Park Report: Waterlogged Love

  Great day for giving your lady skate lessons.

MagPile - Wild Dragon Ride

{o} Pommier

   Stumbled upon this thing a few years ago when lurking around SFU in Burnaby with the Kreep.... it was one of those times when your mind gets blown by how gnarly a spot is in person. Of course Paul kickflipped into it. He's noseblunted rails so big you need binoculars to see him at the top. In the video footage of this you can see an appropriate reaction from a bystander in the background. Damn right it got the cover.

Off the Record #11 - Real Guns

  Sometimes you look for a specific album, or song, for ages..... and then you end up finding it for dirt cheap. That's exactly what happened when I wandered into a little basement shop in Brooklyn last year on a whim. After digging through a large amount of mostly unorganized vinyl, I found this copy of Gil Scott Heron's 1981 album, Reflections, that I had never seen anywhere - original or reissue. Lucky for me it was $4-. 

  This album features one of my favorite GSH songs, "Gun", which I first heard in Real's "Real to Reel" video from 2001. They couldn't have picked a better song to accompany the smooth skateboarding of Nate Jones, and as soon as I saw that part, the song was forever stuck in my head just as much as the image of Nate's 360 flips.... and pretty much anything else he decided to do on his skateboard. The guy just knew how to make it look good. No idea what Nate is doing these days... but his part in that video still comes up when talking with skaters who appreciate style over stunts. 

 Saturday nights just ain't that special..... I miss DJing this stuff at The Waldorf for Endless Summer. Hopefully we can find a new home for the night in the near future.

Park Report: These Emotional Blades

They try to tell me who I am....

I'll show them.

MagPile - Eatons Minor

CLICK TO PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

   A young Aaron Johnson tosses a bomb over the can at Eatons in Vancouver for his first interview ever (photo Kyle Shura), featured in the May 2001 issue of Concrete. The spot was mostly capped by this point, but it was still a major meet up/chill spot for skating in downtown.... the Dorm guys practically lived there.  AJ came up fast once he moved to the city, and he even obliged to film a part for a video I was making at the time, "VIDEO".... you can see some of his 360 flips in there, whoppers.

   It was a shame when they demolished most of the original plaza for renovations a few years back.... I hopped the fence and grabbed a chunk of the marble as a memento. It's even got the spot where a knob used to be.  

 AJ is playing lots of music these days and still finds time to pop his tricks higher than the rest of us.... with a smoke.

Ice Ice Maybe ?

CLICK TO ENLARGE

  One of the things I like about working in skateboard distribution is the random objects/artifacts you find when cleaning out closets and shelves etc...  from ancient magazines to mint condition 80's gear, it's always worth the dig. Today I came across these ice skates for trucks in the back of a neglected closet at Ultimate and figured why not toss em on the ever-so-hot-right-now retro banana style cruiser .... the perfect set up for skate dates at Robson Square. This thing feels dangerous to even hold in your hands, so if you can manage to not severely injure yourself or anyone else at the rink, your date may be impressed. Blizice baby !

Off the Record # 10 - You need the ketchup on your pimpin'

CLICK TO ENLARGE 

 I did a lot of record searching when I was in the south over the last 6 weeks and came up on some great finds, ending up with over 30 albums and about a dozen 45s. I'd been looking for this Positive K single, "Night Shift", for years but never saw it.... until I walked into Amoeba in L.A.  Always a great place for finding old school hip hop vinyl. This was $2.99-..... I wish record shopping was that affordable in Vancouver.

  PK was kind of a distant cousin of the Native Tongues Family who put out an album in 1992 after some success from his single "I got a man", and then that was basically it. This Big Daddy Kane produced track was the 1st I had ever heard of him, thanks to Alphonso Rawls' part from the H-Street "Lick" video in 1993. It samples Lee Moses' "Time & Place".... another album I'm hoping to miraculously find in my travels someday. Until then, I've got this single and Alf's gnarly part from a very questionable era in skate fashion. Love those crazy bleach blotch jeans...  the YMCA tricks were bonkers.

  Interesting coincidence - after I left California, Chris went back to The Honk's vert ramp again and skated with Alphonso Rawls. Bastard.