The most beautiful curb in the world
Imagine doing a slappy-crook in heaven, remember that slop is not a determined future, Høurs Is Yours goes golfing, MoonPay X Games Leagues brings in more undisclosed eight-figure sums, 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 most beautiful curb in the world
Rank: 1
Mood: ⛰️🛹⛰️
Under the stony gaze of The St’á7mes (Stawamus) Chief mountain, bisecting the parking lot of Chances Casino in St’á7mes Village, just south of Squamish, British Columbia, sits the most beautiful curb in the world.
The curb itself isn't where the beauty lies, though, as far as curbs go, it is done up well and nice for any interested skateboarder, as evidenced by local resident and Frog Skateboards professional Dustin Henry, who routinely slides and grinds (and slides into grinds) along its five-parking-spot laquered length.
Where the awe becomes inspiring is when you look up from the curb and into the face of The Chief, framed by the robin's egg blue of the sky that has yet to warble from the heat of the coming day, as you and your friends stretch your legs with a coffee and some warm-up tricks at 9:30 AM on a Sunday.
It's a privilege to have such vivid context for how small we and our preoccupations are in the grand scheme of everything. To be in the presence of something so marvellously large, a rock face crawling with specks of people scaling their way to the top as you mill about below, dinking around with some crooked-grind-pop-overs.
Everywhere the parking lot isn't there are trees and brush and creatures you may startle if you step out of the growing heat to take a leak. A curb spot has never felt so alive, not so much with humans, but with the humming existence of everything else.
And if you listen close, you can hear climbers dangling from The Chief shouting instructions to one another. If you listen closer, you can hear them shouting props to you and your slappy.
A force multiplier of mediocrity
Rank: 437
Mood: 🙈
What is important to remember, to hold in front of you like a barf bag whenever generative AI content crosses your feed, is that it isn't inevitable. Slop of the Gen-AI variety feels like it's being forced upon us because it's easy to make and because the tech industry has put all its eggs in one basket at the risk of itself, the wider economy, our social fabric, and the environment.
For those pumping out slop, the goal isn't to create anything of value; it's simply to get attention, and for some, monetize it. When all you have to do is enter prompts into a text window to "create" something, there is no barrier for entry to "content creation," which is why social media platforms are overrun with dreck and are (allegedly) trying to fight its proliferation.
This is nothing new, and certainly a retread in this newsletter, so at the risk of running these words ragged, that ease of creation means slop is everywhere and its use has been, gradually, normalized. Just look at the MrBeastified visages of Aurélien Giraud, Nyjah Huston, and Gustavo Ribeiro in the thumbnails of these recent Street League Skateboarding YouTube uploads.
😮👉
Did SLS ask the skaters for consent before running their likenesses through an image generator to give them YouTube Face? Doubtful. In addition to the issues of aesthetics and labour and the crushing amount of energy and water and money it takes to run this technology, that issue of consent is a primary reason generative AI content can so quickly become insidious, as if the avalanche of automated deepfake pornography and Grok's CSAM generation wasn't enough of a tell.
Still, the slop isn't inevitable because people really do not like this shit, for obvious reasons. A couple of weeks back, I went in quite hard on Plan B Skateboards for an AI-generated ad that they used to promote a new board series.
...resorting to generative AI, like Plan B Skateboards did this week, betrays a certain level of carelessness and a lack of respect for their audience. It's not unreasonable for consumers to expect thought and effort put into the promotion of something you expect them to buy.
The spot was produced by Marque Cox of the skateboarding meme account @shrimpdaddy, who is probably best known for creating an AI-altered version of Chris Joslin riding away from a 360-flip at El Toro in 2023, making and promoting a shitcoin tied to Joslin's name once he actually did ride away from the trick in 2025, then attempting to justify and ultimately canning the coin after being largely criticized online.
Cox published the Plan B commercial under the banner of Special Meter, a venture whose website's "about" section describes it as:
"...an AI studio focused on building cinematic worlds and original storytelling.
We create films, series, and commercial work using cutting-edge AI technology, combined with strong direction, editing, and visual taste to produce content that feels real, elevated, and high-end.
From narrative pieces to brand campaigns, the goal is always the same: make something that looks and feels like it shouldn't be possible."
Producing content that "feels real" and "feels like it shouldn't be possible" does seem to conflict somewhat, but I'm most curious about the "elevated" and "high-end" content. Because, well, where is it?
After writing about the Gen-AI Plan B muppet team, a dear reader asked why I had let Birdhouse Skateboards off the hook. It turns out I had missed an earlier Cox production that was much more heinous: a commercial for Clyde Singleton's guest pro model.
I'd rather not waste more critical thought on that spot than the very little that was put into it, so to keep my language as simple as a Sora prompt: The video does not feel real, elevated, or high-end. The "storytelling" is nonexistent. The references made are trite and do not make sense. It is embarrassing to everyone involved.
And hey, to each their own, I guess, but it's doubly embarrassing to see Singleton defending the slop in the comments section of the above Instagram post. He is a legend and richly deserving of the honour of a guest pro model, but this sours it, especially since Birdhouse had a perfectly good and relevant promotional video on deck, which they published afterwards.
