Ramped up
The magic of a homemade jump ramp, it's just $9,997 to use Mikey Taylor's Exit Ramp, Asahi Kaihara's ramp magic, 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.
Out of time
Rank: 1985
Mood: 🕐📐🚴
Maybe you've seen them. The, what might you call them, images? They're not quite memes, though they do assume the format. What they are is a false pining. A social media post pumped full of artificial yearning for a time that never really existed in the way the poster laments or wants to "return" to. Consider the example below, which paints the picture of a suburban neighbourhood slowly losing touch with its sense of community, i.e., people hanging out in the street, as the internet's popularity increases over the decades.
These AI-generated images are usually shared in Facebook groups with names like Totally Awesome '80s that are oozing over with gen-AI slop or are uploaded scattershot on Twitter by engagement farmers who inexplicably have hundreds of thousands of followers and handles like @soaringeagle45, like the image above was. And when it comes to that image, it gains traction online because the overall message isn't completely inaccurate. Anecdotally, I do not see as many kids playing out in the street as there were when I was a child, which is what makes it such compelling bait for people of a certain age. However, I am also no longer a child, so maybe kids are off in the streets doing other stuff, out of sight, that I simply don't have a bead on. Perhaps they're in the various Designated Spaces we've built to contain them: skateparks, basketball courts, soccer pitches, et. al.
Or they're all inside and online playing Fortnite with each other; kids in Lois from Family Guy skins sniping Sabrina Carpenter the new road hockey. Or they're inside, all alone, gooning into oblivion. Normal internet stuff. Whatever the case, what I will tangentially concede to groaning toads like @soaringeagle45 is that there are far fewer homemade jump ramps in the street than there were 20, 30 years ago.
How easy it was to take a piece of plywood, stack some 2x4s on one end, and launch your bicycle off it and over your friend Dylan like Evel Knievel — a reference point that still hit when I was making ramps with my friends in the '90s. Who's today's Knievel? Jake Paul jumping the proverbial canyon and getting his jaw broken by Anthony Joshua as a means to sell his Axe Body Spray knock-off?
See, it's easy to fall into the trap. The pitting of one generation against another. The white-knuckled grip on the belief that your lived experience is the way things ought to be is hard to let go of, which is why nostalgia is used as flypaper by slopagandists. Still, it did fire up some long-dormant neurons to come across a poorly constructed jump ramp in a front yard while on a Sunday afternoon walk last weekend.
The ramp itself is probably built for an RC car, as it looks particularly perilous for any prepubescent daredevil on a bicycle, but I would like to imagine some freckled, buck-toothed, Alfred E. Neuman-looking scamp pedalling full tilt toward this setup, full of fear and belief in what sits on the other side of it. That sort of willful ignorance and the exhale following a risk that paid off is what stokes the embers sitting at the bottom of one's heart. The flames that follow burn out of time.
Ramp magic
Rank: 1!
Mood: 🪄✨
Sometimes you see something done on a skateboard that makes you feel the original awe of when you first encountered it.
Imagine day 4
Rank: 9,997
Mood: 💸💸💸
When I think of business, specifically the motivation required to start one, I think of enterprising people looking for a way to make money doing something they love or to utilize their skill set in a way they hope will be fulfilling both financially and, for lack of a better term, spiritually. A job whose inherent grind doesn't hollow out the already tender condition of personhood.
That naivety should make clear that I am not a Business Person. Because what I don't often think of is starting a business, then turning around and flipping it like a house. For some, building, selling, and buying businesses is business. Those people are heralded for their "exits," not for creating a good or service of value to others as well as themselves, but simply accruing wealth and/or property as a resource to wield in hopes of accruing even more. Silicon Valley has operated this way for decades. The goal for most "founders" in that sector is to build hype around their fledgling company, oftentimes without a proven product, get dubbed a "unicorn" or some other unearthly valuation, and be acquired by a much bigger, wealthier company.
What I find confusing about this ambition is how naked and unashamedly it turns passion into a gimmick. A slide on a pitch deck. I'm a real go-getter: here's a thing I believed in enough to develop a product, incorporate, hire employees, and produce a marketing plan — ahh, just kidding, please give me your money for it.
In that regard, from my bumpkin vantage, I found it fascinating to watch someone like former professional skateboarder, current businessman, investor, and mayor of Thousand Oaks, California, Mikey Taylor, promote a "free" training session called Exit Ramp, which took place on Thursday and originally promised to show you "How to Escape Founder-Dependency & Make Your Business Sellable."
