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Two 2001 Toyota Corollas racing across a barren salt flat toward a land speed record

Tom Schaar vs. Chris Joslin, Tampa Amnonymous, now is the time of bullshitters, Dyrdek makes millions... for now? And more.

Cole Nowicki

31 Oct 2025 — 12 min read

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.

Two 2001 Toyota Corollas racing across a dry salt lake bed toward a land speed record

Rank: 2
Mood: 🚗🚗

The last time a vert skateboarder claimed Thrasher Magazine's coveted Skater of the Year award, I was 14 years old and usually stopped watching The DC Video after Stevie Williams' switch-pop-shove-it-revert. It's not that I didn't appreciate the rank gnarlitude or risk-taking of Danny Way, whose Mega Ramping would earn him a Rusty that year, it's that I couldn't relate. How was I, some kid in small-town Canada, supposed to get hyped about vert or Mega Ramp when I'd realistically have to go to another country to skate either? It was like flipping through a National Geographic; here were all these great wonders of the world, a world away.

Now, 21 years on, one of the two primary frontrunners in 2025's SOTY race is Tom Schaar, who Ben Komins recently interviewed for Jenkem, the headline of that piece describing Schaar as "[bringing] clarity to the modern vert landscape."

That feels right. The year Schaar has had — which includes an incredible video part, a shocking Thrasher cover, and another video part on the way — makes it clear that vert is not quite dead, it does rule, and deserves our attention and adoration, even if it is less accessible now than it ever was.

Mind you, Schaar is not the last bastion of elite vert skating, as Arisa Trew, Jimmy Wilkins, Reese Nelson, Gui Khury, and more spin in the wings, but he is currently the face of it and is pushing the discipline to its absolute limits. In that way, he parallels his closest competition in the SOTY race, Chris Joslin.

Joslin is, without a doubt, contemporary skateboarding's greatest hucker. It would not be a stretch to declare him the best there's ever been. Aaron Homoki may have ollied off bigger things, but Joslin has changed our understanding of what different tricks can be done off of those towering heights. His recent Thrasher-fronting El Toro 20-stair 360-flip redemption is proof enough, but his entire career is built on his ability to fling himself from the top of some large surface to its bottom as his board dances under his feet.

Vanishingly few people approach skateboarding like that in the modern era. People still huck, to be sure, but within reason. Stylish flip tricks down aesthetically pleasing or interesting gaps have taken precedence over incremental stair counts. It seemed, understandably, that a physical boundary had been reached, or perhaps the public's interest had just lapsed when it came to that particular bent of skateboarding.

For health and safety reasons, that's for the best, but it is still a thrill to watch Joslin fly, if not as inspiration for those of us with aching knees, then in the anthropological sense. Similar in a way to high-level vert skateboarding: as an act, it's unattainable, a marvel to witness, and tells us some muddled thing about the fortitude and promise of humankind if that's the type of scrounging around for meaning that you like to do.

So, who better to face off for SOTY than a couple of skateboarders taking two outmoded styles of skateboarding to previously unknown places? Like a pair of 2001 Toyota Corollas racing across a barren salt flat toward a land speed record. Dust, rocks, and exhaust a trail to glory.

New kids in the moat

Rank: 1
Mood: 📛

The 31st annual Tampa Am took place on October 19, continuing the rich history of skateboarding's premier amateur contest. For decades, winning Tampa Am was one of the surefire ways to break through in the skate industry. Previous winners like Kevin Long, Felipe Gustavo, and Nyjah Huston all famously had their careers kickstart or kick into overdrive after topping the podium in Tampa.

This was such an accepted reality that Tampa Am was included as a level in Tony Hawk's Underground, with your character vying to get sponsored by placing well in the event. Does it still function the same way all these years later? It's difficult to say. The media and industry environments are far different now than in the late '90s and early aughts. Do you know which year Lazer Crawford won? Do you know who Lazer Crawford is?

More importantly, does that matter?

Tampa Am remains a vital lifeline for up-and-coming talent, and the effort that has gone and continues to go into making it happen is Herculean and should be lauded, especially in an age where the online dominates the in-person. Because Tampa Am is a marketing and career opportunity, sure, but it's also about community building. Skateboarders from all over the world attend and connect, and looking at the results of the 2025 contest is another reminder of just how many amazing skateboarders populate this blue marble, even if I increasingly have no idea who any of them are.

Perhaps this is just ignorance on my part as someone in their mid-30s who tries to limit their exposure to social media, but there is only one name in this year's top 12 that I recognized:

Abner Pietro
Rocco Müller
Christopher Setinas
Pool Bellido
Taiga Nagai
Kalib Starnes
Denis Kang
Bert Wilmink
Gabi Lavallee
Rio Yashima
David Loiseau
Noah De Jaeger

How many names do you know? Do you know which ones are actually late-aughts Canadian MMA journeymen that I slipped in there as a test?

That unfamiliarity with the field (unless you're a rare sicko who knows 'em all, and if so, kudos) could be the result of a number of things. A fractured, struggling skate media ecosystem makes it harder to find out who these skaters are and why you should care about them unless you stumble across their Instagram pages; the global talent pool of skateboarders being so deep that it's difficult for people to stand out even as phenoms pop up every other month; and there seems to be less importance put on contest placings than there once was, at least when it comes to pursuing the "traditional" path of the professional skateboarder.

