Contributing to the soup
Ian Browning on Owen Basher's new photo book "Bumper," Skate Mental on Sports Junkies and grappling with our innate impermanence, SLS goes to Brasilia, Aleka Lang goes PRO, 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.
Contributing to the soup
A special correspondence by Ian Browning
Some cities have all the glamour: legends pulling up on the sesh, clips from local spots in big-name edits, all those parties for video premiers and shoe releases. No pro skaters live in Washington, D.C., but last summer I snuck out of a family vacation to skate Freedom Plaza and met a handful of welcoming, lunchpail-ass skaters who had just gotten done with work and headed to the plaza at 6pm on a Friday.
Many of those faces grace the pages of Bumper, a photo book by D.C. local Owen Basher, which gets released tomorrow by Shining Life Press. Basher moved to town from New York State for college and quickly fell for the energy and hospitality of the plaza. “I was never a part of a big skate crew growing up,” he said. “When I moved to D.C., it was the first time I was skating with people my age. All these awesome people were doing all this amazing stuff, and I just felt like I wanted to be a part of it and document what I could.”
The book is filled with spots you haven’t seen and underground rippers that have graced D.C. local Nnamdi Ihekwoaba’s Statue edits, but Basher also points out that a lot of the photos feature what he calls relatable skateboarding. “I wanted to be intentional about the fact that these are the type of skaters that are hanging out at Pulaski, 5pm after work,” he said. “They just have gotta get a session in and move on with their lives. I think that type of skating deserves photographs and footage.”
He is among the after-five weeknight crowd, heading to the plaza once done with his day job as an imaging technician at the Smithsonian. “I digitize a lot of things called field books, which are the personal notes of nature researchers. They would go out and just document everything they see for 30 years, and then they retire or pass, and the notes get donated to the Smithsonian,” he said. “I’ve found that while working in libraries and archiving, you work on a niche subject that you might not know too much about and pick up on it. For whatever reason, I know a lot about this guy, Jame Eike, who was a bird watcher.”
Bumper explores a few niches of its own: the art of entertaining photo captions, scanned ephemera from skate trips, and nods to formative magazine articles from way back when. “Back in the late ‘90s, Transworld ran a section by Ted Newsome called ‘A New York Minute,’” Basher said. “A lot of those spreads had scans of metro tickets or receipts. I always liked how, as a reader, you feel like you’re looking into a scene instead of one specific skater. I kind of wanted to recreate that, but in the form of an entire book.”
At the end of the day, Bumper is a testament to the ties of friendship that weave together and form a healthy scene. "There are so many awesome eras of D.C., from the original days to the Stop Fakin’ days. Now it’s me and Nnamdi, and there's all these other awesome skate crews that evolve around Freedom Plaza. This is my contribution to that soup."
Check out the release party for Bumper tomorrow at Joint Custody in Washington, D.C., and order the book online from Shining Life Press.
One day, we will all wind up on the sale rack of life
Rank: 59.99
Mood: ⚽🏈🏀🛹⚾🎾
There comes a moment in the lives of all things when they realize their impermanence. Sometimes it's swift and merciful, like a raccoon under the wheel of a car. The butterfly faces it twice, first in metamorphosis, then on the windshield of a car. A song is written to end and begin again and again.
As humans, we see it all the time. In our lives, the news, and reflected back to us in our art and entertainment. From our first broken bone to tuning in each week to witness the frailty of the human form on screen, and then Scrubs itself getting cancelled. Change and demise are the reliable uncertainties of the human experience. It's why insurance exists. These things often shame us — injury, dying poorly, age and the unglamorous things that come with it. Although well documented and culturally understood, we wish to avoid them.
However, it would be concerning if we remained in stasis. If nothing moved and life remained untouched in amber. The good and the bad, whatever that means to each person, don't need to be loved, but their realities do need to be accepted. Is it jarring to see Skate Mental complete skateboards for sale at Sports Junkies Clearance Centre in Vancouver for $59.99 CAD, a 50% discount? Of course. But that change was coming; we just didn't know when. The board brand's light had long since dimmed. This move, a desperate grasp, sounds like a death knell — Skate Mental branded trucks? That's last rites.
Again, these reliable uncertainties are our bedrock. I was in that second-hand sporting goods store to buy clubs for pitch and putt. If you told me ten years ago that I'd enjoy whacking a ball around some surprisingly unkempt green expanse, I'd scoff. Skateboarding was all there was, is. Now there are other things, too — other intentions. Life, as does death, moves on.
Street League Skateboarding update: Did he, though?
Rank: 9.4
Mood: 🥇...?
Felipe Gustavo, after competing in Street League Skateboarding for nearly a decade, finally got a home game when the organization brought a "Takeover" event to his hometown of Brasilia, Brazil, over the weekend. Gustavo would also take first place, which, as the crowd erupted and he embraced his wife and family once it was clear he'd done enough, was a nice moment. That can't be denied.
What is questionable is whether Gustavo deserved the victory. The Plan B PRO edged out Giovanni Vianna by a tenth of a point. Before his penultimate attempt, the broadcast noted that Gustavo would need a score of 9.4 to move into first above Vianna, who had himself earned a 9.4 for a Caballerial-nosegrind down the course's oddly-designed hubba into bank feature.
Gustavo would execute a flawless nollie-kickflip-frontside-noseslide on the same obstacle, and after some tense moments of judges' deliberation, it was announced he'd scored just that: 9.4.