Taylor, a co-founder and one of many former co-owners of Saint Archer Brewing Company (alongside Paul Rodriguez, Taylor Knox, Atiba Jefferson, and more), boasts on the Exit Ramp website that within four years he "scaled" and "structured" the company using his "12 pillars" for an eight-figure exit, an experience and learnings that he's structured this course around. Saint Archer was most publicly fronted by its former president and CEO, Josh Landan, who did the media rounds when the company sold to Molson Coors Beverage Co. in 2015 for a rumoured $70+ million just two years after launching. Taylor left the company a year or so later.
I registered for the training session on Wednesday. When I checked back in on the site and its socials on Thursday, the Instagram page @rampwithmikey was taken down and the Exit Ramp website had undergone a redesign; its headline now read, "You Didn't Build a Business. You Built a Job You Can't Quit," with the subhead, "Try to take a vacation and watch what breaks. That is a bottleneck with your name on it. I structured a company that ran without me and sold it for 8-figures."
That is a bleak pitch. The challenges and stressors of running a business are very real (I grew up helping out in my mother's sign shop and have witnessed them firsthand), and structuring your freedom within that is important, but if you're doing so just to sell that business or distance yourself from its operations, that makes it something else. Purely an asset, perhaps. Or a cup-and-ball game for prospective buyers.
In 2022, Molson Coors ceased production of Saint Archer and sold its brewery and tasting plant after years of struggling to connect with consumers. It's unclear if that failure was due to "founder-dependency."
When teasing the session on LinkedIn last week, Taylor framed it as an almost altruistic effort, writing, "I’ve had a lot of people ask me over the years about the transition from skateboarding to business, investing, and eventually building real ownership. So I’m thinking about doing a free live training... and just breaking down what I’ve learned along the way. What worked. What didn’t. What I wish I knew earlier. And how I think about money and ownership today."
Given Taylor's repeated assertion of this being "free" I was curious about when and where the paywall would drop, as Taylor is a businessman after all. It came about 30 minutes into the hour-long Zoom session. The landing page for what's dubbed Exit Ramp Live pitches it as "the only 3-day event where every 7 and 8-figure operator arrives with their business graded across all 12 pillars — and leaves with the specific roadmap to close every gap." The first Exit Ramp Live takes place in Scottsdale, Arizona, November 5-7.
It'll only cost you $9,997 to attend. And another $5,000 for a partner or spouse.
Now, if you're thinking, "that's a lot of money," as one slide read, the slides also addressed that concern.
"The ticket is not the number that matters. The gap it closes is." One promised. Another claimed Exit Ramp Live is "the cheapest gap in the room." Because, you see, the gaps in your business are what need to be closed to make it appealing to buyers and also afford you freedom from said business so you can have a life and spend time with your family.
It should go without saying that Exit Ramp Live is not for the cash-strapped dreamers. There will be successful business "experts" in the room guiding you, you who are an "operator" already on the way up and looking for a foothold. As one slide stated, "[Exit Ramp Live] is not... another course, online coaching, [or] another room talking about building businesses." This is actionable, Taylor claims.
"One multiple of improvement on a $3M business is $750K-$1.5M. The tax leakage [guest expert] Steve [Harward] finds averages $50K-$200K — per year. The ticket is $9,997. You are not buying information: you're buying the grade before a buyer sees it."
That sounds like information to me, but what do I know.
It also sounds like a guarantee of services rendered for the "100" "operators" (those with businesses doing $1 million to $20 million in revenue) expected to attend Exit Ramp Live, which is the opposite of what the disclaimer on the website warns against.
DISCLAIMER: The figures stated on this page are our personal figures and in some cases the sales figures of previous or existing clients. Please understand these results are not typical. We're not implying you'll duplicate them (or do anything for that matter). The average person who buys "how to" information gets little to no results. We're using these references for example purposes only. Your results will vary and depend on many factors including but not limited to your background, experience, and work ethic. All business entails risk as well as massive and consistent effort and action. If you're not willing to accept that, please DO NOT PURCHASE ANY EXIT RAMP OFFERS.
For those on the call willing to accept, there were additional perks. The first 20 "founders" to sign up would get access to future Exit Ramp Live quarterly events for a mere $5,000 for life. The first 10 sign-ups get to play golf with Mikey, because, obviously, "More business gets done on the course than in the boardroom."
