mean to say is that since I wrote about the long-running Canadian skateboarding apparel brand Red Dragon Society a few weeks back, and talked about their centralization in Western Canadian provinces, one of which I live in, and their primary locus of work camps in the Albertan oil patch, I have been seeing RDS-branded products all over the damn place.
A t-shirt worn by an earnest young man at the skatepark who was excited to break in a new set of trucks, a sticker stuck on the rear window of an oversized pick-up truck, a zip-up hoody whose drawstrings were pulled tight over the head of someone drinking a Caesar at brunch.
Did I cause this? Am I suffering from Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Signs point to the former, as the Red Dragons themselves dropped a tour edit last Friday.
Is it a good video? That's not for me to decide (it's fine). But there are some quality tricks in it, and Ryan Decenzo accidentally ollies over some people, which is about as extreme as contemporary RDS gets.
Does this confluence of sightings and content mean anything? Is it a sign that I harbour some unknown, uncontrolled power of manifestation? Could I use this power to summon other brand names that have fallen out of sight and mind?
That's silly. We're just having a good, hardy laugh. You know what else was good and hardy? Stoned Wheat Thins. Now that was a cracker.
Not welcome
Rank: N/A
Mood: 🤮
There are many other, more dangerous and pressing things going on in the United States right now that are roaring like sirens as this world superpower, hovering over the edge, continues to pull itself apart, piece by piece, in a painfully cruel show of mindless self-destruction. Still, it is painful in a different way to listen to noted far-right grifter and legitimate idiot, Tim Pool, speak at a White House press briefing.
His question is more of an opportunity to spread vile lies about Kilmar Abrego Garcia — the Maryland resident who was "mistakenly" kidnapped by ICE and taken to CECOT, the El Salvadorian mega prison, without charge — and complain about actual news outlets who debunk those lies. This isn't news or new for him, but what Pool is doing here is carrying water for an outright fascist administration. By lying about Abrego, Pool is advocating for the continued abductions of innocent people in America. Many of those who are simply exercising their right to free speech, which Pool often claims to be a champion of, though hypocrisy has never been a worry of his ilk.
This is the same smug, snivelling rat who is trying to launder his polluted message through his skateboarding project, The Boonies. Longtime readers of this newsletter are already familiar with Pool and his many instances of outright stupidity and hate-mongering, but if that all somehow wasn't enough to convince anyone, this should be, as Kyle Beachy put it on Bluesky:
there aren't a lot of ways to be kicked, actually booted out of an entire culture. this is a rare one. tim pool is not a skateboarder. he's no longer allowed to play. i encourage all skaters to give this sad little turd a wedgie on sight, then boot him from the spot.
Something to consider: I got my pre-order of Maen Hammad's Landing in the mail this week and it is beautiful. I would suggest picking up a copy if you can.
Good thing:
Another good thing, however, it's about a bad thing:
Yes. Another good thing:
A good pod thing:
A good time on a pod thing: Thanks to the Mostly Skateboarding gang for having me back.
Posted by
Templeton
A nice springtime book review thing: big thanks to 'sletter friend Adam Abada for including me in a lovely book review round-up in Quartersnacks.
Snack
A good chat about what once was thing:
The Drift
A sneaky collab ad, but still a nice time thing:
Rest in Peace:
Dan Fumano
Until next week… it's tank top season. Get those things out, let the sun have a feel, and flex on 'em.
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.
