An economy of tricks, a surplus of style
Lil Dre does a lot with a little, a bloodbath at VF Corp, SLS sinks lower, ppl rrll good at skating 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.
Project Reinvent
Rank: -400
Mood: 👟🩸
Last Thursday, news broke that VF Corp, parent company of Vans, The North Face, Dickies, and Timberland will be laying off 400 employees across its portfolio, including 82 roles at Vans, effective June 29. According to the Orange County Business Journal, that includes "footwear and apparel product managers, buyers, designers, project managers across various divisions, a head designer of footwear and a digital marketing associate."
In a statement, the company said, "Over the past few months, VF has been working to reorganize select commercial functions globally, as part of the company’s ongoing business turnaround. While these decisions are never easy, we are confident this work will result in a stronger foundation that supports the company’s growth and value creation objectives. We’re committed to handling these changes with dignity and respect for all involved and want to thank those impacted through this process for their valued contributions to VF."
The company's plan to reorient the business, Retail Dive notes, is called "Project Reinvent" and was announced in October of 2023 as an effort to "help the conglomerate enhance brand building and sales strategies in North America. It also called for boosting revenue results at its Vans brand."
That plan also involved "naming several new executives, including a new president for Vans and a new VF COO."
So, is Project Reivent working? VF Corp "returned to revenue growth for the first time in more than two years, according to Q3 2025 results posted in January. Revenue for the quarter was $2.8 billion, a 2% year-over-year increase." Is that not good? Not good enough to spare hundreds of jobs, it seems.
Was this bloodbath designed to get ahead of whatever numbers await in VF Corp's upcoming quarterly earnings call on May 21 by showing shareholders that they're serious about "cost-cutting"? We may find out. What we do know is that human costs are always the first on the chopping block.
While it's unclear if these layoffs are tariff-related or just the result of VF's overall underperformance or prolonged reinvention, we'll likely see more of this happening across skateboarding and in every other industry that faces the Trump administration's catastrophic tariff campaign. A recent article by Ian Michna in Jenkem makes clear that it's already done damage, as WKND Skateboards and Hyperion Distribution head, Grant Yansura, outlines.
Ian Michna
Yeah, tarrifs are really fucking us up. We just got a shipping invoice and I almost cried. No idea how the industry is going to work this out. Prices are going to have to go up.
This first wave is especially damaging since we pre-sold orders to shops 5 months ago before these tariffs existed. Now it’s arriving and we can’t exactly change the prices on shops that already paid and placed orders. It’s going to be a big loss. Then again it’s hard to really plan anything out since the psychopath in the White House changes his mind daily. I’m really hoping it’s all just a pump fake that’ll be taken back in another week or so.
David O'Toole from Bluetile Skate Shop in South Carolina predicts significant and damaging price increases:
All trucks could double in price except for Thunder and Ventures. All bearings too, except for Swiss and SKF. I feel like all this is an attack on small business because only companies that can navigate huge losses will survive.
I mean, I guess customers could just pay the increased cost and not complain but my gut tells me there is a point where customers just stop buying skate products because it’s too expensive.
Others like HLC Distribution, Generator Distribution, and BBS Manufacturing feel more confident about weathering the storm, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. This week, a stray post from the President of the United States about slapping 100% tariffs on all foreign-produced films sent Hollywood and the international film industry reeling. What does that even mean? Would Blu-rays of Quasi's BOBCBC, which was filmed in Toronto, double in price?
It's not just skateboarding that could be headed for severe contraction — everything is. What happens next, and how the industry responds to it, is as unpredictable as the current American administration itself.
Cole Nowicki
An economy of tricks, a surplus of style
Rank: 1
Mood: 💆
It is a treat and a privilege to watch Lil Dre skateboard. He has a distinct style of dress and presentation, and the influence of his push into the worlds of music and fashion is apparent in both. The control he maintains over his board borders on the unreal as he flips and catches it down increasingly larger sets of stairs and gaps. His technical acumen needs to be lauded as well. To do a fakie-flip-backside-5-0-180 at top speed, at the start of a line, and with the grace he possesses, requires a level of ability that only a rare class of skaters have reached.
Lil Dre is such a treat and a privilege to watch, that you'd be forgiven for not noticing that line, which is featured in his most recent video part, For Drew, contains three of the mere 19 total tricks that comprise its entire four-minute and 48-second runtime (that's not including a casual 360-flip and bigspin made after landing their respective clip's primary trick, which would balloon the total up to 21).
If we're to put that into the calculator, that's a rate of about one trick every 15 seconds. The rest of that space is filled with slo-mo ride-ups, slo-mo ride-aways, the slo-mo'ing of the tricks themselves, and extended b-roll. In the first half of the part, we see only seven tricks from Lil Dre — a Bootleg 3000 statline through a "Blessed" lens.
