The NEIFM rule
Plus: Vincent Milou on... Element? Joslin's blunt appraisal of life, Fievel the cat has moved, an experimental co-production, 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.
Link and rebuild
Rank: 2
Mood: 🌍💨🌊🔥
In earlier eras of popular and professional skateboarding, there was not just regular roster hopping and brands stealing big names and hot prospects, but also fevered excitement and speculation from the fan base about those moves. While that still happens to some degree (Reynolds to New Balance, Kader or Joseph Campos to Violet), it's with less frequency, and there is a more muted reaction when it does.
That could be due to any number of things — a changing media environment, the diminishing relevance of the board brand to a skateboarder's career, how the skateboarder is now a brand themselves, which supercedes the umbrella effect of their sponsor — things I whinge about in this very newsletter regularly.
Whatever the case, it was still a curiosity when Vincent Milou left Pizza Skateboards in October of 2023 and then went board-sponsorless for what seemed like an eternity in professional-skateboarding-time, especially for someone of his calibre. Just a year earlier, he made the move from Globe Footwear to adidas and would soon pick up secular sponsors like Seiko watches and regional ambassador deals with Toyota and Visa — upgrades worthy of the future Olympian he'd become during the Paris 2024 Summer Games. In that time, he had been seen skating silver spray-painted boards and Girl Skateboards, but nothing concrete was made official until this week, thanks to a fantastic video part welcoming the French star to... Element?
It's a surprising pickup for a company that had, within the last few years, shed most of its big-name North American riders and seemed on death's door following its most recent licensor filing for bankruptcy at the beginning of the year. It also might be a minor disappointment if you consider the trajectory of Milou's growing collection of endorsements. Yet, if you take a more positive angle, this looks like the first big step in the start of a rebuild for Element. The raw materials, talent-wise, are there.
Despite the discord on the North American side, the European arm of Element is strong. Under the guidance of team manager Phil Zwijsen and brand manager Alexandre Deron, it has a noticeably stellar output. One assumes that helped convince Milou: the chance to be one of, if not the face of, a legacy brand as it pieces itself back together with capable hands, at least creatively. Is it the most high-wattage move available? No. But if you survey the landscape, what would?
For their part, Element is aware of the chance Milou is taking on them, as Element PRO Madars Apse made clear in a kind but telling comment on a recent Instagram post celebrating the Frenchman's addition to the roster.
A blunt appraisal of life
Rank: 29
Mood: 🦺
Last week, Independent Trucks released a web ad featuring Chris Joslin 360-flipping another frighteningly large gap. Frightening for most others, that is. This is the exact type of risk he has made a nearly decade-long pro career out of. Joslin, somehow still only 29 years old, had already done severe damage to his knees as a teenager, yet continues on, filming potentially life-altering stunts for YouTube content.
Last year, Ryan Decenzo was featured in an Independent web ad of similar stakes. I wrote this at the time:
Now we watch a 37-year-old Ryan Decenzo throw a frontside flip off a second-storey walkway like this — for an ad! A throwaway internet clip! This trick would close the show in most people's video parts, but here's Decenzo giving the clip to his truck sponsor. But that's just a regular day's work for the consummate veteran who has been hurling himself down these cavernous structures professionally since 2010, with years spent toiling and hucking as an amateur before that...
It also describes Joslin to a tee. Encountering such peril is what it looks like for him to clock in for a shift. Specifically, in this instance, Bring Your Child to Work Day, as Joslin's young daughter is shown riding her scooter around the parking lot of the empty business park as her father casually throws himself off a storey or two.
Watching your parent fall from the sky, smack into the pavement, scream in pain and frustration after each failed attempt, before persevering and accomplishing such a feat, must be a formative experience for a kid of that age — and potentially a traumatic one if things went differently. It's a moment that immediately brought to mind mixed martial arts legend Mark "The Hammer" Coleman. During the post-fight interview following his rematch against Fedor Emelianenko in PRIDE back in 2006, Coleman, after getting thoroughly beaten, disfigured, and eventually armbarred, famously called out to his young daughters who were in the audience, letting them know he was okay.
