Crew members of REAL and Krooked Skateboards smash it down under in Australia in this new 6 minute tour edit. What a line up of heavy talent too, with footage of Ishod Wair, Chima Ferguson, Bobby Worrest, Sebo Walker, Ronnie Sandoval and Robbie Brockel.
Sick edit.
Krooked and The Smiths in one edit, what more do you want? Gonz cruises around NYC spots with Bobby Worrest, Mike Anderson, Brad Cromer, Sebo Walker, and Matt Gottwig in tow for this latest trip.
Get your mince pies on their new Fall catalogue when you’re done.
The amazing Bobby Worrest is back with a new section kicking off in Washington DC. Get on this.
Nollie. Photo by Sam McGuire.
Coming from Ohio where the winters are cold and wet, Kevin Terpening has traded his sheepskin and rabbit fur ear warmers for a tee shirt and shorts and moved to LA to get what he wanted in life, sponsorship and freedom to continue his motivation to skate all day and do nothing else.
Hooked up on Alien Workshop and éS this year, it’s all looking rosy for the dude that could well be the most siked bloke to ever grace this zine. Read on to find out why.
Easy Kevin, what’s going on?
Not much. Hanging out in the nice Californian weather.
How did you enter 2011?
Kept it pretty mellow. Just had some friends over and drank some beers.
You had a pretty good year on the board last year as the companies flowing you stuff recognised and made it all official… and now you’re on Alien Workshop proper. That’s gotta be a good start to a year right? Tell us how that all came together…
Alien has hooked me up for a long time and its always been my favorite company so I’m definitely siked. I think they seen some of the stuff we’ve done with éS and some videos and coverage and they were siked. It all came together at once. I’m siked to just keep it going this year and do more.
The Ohio collection must be sick, getting repped by a globally recognised company based in your hometown. Take us on a verbal journey back in time if you will… what was it like growing up skating there? Who got you into skating and what spots would you hit up?
I’m from a pretty small town that doesn’t have much to skate and has no skate scene whatsoever. My brother had been a skater growing up in the 80s and when I was around 10 he started skating again. I got siked on it and started rolling around with him and finally got my own board. He built a mini-ramp in our backyard and that’s what I learned to skate on. After that I built boxes and flatbars with my friends and we’d pretty much just skate in the driveway all day.
Do you miss it now that you live in California?
Yes. I think about it almost everyday. I can’t wait to go back in the spring.
Who set you up for that move and who were you living with to start off?
I graduated high school and went and visited my friend, Scott, in LA. He asked me if I wanted to get a job at val surf where he worked. I filled out an application and went home to Ohio. He called me and said they wanted to hire me so I moved in with him a few weeks later.
The idea is a little alien to us in the UK as our concentration of skating from the US is pretty evenly spread from coast to coast…but, like Kalis said on Quartersnacks, there seems to be this unwritten demand that skaters do their thing in Southern Cali. How much truth is there to this? Did you feel any pressure to move or was it strictly personal business?
I think it just makes it a little easier. The weather is amazing and there are tons of filmers/photographers. All the companies are here for the most part as well. People live in the middle of nowhere and still can skate and get coverage though. It’s not mandatory to live in California, I personally never moved to LA to just try to make it in skating. I wanted to move out of my situation in Ohio and do something new. I knew that it would be a little easier to make it in LA though. It’s funny, when I moved to LA and seen how things were, I didn’t really want to be a sponsored skater anymore.
BS 50-50 Photo: Anthony Acosta
Tell us your best story involving Cody Green…
NO more Cody stories. I love him.
I find it hard to imagine why you were kept flow for so long, especially after making the move and getting amongst it Cali. What were you doing other than skating to keep your head up?
Try to stay busy and work to pay bills and rent. I was lucky I had a lot of my friends from Ohio around to keep me happy. I was always just siked to be in LA and skating all around the city and taking buses. It was all so new to me.
I read a great little story in Skateboarder Mag about how you used to use the paper inside éS Shoes for toilet tissue… when they put you on fully did they give you some nicer paper or had you already grown accustomed to that crinkly stuff?