Whether it's any of that or a confluence of all factors and others, what it highlights is the importance of an institution like Tampa Am: even if those names are unfamiliar now, this is still one of skateboarding's best opportunities get your name out there, meet people, and showcase your skills, even if first place no longer springboards a person like it did "Spanky."

Personally, I'm excited to see some street footage from this David Loiseau character.

Now is the time of bullshitters

Rank: -2025
Mood: 💩

If there is one throughline that has woven its way into nearly all aspects of our current moment — this place in time we now occupy that, at turns, can feel like end times — that has become almost inescapable in its abundance and omnipresence, it is the lying. The institutionalized, ever-present shuffling of objective reality to the outskirts of shared reason.

Lying is not new. It's one of the oldest things we've got, which means we know its dangers and what happens when it's everywhere, in the walls like asbestos. Yet, it seems like now more than ever, the drywall is pregnant with it. Daily life bursting with this scratchy, poisonous thing.

There's such a surplus that it's made the liars lazy. The "zone has been flooded" to such a degree that we've acquiesced. The previous forms of recourse — shame, disavowal, consequences of any sort — have been defused by, get this, more lying. By an outright refusal of the truth.

It's why the president of the United States can scrap whatever trade negotiations might have existed with Canada and lob more tariffs at a former ally due to his anger at a television ad that uses archival audio of Ronald Reagan denouncing that exact wanton use of tariffs. The current president claimed that "CANADA CHEATED AND GOT CAUGHT," implying that those direct quotes from Reagan, publicly available, are some fabrication.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute then backed up the president's lies because the lying no longer matters. It is merely a half-assed means to an end. Or abject fealty. Those are often one and the same.

What is the mass push of generative AI products into every corner of our personal, business, and technological lives, than another lie (a useless product deemed useful) supporting another lie (an entire economy keeping itself afloat on the promise of these companies making something useful).

How else does one describe the proliferation of sports gambling and cryptocurrencies other than lies (false shortcuts to wealth) that distract from other lies (that our current capitalist system can be gamed or won when it is purposely structured to crush the poor and feed the wealthy).

The devastating culture war crusades against trans people, DEI, and "woke" are lies in the service of white Christian nationalist supremacy. Of fascism.

What makes all of these lies, big and small, even worse is how fucking stupid they all are. They don't stand up to scrutiny. It's brute-force idiocy. And without pushback or consequences, that stupidity begets more stupidity until it becomes the air we breathe. A common tongue that funnels down. Not just accepted, but expected. How else do you continue to explain this dumbass shit:

It will take aliens (or bankruptcy) to stop me from being a billionaire

Rank: 32,000,000
Mood: 👾💸

What fuels Rob Dyrdek's branching quests to become a billionaire, an old-money philanthropist, and the Master of Time itself is also what he himself swims in, like Red Bull-flavoured amniotic fluid: a ridiculous amount of cash from MTV.

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported some eye-popping financials related to Dyrdek's fifteen-year run hosting and producing the online clip show Ridiculousness for the former music television channel.

MTV pays Dyrdek, an ex-professional skateboarder turned serial media entrepreneur, at least $32.5 million a year for its typical 336 episode-per-year slate, according to court documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. Under its current deal, that could climb to more than $45 million a year if the show is picked up in 2028 and 2029.

The pay, which hasn’t been previously disclosed, includes bonuses as well as a $21,000-per-episode executive producer fee and an escalating $61,000-per-episode on-camera fee, which could rise to as much as $101,000 near the end of the current agreement, the court papers say. Dyrdek is deemed so critical to Ridiculousness that a credit agreement between the show’s production companies and their lenders require “key man” life insurance policies for him worth $200 million.

Besides the episode fees, Dyrdek gets a $2.5 million bonus each time MTV approves a new 168-episode batch, which typically occurs twice a year. He’s also entitled to a so-called phantom equity award for 12% of Superjacket’s enterprise value above $210 million. The equity award is scheduled to vest after the next roughly 168 episodes, court papers say.

Curiously, we know these figures because Dyrdek's production company, Superjacket, which is behind Ridiculousness, recently filed for bankruptcy. Superjacket, which Bloomberg notes doesn't retain library rights or own the intellectual property rights to Ridiculousness, claims "elections MTV made earlier this year under the production deal reduced company revenue, negatively impacting its ability to service its debt."

Advisers to Superjacket say they "sought Chapter 11 protection to protect its operations and prevent 'potential catastrophic consequences' from senior creditors taking over the business." Bloomberg also notes that "the bankruptcy was filed weeks after Paramount completed a merger with David Ellison’s Skydance Media," though apparently there aren't any plans to "sell or spin off Paramount’s cable networks, which include channels like MTV."

While Dyrdek has made moves to expand his portfolio, up to and including getting into the Cheeseball Business, there may be reason to believe he has to be worried about more than just aliens getting in the way of him becoming a billionaire.

UPDATE: This newsletter was published at 8:27am PST. At 8:30am PST, Variety reported that Ridiculousness has been cancelled after 46 seasons.

H/T to Templeton Elliott for originally sending this story along.

Something to consider:

Good thing about a terrible thing:

A good thing:

Good basketball thing:

Good pod round-up:

Another scourge of private equity thing:

Interesting new magazine alert:

Until next week… press your hands into the earth. Feel its cold, warmth, wet, grit. Remember to wash your hands, eventually.

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