They would enter the ring and sob as Coleman held them, their father clearly not okay. Just this past weekend, former UFC light heavyweight title contender Anthony Smith brought his entire family, including young children, to watch his retirement fight. He wouldn't make it out of the first round. His last moments as a professional athlete were spent lying in a pool of his own blood as his loved ones looked on.
There are vast differences in these professional athletic pursuits, but skateboarding and MMA are analogous in their mostly brutal ways — they both will destroy your body for the pleasure of a distant audience and pay you poorly for doing so (perhaps that's why UFC president Dana White has shown interest in skateboarding). Is it wrong to let your children watch you endure the worst of that? I'm not sure. It's only an issue if you don't succeed. But you won't always succeed. Still, is there not value in witnessing such a blunt appraisal of life? That even if you get your ass literally or figuratively kicked, you get up, dust yourself off and keep moving?
Most importantly, how much is Independent paying Joslin for these clips?
Fievel the cat has moved
Rank: ...
Mood: ❤️🐈⬛
For years, as I'd walk to and from places under the bows of towering chestnut trees on one particular stretch of 10th Avenue in East Vancouver, the sound of my footfalls would, almost inevitably, be accompanied by a jingle. Soon, Fievel would patter alongside me. What this scruffy black cat, fur rusting from age and the sun, demonstrated throughout our encounters is a sense of purpose. Whatever you are doing, he is sure he can help.
A large, colourful, and loud (jingle jingle) collar, meant to alert birds to their impending demise, splays from his neck like a ruff. Fievel will rub it against your leg as you walk. He'll weave between your feet with less grace than you'd hope if you're looking to not step on a beloved neighbourhood cat. He will do these things until you stop and pet him.
I'm not sure how to measure what the affection of a creature like Fievel brings to the overwrought human, well, condition, because it feels like this roving furnace of purrs improves one's condition on a seismic scale, if only for the length of a belly rub.
Fievel the cat has moved. I don't know where, but while he was here, he made such a recognizable impact that his owners held a goodbye salon. Not for them, but for their cat.
"Come by Fievel's house... to share some pets and say goodbye." The poster taped to the lightpost read. There was even a QR code that led to a Google Form where you could share your beloved Fievel memories with the people responsible for bringing him into our lives.
I missed Fievel's farewell. I will miss Fievel. I'm not the only one. While I have a great fondness for this cat, I had never snapped a photo during our countless meetings — how could you not be present with such a creature? It's a testament to his tenure on the block that it took approximately 30 seconds to find a photo of Fievel online, taken by another longtime fan, along with a note.
We walk past Fievel's home a couple of times a week and when Fievel is out he greets all passerby's.
This has been a ritual for years. But Fievel is moving at the end of the month.
We will miss his friendly greeting on our walk.
Same here. Thank you, Fievel. Farewell.
The NEIFM rule
Rank: 1
Mood: ✋🙈
If you want to exist and consume on the internet while maintaining some semblance of a regulated emotional state, it's imperative that you follow NEIFM (nē-fem), the Not Everything Is For Me rule. It's key to keep NEIFM front of mind while scrolling and searching because you simply won't enjoy the majority of what you'll come across, despite prying algorithms playing with our user data in billion-dollar efforts to decode and commodify a mutant mix of taste and engagement.
And that's okay. Better than okay, even. You don't have to watch or like everything. That's part of what having taste means. Unfortunately, the primary objective of the online platforms we've become attached to is to keep us forever watching. So we're fed things in our general fields of interest with the hope that they're convincing enough for us to click and stay until we get to or through an ad roll.
Creators on these social platforms are encouraged to produce content that is engaging in the immediate, hitting the right set of buttons to get us to press play, but not necessarily to make something good or worthwhile. It's a phenomenon that has been discussed at length in recent years — the social web's flattening of culture in pursuit of content.