Haha! No but when I went to Sole Tech once, Rob Brink stole some toilet paper from the bathroom for my house!
Have you reached the point where you can wipe with your paycheck yet or is that a pleasure reserved only for those with a pro shoe?
Fuck no. I’m doing pretty good so I’m siked. I’m not rich though.
Nosebonk. Photo: Sam McGuire.
You’ve been in discussions with the designers at éS to make sure everything you rock is perfect right? Ever considered getting on a proper design tip and earning some dough? That’s like one step in the direction of completing skateboarding…
Things don’t have to be perfect. I just want things to fit right because it can be hard to find the right stuff sometimes. I’ll let the designers do the work though. I probably would fuck everything up!
So what have you got planned for this year? Any upcoming trips or edits to film for?
Just starting to film for an Alien Workshop project. Its early in the making but its gonna be rad. My friend Benny is filming for them now and he kills it so I’m siked.
That may be one of the first few times I’ve ever asked someone if they were filming for an ‘edit’ instead of a part in a video. What’s your view on the direction skate media is heading in?
I don’t know man. It is what it is. I don’t want to get to into it. I just want to film and skate with my friends and have a good time. People just want too much, too fast and that makes everything less quality. There’s also an overload of certain skaters.
Most, if not all the footage I’ve seen of you has been featured in online edits, with so many of them around it kind of leaves us lurkers in search of some radness a little over-satisfied, jaded and forgetful. Your éS Welcome Part was a total banger though… do you go out of your way to make your skating interesting or do you just skate how you want to skate and hope for the best?
I just try to skate what I’m siked on at the time. Some stuff you really think about and some stuff just happens. Sometimes you get burnt and just want to do fun shit. That’s where bean plants and shit come in handy!
Who out there in the US should we in the UK be paying attention to right now or expect to see great things from in 2011?
I’m not too sure haha! Stevie Perez is sick. He’s an éS flow rider. I’d like to see him come up.
What’s currently rocking your playlist the most?
I’ve been listening to the Minutemen a LOT.
Can you tell us of one specific moment in time, where everything is clicking and there is that moment of unparalleled clarity where you think ‘man, skateboarding is fucking rad’?
Me and Bobby (Worrest) skated the quarter pipe in my backyard for like two hours learning tricks the other night. It felt like were little kids again just siked to skate and learn shit. We got sparked. I guess just those days where you just get siked like you did when you were younger is what keeps me going.
Finally, any words of wisdom?
Just keep shredddding.
Watch Kevin do exactly that here:
A select crew of éS Footwear riders were in Austin, Texas recently for a catalog shoot with Atiba Jefferson. Naturally, we’re dealing with the likes of John Rattray, Bobby Worrest, Justin Eldridge and Mike Anderson, so of course they left with a banging edit too.
Have a look below for some visual goods and if you haven’t noticed already, this is the second news story this week that involves John Rattray. This week is awesome.
Below: Bobby getting rubbed up in the Soletech HQ (Photo: Stanley)
Bobby Worrest is one of those rare folk in skateboarding who seem to embody what many a self-proclaimed ‘true’ skateboarder associates with both skateboarding and the extended culture that comes inherant within it. Devoid of any artsy pretense, Bobby tears up streets in the same way he’d tear through a six pack of beer, drunkenly roar through a capella renditions of Slayer or cover grotty walls with spray paint.
Bobby gives a shit about the things that matter and doesn’t waste time with the things that don’t, so you can be guaranteed that with the Bobby Worrest approved garb that éS unloaded on stores this autumn that you’ll get what you pay for. Solid materials, no-bullshit design and stuff that gets the job done in the raddest way possible. Just like his First Blood shoe (which happens to be one of our absolute favourites from the last decade) before it, we were a little more than stoked to try out some of his signature clothes.
Read on below for a top-to-toe review of Bobby’s Wrecker Cap, Chop Jacket and Worrest 2 Jean and follow this link for our linguistic rimjob of his First Blood shoe.
