Grace to Effort VideoBro: BelgiumJosh

Effort Skateboards' videographer, Josh from Belgium, or "BelgiumJosh" or "belgium", broke bones and snapped ligaments on a miniramp, last week. Effort's owner, "Big Red James" did the same deal back in the day. Just the cost of pushing skating to the N'th degree. We're all glad you Effort guys do hard work to keep Cincinnati Skateboarding moving forward. We all hope you recover as well as James did...

like multiple pins, screws. Like 8 months recovery. That's the deal... Big Red still has a plate in his ankle. Hasn't had the down time to get it removed... Hopes that Josh'll have the time.

Tough thing of it is that Josh has had operations on both of his feet, already, to remove dead bones, skating through as best he can. I watched him last april or march doing sick blunt slides to 270 out on the near 5 foot wall at Delhi, the night of the opening... he must have tried that thing like 50 times before we went to Shanghai Mama's for a great meal. I think that was the first time we met. Nice to know you, Belgium.

Prayers ascend.

Something More

I have linked Mike V in recent months... I have enjoyed his point of view... I kind of get creeped out at how serious it's all taken, though. too serious about skateboarding, people... Mike. There's something more to life than this skateboarding stuff. Seriously, if its your LIFE, it shouldn't be. It should be a PART of your life. Not you LIFE.

Skateboarding starts with playing with a toy on roads and sidewalks built with other people's money. on obstacles and parks developed by others for us... we are consummate moochers and need to develop some serious gratitude in our culture toward the cities and parents and people...

some people, through practice and dedication, discipline and sacrifice, raise skateboarding to an art form, modeling higher aspects of human potential. Hats off. Gratitude should be multiplied...

Over the last 22 years, I've been really shocked at the sense of entitlement that skateboarders manifest. Haven't we thought this through a little more thant that? I mean, realizing all that's being freely given to us,and all we're taking, we will enjoy it even MORE from the humility we'll get...

a false sense of entitlement really ruins stuff. It ruins personal fun, making one too serious about what they're doing. It blinds you to the generosity of others who have gone before you. I trashes the opportunities of the ones who can't get past the stigma of your bad behavior. All that loss, because you think the world owes you for being good at skateboarding? Wow. And you're proud you're selfish. Wow. Piece of work, dude. Piece of work.

So the next time you want to resent the cops, or business people of your town, think about all you have been given in your life, from the birth canal on down to today, walking around under someone else's sunshine... think about the curb you're grinding: who built it? What did it cost? Who DOES care? and find soemthing somewhere where skating will be a positive thing. Go hit stuff in rough neighborhoods. Get parks made there, where destroying curbs and rails will help kids break out of the dark...

and don't be whiny elitist skaterboys. that's tired...

20/20 last night

These kids were on TV last night. Sponsored by 17 companies or something like that. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of compensation and merch. An eager and enthusiastic father...

Mike V's Youtube Page

THIS is a good spot to check out. Mike's philosophy about the potential of skateboarding in personal development. Who can agree with everything anyone says? That would be silly. But I find this a great place to hear from a guy who has really thought this through. ...who has really lived this through.

and it hammers some of the stuff that trips so heavily in skateboarding today, along the lines of conformity to the "outlaw" ethos, as well as the "sport/jock" aspects of Olypmic possibilities and "soccer mom" culture...

Solid Philosophical Integrity

click this

Enjoy this vid. It's Mike V laying down the fundies of what skateboarding can mean to a person. I like this because it lays skateboarding wide open to all comers, and puts prevalent elitism and snobbery to rest.

PS: some youngster asked me yesterday why it was wrong for him to push mongo. you can guess what I told him...

Skateboarding cannot be your life.

skateboarding isn't life.
It's not an identity.
It's not your parents.
It's not your god. Though some make it one...

People aren't skateboarders, any more than the potbellied forty-something drooped over his glory days was never actually a football player. He was just a person who got tricked into thinking that he was a football player. When life, and the truth that things down here don't last forever, caught up with him, he wasn't ready and despair set in.

"That'll never happen to me." you may say.
but it will if you're not ready.

You're not a skateboarder. You are a person.
you need to grow as a person, and consider the kind of character you're developing. Are you going to be okay with all this when you're 60? 45?

What? you don't want to live that long?
Well, then, glad you brought that up.
are you going to be okay with the choice to identify yourself with what you did, when your're dead, and there's no doing anything, only living in the who you are of what you've done?

Are you digging your grave with overfocus on learning tricks, fitting in, and being praised by people? Aren't you becoming an whore to people's approval, justlike the person you swore you'd never become?

Are you going to be okay with that after you die?

We are people.
People are people.

Skateboarding is just a game.
it's a game of skill and chance
a gamble.
Our games don't define us.
...cannot fulfill us.

are you addicted to gambling?
gambling your ankles for glory?

Skateboarding isn't a full enough expression of the human spirit
to be the life that it's retailers are selling us.
"Core" guys, you're just pushing a retail lie.
Wake up.
you're a human being.
That's way more than being a "skateboarder".

you are human.
you have soul.
human souls need to grow
stretch out in choices
and thinking about life beyond
the boundaries
of a retail segment.
or gambles on tricks they do...

the gamble on ankles and glory.

