Who's the real animal?
Plus: Gabbers on Thames, Lakai on its replicant tip, TJ Rogers' new shoe leaked on LinkedIn? A low-effort travel blog, 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.
Bloke finally
Rank: 1
Mood: 💀🚫🇬🇧✔️
It seemed that those in the know had known for some time and were less than surprised, or simply happy, when Gabriel Summers announced his departure from longtime sponsor Zero Skateboards earlier this month.
What was more surprising than one of today's most Zero-coded skateboarders — at least in terms of what he chooses to skate, i.e. big rails, gaps, and other life-threatening things of that nature — leaving the company, was where he ended up.
Thames, the fashion brand that is ostensibly a skateboard company based in London, England, and helmed by Blondey McCoy, on paper, is the furthest rational option for Summers to choose. Even in the above video that celebrates his addition, the rest of the team skates almost exclusively small embankments and flat ledges — as low impact as it gets — while Summers' sole trick is a body-breaking gap to crooked grind on some unforgiving English crust.
It's a fascinating contrast of styles and a move that injects serious life into a brand that, while it does make some good-looking (if prohibitively expensive) products and some interesting projects, has always felt like the skateboarding side of it was secondary. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, especially if attention is being paid elsewhere, such as in design and storytelling. Perhaps that's why the brand has gained more mainstream traction and is, frankly, just more interesting than most. Still, it's nice to see McCoy invest in some top-tier skateboarding talent.
To that end, if McCoy is looking for another skateboarder to give a $300 jumper to, albeit one of negligible talent, but who loves to skate small banks and is also from a commonwealth country, I'm available.
Are you still you?
Rank: 5
Mood: 🪹
Branding has existed in some form for as long as people have been producing things. Early blacksmiths, ceramicists, farmers — they all put their signature on (or burned it into the flesh of) the item they had for sale. At some point following the Industrial Revolution, the mass production of goods and the increased scope of where those goods were sold and to whom led to more competition, and meant that companies needed to market themselves.
Brands went from the literal to the representative. Logos and wordmarks were designed to convey a level of quality and familiarity to the consumer. Marketing eventually became its own field of study, with courses being taught at Harvard as early as 1909. Necessity would then become an afterthought, as advertising agencies went to great lengths to sell us things we may or may not need, things that may or may not have any practical purpose. Subsequently, what people were conditioned to want was the idea of a brand. Then the brand, as we currently experience it, became nothing, if it was ever anything at all.
By this, I mean that the idea of what a brand name itself conveys is becoming increasingly difficult to hold onto, as companies seem to care less about their products and their audiences. Profit is the sole driver and consumption is expected. The purpose of that consumption has become detached from its motivation: a quality product that fulfills a need and is available for purchase.
What is supposed to motivate someone to connect with or even enjoy something like Prime Hydration? If you google the energy drink brand, it appears to be that it's owned by Logan Paul and KSI. What it tastes like or offers as a beverage is secondary.
Prime is a brand borne of the personal brands of its founders. As a product, it exists for no reason other than that two influencers correctly assumed they could make a lot of money by slapping their names on a bottle. It's a mark of notoriety, not quality. They could have just as easily sold lip chap or wet wipes.
Brands have become commodities in their own right — purchasable IP. The product they represent is now subordinate. Is Tim Hortons, the uber-popular Canadian coffee and donut chain, which hinges much of its marketing on a sterile essence of Canadiana, actually Canadian if it's owned by a multinational business conglomerate whose shares were once predominantly owned by a Brazilian investment firm? Or is that just a nametag stuck to the side of an interchangeable fast food joint?
It's an important question to ask, because when outside firms or something like private equity, one of the great ravagers of our time, purchases and hollows out a company and fires the people who once ran it, can that brand still be considered that brand, and that product that product, if the people who established it and gave it life are no longer around? Should a logo matter more than people? And, perhaps most importantly, do consumers care?
On Saturday, Lakai Limited Footwear uploaded its second tour video since the company was acquired by Marc Roca and his firm, Inversal, last year.
I wrote this after their first release in January:
LAKAI IN TOKYO offers high-level, generally enjoyable skateboarding. The edit lacks creative substance and any semblance of brand direction, but that doesn't seem to be the goal.
That still stands when describing last week's LAKAI IN BARCELONA. There is nothing that suggests they are trying to maintain the Lakai brand of old or establish a Lakai of now. It doesn't feel like anything. This emptiness isn't new in the world of business by any means, but that doesn't make it any less perverse to take something that people once cared about and use its memory against them to sell a long-degraded product.
