Alright, I just received an IM from my boy Keegan right now letting me know about a skateboarding petition to create a new concrete skatepark for the city of Malibu, CA. If any of you guys are TRUE skateboarding heads then you should go here and sign it! (It only took me 2 minutes.) Werd has it that the Maloof Brothers might donate some money into this so the more signatures that they see, the more of a chance that this is going to happen! Do your part. – RICKS
To: Malibu City Council
As you may know, Malibu’s youth is filled with skateboarders. There are 2 shops that carry skateboarding equipment, and 2 small skate parks. 1 small half pipe at Malibu High, and the Papa Jacks skate park in Cross Creek. Papa Jacks skate park is in danger due to development, and the youth of Malibu is demanding a replacement. However, we need your help. We want a new area to build a legitimate full blown cement skatepark that will cater to all levels of skateboarding, as well as other activities such as BMX and Rollerblading. The park will be built out of private funds from donations within the community and will not take away from any funding for any other local activities or projects. Without this skatepark, it will send many kids to skate other areas in Malibu where it is illegal to skate, such as Banks, Schools, and businesses, further creating more strife and altercations between skateboarders and communities. Private property issues are only getting stricter. By signing the petition below, I state that I am in support of building a new skatepark, keeping the local skateboarders off private property in Malibu, and away from unproductive extracurricular activities. Please, with your time, we can get a park built soon, and continue to entertain the youth of Malibu in a positive way.
Alright this blog entry goes out to all my haters. We’ve been getting random emails alot lately from “Mr. Hater’s A-Z” in regards to our Skulls And Crossboards logo. The same question always pops-up, “Why are you guys biting FOURSTAR?” or “FOURSTAR has a logo like yours.“ I’m going to have to set the fucken record straight on this one so that you really know what’s up. But before we start up any type of controversy or beef with anyone, let me just start off by saying that we’re simply stating our case from all the hatemail that we’ve been getting. We’re not trying to talk shit on FOURSTAR or anyone established with them. Much respect goes out to them. We acknowledge FOURSTAR as a premiere clothing brand in the skate industry and give them props for the elite team that they have put together. Any team with The Gonz, Guy Mariano, Mike Carroll, Eric Koston and now Sean Malto put all into one is absolutely butters in my book.
So let me take you on a trip down memory lane. My boy Mike Morales originally came up with our SAC logo around the late 90’s simply as a sticker for the crew to slap around the city. Coincidentally FOURSTAR starts up around the same time with their original logo here. A couple of years fly by and FOURSTAR creates their version of a Skull And Crossboards logo here. Now you would think that a well established company like FOURSTAR would (or should) copyright a trademark like that right? WRONG. We were the first ones to have the Skulls And Crossboards (SAC) logo and Mike was smart enough to copyright that thing with the little money that he had. (Just check out the little copyright symbol on our logo. Notice how FOURSTAR doesn’t have a copyright symbol on any of their marketing?)
Don’t get this twisted though. We’re not claiming copyright infringement or anything like that since the logos have different looking skateboards and skulls. I mean we’re just as guilty of flipping the Thrasher’s Skate And Destroy font.
Fast forward to the present date, FOURSTAR uses their version of the Skull And Crossboards logo on all of their clothing, hats, catalogs and is widely known throughout the skateboarding industry having kids recognizing the logo as FOURSTAR’s and not Skate All Cities. So before any of you haters start sending us some more hatermail about our logo, do your homework son. I’ll let you decide on who’s biting who.
As we promised to you last Friday, we attended The Ambassador Series grand opening over the weekend to give you coverage of the event. To our disappointment the event didn’t live up to it’s “hype”. We initially discovered about the event online through their website. After watching the 3 minute clip of RAEKWON hyping it up as well as having P-Rod & Daewon as the faces behind it’s grand opening, we were hooked. I mean, it was the first 100% Street Skate Plaza right? Wrong. It should have been the 100% Street Skate Skatepark. (It’s not a “skate plaza”. THIS is a skate plaza.) There might have been a little bit of misunderstanding from the spelling or something? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking down on the positivity that the city is bringing for the skateboarding community but if you’re going to claim something then you better have something to back it up.
