The Far East Skate Network have dropped some more visual treats that may or may not cause an epileptic seizure but will almost certainly cause you to have a great time.
Here the Tokyo-based skate-media collective behind the notoriously progressive Overground Broadcasting video get dressed up for some pretty intense nine-ball action. Just watch it already, it’s incredible.
Baker have never portrayed themselves as clean-cut, nor do they succumb to trends as transparently as handfuls of other companies. While edits are appearing like wildfire implying that skateboarding is still experiencing a comedown from the overdose of HDMA (ever wondered why all that shit is in slow-motion?), Baker haven’t strayed from lo-fi lurker footage at parties and an IMPACT typeface. To put this in perspective, Impact is the font used on all those lolcat macros that dominated the internet for a while. Hardly Brooklyn-based fixie-riding designers flicking imported Lucky Strike ash on their Polaroid collection and doing polejams to Belle and Sebastian is it?
What it is, is fucking rad. Drew is called The Boss for a reason, and that reason is because he runs a tight ship that regularly throws out shitty (read: awesome) footage and crude (read: awesome) decks for beat-up sketchy (read: awesome) riders. I had the pleasure of riding Braydon Szafranski’s ‘Bad Guys’ deck this week and had a baller time doing so. The deck is a garish orange and the graphic is a flick lighter beaming away at you like only a waking baking and shaking hotel room trashing skateboarder can. A Baker design through and through that fits in perfectly with a brand that shoots their team portraits in a liquor store.
The board is an 8” so my clumsy feet aren’t at risk of flopping around like they tend to. There’s deep pockets of potential pop, the concave is shapely and while I’m not nailing full-cab flips down big stairs like Braydon let me just say that bitches don’t know about my slappy noseslides. Bangers bangers bangers.
Stanley
When Ed Bowen isn’t dipping his dickfingers into the moist crack of layback grinds, he’s pounding away at the alphabet with them. After a long wait his new website is here and its full of delicious, steamy bullshit.
So if you need relationship advice from the trustworthy shaven love machine that is Dr. Ben Cundall (where did he get his PHD?) or want all the insight into all the ginger skateboarders in the world, or just want to know what happens when a pair of vans comes face to face with a VW van then head over to Writer’s Tailblock and get stuck in to lots of pubes, willies and all the good things associated with skateboarding.
So just pubes and willies then.
If you mix him up wrong, rudeboy he’s gonna get ya, get ya.
To celebrate DC’s collaboration with Chemical Records, Dave Snaddon has gone out and cracked up some stonking footage with the filmbot extraordinaire Tim Crawley whilst rocking that exclusive tee.
You can pick up the t-shirt HERE, but don’t hesitate to watch the promo below, it’s sick and full of huge beats.
DC Shoes x Chemical Records Collab Promo from Chemical on Vimeo.
Bay 66 has been treated to some weird and wonderful manny pads for this year’s Red Bull Manny Mania comp. I couldn’t overcome my manny phobia to skate them myself but was stoked on the many creative possibilities they offered.
The footage from the London qualifiers is up now so check below to see some disgustingly good balance action from the likes of Joe Moore, Will Greenfield, Jack Edwards and more…
Jack took the 1st place and will be heading off to NY to manny it out with the best. Ave’ it international steeze! Good luck Jack!
Peter Hewitt is the newest addition to the impressive line-up of skate-rats repping Innes Clothing.
Hewitt will be joining Innes founder, Matt Hensley, alongside Fred Gall, Chris Troy, Anthony Schultz and more…
See below for his welcome to the team video. It’s ripping!
The regular skateboarder-influenced-art show Love & Guts had an exhibition in New York this month. The exhibition was called ‘Eyes Wide Open‘ and was conceived as a platform for skateboarding’s most passionate artists to pay tribute to their fallen heroes.
For a look into some of the art that was featured and to hear commentary from the artists themselves (including Steve Caballero, Lance Mountain, Steve Olson, Chad Muska, Giovanni Reda, Pat Pgoho and more), have a look at the video below.
LOVE & GUTS – NEW YORK from KIRK on Vimeo.
A new, and long overdue skater-owned-shop in Leeds will be opening on July 10th.
Welcome was conceived by a collective of Leeds skateboarders and to celebrate the opening of the store will be throwing a huge party the night before. Based in the basement of Crash Records on the Headrow, Welcome have teamed up with A Nation Of Shopkeepers to kick things off in style.
The party will feature live performances from Serious Sam and The Magnificent alongside DJ sets, free booze and skate films showing throughout the night. Leeds heads get involved and don’t be too surprised if the team are nursing a monster hangover when doors open on the 10th.
Skate documentaries are – sadly – regularly overshadowed by the films that treat skateboarders as though they couldn’t begin to comprehend something as bold as a narrative. I’ve always been encouraging of skate flicks to have a little more talking and some more creative substance; despite the medium being able to stay afloat without them (I know when I was younger I was the sort to pick up magazines and just look at the pictures, I’m sure I wasn’t alone). Because when this is pulled off right (see Hot Chocolate or Under Wraps) they can reign among the best videos you’ve ever seen. Patrik Wallner’s visual journal of his trans-Siberian trip into some of the world’s most unique spots skated by some of the world’s most unique skaters not only achieves this, but its one of the best.
Running at 46 minutes, the film positions us first in Moscow, then proceeds to follow the troupe all the way to Hong Kong and not once does it tempt your attention to waver from it. The balance between commentary and pure skateboarding is perfect, and it’s not as if the stories are something every skater can’t relate to; it’s a film about getting out there and trying some new things after all. And it doesn’t exaggerate of romanticise anything like some sort of Wes Anderson film, even though the soundtrack isn’t far off one (no complaints, it’s perfect). This is fully gritty-gritty, you can feel every bump, the visuals themselves carry a sort of humidty, it’s rad.
The skateboarding alone is on a mesmerising tip, in which John Tanner really shines (his LINE on the Great Wall Of China is unfuckwithable), Michael Mackrodt kills it and Dan Cates does his thing on sketchy spots that no one else would dare touch. There are some slept-on skaters in there too; Stas Provotorov, Laurence Keefe, Lesha Naimushin, Danny Hochman and Dan Zvereff should cause a lot of you to start following them on their proverbial real-life Twitter account. Oh and Kenny Reed is in there, did you really doubt that a video that drifts through the barren landscapes of Mongolia and other washing-line riddled spots wouldn’t have his name written all over it? He steps in late and despite being plagued by illness and tropical injury he does the stuff he can do and no one else can. Big, stylish fakie tricks to introduce gliding lines; Kenny is one of my all-time favourite skaters to watch.
At certain moments, the documentary does what all documentaries try and rarely succeed in doing, prescribe the viewer with the feelings and emotions of those being documented. During the standing-class and sleeping-bus segments I felt crippled by claustrophobia. There is a strong sense of involvement in the group we’re following and the filmmaker should be applauded for this triumph, so don’t hesistate to pick this one up. It’s interesting, it’s full of spots you’ve never seen before, it’s great fun and it’s super sick.
Stanley
www.visualtraveling.com
The Crayon Skateboards team were in Cardiff recently for the launch of the recent deck collab with Pete Fowler and The Super Furry Animals. Enjoy this 3 minute edit that went online overnight and click here for a review of these superb decks that we will have up for grabs in a competition next week, don’t miss it.
Crayon ‘Weekend in Cardiff’ from george nevin on Vimeo
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