Always have room for shit talkers, for one…
Why is it that skating can thrive through honesty while surfing has to be this polished product?
It’s not like the industries are that different.
Small groups own almost everything, image is key. But skateboarding has always had room for shit talkers. People speak their minds, call ’em as they see ’em.
It’s far more entertaining, more engaging.
Keeps me interested in the sport, even though my fat old ass is completely pussified and it’s been years since I did more than fuck around on flat ground.
Give this chat with Lucero and Grosso a watch, then join me in waiting for the next installment.
Jeff Grosso & John Lucero: Love Letters, Bones Brigade, Dill, Weirdos: Weekend Buzz ep. 113 pt. 1
Applause.. w/ more “Sugar Man Rodriguez” soundtrack. The act of skating is more creative..?
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any form of pro boardrider will give surfing the nod too
gold
Try imagining Joe Turpel looking down the camera and yelling “You’re all kooks!” like that. I don’t even know if he can frown.
Furthermore, can you imagine if surfing had something like Thrasher? Respected more than anything else, and mostly for their lack of fucks given? The mind boggles.
This doc on Thrasher’s King of The Road “contest” is awesome: https://www.viceland.com/en…
Instead, we get the Surfing “Factory” or Jack Freestone riding a Chanel board via a yacht.
can you imagine the industry’s use for a guy like Jake Phelps? warehouse guy for sure.
Heres pt2
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Surfers age better, no question.
Plenty of shit talkers around here, come stand in the Point carpark when it’s pumping and the peanut gallery is warming up, you need wings to stay above it. Then try snaking someone up the inside on a good day if you want a further gobfull.
Don’t forget – Grosso is doing that on Ride – which is owned by Tony Hawk.
i love skateboarding culture
So damn true, Parker. Imagine if this review was about a surf movie? The surfers would never talk to that mag again, their sponsors would pull ads. Surfers so want to be cool like their skate brethren, sadly can’t handle the heat that comes with it.
http://www.jenkemmag.com/ho…
surfing lets the NSSA decide who gets paid. you can’t surf some of their contests with bad grades. surfing is just shit. companies can hardly wrap their heads around the “freesurfer” concept. 99% of pro skaters are “freeskaters” (but they’re not gay enough to ever think about using a term like that)
Yeah but sadly 99% of the guys who make money out of skating do it in Street League, which makes the WSL look soulful…
fuckin Dyrdek, worse than Shaun White and Sheckler put together
the surf industry is pretentious while skate is straight shooting. People are’t afraid to give their opinion and there is not backlash really.
amateur/getting paid surfers are still battling the Spiccoli backlash, companies think that Moms will buy more boards if they think there’s no herb in the beach parking lot. skate Moms are happy their kids aren’t shooting H.
True – but I was thinking more of the bro stroking going on in surf and “yeah let’s be pals bro and go shred” que the pac sun commercial…skate is not like. Even commercialized skate is not like that. I love to surf. I hate the bullshit image that comes with surfing. No I don’t want to be friends, no I don’t have a fuckin Bon fire after every sesh with an acoustic guitar, no it’s not happy go lucky in the water. I’m actually praying you die on the next wave so I never have to see you out here again
Because surfing is controlled by too many backslappers!! There so called polished game is too contrived!!
Fucking wrestling back in the day was total contrived bullshit – but at least there were people to hate!!
Competitive surfing, there all supposed mates, needs a few “enemies” and few feuds between the guys.
Skaters will speak mind if ripped off, call others out etc
WSL needs to let these guys fucking blow up if they want to and just let it roll
I’ve had this argument with friends. Here’s the conclusion we came to. If you grew up skating and surfing you’ll understand. Skaters talk/socialize/rationalize/shittalk a lot more than surfers when doing the activity. You hang out for hours on a curb, arguing all types of bullshit. Surfers don’t talk much, except when you’re all waiting for waves but even then it’s not a lot of talking and conversation/rationalizing. Therefore, skating over time became very social, leading to more rationalization and shit talking than surfing.
Brilliant!
Yep. Surfers take themselves far too serious.
good point. But in surfers’ defense, there’s no shortage of curb, so the skate vibe’s never needed to be about just “me”.