Overall, the event was just pure madness with about 200-300 skaters running around and trying to do flatground tricks in front of the obstacles. (It’s pretty much expected for a grand opening of that status so it’s understandable.) Don’t expect to go to the spot anytime soon if you want to get a good skate session going since it’s fairly new and will be full of groms getting in your way. However, it’s definitely worth a trip visiting if you’re ever in the Long Beach/San Pedro area. Go check it out for yourself.
Ambassador Plaza Wilmington Recreation Center
325 South Neptune Ave.
Wilmington, CA 90744
Phone: (310) 548-7645 Directions
The Steel Wheels Show (aka Rails & Relics 2) will be showcased in Atlanta, Georgia this year at the Relapse Theatre on Saturday, October 4th. The Skate All Cities unit has been lucky enough to be one of the featured artists in the show as well as one of the many co-sponsors of the event. As I mentioned earlier during the week, HUCK and I have been hard at work painting our toy freights. We are pretty happy with the final results. We will have some HAELER boards as well as our new t-shirt drops available at the show. If you’re in or around the Atlanta, Georgia area that day make sure to stop by and check it out. There is an incredible line-up of freight artists that will be attending. Everyone from the West Coast to the East Coast will be putting it down. Unfortunately for us we won’t be attending the event as we are in the process of filming for our video during those dates. (Note: Click on the images to enlarge for a better view of the line-up of artists.)
We usually blow up spots with our Spotcheck category by giving you addresses of the locations and descriptions of the spots but for this one out in Fountain Valley we’re going to have to keep it a secret. It’s a top secret ditch with 2 double-sided buttery ledges, a quarter pipe to wall ride and a random bump. We connected with the Costa Mesa SAC’s (LUMBO and BOCKCHOY) to see what was up with the location. Werd has it on the street that some local rippers by the name of David Loy (and friends) created the ledges. So out of respect we’re not going to “blow it up” by telling you where it is so all 10,000+ of you skaters/writers that check this blog everyday can go burn it out. Sorry, but no help over here. Besides, you’ll never be able to find it. Trust. (It’s about a 1 mile skate, deep into a ditch, in order for you to even be able to catch a mere glimpse.)
We’ve been hard at work trying to film for our upcoming skateboarding/graffiti video but we’re gonna be honest with you. This shit is only about only 5% done. IF THAT. Injuries, The Law, Lagging, and Procrastination having playing major key roles in our crew not being able to collect footage as fast as we wanted. Oh well, what can you do. Part of life’s everyday struggles. At least you can always check up on our progress through our CLIP OF THE WEEK’s every Sunday.
BOCKCHOY
1 Mile Drive
Fountain Valley Ditch
Instead of trying to skate the whole mile to the spot we decided to bring LUMBO’s car down to the ditch and have Masaki & Chan hang on to the sides of the car to save time and energy. You can see Masaki was having a great time while Chan was just chillin. You are probably wondering why we didn’t just put them in the back of the car? Well LUMBO had his whole rear seat full of LRG gear from showcasing up and down the California coast, so there was no room. Duh!
Masaki
Chan
Random Bump
LUMBO – Backside Tailslide
Here’s some footage that I took with my regular point and shoot camera. We didn’t bring the VX1000 that day so sorry for the quality. The homey Chan broke it off with a pretty dope trick to end this weeks Clip Of The Week before my camera battery died.
Refreshments
Chan – Backside Nosegrind
While we were there we met a pretty cool dude by the name of Gabe. It’s a pretty small world because he asked us where we were from and said if we knew our homegirl Cunan. I guess that they use to ride for Pharmacy together back in the day. He was nice enough to drop this Backside Wallride from the quarter pipe to wall for me to take pics of.
