This is a great clip showing Rodney Mullen working out the now famous Dark Slide. The cool thing is that he builds the trick backwards by first figuring out how to get out of the Dark Slide to land it. Once landing it is sorta worked out, then he starts riding into the trick. Pretty cool:
I was in 8th grade and it had been raining for at least a week so we were seriously jones’n for a session. This was during the great skateboarding depression of the late 80′s and early nineties so there were zero indoor parks to hit up when the weather was bad.
It was a Sunday so we figured we could score a session by finding an empty parking garage. We found one that had a couple guys already skating so we pulled up and sneaked through the gate. All that was in the garage was a couple of long well lathered up curbs and some manual pads. No stairs. No ledges.
We were just glad to find some dry concrete.
A couple more guys showed up. Then another car load. After about an hour there were more than thirty guys in the garage taking turns on a curb that on a normal day would be passed up for twenty other spots in the area.
The amazing thing was that this was before cell phones and Twitter. This was just random cats showing up to skate. And like I said, this was during the depression of skating so any time you had a session with more than six guys it was something to celebrate. Unless of course you were at EMB.
It was cool to see a bunch of skaters just having a session in the simplest form. Just sessioning a curb. Slappies, 5-0, a little flat land…just the basics. It was true. It was the skate community at it’s finest.
Then the cops showed up and busted us. But that’s another story.
I was guilty of the of it when I was a young grom trying to keep up with the big boys at the Benicia skatepark at Willow Glen(RIP). Dropping in and hitting the lip and flailing out feeble attempts at a 540 double kickflip or something like that. I never landed it. Frankly I never intended to.
When the park was crowded and all the rippers were shredding it up I would resort to flinging ridiculous tricks off the main hip for an odd reason; I would rather the other skaters there think I was good by the fact that I was trying insane tricks rather than resort to the basics that I could handle at 11 years old. I would fake that I was better than I was…it was sad.
I bring it up because I’m starting to see it in the next generation. On a given night I head to the skatepark down the street and the kids are lining up to fling off technical wizardry that never gets landed. I fear it may have gotten worse since I was a kid. In fact, there are more kids flailing than there are skating.
Maybe it’s because there are more skaters and the culture has been infected with an underlying sense of competition…which is completely lame.
Can’t we just skate…because it’s fun?
If you were around when Powell Peralta dropped Propaganda on us then you know what Frankie Hill’s part did for the progression of skateboarding. First off, I can’t believe that video is 20 years old. It seems like only a few years ago we were posted up in our friends living room fast forwarding to Frankie Hill’s section before heading out to wreck all the spots in San Francisco.
You have to understand that this video section was showing some big gaps the likes of which most of us had never seen. Compared to what guys are pulling now it may seem lame, but at the time this was the biggest stuff we’d ever seen. In fact, there were rumors that spread because who could fathom that this was even possible so people started saying Frankie Hill was on meth or crack or something. Seriously.
Enjoy:
I’ve said it before, if I could live anywhere on the planet it would be Vancouver Canada. I have been there a few times in the last couple years and the place is epic! As if they weren’t epic enough, they blew up the city on Go Skateboarding Day 2010.
Now if I can only get the skaters in Austin to pull together like that next year?
Remember when skateboarding was just fun? Lately I spend so much time riding in skateparks that I forget how fun it was to roll through the city with a dozen of my friends and just session the whole scene. I would take a day like this over a day in the most perfect skatepark.
Future Primitive was one of the VHS tapes that I absolutely wore out.
I had one of those sessions last night. Just me in a smooth parking lot. No ledges. No stairs. Really not a skate spot at all. Just an empty canvas.
This parking lot has a slight incline that is perfect for flowing down and connecting some flip tricks. Which sounds weird because old guys don’t normally care for flip tricks and I’m one who will go for hours at a skate park without dropping even a kickflip. I’d much rather grind.
Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out to pure skating, not that it’s better, it’s just fun to strip away all the stuff and get down with just me and my board.
True.
Pure.
Peace.
Mongo foot is a tragic condition that has been sweeping the nation since the X-Games started in 1995. Some nights I wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares of my children pushing around the neighborhood mongo footed.
For those new to skating, mongo foot is when you push with your front foot. So if you’re a regular foot you push with your left foot or with your right foot if you’re a goofy footer.
Let’s be honest, a lot of what we love about skating is the esthetic of it. The art. The style. Mongo footedness isn’t pretty, not to mention it makes skating harder.
I have to admit that there have been many skaters who have managed to skate beyond their condition and go on to have beautiful careers despite the weakness.
The other day my daughter was giving her first honest go on my skateboard and she immediately started pushing mongo! I got dizzy and the ground began to spin. Everything moved in slow motion. I immediately stepped in and gave instructions to help her out on the path to proper skating.
So, now I’m scared to death to hand her a skateboard for fear she might do it again.
What is a father to do?