Wrecker Starter Hat
So let’s tackle these from the head down. Now, New Era might be what first springs to mind when thinking of fitted caps but Starter were the definitive hat brand in the late 80s and early 90s, rocking that snapped back harder than your 9-year-old self did on summer holiday trips to the seaside. Bobby’s collab with the hat-champs is a rocking callback not to awkward family trips, but thankfully recalls the styles of early east coast subway graffiti writers and b-boys alike. Awesome.
It fits nice and tight, even on my ridiculously shaped head, is super comfortable and the custom twill patch logo on the front looks dope too. Very Bobby so far…
Chop Jacket (Tobacco)
At first glance, this cotton quilted garage jacket may remind you of those that tend to frequent buses so much that they have their own pass and somehow know everyone on-board. Maybe it’s the mouldy tobacco colourway that evoked these connotations but on second glance I’m already kind of into it. In fact, my reaction to this jacket kind of went remarkably like this.
It’s as comfortable as what I’d imagine wearing your bed would be, only it’s ever so slightly more casual and inconspicuous than leaving the house in a king size duvet. So when it’s spuds-u-like outside (like the perpetually freezing east coast) you can keep cozy. Want proof? Try to imagine Bobby Worrest shivering… you can’t. Bobby Worrest doesn’t shiver.
The colourway itself is so beige it’s actually rad, plus the twin front pockets are deep enough to carry all your bus passes, bits of tissue and snack size mars bars. If you’re not sold on first glance, then you’ll be surprised how styling you could be in this. It does the jacket job, and it does it well.
Eli Shirt (Gold)
A collection can never be without a woven plaid flannel number, and the Eli is a fine example of how to fully complete a clothing line. The Eli comes in a traditional red/black colourway for all those who love buying into all that wood-chopping, animal-loving, cigarette-smoking, beer-swilling malarky and in this mustardy gold/yellow that we were told to wear and tear. Generally, it’s as hard to stand-out with flannel shirt design as it is to go wrong with it, but this particular colourway is a rare gem that you won’t find in the local market.
The Eli is a mid-weight flannel that serves as a solid layer to aid you in your constant battle against the bitter winds of winter but not feel too bulky while out skating. There’s dual chest pocket action providing a miniature time capsule into the 50s should you choose to keep a comb or pack of smokes close to your heart. Overall, a versatile piece of comfortable cotton in traditional buffalo plaid and a worthy addition to your wardrobe that’s probably filled with substitute picnic blankets as it already is.
Worrest 2 (Midnight Wash)
These denim wonders are nowhere near as poetic as the colourway ‘midnight wash’ might implicate, a definite good thing. If my arguement why you should be repping Worrest’s signature gear is primarily concerned with how it replicates the ‘get shit done’ mentality then these jeans would be the perfect example. These are a refreshingly plain pair of jeans that combine cotton with stretch denim to provide that massively comfortable bit of give. They are a regular fit and haven’t once irritated the areas most frustratingly prone to irritation. That’s right gents, your balls are safe. Bobby wouldn’t have it any other way.
The usual five pockets are there in the usual places, the fly zips up and down easily, the little shield éS logo is a nice touch and it even comes complete with a patterned shoelace belt to save you raiding your wardrobe for a spare. I couldn’t ask for a better pair of jeans. Bobby and éS come up trumps yet again with these. Highly recommended.
Stanley
Back in July when we re-launched this mag we had the pleasure of trying out a limited edition version of the First Blood signature shoe from éS rider and Beast from the East, Bobby Worrest and we were not disappointed. Well actually that’s a lie, we were actually gutted that éS had not released the leather version of these in plain black once their collab with graf artist Cycle had passed as they are one hell of a skate shoe and in leather they are as slick looking as Ice-T and his mates on the front of the Power sleeve.
After searching the web for simple black versions I found these black, red and gum sole versions in suede and they were that good that I ordered two pairs. Sometimes if you love a shoe that much and think that it suits your needs it’s always worth investing for the future as they do become harder to find as time ticks on.
