check this out - some titles are links to Amazon.com that will allow you to buy them with a nice kick-back for me.
BOOKS AND VIDEO
Rising Son, The legend of Skateboarder Christian Hosoi.Some of the coolest skateboarding photos of all time have been shots of Christian Hosoi. At the height of his fame he was Tony Hawk’s main competition. Drug use led to a personal decline. Hosoi spent some time in prison for drug trafficking and found Christianity. I feared that this was going to be the kind of dipshit jock evangelism that you get from guys like Stephen Baldwin. Then the film starts with clips of insane skating with a punk rock soundtrack and tells the crazy story of a truly entertaining guy who also happens to have been one of the greatest skaters of all time. The skating prowess, the money, the fame, the largesse, are recounted in the familiar nostalgic format. There is plenty of really funny material about Christian’s crazy hair, clothes and taste in music – how surprising it all was to most skaters – and the fact that he pulled it all off. Rising Son also tells the story of Christian’s drug-related troubles and tells a fairly convincing tale of redemption. Christian isn’t the superstar he was but Rising Son includes post-release skate footage of him still ripping. I always thought of Hosoi as someone who was successful because of his talent but at the expense of his future. Christian dropped out of school early to concentrate on his skateboarding career. His dad, an artist and free-spirit, seems to have aided and abetted his son for better or worse but Christian took away from his dad’s example that “it’s what you’re creating and not what you’re going to get out of it” that matters. I have to respect that. You can rent Rising Son from Netflix but I’m going to buy a copy.
Can’t Stop the Firm Even if shot after shot of dudes flipping down stairs puts you to sleep, this vid has some really cool footage of Lance Mountain at the Vans Combi Pool. The art direction is very interesting, Looks like he's skating in the dark with a few spotlights. Highlights include a huge corner air in the square bowl and invert to fakie. There are also some home remodeling tips in a “Dream Sequence.” Bob Burnquist’s part is also amazing skating his ramp, dropping in off a 10 foot vert extension and attempting to loop Mt Baldy Pipeline... so close! Plenty of vert action plus dorky skits of the Firm team riders pretending to be prohibition-era gangsters. I can't find this thing on Amazon but you can probably still find it at skateshops.
Chlorine - A Pool Skating Documentary - I thought I remembered not liking this much, finding it inferior to Fruit of the Vine. I saw it again as a benefit showing for Skaters for Portland Skateparks Pier Park Project.
It has it’s moments. Plenty of crazy characters. Salba doing push-ups on the edge of the pool. I wish I’d thought to yell, don’t hump the damned thing, skate it! The embarassing story of Lance Mountain knocking himself cold in a pool before his parents could come over to watch - as told by Steve Olsen. Pool hunting, pool cleaning, permission, barging.
There is some great pool skating footage. Definitely makes you want to skate pools. If you get the DVD there’s a great extra short by Toby Burger sneaking into a bust pool, cleaning it and filming himself by putting the camera in the light hole.
I’ll recommend it. It didn’t freak me out as much as Skateboard Madness
The DC Video
P3: Pipes, Parks, and Powder - Autobiography of pro snowboarder Todd Richards. Even though this book has a cool cover design, I would not have picked it up - who cares, right? - but a friend told me I was mentioned in the book. Turns out I skated with this guy back when I was in Boston. Once I saw the pictures I vaguely remembered him as one of the many guys I skated with at various halfpipes. I don't remember the gnarly inverts! that must have come later. I guess I was looking up at the time at Fred Smith, The Wrecker, Dave LeMieux, Kevin Day, Metal Man and other skate gods. Richards and Eric Blehm write a lot about the Boston skate scene in the eighties so it's a cool book for me because I know a lot of those guys and skated those ramps. P3 is actually a fairly engrossing read. There is a good look at the early evolution of competitive snowboarding as well as a peek into the mind and motivation of a talented athlete. Richards insists that snowboarding’s roots are in skateboarding several times and that skateboarding is the harder of the two. He picks out the guys who have skateboarding roots as having more style, but we knew that.
Scarred for Life - A collection of essays about skateboarding. Interesting stories well written. He covers hardcore downhill racing, pool skating, Jay Adams, Christian Hosoi, Bob Burnquist’s loop attempts and more. Some great pictures in here. The final article is about the Dreamland skatepark company and the build it yourself ethic takes us up through Hailey and Red looping at Reedsport.
Insane Terrain - Thrasher Magazine kept it going through the lean years and remains punk as fuck. Great pictures of all facets of skateboarding viewed through a ragged design aesthetic. A good essay about the history of skateboarding introduces the book. I’m in there rolling in at Dave Richardson’s ramp in Maine which they mistakenly identify as a Northwest ramp. Nice to to have these pictures without the ads.