Vehicle for Lives...minds...

Skateboarding is vehicle.
skateboards are vehicles.
vehicles for lives...
...actual lives,
of people
who can know who they are...
...what they are...
...who could.
who should.

skateboarding isn't only "outlaw" or "punk", "gangsta" or "core".
...attributes to some (ultimately strictly conformist) movement.
self-proclaimed masters of
self proclaimed cultures
pushing molds on minds and hearts softer than theirs...

skateboarding is the freedom
of wheels
under feet
for anyone,
from every background,
on paths to many destinations
on paths to many different deaths...

skateboarding is the feeling of
being
the roller coaster
for the price of wood and wheels...

the sense of flight...
available to all.
no kidding.
kids on the street could hustle up a plank in an NY minute.

its the possibility
of vast possibilties...
...of poetry in motion.

skateboards carry lives around
minds around
on a ride
as varied or regular
as dangerous or safe
as lives desire...
as minds desire.

I live in Cincinnati

I live in Cincinnati, and there's a good movie I caught up with... Thanks to Nick Accurso at Anonymous for giving me a copy. That was kind.

The movie is THE STREETS IS TALKING by Eric Girgash. Eric's all over the place now, doing stuff with filming and whatnot...

...anyway this movie is about Cincinnati street skating...

here is a link to the google page I got for that title... you can see a myspace from a fan, buy the vid off bobby, or hear nick's writeup of the premiere...

and here is a link to the blogging world of girgash, hisself...

On Pushing Mongo

FROM FIRST HIT ON GOOGLE FOR MONGO:
"You need to ditch your mongo style quickly or else you'll never reach your maximum skating potential. Pushing mongo is a weak way to ride and will open you up to major flack from your fellow skateboarders (if it hasn't already.)"

Definition of "Mongo" (Click here)

Let's get real:
1. the REAL first reason to not push mongo has to do with not being made fun of.
2. The second reason is setup time.
3. The third reason is difficulty achieving top speeds.

let's talk from the bottom up:

Number 3:
Well, just push harder, or switch to regular pushing if you're having trouble getting fast enough. how many of us have ever seen someone who "just couldn't get fast enough" all because they pushed mongo? There's a terminal velocity on a skateboard that you can reach, no matter how you push. When this becomes a real, actual problem, let me know.

Number 2:
Get faster at setup.
Leave more space for setup.
...or switch to regular pushing.
maybe someone would push regular only at certain times. Like people who can use both hands...

Number 1:
Ridicule.
here's that dynamic that really drives the whole "mongo" debate.
Somewhere in the collective human mind lies a strong drive to assert ourselves in a movement toward conformity. Somehow we want others' way of skating (or whatever) to affirm our own way.
There has always been a race to set standards of measurement, so we can know where we lie in the order. That way, we can curry favor with those "above" us, and have power over those "below" us.

My personal distaste for this dynamic is what landed me in skateboarding as art/life-pursuit in the first place. I hated all the measuring, and I gravitated toward self-development sport/arts. I got into martial arts and skateboarding because there, there's no coach telling you to play team. You excel when you forget about all the others and develop yourself. Your best competition is what you could do yesterday!

It was freedom from being molded by fearful, mean people that attracted me to the then-punk skateboarding culture. I loved it. It was freedom.

I always stayed clear of people who took themselves too seriously, tripping on others and not just enjoying the day. Then I moved to Cincinnati, where tripping on others and losing perspective are prerequisite for acceptance into the "elite" "core" of the skateboarding culture here...

whatever.

...and pushing mongo is one of the first, most basic targets of this mentality. I think if we can get off the trips about pushing mongo, it may open minds to being a little more about the good stuff that remains, after we stop trying to compensate by pressing our molds on kids.

Criticizing kids for pushing mongo
Reminds me of nineteenth and early twentieth century,
when they stripped the mental gears
of all the left-handed kids.
Lots of artists got chewed up in that machine, man.

The Man never cared much for art, unless it could be used to fund war.

and it is shocking,
to see the freedom that wheels and a plank give us
caught up in
a wholesale push for conformity.

and this little sign of creative fascism--picking on kids who push mongo--belies an infestation of peer pressure and jock-elite culture...
it's jaws open beneath our feet...crunching up the freedom of skateboarding art...

I say that anyone who has succumbed to pressure to stop pushing Mongo for any reason outside themselves, has given up territory in their mind. They have given control and power to people who are confused about freedom and expression... they have listened to people who crave affirmation and are working it out in pushing a mold of conformity...

You can RIP mongo. Just give yourself three extra meters of setup at 20 miles per hour. two meters at ten. What? Just that simple.

PS: mongos don't ditch on pebbles as often. Think on that. Weight off the front wheels, dudes. Simple. when you catch one, it'll be on the back wheels, and the pitch of your weight will engage balance on the front wheels.

For sure there are advantages to different things. Everyone needs to just do what they do, and give props to anyone who develops to any level through perseverance...