Worrest’s kicks come in various other colours and are full of the usual goodness like the System G2 malarkey in the heel and that griptape sucking, vulcanized sole that was just made for skateboarding. It’s the most simple skate shoe ever made and on par with the Etnies Faction- no fancy shit, comfortable as hell with a thin padded tongue with a beer inspired logo fitted with those elastic tongue-centering straps that hold your entire life together. What more do you want from a skate shoe? Everyone has their own styles but for me I need look no further.
Rambo was the last surviving member of his unit in First Blood, the movie that I guess inspired the name of these kicks and with that in mind I believe it’s worth fighting everyone in your path to get a pair of these before they become ‘last year’s collection’.
MT
When we visited Soletech’s labs in LA last summer, Bobby Worrest’s collection was being prepped and looked like one of the highlights of 2010. A year later and Bobby’s signature éS shoe the First Blood is being voted by most skaters as one of the best shoes on the market.
This month Bobby has collab’d his successful shoe with Cycle– a graffiti artist famous for his artwork spanning over 20 years in Washington DC. The 2 guys met in a local bar, shot the shit and got their heads down to design this end product.
The shoes are strong, comfortable and lightweight and made from a wonderful shiny leather that makes you feel as though you have more than just a skate shoe on your feet. The tongue is not too fat that it gets in the way, the System G2™ heel cushioning gel insert provides cushioning only found in a Soletech shoe which feels perfect and skate straight out of the box.
The suede versions of course tend to get battered a little harder where your feet scrape the griptape when you ollie so these leather versions should last you a little longer which is worth thinking about if you go through skate shoes like Chunk does Baby Ruth’s.
MT
Photos and words by Joe Moynihan
I find myself three hours into a cross-Atlantic flight, mindlessly eating vacuum-packed sludge while I watch Drew’s section from This Is Skateboarding for the nine thousandth time and doing everything I can to avoid eye-contact with the strangely terrifying person I have had the misfortune of being sat next to.
It is at this moment I realise that the flight attendant is in fact Gok Wan, had he lived on Californian breakfast burritos throughout his entire life and actually didn’t know how to look good naked, at all. He even had that horrible accent. ‘Coffee Sir?’ I shudder to recall, even now. In terror, I mistakenly look at the person sitting next to me and discover what can only be Dibble’s long-lost twin brother. Shit the bed and sleep in it, no wonder I was scared (I kid, I kid). None the less, I named him Dobble. I couldn’t help but wonder though: Is this flight filled with doppelgangers a cryptic omen of what is to come? Well, kind of.
Wait, what? So here’s what this account is about. Our skateboarding brothers at Sole Tech (Etnies, éS, Emerica, Altamont) kindly invited us skateboarding media-types from around the globe to stop lurking in our respective countries and come and hang out at their labs in Orange County, CA to get an insight into the ever-progressing System G2 heel cushion and E-Suede, have a skate in the super Etnies Training Facility and get a sneak preview of some of the shoes dropping later this year. Sounds too good to be true, right?
For a while, as I looked over to Dobble to check if he was asleep so I could have a piss without talking to him, I thought it was. But after twenty-six hours of battling through snow, customs (are you SERIOUS, America?), terrible in-flight movies and vicious lookalikes I ended up in Pierre’s Marina Lofts ready for three days of non-stop skateboarding. Here’s how this epic sausage-fest went down.
The Euros arrive first, before things really kick off (in more ways than one). Our wonderful host, James Appleby from Sole Tech Europe greets us with one of the countless cans of Blue Ribbon (imagine Coors Light, but lighter) and shows us around our home for the weekend. Pierre knows how to fucking LIVE. Yet despite these fairly spectacular distractions, it’s only a short amount of time before we all nerd out and start showing each other our magazines, scene videos and exchange some stories from where we’re all from. We are skateboarders after all; contrary to mainstream belief, we’re the friendliest neeks out there. Give us a beer and a laptop and there’s no stopping us.