Even Lakai's latest roster edition, the very talented Evon Martinez, doesn't seem to know how to talk about his new sponsor, titling a recent YouTube vlog "I QUIT MY DREAM SPONSOR...," which presumably means being flow for adidas was a dream and Lakai is, well, paying him, at the very least.
On this week's episode of The Bunt, Mike Carroll, a co-founder of Lakai, talks briefly about the brand's sale and what it's like to see it continue in this form. He doesn't fault the new riders on the team as he understands that "an opportunity is an opportunity," especially in the state that the industry is currently in, but also correctly notes that the work, care, and effort that he, Rick Howard, Andy Mueller, and the original team put into Lakai made it what it was. History does mean something.
What was purchased in the sale was a trademarked logo and whatever assets and stock remained. A production and distribution pipeline, if they were lucky. Can new meaning be ascribed to that? Carroll describes this version of Lakai as an ex moving on and dating someone new. I'd suggest it's more ontological, like encountering your replicant. Are you still you if your insides are gone, if all that's left is a facade?
Leaked on LinkedIn?
Rank: 3
Mood: 💻💦
Well, "leaked" might be the wrong word, but it was unexpected to get my first glimpse of TJ Rogers' debut signature shoe from éS, which comes out in August, that is the brands' first pro model release in a decade, and has yet to be promoted on their own channels, in a LinkedIn essay.
A quick google turned up another image of the shoe in a Boardsport Source fall/winter product preview article. An anti-climactic way to encounter it, instead of through a planned marketing activation, to be sure, though Rogers himself has been skating around Vancouver in it for the last week or so.
To be fair, not everyone can (or wants) accomplish the slow drip of an Andrew Reynolds New Balance 933 tease-and-release campaign. And hey, who knows, maybe LinkedIn is the new frontier of skateboard product marketing.
That aside, my main takeaway is that the shoe fits. As far as design goes, it looks to match Rogers' personality, personal aesthetic, and style on board — big, flashy, and technical. Great stuff, as far as that goes. That's one of the primary things I look for with a signature shoe: Does it represent the skater whose name is stitched on its tongue? These are monetized extensions of their personal brands, after all. What statement are they trying to make about themselves with this product that they hope we'll connect with and spend our hard-earned dollars on?
It's always a little unsettling when the answer is unclear...
Low-effort travel blog: Albertan summer #1
Rank: 1
Mood: 🦌🐻🦅
When the highway shrinks from four lanes to two, they become more comfortable. Where you turn off the highway onto a range road lined with trees and grassy ditches, they turn daring. It's those ditches that are dangerous. They can just as easily go alight from a discarded cigarette as provide cover for animals looking to cross.
Verdant, that's accurate. The fields we passed as I drove the rental car south, back toward Edmonton International Airport, were all sorts of green. Deep. Lush. Greens that pushed so far back into the horizon, I couldn't spot their end.
What we did spot were the animals. Magpies dipped and dodged the sporadic traffic, windshields windows to the next life, approaching at 110km per hour. Deer stood doe-eyed, as they are wont to do, waiting until the most inopportune moment to leap. A moose and its calf lumbered along beside us, their spindly legs doing just fine carting around such hulking mass. A black bear poked its head from the long grass and promptly retracted, knowing better than to test its luck.
Then we turned onto the highway, the homestretch. It expanded from two lanes to four. At the most inopportune moment, we realized we had long passed the last gas station and needed to pull over. So we did, in front of the City of Edmonton's welcome sign. We shuffled toward the ditch and pissed all over it.
Who's the real animal?
Some things to consider:
Brian Merchant
Kyle Chayka
Good thing:
jonah
Another good thing:
Spencer Ackerman
That's right, another good thing:
Good thing about bad spots:
Good pod round-up:
Village Psychic
Sara Levine
Good book things: Pre-orders are available now for Anthony Pappalardo and Nathan Nedorostek's expanded edition of Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music.
Anthony Pappalardo
As are pre-orders for Natalie Porter's Girl Gangs, Zines and Powerslides.
My essay collection Laser Quit Smoking Massage was shortlisted for an Alberta Book Publishing Award.
Until next week… don't worry about not being able to keep up with everything that's happening. Everything will always keep happening. You will find your way, your place, your time. The time to watch the new Atlantic Drift edit (it's good).
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.