That Lil Dre is able to be so compelling with so little footage is a testament to his skillset and presence and the deft touch of his video part's editor, who also happens to be Lil Dre. The section also lives on Lil Dre's own YouTube channel. That's a degree of personal brand curation that would fall flat if it weren't executed so well. To pull that off requires a confidence and self-awareness that many sponsored skateboarders either don't have or aren't willing to risk putting on display in such a way, because the line between compelling and corny is thin, easy to overlook, and trip over.
Lil Dre does not lack in confidence. He chose to skate to Guns N' Roses' "November Rain." He's also aware that he needs to keep progressing as a skateboarder to make efforts like this work, which he continues to do. As long as he keeps this up, the economy of tricks in For Drew is easily buttressed by a surplus of style.
"Dude wtf is happening to Street League"
Rank: 30
Mood: 🗑️
We got @adinross in the building for SLS MIAMI FINALS. 👏👏👏
WATCH NOW ON RUMBLE, use code SLSMIAMI for a 30 day free trial of Rumble Premium.
All you can do is marvel at how much vileness Street League Skateboarding managed to pack into two sentences. Bigoted right-wing streamer Adin Ross. Explicitly far-right streaming platform Rumble. A free trial code for Rumble Premium! Wow.
Cramming that odious figure into SLS content, which is primarily watched by children, and forcing them to view it on a platform that actively promotes hate, disinformation, and violence, is by design. As is laundering the image of Ross by sharing videos of him gladhanding with Nyjah Huston and Bam Margera.
Cole Nowicki
Thrill One Entertainment, which owns SLS, is co-owned by UFC CEO Dana White, who has made a business out of catering to the right and has even stuffed Ross' pockets, quite literally, with cash. To them, this is all part of a plan to lean into an amorphous culture war in hopes of dominating a demographic and then a market in order to make more money. That's why they infuse every product they can with those who align with their world view — vice signalling, if you will.
Unfortunately for the MMA fans among us, this works for the UFC, whose Pay-Per View broadcasts have become regular Trump cabinet member roll calls, but skateboarding is different. The competitive side is only a small slice of the attention economy here. That's not to say there aren't skateboarders who are into or can be influenced by this dreck, but White and company don't control the primary means of how the sport is consumed like UFC does, which makes it harder to co-opt into a political weapon.
That makes each attempt via SLS look increasingly bizarre and forced. From all I've seen in the years since I started covering SLS' move to Rumble, there is a general distaste and disgust for the platform and the heinous grifters that come with it.
The belief of companies like Rumble and actors such as Ross and White is that they can capitalize on the mostly manufactured backlash to whatever it is that week they decide is "woke." Whether they understand it or not, they are useful idiots for the political project that is currently destroying the United States' standing in the world and its general functionality, a movement led by truly stupid tech, business, and political elites who radicalized themselves in groupchats after misreading the works of political theorists as a way to justify their overt racism, greed, and desire to dominate.
It's hard to predict how effective any of this will be in the long term in the skateboarding space, but it's a tough sell if you're not already bought in. I mean, is anyone really gonna pay to watch SLS on Rumble Premium?
ppl rrlly good at skating now
Rank: 1
Mood: 🤯
Sometimes, I think it's important to step back and acknowledge how good people have become at skateboarding. Occasionally, some will gripe that the current crop of todays top PROs and AMs are soft or don't push themselves in the way those of yesteryear did, and that may be true to some degree as taste, sensibilities, and levels of compensation have changed over time, but people are still out there doing absolutely fucked up things on a skateboard. Consider what we've seen in just the last two weeks or so:
That's just a smattering of the more high-profile releases. There are now all types of skateboarding and skateboarders for whatever you're into, but people are still out there testing the limits of what's possible on a skateboard and how much the body can endure in the process. Salute to those freaks, because that's all completely unnecessary.
Anyhow, if you're wondering if this section is a result of me smoking a bit of weed, having what I thought was a galaxy-brain revelation, and scribbling in my notes "ppl rrlly good at skating now," yes, yes, it is.
Something to consider:
Good thing:
Farran Golding
Another good thing:
Village Psychic
A good thing about tree bump things:
Josh Sabini
Good thing about some Hardbodied boys:
Snack
Good thing about books and skating and babies:
Walker Ryan
Good new book thing: Niko Stratis' debut The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman came out this week.
Niko Stratis
And you can read an excerpt from it here:
Niko Stratis
The new Destroyer album is great and so is this interview:
Ryan Dombal
AHA! ANOTHER GOOD THING!
Until next week… there's a breeze flowing through the room. You can feel it against your bare flesh. Where does it expect to go? Everywhere, presumably. Under the couch, behind the fridge, caught in the space between your body and the fabric of your t-shirt. What happens when it stops moving? Perhaps a better question is, does it stop? It certainly gets tired, lethargic, so you can't register when it pushes past and through you, but it's still around, doing its thing. That's normal. The same thing happens to love, glee, ennui — they come in a rush and then slow. It doesn't mean they're gone; they've just settled all around you.
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.