The Euro-pad (unsurprisingly the smaller of the lofts, and even more unsurprisingly the cleaner of the two at the end of the trip) was shared by Fred Demard from France’s Soma Magazine, Angel Sanz from Uno reppin’ Barcelona, Holger Von Krosigk from Germany’s Place Magazine, the Italian Davide Biondani and the Dutch Love-Machine, Jeroen Smeets on behalf of Reload Magazine. Straight-up the raddest roommates an awkward Essex lad from Wales could ask for; and all as passionate about this ridiculous wooden thing on wheels that has dictated our entire lives, and brought us all together for this trip. Planes, delicious Blue Beet cuisine and early blogging don’t half take it out of you mind. Get the sleep in while you bloody well can.
The day begins with James having fun pretending to be a photography tutor guiding us around Newport Beach while we all have fun pretending (badly) not to be tourists. Those cameras permanently attached to our faces weren’t fooling anyone, and there I was wearing nothing but a flimsy t-shirt during California’s ‘terrible weather’ period. James looks at me and grumbles, ‘you’re so obviously British‘. Outed!
Back at the lofts, it’s time for the arrival of the American press dudes. Without so much as a ‘Hey, what’s up?’, Etnies Marketing Head Honcho and part-time lunatic, Ashton Maxfield barges into Euro-Pad sporting nothing more than shades and a killer tache, picks up a chair and throws it out the window as if it had dissed said killer tache and spat in his face. The broken chair is then assembled into a pile and set alight; less than ten minutes later Holger runs outside and throws a mean frontside flip over the small inferno. The weekend has landed.
After geeking out over the staggering awesomeness of Mindfield for the rest of the afternoon, Pierre André and Don Brown, the masterminds behind Sole Tech and freestyle legends, introduce themselves and take us on a cruise in Newport Harbour. Meeting people of such status is often unnerving, but can of Blue Ribbon in hand and a ridiculous leather chair made of skateboards to laugh at, talking to the two is just like standing on a mini-ramp platform, chatting about nothing and happily sharing the unmatched atmosphere that is generated by skateboarding. If you want people to look after your feet when shralping, these are the guys are who you go for. Additionally, if you want people to throw a BBQ with an impromptu food-fight, these are also the dudes to see. Check out the footage courtesy of the Skateboard Mag’s three-trick extraordinaire and generally super-rad broseph, Paul ‘Animal’ Chan. Messy…
There are two perfect remedies for a monster Blue Ribbon hangover. Coffee, and -apparently- Bloody Marys. At least, this was what was on offer after shaking hands with The Boss and The Other Boss at the Sole Tech Institute. I’m not even kidding. Bloody Marys work a treat too! They go down damn fine with some tasty new shoes too, which is after all what we were all here to see this morning, after Don arrives fresh from the slammer that is. Pro tip: if you find yourself being accosted by the police who are yelling “What are you doing?! Do you want to be arrested?!” while drunkenly trying to drive some unknown dude’s boat down Newport Blvd at three in the morning, do not, whatever you do, reply with “HELL YEAH!”
All in the name – Don Brown is a Don.
First up are Etnies, and a cheeky look into the gorgeous Black Label collaboration that serves as Kyle Leeper’s new pro model. The Perro is a great shoe in itself, boasting the new Kevlar fabric addition to the System G2 Cushioning Gel. Kevlar is the same material used in bullet-proof vests, and protect your heels as if they were guarding the President through the not-so-blue states. On top of that, you have some gnarly Black Label graphic that keeps style looking tight, whilst obviously not slacking on substance. Be hyped because the shoe has dropped alongside the new Black Label video. Oh, there’s also a Thunder Collab to get hyped on – did I mention in the photoblog that the tag is a riser pad? Well, it is, and come on, how cool is that?
éS are next, and Bobby Worrest is summoned to the stage to speak a little about his debut shoe. The hangover may have got the better of him and Bobby’s conclusion on these bad boys is “yeah, they’re good. I like them.” Similar to Cardiff’s loveable Pirate Man, Bobby is an all-round nice guy, and has a soft-spot for Rambo. ‘First Blood‘ is the name of his shoe and you know what? They’re pretty damn good, and I bloody like them. A lot. I’m wearing them right now as I type this very sentence. Aesthetically simple, technologically awesome. The Sole Tech lab geeks are skaters too remember. They know what we want.