Cole Nowicki
And there is so much content. It doesn't stop. This flood and churn have twisted our notion of what it means to create and how we even speak of it. Marketing sludge is now the act of "creators." The medium of documentary film has been co-opted into regular beats for PR campaigns. Art becomes not something to appreciate and critique on its merits, but a vector for more content: breakdown and reaction videos, reaction videos to reaction videos. Dead-ended and parasitic, the worst is made to profit off something someone else has made.
Admittedly, I struggle to abide by NEIFM. I don't have to consume tripe, and mostly, I don't. But I'm also curious and have interests, as well as a weekly newsletter, which, if I'm honest with myself, is about content. That means I spend a lot of time consuming, thinking, and writing about things, good, bad, and negligible. I know much, if not most, is not for me, and I try to keep that in mind as I go about my work, but there are times when I have to ask, who is this for?
I already went in quite hard on Chase Gabor's Storied for their bogus Cybertruck content barrage a few weeks back, but I was still surprised to be left asking myself the same question after watching their latest video about Mark Appleyeard's rise, which they dub as "The Start of Skateboarding's Golden Era."
On its face, this one is easier to imagine an audience for: fans of Mark Appleyard. Skaters who came of age in the late '90s and '00s. I willingly watched this because I tick both of those boxes — hell, I'm even Canadian — yet, besides some fun modern-day footage of Appleyard and Geoff Rowley skating and some little-seen archival courtesy of Fred Mortagne, this thing approximating a documentary doesn't tell us much, if anything at all. It takes us through the familiar beats of Appleyard's career, and we hear from a few talking heads, but it's more of a half-hearted hagiography than a meaningful biography.
So, what is the story here, Storied? Its narrative crux, it would seem, which is shown many times throughout, is the hideous commemorative deck they've produced alongside this video that you can purchase for $155 CAD.
"Skateboarding is a dangerous sport and these products are intended to be used as displays," a warning on the product page tells us. Who is displaying this?
I understand that creating a self-sustaining media entity, especially in skateboarding, is a tall order, if not impossible in our current era. But is the point of this video, of the whole Storied project, to tell "stories" and treat its subjects with the reverence they deserve or is it to use those people and their stories to sell product? Because, as it stands, they're not doing a great job at either, and it leads one to ask an even more pressing question: why would anyone buy a skateboard commemorating a YouTube video?
It's the end result of a blistered, mindless content ouroborus — a terrifying sight. The only defence against it is to close the tab, clutch your rosary, and repeat to yourself NEIFM, NEIFM, NEIFM.
An experimental co-production
Rank: 1
Mood: 🤝
YOU WANT MORE CONTENT ABOUT CONTENT?? You've got it.
Introducing "Ranked & Filed," an experimental co-production that brings you the headline story from Simple Magic’s weekly “Simply Ranked” newsletter in multimedia form, courtesy of Skate Bylines. Available at skatebylines.com and wherever you get your podcasts.
Huge shoutout to Farran Golding, who did a fantastic job putting together our first column in record time.
Farran Golding
Something to consider: Supporting the families and survivors of the Lapu Lapu tragedy.
Good thing: The good folks (and 'sletter friends) who run the College Skateboarding Educational Foundation got a Dunk!
More good, educational things: Buy a Slow Impact zine featuring photos from all your faves and support Skate After School in Tempe, Arizona. Win-win.
Skip to Content
Speaking of skateboarders getting together and sharing knowledge: The pals (and yes, 'sletter friends) at Adjacency Bias are "launching an annual event called Adjacent, a weekend-long gathering celebrating skateboarding in the Northwest." Yes, please.
Alex Fazekas-Boone
Another good thing:
A real good Ian Browning thing:
The Stopgap
A good pod thing: Congrats to Quentin on 100 episodes of Beyond Boards, hitting the mark with consummate legend, AVE.
Plus, the Mostly Skateboarding gang get into the nitty-gritty of 933-mania with New Balance Numeric designer Jeff Mikut.
Posted by
Templeton
A moving story of redemption thing: Daniel Empey is back to face his (street) demons.
Until next week… make sure you pet your neighbourhood cats when you see them.
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.
