Finger lickin' good
Plus: Skateboarder vs. the state, Baker stays fresh, Pat Coghlan searches for the "where," spending time in a KFC parking lot, 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.
What else is there to call them?
Rank: N/A
Mood: 🔥🚗🔥
Video via Jeremy Lindenfeld on Bluesky
The skateboard is important, to a point. It shows us that this person could be anyone watching this video through their phone or computer screen. That skateboard, a thing that you or I may regularly carry, shows that any of us can be called to the moment they rose to meet.
These images and videos are terrifying, though not unfamiliar, especially in the United States. Lethal and "less than lethal" weapons are regularly, and often gleefully, deployed on any populace who protest injustice perpetrated by those who are supposed to govern them. Except now, compounding the already rabid systemic abuse of that creeping police state, is a presidential administration that hungers for it openly.
ICE, or rather, masked men who refuse to identify themselves, are stealing people away at their jobs, in the hallways of their apartment buildings, and during citizenship hearings set up as traps. They lie in attempts to abduct first graders from their schools. Increasingly, they succeed. Their leaders bristle when the public calls them "Gestapo," but what else is there to call them?
They kidnap and detain innocent people for months, or indefinitely, on no charges in cities two, three, and four states away. Some are flown to megaprisons in El Salvador. Others are shipped to countries they've never set foot in or have any ties to whatsoever.
The protests against this are necessary and generally peaceful. When heavily armed and armoured paramilitary agents of the state show up, the peace breaks. Protestors and the press covering them are targeted and wounded.
Nina Golgowski
These anonymous thugs agitate, blame their violence on those protesting mass injustice, and don't care if they get caught lying. This isn't new, protestors have gone missing and shown up dead in the past and "law enforcement" doesn't bat an eye. That threat has always been real, but now there's leadership occupying the highest office in the land that embraces it with a sweaty fervour.
The swirl of spin and social media misinformation needs to be kept in mind. Los Angeles isn't occupied or burning down at the hands of maniacal leftists or whatever. Most of the city continues on as usual, despite what your algorithm or the country's president might say. That fear is an excuse to commandeer the national guard and deploy a handful of marines as a flex and justify state violence in the pockets where the protests do happen.
This is happening on top of everything else. The gutting of government agencies, public services, health care, and environmental protections. The furious tearing away at whatever social safety net was left. In the end, this has always been the endgame of those Quinn Slobodian might call Hayek's Bastards — a world where we no longer pretend that democracy works and invariably submit to the might of the gun, monarch, and market.
It's happening. That's why people are in the streets to stop it. Many welcome that awful future, likely, and I say this generously, because they don't understand. They see a Waymo on fire and cry insurrection. Kayla Harrison, newly minted UFC women's bantamweight champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, wrapped her gold belt around Donald Trump's waist after her victory at UFC 316 in Newark, New Jersey, last weekend (moments after getting on a microphone to thank her Christian god for blessing her with the strength to beat the living shit out of another human being). He's the person requesting and rubber-stamping these horrors, which are the reason people are decommissioning Waymos (whose 360-degree camera footage can then be used by the state and used as evidence to charge protestors who were goaded into action), that adjudicated sexual predator, alleged pedophile, with a near endless scroll of disgusting superlatives, including president, gets celebrated like a champion.
It's a lot, to be sure. I watch this happening from the country above, knowing it won't stop at the border. Lines on maps, democracy, the fate of our shared humanity — these things have never stopped the appetite of an empire. In that video, the skateboard can represent any number of things. What it tells us is to be ready. It's happening, and you never know where you'll be when it comes knocking.
Andy Greenberg
Refresh, stay moving
Rank: 1
Mood: 👨🍳👩🍳👨🍳
Much ink has been spilled in this newsletter about the shifting tides of taste, the marketing follies of brands — commercial and personal — who fail to evolve with the times, and the general quest for meaning in a culture whose beating heart is, ultimately, the advertising efforts of the companies who produce hard and soft skateboarding products.
Sometimes, well, often times, I feel like a real Negative Nancy while writing this stuff. Sure, there is a lot to be critical of or repulsed by in skateboarding and the world at large (see above section), but good things are happening, too.
Baker Skateboards is one of those things, and one of the few — and perhaps the only — legacy board brand that has managed to not just maintain relevancy, but excel decades after its launch. To be fair, I don't know what their financials look like, but in terms of popular sentiment and quality of media output, they rarely stumble.
That's partly because they understand the need to Refresh and Stay Moving. That starts with the team. Baker, with Andrew Reynolds at the helm, have a rich history of fostering talent from a young age. Some become stars with enough cache to last into their later years, like a Bryan Herman or Kevin Long (though he is a special case). Some flourish and leave the fold like Kader. Others show promise but, due to whatever reading of the tea leaves, get the boot, like Cyril Jackson and Dee Ostrander. Most hang around in some capacity, official or not, like Theotis Beasley. Figgy is still pro but appears to support himself financially with his "Residential/Commercial Bathtub Refinishing and Concrete Coatings" business.
These are generations' worth of skateboarders brought up under a single entity, stacked and mixed together to create a whole. New blood circulates among the old.
As of late, Baker has also been willing to give the creative reins to new and different talent. Whether that's Long in the art department or now, Felix Soto, who filmed and edited their latest video effort, "Gimmie A Break!" A Baker Vid by Fel.