The Boss, coffee in hand, is up next and delivers a cool, calm and straight-to-the-point speech on why his new Cruiser shoes are boss, why Altamont’s Fall line-up is boss and why working for Soletech is boss. After a short video of Drew being Drew, he takes a sip of coffee and poignantly remarks how he ‘just wants to work with skaters’, with a nod towards Pierre and everyone in the room feeling some wonderful bromance. If it wasn’t for the upcoming visit to the TF, I’d have whacked my laptop out and posted in the Stoked thread on Sidewalk before BDF could say edit my post and imply that I am a gaylord. We all love the bromance.
Just before invading the mind-blowing awesomeness of the Etnies Training Facility (or Etnies TF if you want to abbreviate things and therefore resemble someone who is cool and abbreviates things) we had some more traditional Californian cuisine, courtesy of Mexico, that tastes delicious but does unspeakable things to a European stomach. In this interim, a couple of us now dicky-tummied Euros had the pleasure of speaking with Rob Carlos, a designer from Etnies Plus. Etnies Plus are already known for making some bad ass collabs with killer artists, and we were happy to hear of a future collaboration with So-Me of Ed Banger Records. I don’t know about you, but I’m hyped.
I won’t go into too much detail about the incredible TF, as any footage of the place speaks for itself. But let me just tell you that journalist types can shred too! Holger tore the place apart with style and the other French Fred got buck-wild on the mini. Animal Chan and I rinsed our three tricks for four hours and then sat back and happily watched as Malto, Bledsoe, Worrest and Mikey Taylor showed us all up. Check the brief interview I had with Mikey to hear his recollection on the GNARLIEST slam / collision I have ever seen. Ridiculous. Click here for an interview with him from this trip.
Before we hit the bars, we had an in-depth tour into the STI Lab (imagine what The Berrics might have looked like if it were designed by Steve Berra and Dexter; as in the loveable, animated, four-eyed, ginger genius, not the serial killer played by Michael Hall). Inside the labs were a lot of things, that a lot of us honestly had no understanding of whatsoever. Apart from ESPN’s Josh Brooks, who came out of his shell and revealed himself to be a secret physics nerd: so big ups to him, his knowledge of forces and his awesome RUN DMC style Obama tee. The tour itself was a fantastic insight into how these things we throw on our feet and slowly ruin are put together; just check out the pictures and peep the relentless testing each shoe is subjected to before it is deemed safe and worthy of making your feet look and feel a lot nicer.
And it was in that lab that I came to realise the significance of those doppelgangers that plagued my journey out here. It’s all to do with repetition and difference, something that Sole Tech has nailed. Steve Neale is a known bunty man (as anyone who has studied film will back me up on), but he did spearhead this particular theory on how things are constantly improved by repeating elements that work, and playing with them ever so slightly to make something new and great. Sole Tech are doing just that. System G2 was great, but adding the Kevlar and creating G2 Platinum is perfect evidence of making something great, well, greater. The same can be applied to E-Suede. Look at the comparison of suede and e-suede after 2500 rotations in the KICKFLIP MACHINE (!) to see what I’m getting at.
Unfortunately the same praise cannot be said about American Airlines, as I sit back in my chair on my flight back to London and continue to get offered disgusting coffee by an even shittier Gok Wan variation… all the while trying not to make eye-contact with what appears to be someone I will later name ‘Dubble’.
Did you know that when throwing yourself down the London Bridge ten, more often than not you exert around 18-times body weight straight onto your heel or toes?
Eternal props to all the dudes at Sole Tech for bringing us media-heads together and showing us all how these things on our feet and body we often take for granted is so generously made for us without asking for anything in return other than your support. Extra thanks to James for being a rad host, and all the safe-as-fuck dudes I had the pleasure of meeting out there. And big up skateboarding, for being the greatest fucking thing in the world.
If you enjoyed this feature, click here with an interview from back in February 2006 with Pierre André Senizergues.
