Lakai have released an explosive new edit featuring Norwegian powerhouse Karsten Kleppan who gets an official welcome to the team today in style. Press play for a huge bag of tricks and a pop to die for to take this week’s Skate Edit of the Week.
“I’ll be honest….I’m pretty confused with this Selfridges skateboard fashion fiasco. At first I thought it was a bit of a mug off to skateboarders/our industry etc but then it seemed to be gaining the predictable legitimate backing from certain industry figureheads and cool brands on the basis that ‘people need to get by’, ‘mouths to feed’ bladeeblaa.
Then, during a week’s break abroad, I tapped into the world wide web one day and was bombarded with SM notifications, texts and emails about an article that Nellie Eden had posted on the Marie Claire website. Being late to the party, I was unable to read Nellie’s instructions on how to dress and behave in order to pick up ones hot, single skater date, as it had already been removed from the MC site, but I got the general gist that the feature had caused a bit of a stir. Having read the article on my return, Crossfire asked me to put across my point of view.
Firstly, I’m a thirty year old female skateboarder and am no way in the same demographic that Marie Claire targets, therefore luckily, I have never been subjected to any of Nellie or her colleagues’ ill-informed articles before. When I say luckily, I really mean it. If I was one of the young and impressionable girls that make up MC’s readership I might have read this nonsense and missed out on the opportunity to try an activity that has led me to travel the world, meet lifelong friends and improve my fitness, health and well being! Explicitly telling young females not to try skateboarding?! The girls-only skate session at said skatepark last week saw over 50 attendees ripping it up and was so popular that they will be holding a second session on the 15th.
What was Nellie thinking?! It is the perfect time to be celebrating and encouraging women’s participation in sport what with the success stories from 2012 and more recently with a British female snowboarder making the front pages of the daily newspapers! However instead of rejoicing in this move towards getting more women active, Marie Claire suggests we all don our plaid uniforms (2005 called….!!!) and ogle at the ‘hot skater boys’ whilst doing our best mall grab with our shiny designer skateboards. Perfect stance to really close that gender inequality within sport and physical activity. This 19th century sexist depiction of women is disgusting and with a viewpoint like that, one can hardly wonder when a woman would find the time amongst the washing, cooking and ironing to hang out down at the skatepark!
The only part of Nellie’s article that I didn’t find too offensive was her use of the objectification of men. This type of thing within the media occurs about women on a daily basis. It’s evident in the fact that Page 3 still exists! So guys, don’t lose sleep over this one, and don’t tell me you aren’t secretly excited by the prospect of a swarm of female attention down at the skatepark. Plus ‘meals-on-wheels’ is actually pretty funny!
But what of the whole ‘fashion party’ side of things?! Well we all know that skate/surf lifestyle has been at the forefront of fashion since forever. Some can still remember the good old days of greeting a stranger simply because of the shoe brands they sported, but today we see townies in Vans, skaters in Adidas and chavs in DC’s. It’s a sorry state of affairs and this Selfridges thing is probably only really making it worse in the long term. Sure, they’re providing a pretty, little, unsustainable skatepark for 3 weeks, and they’re selling overpriced, designer skateboards that aren’t even meant for skateboarding, but please tell me how will it benefit skateboarding in the long run?
So Nellie, you’re welcome to our ankle swingers and sportswear brand skate shoes. You can have our bucket hats and £80 hoodies. You can even have our plaid shirts and weed leaf socks, but don’t, whatever you do, try to dissuade young female girls to try something positive. It’s something that will help them experience rad times like never before. If you’re a girl skater, or you are a girl who is interested in becoming a skateboarder, or even if you just know a girl who wants to skate, then encourage them to try new things, especially skateboarding.”
Lucy Adams
Read another recent ‘open letter to the Telegraph’ in reaction to Lee Coan’s awful blog on skateboarders here.
Looks like Tommy Guerrero is making his way over to the UK next week from San Francisco to play some live shows next week. Get down to one of the shows in Leeds or London to witness and support Real Skateboards’ head honcho whilst he shares some tunes from his new album ‘No Mans Land’.
Mon 14 April: Brudenell Social Club. Tickets.
Tuesday 15 April: The Underworld, London – Tickets
You pay to play in this game at the highest level, but the very best will always stick out from the crowd because they make it work. Andrew Reynolds took a varial heel test to the Hollywood High 16 spot…there was only one winner.
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If you have not visited Denmark yet then it awaits you with open arms. Spots for days, wonderful people and a banging skate scene. Upcomers Hugo Boserup, Sebastian Wang-Holm, Kern Handler and Jonas Daater get stuck into Danish spots for this latest Lakai edit.
Habitat’s Daryl Angel gets the Day in the Life treatment in this latest Monster Children production that has a nice cameo from our very own Ben Raemers who narrates.