Built to Grind: 25 Years of Hardcore Skateboarding - from Independent trucks. I used to be sponsored by X-Caliber Trucks and after Tracker started making magnesiums I rode those for twenty years, so I never really bought into the Indy mystique. I have been riding them for several years now and they work great for me. Here?s a big sucker of a book with lots of cool pictures of devotees of this upstart truck company. (I’ve been skating for over thirty years so they look like young punks to me.) Some really great old photos that you’ve seen before (like the classic Master of Disaster short of Duane Peters doing the frontside micr-edger at the combi pool) and some you haven’t. There is also a great look at the development history of the trucks and the ubiquitous logo. A great book to have around.
Surf, Skate & Rock Art of Jim Phillips - The guy responsible for one of the graphic icons of skateboarding - the screaming hand - and so many of the classic board graphics from Santa Cruz, plus a huge amount of poster and magazine work. This is a great collection of his art. One image, from an ad for the Oneil Wetsuit Company, made a big impression on me when I first saw it as a kid. It’s a crazy interior of the wetsuit factory with all kinds of nutty things going on - a sweating nixon, the Cream of Wheat chef, creature from the black lagoon. Quotations from popular culture?! Now I’ve seen everything!I wondered why he didn’t have an interview in Disposable, now we know.
Disposable - This is the skateboard art book I’ve been waiting for. A great collection of images of actual decks and the words of the artists and skaters involved. Great historical background, skate images and insight into the artistic process. Pushead, Jim Phillips, Sean Cliver (the author former Powell/Peralta board artist), Humpston, Hecox, McKee, and others. I wish it was a hardcover book. They're supposedly selling it only through skateshops until later in 2005 but none of the three local shops I called had it. They all promised to get it though, give ’em a call. I couldn’t wait. There is also a website for the book including PDFs of sample spreads and links to a couple of online skateshops that will sell it to you. I got mine from Team Goon ($23 plus $5 something shipping) Ð only took a few days to arrive. Craig bought from one of the others and also had good results.
O.T. - a film by Stacey Jenkins, chronicles the tales of "over-thirty" Portland vert skateboarders who were there at the birth of plywood half-pipe culture; and through eighties punk music, careers, marriage and kids, they never stopped skating. Archived seventies Super 8 film footage, original music by Portland independent bands and great new skating footage combine to tell how skating influenced their friendships, careers and attitudes over 30 years of skateboarding. O.T. premiered in Hammersurf presents: Proven In the Northwest and is available on DVD from the accessories section of the Rebel Skates online store. check out the 7MB trailer
Fruit of the Vine - Pool skating, baby. I knew Buddy Nichols in Boston, I hope I wasn’t too much of a jerk back then. If I was I hope it helped build character and that in some small way I contributed to this great film. The Super 8 aesthetic is very different from video but it’s the great storytelling that sets this skate film apart. Pool skating becomes mythic. There is a real sense of being there - you’re in there elbow deep in disgusting slime cleaning out a pool, you want to be the one taking the next run. The film makers go on to do Northwest and Tent City and to join the crime-fighting Team Ouch brought to you by Tylenol.
Northwest (2003) - We are so lucky to live in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon skaters were always looking south to where the skateparks and the skate media were. We never really had skateparks here, City Skates, was there anything else? Tri-Cities skatepark and Olympia in Washington but it never really happened here. During the dark years (also known as the Dork years when dork skating opened up creativity but killed vert skating) a few hardcores kept it going with backyard ramps and eventually, Burnside. Nichols/Charnoski - the makers of Fruit of the Vine document the Burnside/Dreamland/Grindline crew and what it's like to be a hardcore skater in the Pacific Northwest. This takes the story up to Aumsville - incredible skating. If you’ve ever skated Burnside you know that it’s hard to figure out the lines. There is amazing footage of Burnside skating in here - stuff you would never even think of doing.
Disfunctional - from Booth-Clibborn editions a publisher of all kinds of cool design books. Aaron Rose collects all kinds of great photos and images of boards, zines, ads, magazines and other skateboarding related art. I wish Bodyslam was in here. It feels like a definitive record of Skateboarding up that point and I got left out. Another great thing about the book (or a really annoying thing depending on how you look at it) is that the pictures are all captionless so they speak for themselves. All the info is in the back of the book if you feel like reading. Kind of hard to find I had one and someone lost it - I ordered a replacement from their website.
coming soon
The Answer is Never - the question is when are you going to give up that stupid skateboard.