Soto's touch is measurable. From the glitchy VHS intros to the soundtrack, it's not not Baker-y, in the traditional sense, but also brings its own aesthetic and emotional self. There are heaps of drunken b-roll and tonnes of incredible skateboarding, which is a Baker Skateboards staple, but it's delivered in a more raw, condensed form. In overall runtime, yes, but also in pacing. Historically, the Baker canon loves to linger — extreme slo-mo, multiple angles, long stretches of meandering, sometimes humorous b-roll.
Soto, for the most part, keeps things moving. And for this effort, it makes sense. When showcasing talents like Zach Allen, Rowan Zorilla, Taylor Kirby, and especially the star of the show, Tristan Funkhouser, you need to see them as they are. Stylish, powerful, and above all, reckless.
How else would you describe the skateboarding Funkhouser does? In the past, I've likened him to a cannonball as he takes off with blistering intent and goes wherever gravity takes him. He is committed to endangering himself and everything around him for his and our entertainment.
I could list all of the tricks, nay, stunts he accomplishes in this latest video, but you should just watch them or watch them again if you haven't already. T-Funk is a skateboarder in tune with his abilities to the degree that San Francisco — the city and its geographical and architectural undulations — appears to have thrown everything they can at the variously be-mulletted skateboarder to no avail. He figures it out. Finds his line. Some new thing to jump off or into.
Everything he does becomes exciting because he's the one doing it. He can get absolutely bodied on a New York City curb and it looks awesome. That's something special. Something that needed to be fostered and given space to grow, which Baker Skateboards has done.
Allen, Zorilla, Funkhouser, they've all had room to come into themselves as professional skateboarders under the auspices of the brand. That's how generational turnover works. It's how you stay relevant as new generations of skateboarders start paying attention to skate media, by giving them people to care about. Max Wasungu, Zion Effs, Sulley Cormier, Lyric Bennett, and most recently, Ivan Glenney and Davey Sayles, are in that space right now, developing who they are on a board and their relationship with the audience through the each subsequent clip, video part, and photo we see. Baker continues to make room for new filmmakers, too, a promising sign in an industry that often seems short on it.
Gimmie a break! You might be saying after reading all this, and, hey, fair enough.
The how and the where
Rank: 1
Mood: 〰️〰️
If one were to break down the act of skateboarding to its most elemental directive, that would be to fulfill the desire to find out where you can ride a skateboard and how. On ledges, transitions, through the air or a pile of trash, off a wall, down the sidewalk — if you have stood, sat, kneeled, or lain on a skateboard, you've experienced that urge to take it somewhere, anywhere.
The majority of skateboarding now is done in search of the how. How can I place this trick, or combination of tricks, together on this familiar, archetypal obstacle? That's great stuff. Beautiful stuff. The known buffed and polished into something new-ish.
I've got a soft spot for the where, when a person and their skateboard work hard to unlock a different place to be. A new angle, surface, or texture to navigate. Sometimes this might look silly or contrived, like a stunt or a gimmick, but it's a straightforward exploration.
If it looks alien, that's because it is. We didn't know the things Pat Coghlan rode his skateboard over and down in Slam City Skates: Ben + Pat could be ridden over and down because no one had. Where is a cross-section of expectation and surprise.
Let's admire his vision:
Finger lickin' good
Rank: 1
Mood: 🍗
On Saturday, as I stood in the parking lot behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken, the ground dark and slick with grease from a nearby waste container tucked beside a pair of equally stinking dumpsters, waiting with a brick of a video camera in one hand while the sun torched my bare shoulders and two friends drank ciders in one parking stall as another readied himself for the line I was to film, it was clear that there was no where else we'd rather be.
Before this, we'd spent a good two hours at an electrical box, throwing ourselves onto its metal face with the help of a sidewalk-kicker, elevated due to thriving tree roots. Sometimes, pedestrians would stop and watch, mostly, they continued on their way. This is normal. Natural, even, what the skateboarders are up to. Clanging and crashing, moving in ways indelicate and beautiful.
It's not always fun, but it's always good. Being outdoors, together, in odd communion with the city, turning pockets of exceptional mundanity into exceptional opportunity. Within our means, of course.
On Sunday, as I assessed my sunburnt shoulders and the white strips of flesh left by Saturday's tank top, and how I probably should've eaten more food, drank more water, and applied more sunscreen throughout those however many hours outside, my Sunday mind not just fried but crisped, having just wept after finishing a book with my morning coffee, it made me appreciate the greased up ground at the KFC all the more. How the drivers who struggled to squeeze into the small parking lot were all kind toward us and made sure they weren't in our way, wherever they parked, even though they had no other real choice but to be there, with us, cramped but smiling as we all waited and worked to get what we wanted to be ours.
Something to consider: Heading to Adjacent, a very rad-looking event put on by 'sletter friends Adjacency Bias in July.
Alex Fazekas-Boone
Good thing: Alex Coles is back on the 'Tube and we're all better for it.
Another good thing:
Snack
A good thing about a bad thing:
Another good thing from some of your favourite skateboarding academics:
A good thing from earlier this week:
Christian N. Kerr
Yeah, sure, another good thing:
Diana Moskovitz
A Kerry Howley thing, which is always good:
Kerry Howley
A nice smelling thing: Nosegrab, the scent made in collaboration with Dirt, Simple Magic, and Pearfat Parfum, for our Sensuous Skateboarding editorial series, sold out in mere minutes on Monday. People love to smell good. Hope you like it if you bought it.
Cole Nowicki
Until next week… hold on.
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.