It should be noted that Taylor came off as knowledgeable when detailing his learnings from over the years, and his overall messaging seemed to resonate with some attendees in the chat, but as a non-business knower, I cannot speak to how effective any of this would be for true "operators." It's possible it really could help businesses shore up their "gaps." Or it's the start of a hokey cash grab in the vein of Patrick Bet-David's Vault Conference.
What I do know is that the pitch for Exit Ramp Live came in hard, especially off the back of a "free live training" session, which probably wasn't surprising to most. What was is how much Taylor leaned on his experience as a professional skateboarder (the poor economics of that industry inspired him to focus doubly hard on business) and his term serving as a council member and current mayor of Thousand Oaks. They even lead his bio on the Exit Ramp website.
He brought them up multiple times throughout the session while wearing his own "re-elect Mikey Taylor" campaign merch. Also, it's not exactly wrong, but it is a bit disengenous to sell yourself as "the first pro skater in history to be elected mayor," as, per the City of Thousand Oaks' website explains, "City Councilmembers pick one Councilmember to serve as Mayor for one year, after which the City Council picks a different Councilmember to serve as Mayor for another one-year term. Councilmembers serve four-year terms of office."
Considering the above, it would not be unreasonable to think that this leveraging of public office for private interest promotion is an ethics violation1. Sec. 1-10.09. of the Thousand Oaks, California, municipal code, states:
Public officials and employees, whether appointed or elected, full time or part time, paid or unpaid, should conduct their official and private affairs so as not to give a reasonable basis for the impression that any such official or employee can be improperly influenced in the performance of his/her public duties. Such officials or employees should so conduct themselves as to maintain public confidence in their performance of the public trust in the government they represent. They should not be a source of embarrassment to that government and should avoid even the appearance of conflict between their public duties and private interests.
Because if Exit Ramp Live isn't a conflict or embarrassing to the point of an ethics violation, it's at the very least incredibly tacky.
1 At a city council meeting in June, a resident accused of Taylor of a conflict of interest stemming from his 2022 election campaign receiving donations from various real estate companies (including his own) and his subsequent support for a "controversial" development project in the city.
The premier skateboarding-cum-sports event put on by a skateboarding-cum-sports podcast returns
Rank: 1
Mood: 🏈🛹
The premier skateboarding-cum-sports event put on by a skateboarding-cum-sports podcast was back over the weekend and looked like great fun. Watching Zion Wright and Kristion Jordan perform incredible on-board stunts while catching (unfortunately traitorous NFL-branded) footballs (the CFL headquarters is just 3 kilometres away from Polson Pier, smdh. Go Lions.) is further proof of the hunger for and continued success of Silly as Spectacle in skateboarding that I touched on while covering The Bunt Jam for the newsletter a few years ago.
Cole Nowicki
These moments — whether of glory, (near) peril, or redemption — are what stick in the public’s mind and help an event live on long after it's done. When money is not a measuring stick, that’s how you gauge success: exposure and memories made. A combination of the two is what’s needed to convince people to come back next year and for those who didn’t attend to feel like they missed out and to mark their calendars for 2024.
For this level of spectacle to have evolved from a podcast hosted by a couple of friends nerding out about sports is as much a surprise to Jones and Benson as anyone else... Benson added, “At this point, it all feels like a massive cherry on top that we never could have imagined before we started. [We] hope to keep it going for as long as we can and as long as it’s fun.”
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Image source unknown, but farewell to the friend at the end.
Something to consider:
Editors
Good thing:
Another good thing:
Tyler Watamanuk
More good:
Good thing about a bad thing:
Daniel Kolitz
Another good thing about a bad thing:
Michelle Cyca
You cannot stop the Hop:
Oria and Ryan's corner:
Cole Nowicki
Walker's corner:
Walker Ryan
Good billionaire being punished thing:
Good pod round-up:
Joshua Stewart
Bonus Justin Hill on Adjacent
Justin
Always a pleasure to be on the pod.
One more:
Mitch Therieau
Until next week… the spiders in your house are friends. Do your best not to smush them. If they don't respect your personal space, scoop them up in your designated Bug Cup and throw them off your 9th-floor balcony. They'll be fine.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS
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A collection of essays that I think you might like. The Edmonton Journal called it a "local book set to make a mark in 2024," The CBC said it's "quirky yet insightful" (lol), and it won Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards.
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.