At this point, we're well beyond the notion of generative AI as "just experimenting with new tools" or an inevitable future hurdling toward us. This stuff is trash and any discerning person — including some AI companies — knows it. Take this excerpt from a recent New Yorker piece by Kyle Chayka about a so-called "lo-fi rebellion against AI":
Granola, an A.I. note-taking service for work meetings, recently rebranded with a rough-hewn spiral logo in a soft, organic green. Max Ottignon, the co-founder of Ragged Edge, the branding agency that did the new logo, told me that the style was “janky in places, by design.” (It provides a contrast with OpenAI’s branding, which is “very precise” and “could be the identity for a defense firm,” Ottignon said.) Anything that appears too smooth these days is suspicious; the more refined-looking, the greater the chance it was machine-generated. As Ottignon said, “A.I. is a force multiplier of mediocrity.”
“A.I. is a force multiplier of mediocrity” is exactly right (and a funny thing to say when taking money from an AI company). In marketing, sure, but also in any creative pursuit. Audiences will inevitably tire of the hollowness dished out when they realize there is nothing of substance within.
Cox is a genuinely talented editor. He is also certainly motivated as a "creator," so he must be aware that his Shrimpdaddy YouTube page, which has 55k subscribers, has struggled to crack 500 views in the last four months with its Gen-AI content. Engagement on his Instagram page hasn't fared much better.
This stuff is insufferable, not inevitable.
Fore!
Rank: 4
Mood: ⛳🏌️
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you want obscure, left-field scoops related to the skateboarding industry, there is no better place to stumble upon them than on LinkedIn, the world's most frightening social media platform.
There is just something about LinkedIn that compels users to share things they maybe shouldn't or shouldn't just quite yet. Perhaps it's because LinkedIn's algorithm demands a certain air of expertise from users that they feel the need to flex anything resembling acumen in business, marketing, leadership, et al. Even if it's an embarrassing overshare, an obvious exaggeration, or completely AI-generated.
LinkedIn is where the first images of TJ Rogers' debut signature model shoe leaked. LinkedIn is where I've continued to find the brains behind the Skate Board Association showing their asses, and on Tuesday, it's where I learned that Høurs Is Yours is going to start making golf shoes.
Høurs Is Yours, the footwear brand founded by former professional skateboarder and Supra Footwear marketing and design director Dennis Martin and maybe-sort-of-still professional skateboarder Bryan Herman, has been making some moves lately. With recent additions of the criminally slept-on Ryan Thompson and Gus Bus to their team, along with an admittedly brazen new ad in Thrasher, it would appear that the brand is on a stronger footing after a quiet first few years on the market.
Is that stronger footing on the green? It's a strange branch, but not wholly surprising, given the popularity of golf among the professional skateboarding class. Are those good-looking or functional golf shoes? As a non-golfer, I have no relevant opinion on the matter, but this bug clearly bit Martin some time ago, as he first posted on the Høurs Golf Instagram account back in 2023.
Anyway, do golfers send in sponsor-me-tapes?
Undisclosed eight-figure sums
Rank: $??,???,???
Mood: 🤔
On Tuesday, the MoonPay X Games League announced that they had sold "both its New York Summer and New York Winter teams to UNA Sports Group in an eight-figure transaction." Adding, "UNA is the first single group to own two X Games League Clubs."
To note, UNA is the first group to own any X Games League Club. And UNA, while led by some real names in the talent management and private equity sectors, is a fresh firm, this dual acquisition being its first. The numbers on that transaction are undisclosed, but in an interview with Sports Business Journal, X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom said that "the two teams were sold for an eight-figure sum apiece." [Emphasis mine.]
Chris Smith
That's a tidy, vague, and somewhat familiar sum. In January, Bloom announced that the three-year naming rights deal that led a cryptocurrency fintech company to latch its name onto the X Games' latest venture, the aforementioned MoonPay X Games League, was an undisclosed "large eight figure[s]."
When private equity firm MSP Sports Capital acquired a majority and controlling interest in X Games from ESPN in 2022, the deal's financials were, unsurprisingly, undisclosed. However, reporting from The Information (per Front Office Sports) in 2021 stated that "ESPN was looking to sell broadcasting rights to the X Games for around $100 million but was more likely to offload their intellectual property rights for about $50 million."
If the latter ended up being closer to reality, X Games itself was acquired for an eight-figure sum. Can one of eight X Games League Clubs, which have yet to compete as the MoonPay X Games League has not held a single summer or winter event yet, be (potentially) valued in the same ballpark as the parent company of the league itself?
According to Bloom, absolutely. And those sales are "validating," because really what you're paying for is twofold: an opportunity to get in on the ground floor and an investment that circumvents the market, per Forbes.
“It’s a non-correlated asset (to the stock market),” said Bloom. “Over the last 60 years, nothing’s appreciated like sports franchises," pointing to franchise fees in new leagues for pickleball and yacht racing. “You can’t find that kind of value creation in the public markets.”
Cool. How a MoonPay X Games League Club will actually create that value remains to be seen.
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Screengrab from "SLS DTLA 2026 Women's Final - FULL COMPETITION"
Something to consider:
Very good thing:
Another good thing:
Samantha Bache
That's right, another good thing:
Ben Fowlkes
More good Slobodian (and Tarnoff) as they continue their book promo cycle:
Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff
How's Alberta doing, you ask?
Jeremy Appel
Good pod round-up:
Posted by
Templeton
Skate Jawn gave Sabini $100 USD:
Until next week… c'mon, you know what to do (find a park bench to sit on and read a book).
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.