LA High is (or was) famous for it’s tiled bank ledges and most importantly a white 4 stair rail in the Cafeteria area where everyone and their mom has done everything on it. (Even we got down on it.) I still think Wade Desarmos Backside Heelflip to Back Smith in FILMBOT was the best trick on it so far. (Check out the 1:42-1:48 mark here.) But hey, I haven’t been keeping up with any of the current skate videos as of much lately so I wouldn’t know about any of the new stuff that has gone down.
For beginners, the front entrance of the school has a downhill slope where you usually hit the tile-banked ledge on the left side first and then the right side afterwards. The ledges are super chunky nowadays so you won’t have any luck nosegrinding it too easily. It’s doable but pretty sketchy.
I heard that there was a safety or building violation if you don’t have a handrail going down stairs or something like that? Knowing that, the architect of this high school (or whoever is responsible) is still willing to risk fines in order to prevent skateboarders from coming here to skate. Ouch! This goes back to my last blog entry about how much power we have as skateboarders changing the architecture around us. SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME!
No More White Handrail
Located near the back of the school in the Aquatic Center are 4 blue ledges that was more right up our alley. Make sure to bring your wax when you go cause it was super-sticky when we skated it. The heat from the sun just melts all of the wax away.
George – Switch Backtail or Fakie 180 to Front Nose?
We stopped by the ACTIVE in Westwood really quick for Beto to grip his new HAELER board before we went out to go skate Los Angeles High School. If any of you guys have been in the skateboarding game for some time now then you know that ACTIVE is doing a damn good job expanding their stores up and down the coast of California. I think that they got like 25 stores opened now? Pretty nuts in my opinion. Good for them. It also doesn’t hurt to have one of the illest skateshop teams in the game with riders such as Eric Koston, Mark Appleyard, Andrew Reynolds, Paul Rodriguez and a shitload of pro-ams that I can’t list off right now. (The list goes on forever.) On top of that they have a pretty legit website where you can order your Nike SB’s for a reasonable price. After getting huge air bubbles on Beto’s deck (Thanks to the dude working the skate section who doesn’t even skate.), we asked the sahweet blonde chick working the counter if we can watch the new FALLEN video. All I gotta say is that “hip-hop to hesh in 1 minute” Mr. Chris Cole puts it fucken dooowwwnnn with 2 parts. “Time to go skate!” or is it “Damn, I quit.”
I just received a photo of a Nollie Heelflip at the Santa Barbara skatepark through email right now from my boy Adrian Adrid (Check out the 1:03-1:07 mark here). On top of being a super ill skateboarder he also handles it both on and off the camera. You best believe that I landed “bolts” on this one. ALL DAY.
Remember when we were talking about getting together as a community and building a LA Skate Plaza just a couple of days ago? Well HOLYFUCKENSHIT, looks like this is turning into a reality!
Don’t miss out on the grand opening of Los Angeles’ first 100% Street Skate Plaza! The Ambassadors, Councilwoman Janice Hahn, and the City of Los Angeles are holding this event on Saturday, September 27th from 12pm-4pm in the city of Wilmington. This means TOMORROW! The skatepark is suppose to have street obstacles similar to the DWP & Fairfax Ledges, and the LA High Banks. P-Rod and Daewon Song will be there as the guest skaters hosting this event as well as of some of your favorite hip hop artists such as Raekwon, Pete Rock, Chino XL and DJ Premiere. There’s going to be giveaways from the sponsors of the events by: Nike, Plan B, & Nixon Watches. Go visit their website to find out more and make sure to check out the video clip introduction by RAEKWON.
Ambassador Plaza September 27th, 2008 from 1pm-4pm
Wilmington Recreation Center
325 Neptune Ave.
Wilmington, CA 90744
Phone: (310) 548-7645 Directions