I feel like skate might involve more people from places that are far more opinionated / shit talkers than say the populace in southern California -in context of where the surf industry is based- where passive aggressiveness and no real convictions dominate? at least in the surf world? Just a geographical theory.
You mean that black, brown, and poor people skate more than they surf? Yes.
what about indo people?
The Dutch, French, and English called ’em brown when they colonized ’em. But I’m referring to global trends, not just people who live frontyard to world-class waves. Of course you surf more than you skate if you live on a tropical island.
This too. Skate pros come out of Tampa, Phoenix, San Jose, Austin, wherever. Lots of different perspective allows for more shit talking. Imagine if a surf pro came out of Bakersfield, he’d think all the OC groms were shitheads.
Yeah right? He’d be like your name’s Tanner? Cory? Go fuck yourself..
That’s where Dane Reynolds grew up, right? So wise GB!
GB is on point. Take the local slappy curb as further evidence, I just wasted my Sunday afternoon there: everybody who rolls through greets others, new faces introduce themselves, old faces offer beers or smokes, everybody hoots at any trick someone is working based on their level, from pro caliber shit to overweight guys in their 50s just getting a clean grind.
That said, the local vert ramp and any number of high-profile area parks are another animal, so it may just be that curbs are the Waikiki or Churches of skate spots. But still, less old man angst.
“everybody hoots at any trick someone is working based on their level”
and that’s the biggest difference. surfers like to pretend that we never sucked. just immaculate conception ripping. way too hierarchical, but that is somewhat the nature of things as far as getting waves. on the vert ramp, even the barns get a run when they put their tail down.
I wonder what the politics or pay-to-play hierarchies of waveparks will look like and how that will be visible in ocean lineups…I’d much prefer more slappy curb dynamic in my surfing life than ski resort, but one can’t help but think that a proliferation of wave parks would breed that weird ski resort entitlement vibe that middle-aged novice surfers tend to bring to the beach.
Hard to say how it would play out with daily punters, but at Unleashed in Wales last year the surfers were supporting each other and cheering and carrying on the same way as skaters in a bowl comp or snowboarders at the bottom of the pipe at X-Games. When you’re not competing for priority and it turns into catching your wave/having your go/doing your run/whatever, the dynamic changes totally for the positive.
I could see it. I don’t fuck with snow but a family member spends lots of time in BC, Pac NW, and intermountain west mountain towns for work and from his observations as a surfer-turned-mountain dweller, I get the impression that there’s still an element of localism in the mountains (born there, live there, work there, ski there vs. flew in to ski for the weekend). Not always all high fives and bros at a crowded, high-level skatepark, either, even if you’re getting yours (though maybe slightly moreso than at your average sandbar).
The pros in all board sports tend to behave with each other in public anyways, as their marketing persona depends on it. The shit talk comes out after events or behind closed doors, but when on the mic they all do the “thanks to Red Bull and Vans” thing at most events. Not unlike WSL vibes.
I don’t know, I guess my previous comment was more regarding what the dynamic will be between resort surfers and beach surfers in, say fifty years, when my body is fucked and I’m merely an outside observer altogether. We’ll see if the wavepools take off given international water crises, first, worry about the cultural politics later.
wavepools are skateparks, nobody can ever run more than 5 or 10% of a video part on hand sculpted tranny. maybe if its Channel or Washington St. but that’s it.
True, and the transition that does get prime video parts is generally the more esoteric stuff (like the massive concrete of the NW, the legendary CA DIYs, etc.). It’s never the Vans park, that’s for sure.
i can still go do water slappies at Bolsa if it comes down to it. in OC that entitlement vibe is there because your parents need to be wealthy for you to live anywhere near the beach, unless you’re Courtney Conlogue from Santa Ana
An aside, but I love the fact that Conlogue is:
1. Competitive and serious as shit, no “we all love each other” rhetoric
2. From Santa Ana and not Huntington or San Clemente
3. Stares daggers at female (and male) broadcast personnel for their canned questions.
Can’t wait to see her win a world title.
Because the WSL run the show, and are slowly poisoning the sport
we can do contests without doing jock. in skating, its well known that most people would skate better without the artificiality of the competitive setup, and they look for formats that minimize it at least. and you can still get paid without doing any of it.