Now this is what’s up. Thrasher’s amazing GX1000 series rolls forward in style today with Ben Gore, Jake Johnson, Brian Delatorre and many more skating every possible moving target. Trams, bangers, cop cars, street cleaners…everything on wheels is skateable.
Remember that scene in the Lost Boys where Sam goes into the comic book shop? He’s looking for a copy of Batman #14. He’s politely informed by the Frogg brothers that there are only five in existence. His response is priceless: “[There are] Four, actually. I’m always looking for the other three.”
Now, depending on how much you fetishize one-offs, limited editions, misprints and other purchase-incentive collectables, you will either see this as harmless collector braggadocio, or serious asshole syndrome.
By flexing his collector muscle in such a grand fashion, he will either remind you of Poison Idea (Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes) or your own sick hunger for commercialist trinkets. Some of us fall on both sides of the fence – we rabidly collect things just to have them, and we fucking hate other people for doing the same. I’ve got my hands up – I’m guilty. I love ‘deluxe’, ‘limited’, ‘super deluxe’… all that stuff. But if I see someone else bragging about how hard-to-get their own collection is, I feel sick.
You know the Wu-Tang Clan. Shit, we all know the Wu. We know what they’re all about. So it’ll come as no surprise that we had to mention this particular news story:
Wu-Tang Clan’s legendary spokesman, leader and resident genius The RZA (the artist formerly known as Bobby Digital) is causing the music world a whole heap of grief on this topic with his announcement of a new Wu-Tang Clan record that will be limited to ONE copy. That’s right, one, uno, un, eins… a single fucking copy.
But that’s not all – the record, handily titled The Wu – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin will be toured across the globe as a ‘pay to hear’ spectacle, which is essentially a gig without the performance aspect. The details aren’t finalized, but it would appear as though closely-guarded headphones will be installed in museums across the globe, and folks can pay $50 to sit for two hours to listen to the record. Once. All two hours of it.
So after that tour is over, the album will be sold to the highest bidder. Be it a banker, a car salesman, Alan Sugar, Rob Dyrdek,… whoever the fuck is rich enough and stupid enough to buy it will surely be deserving of the scorn sent their way by a public who aren’t guaranteed to ever be hearing it.
This, of course, raises many questions. Amongst them are:
“What happens if I need to piss/smoke/eat/cry/call somebody? Can I pause the record?”
“What happens if the album is shit? Do I get a refund?”
“Just how big of a mug do you think I am?”
“Is this Alcoholics Anonymous?”
It supposedly features all of the Clan, some FC Barcelona players and a string of unannounced guests. Exciting? You betcha. Worth the hassle? Probably not. I didn’t even know Xavi could rap, and I certainly wouldn’t want to hear Dani Alves’ bars, they’re probably wack.
Of course, this concept is, technically, revolutionary. The fact that all recorded music is free nowadays is not lost on the RZA, who wishes to put the ‘art’ back into ‘artist’ and ‘asshole’ back into ‘money grabbing asshole’ with this grand plan of his. It wouldn’t be the first time.
If you’ve heard any Wu-Tang album, especially the first one, you’ll know that they’re capable of brilliance. No, they are capable of making a perfect record. How close Once Upon a Time gets to that level is beyond a guess.
Of course, my guess is that this is actually a Funny Or Die hoax to promote their actual new album A Better Tomorrow. The site that’s marketing the album is called ‘Ezclziv scluzay’, which sounds a bit like Exclusive Clues Ay. Don’tcha think? I call bollocks. He might be having a little dig at Jay-Z, who sold $5,000,000 worth of his latest album to Samsung in some marketing shenanigans. Who knows?
I, for one, hope it’s one big joke and Funny Or Die will come out soon to claim the credit for this shit-heap (like the comedy terrorists they are) much like they did for the Flaming Lips’ announcement of a companion piece to Dark Side of the Moon. If it’s not a hoax, then the joke is on Wu-Tang Clan, I’m afraid.
In any case: RIP ODB.
“PS: EZCLZIV SCLUZAY = Easy clues I’ve schooled you’s ay?”
I think I’ve worked it out – if it’s a hoax.
Ross Horton
Thee Oh Sees
‘Penetrating Eye’
(Castle Face)
John O’Dwyer threatened a hiatus for Thee Oh Sees after last year’s ‘Floating Coffin’ but despite flirting with electronica with his Damaged Bug project he wasn’t ready to hammer the nail in that wooden box yet. He did move to LA from San Fran, but other than that it’s business as usual.
The new album is called ‘Drop’ and it’s about to ahem drop on Record Store Day. It was recorded in a banana ripening warehouse and the banana skinny on this record is that the quality has not slipped. ‘Penetrating Eye’ is the wince inducing intro track, part Ty Segall part Led Zep, as shredding an opening as you could hope to witness, it scared me shitless.
Nick Hutchings
Anti Hero are about to roll out a new Eagle Family series this month so look out for the Infant in 8.25, Adolescent 8.5 and Old 9.53.
