Salad Days: DC Punk

When I started really skateboarding around 1985, everything changed for me. I didn't care enough about sports to actually try and be good at them and I never really got along with the people in my peer group that played sports or whatever. So when I discovered skateboarding, I started hanging out with different friends that liked to skateboard, I started changing the way I dressed to accommodate my skateboard lifestyle, and subsequently I started listening to different music. A friend gave me a tape one day, one side had The Dead Milkmen, the other side had the first Minor Threat album. I was blown away, it has such a different sound from the Van Halen and Iron Maiden albums I was into at the time, with the energy in the music and I loved the fact this music wasn't on the radio and you could go to your local teen center or community center to see them play when they toured. I listened to that Minor Threat tape over and over until I wore it out...and to this day its my all time favorite album. I always had a love for the music that came from the DC punk scene, though I was into a lot of the west coast punk, my heart was on the east coast and what was labeled "hardcore punk".

Anyway, here is a documentary on the scene. When I lived in DC in the late 90's, I met several people that were actually there to see this all happen. I'm sure they are in the scenes of this...here it is broken down in 8 fifteen minute episodes:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

Nike SB Chronicles, Vol. 3 | Lance Mountain

I hope I can still kickflip over picnic tables when I'm 51.

The Man!

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Mr. Dressen...

...invented the salad grind. Epicly Later'd Episode 1 of Eric Dressen. There's episode 1-4 so far...

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Andy Jenkins getting some work...

These nutz

The phrase "doing a line" brings immediate thoughts to differnt people depending on if you like to do drugs, creating artwork, or in my case...ride a skateboard. "Doing a line" in skateboarding is linking multiple difficult tricks in a row. When I think of a skateboarder who has that nailed, I think of Dennis Busenitz. Or as I like to call him, These nutz or Biz snatch, I'm not sure why. I skated with him about 10 years ago and the dude is amazing.

Latest video put out by Adidas with some of his footage in Europe...

TG fo' life

So not long after I got into skateboarding, the movie Back to the Future came out. I really didn't know much about skateboarding, such as brands, and who was cool or good at skating, I just tick tacked around my garage on my shiny new Variflex I had gotten for Christmas the year before. I had some plastic little boards growing up, but this was my first wider board and one I could balance standing up on. Back to the Future was a huge game changer for me. It was the first time I had seen someone do tricks outside of tick tacking around. Not long after that movie came out my buddy picked up the exact same board Marty McFly skeetched behind cars on in the movie. It was a VALTERRA! I was pretty jealous. It wasn't too long after that he had gotten his hands on a copy of The Bones Brigade Video Show somehow. It was huge eye opener to see people do other tricks besides push mongo and get drug behind cars around a fake city called Hill Valley. I was instantly hooked. My friend that had the Valterra was not rich, but got his parents to go out and buy him a brand new Mike McGill (exactly like the one on the wall at Tom's neon shop) and like the one in the Bones Brigade video. That video was also the first time I had ever seen Tommy Guerrero ride a skateboard. He instantly became my hero and I had to look like him, talk like him, grow my hair into a mullet like him, and ride his pro-model. Unfortunately I was a poor kid in a large family, so there wasn't much money to go around. By the time I started working around 13-14 and had money burning a hole in my pocket, I had been turned on to other great skate videos by Santa Cruz, Vision, Sims, and Blockhead. New pro-models had come out and Tommy's board wasn't as cutting edge as it once was, but I always loved the graphic. So I bought other boards and moved on. This was also a time when you couldn't order boards off the interwebs...you were stuck with whatever they had at the local skateshop, so it may be harder to find that Guerrero board you wanted so bad. Fast forward to the current time and I still think about that original graphic I loved so much. Powell Peralta recently decided to repop limited numbers of those original Bones Brigade boards they made and I finally got my chance to get my hands on one. So I scooped this up the minute I saw it. I am grateful to own this sweet piece of history and an important memory in my life...

Skateboarding changes everything...

Really missing this...

...right now. Good skating and I dig the editing.

hot banana on a cold morning

i very much live in the wrong state.

Surf N' Turf

I used to skate here as a kid during its second resurgence whenever my Mom would drive to Milwaukee and drop me off for the day here...still love to see old footage of it. This was a great part from Streets on Fire...

There's something beautiful...

...about a nice clean kickflip, and Clint Peterson shows how its done. Close call at 0:52

Firing Line: Tyson Bowerbank

Nice line...

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disposable: random essays on skateboard art

Who wants to go? It's in Rockford from May 6 to August 14. It'd be a nice afternoon ride one weekend...

Click the pic for more info...

As my pal Ronald McDonald would say...

...I'm lovin' it.

If the "Man" would stop making me work so much I would have some time to put together and put up some new original content.

Madtown to Houstown...

No pressure...only about 500 bones and you could probably find it cheaper. This weather should be enough to twist your arm a little too...

Wade Speyer...

...rulez it.

You'll...

...probably only get this if you skateboard. I have a few friends that could benefit from this. Hilarious...

Alumni's First Video

I gots the wall ride in the credits at the end and a hippie jump type trick in the friends section.

Get your rad on.

LAKAI VOLTAGE TOUR VIDEO from LAKAI LIMITED FOOTWEAR on Vimeo.