Did he, though? Is a nollie-kickflip-frontside-noseslide to forward as difficult and impressive as a Caballerial-nosegrind? Especially on an obstacle where, in Vianna's instance, he has to land on an incline and ride off another drop backwards?
There were other questionable decisions made that day in Brasilia, like when Lucas Rabelo, who attempted a fakie-ollie-hurricane down the lone handrail on the course, missed, but still pulled off a fakie-ollie-backside-lipslide. He wasn't awarded any points. If he had been, even a meagre score would have moved Rabelo from 5th to 4th place, and potentially even up into third, since the scores were so tight. Just minutes earlier, Luan Oliviera was awarded 1.4 points for a kickflip-nose-manual attempt where he only managed the kickflip portion. This inconsistency was not explained by the judges or the commentary team.
The course itself was a head-scratcher.
Stunted, awkward, raised on a platform that the skaters kept falling off of, and with limited ways to approach the available obstacles, only three competitors in the men's field managed to get three scores on the board, meaning they would fill out the podium. It almost felt cruel to watch the lower-impact, technical-minded Oliveira struggle to find any path forward on the course. He'd eventually bow out before his last attempt, claiming an injury after trying to kickflip over the out ledge, which was sponsored by the scummy online casino, Stake.
It was also an eyebrow-raiser when the commentary team mentioned Gustavo's impending fatherhood, and commentator Sean Malto referenced Chris Cole, the former professional skateboarder and SLS competitor, who once told Malto that he found a renewed focus on competitive skateboarding after becoming a father. While that may be true, one of the most notable and frightening parts of the domestic violence allegations against Cole is when he would allegedly become violent toward his ex-wife after performing poorly at SLS events, a part of a pattern of violence corroborated by his son. This isn't some call to erase Cole from skateboarding history, but a note that contextual awareness is advisable.
While there were those not-so-great things, the event still had its positives. The turnout was substantial (SLS would claim there were 10,000 attendees throughout the totality of the weekend) and those fans were raucous on broadcast. We got to see the SLS arrival of highly talented Brazilian prospects Gabryel Aguilar and Matheus Mendes. Rayssa Leal won her 14th SLS, marking her 14th victory in the last 20 SLS events — a 70% winning percentage is astounding and something to celebrate.
Also, SLS seems, at least for now, to be loosening itself from its relationship to the right-wing streaming platform Rumble, with the last few of its events airing on YouTube. That's good, even if the company is still owned by Dana White's Thrill One Entertainment, who play Power Slap ads on loop around the SLS course.
Cole Nowicki
And hey, even if Gustavo didn't deserve the W, it was still nice to see a veteran, a skater who's been literally grinding away at a career for close to 20 years, get some love.
PRESENT AF
Rank: 1
Mood: 🎈🎈🎉🎈🎈
On Monday evening, as I walked past the Vancouver Art Gallery on my way to the theatre to watch Superman (2025), I noticed a few skaters gathering around the stairs on the gallery's north plaza. That's normal. People have been skating those stairs for decades.
As I rounded the corner, I saw a pair of women in an alcove, wrangling a grip of big gold letter balloons. I couldn't make out what the letters were supposed to spell, and I didn't have time to try, because I needed to purchase snacks before the movie started.
Once seated with my Fuzzy Peaches and purple-flavoured Vitamin Water, I noticed there were two or three rows in front of us filled with high school-aged kids. As the movie began, many of them had their smartphones out. They showed each other their Instagrams and Snapchats, as the massive screen in front of them showed the chiselled jawline of David Corenswet. Did they want to be here? What was the point of being at the movies if their minds were so brazenly, annoyingly elsewhere? Eventually, someone approached, scolded them, and their phones went dark.
Later, after leaving the theatre, I opened Instagram and was shown those big gold letters once more.
Aleka Lang had been given the surprise PRO AF treatment by his friends, family, and sponsor, Cash Only, at the VAG, one of his preferred skate spots in the city. This was one half of a cross-continental PRO AF moment, as Cash Only rider Philly Santosuosso also got the nod in New Orleans. And, in proper promotional fashion, the brand followed it up with an excellent new video the next day.
That surprise bump from "amateur" to "professional" remains one of the sport's feel-good blockbuster moments. A communal celebration of an individual's contributions to this amorphous thing called skateboarding. A reason to be here, present, with your friends. Hell, it's even a rare good time to pull out your phone.
Something to consider:
Rümeysa Öztürk
Good thing:
Hanif Abdurraqib
Good Brooklyn Banks things:
Farran Golding
Village Psychic
Another good NYC thing:
Snack
Good pod round-up:
Posted by
Templeton
Good thing about a bad thing:
Jason Koebler
A good and probably very sweaty in all that gear thing:
Good opening thing: If you're in the Los Angeles area, the good pal, Adam Abada, has an exhibition opening tomorrow.
A thank goodness for gophers thing: I skated Fort Miley with Ted a couple of years ago and he did a mean switch-360-flip over the hip. That's not in this most recent episode of "This Old Ledge," but I thought you should know.
Until next week… as the summer heat pushes down and your clothes stick to your person and sleep is but a fitful thrashing of discomfort and damp sheets, do remember that somewhere a cool breeze is working itself up, like a ram kicking dust before it charges, and impact will be a respite for however long it lasts.
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 called it a "local book set to make a mark in 2024." The CBC said it's "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.
Photo via The Palomino.
