Offices Ransacked!

Apparently the Kingsport crew caught wind of this site and notified some members of our sworn enemy, the BFRO (Bigfoot Field Research Organization) as to the whereabouts of the Daily Coiler's offices. Needless to say, they wasted no time in getting here, apparently breaking in while I was at work today to fuck up our operations. Check out the damage.

 

I guess to prove a point, the bastards left a bunch of bigfoot turds laying around the ransacked office that I had to clean up as well.

The tape measure certainly demonstrates the authenticity of the mysterious ape man's shit. And here I thought I was so funny all those times I used to send those guys jars of my poop and say I'd found East Tennessee Bigfoot crap in my backyard. I guess years and years of that would take its toll even on the most professional of crypto-zoologist. The irony in all this is that I used to complain that there wasn't shit going on around here, and now I've literally got my hands full. Yuk.

Anyway, my apologies to our legions of followers if I don't have anything to post for a few days, but I've got to get our operations back in order. I understand Caleb's deal has been postponed to this weekend, so get down there and skate and maybe donate if you get the chance. I'll be too busy sifting through the rubble here to get down there myself. I hope to have D. C. relief donation information up soon. Thanks for your continued support during these difficult times, and fuck the BFRO!

The Worm

If I had to compare how skateboarding was when I grew up to a political philosophy, it would obviously be anarchism. Highly individualized, exploratory, unregulated, lacking regimentation, hidden in the margins of everyday life, skating took place almost completely out of view of the mainstream. Skating was peopled by a hodgepodge of unique characters, none of whom thought much alike but all of whom agreed to let skating be what it was. Skating didn't appeal to people who could live within normal boundaries. Free spirited, contemptuous of authority, skaters blurred the distinctions between art and diversion and didn't really ask why. They already knew. There was no formality, no routine, nothing preordained, rehearsed, or staged, not in the everyday lives of everyday skaters where I grew up. Things progressed quickly in those days; boundaries were surpassed apparently because no one noticed them to begin with.

Clearly, somewhere--and I don't care where--things changed to the extent that much of skateboarding today has more in common with fascism than with anarchism. The isolated silhouette that once lurked in the most remote social periphery, locked into a lap-over grind under a serpentine freeway overpass in wasted desertopia all but forgotten. In its place, the heirs of an entirely new landscape: the centralized, safe, governable skate park, home to confused but calculating skateboard in-breds huddled under the billboard placed there to remind us who's responsible for all this, though no one bothers to notice.

If it's true that you know you've bought into the system when you think things aren't the way they're supposed to be, then we're all fucked. More often than not, it seems, I experience skating through the corporate aperture of multimedia rather than through an evening session in a drainage ditch with a half dozen friends or so. Sure, a lot of that is due to the logistics of age, work, family. But the fact is, no one skates there anymore. At some point, parks were built, billboards erected, and helmet rules enforced. But we're the ones who stopped skating the Worm, or whatever your local spot was called. We can hit it up this weekend, if you want to.

Alien UFO Bigfoot

As if there was any doubt that Bigfoot existed, Joshua Blu Buhs inadvertently proves so in his new book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend. He compares Mort Künstler's 1960 illustration in True Magazine pictured below (on top) with the famous 1968 Patterson "film" of Bigfoot taken in California (on bottom). Go ahead, compare for yourself.

I agree. No similarity whatsoever. I mean, the most obvious difference is that the bigfoot on the bottom is clearly a real one while the one on top is merely a painting of the same one walking the opposite direction eight years earlier. Like, duh. Sure, Künstler's drawing may have inspired the later bigfoot film, but only because it gave the filmmakers a bunch of clues of what to look for: woods, logs, bigfeet. etc., that enabled them to successfully film the bigfoot at long last. Besides, Buhs clearly ignores the most important factor in his supposed debunking: Bigfoot's an alien, a UFO dude. He doesn't play by our rules. He probably posed as Künstler and painted that picture himself just to show people where to find him. Dumb humans. They probably interpret posts like this as lame attempts to get people to send in things about skateboarding, since there's officially nothing going on in this neck of the woods. Whatevs. Pretty soon people will be debunking this blog.

Kick Your Own Ass for a Change

The dude in the pictures below is named Greg. Like most dudes his age, he's acquired a number of nicknames, among them "Silverback" and, most notably, "Onefoot."

"Onefoot" is  a semi-literal description. He likes to do one-footed frontside carve grinds on coping all over Texas or, as pictured above, in Arkansas. He's skated since the '70s, but chilled a while to ride dirt bikes, I think the story goes. He later decided to take up skating again after breaking his neck or back or something like that. Greg's been skating so long that he's one of those guys who's never even heard of punk rock, but make no mistake about it, he's way punker than most. I haven't seen Greg for a few years now, but pictures like these remind me of that fact, and I'm sure he's still hitting coping somewhere. Why wouldn't he be?

 

By all accounts, Greg's gnarly. Not in the sense that he'll kick your ass or anything like that, though. In fact, far from it. He's as mellow as they come. For example, every time I used to see him at the old Frosty bowl he'd ask me politely to "please not yell at the kids today." He's gnarly for better reasons than most; he's gnarly because he's considerably older than almost anyone he skates with, yet does things no one else can do, thus the name "Onefoot."

One time while watching Greg skate, a total stranger in Arkansas raved: "That guy rules, man. He reminds me what this shit's all about." When pressed to explain further, he reflected, "Well, my boss is a dick. My wife won't let me drink no more, and my own kid wants me to buy him fucking roller blades. This dude kinda reminds me that I can kick my own ass for a change." Enough said. 

At the risk of waxing philosophical yet again (I know it's not punk, jockface), I think I understand what dude meant. Somewhere at the essence of skating, none of the rules of banality seem to apply anymore. The usual limitations of age itself are tossed out the proverbial window and replaced by the much freer possibilities of imagination and determination. Every time Onefoot carries out his namesake grind, he demonstrates the fact that we place a lot of restrictions on ourselves in those very categories. Put simply, Greg stokes people out by showing them there are no rules, that you can in fact kick your own ass for a change. Maybe some of us--chest puffed out, punk rule book in hand--need to remember that.

Authenticity

One of the appeals of skateboarding over the years for me and, I suspect, for most "lifer" types, is its undeniable authenticity. Unlike so much of American mass culture, where style usually outranks substance by a long shot, it's just hard to fake skating. Sure, you can try to look the part, you can run yer yap, you can drop names. But in the end, you have to get on board and, whenever that happens, you're bound to fall eventually. Viola. Humility. The dignity's in trying in the first place. Getting up and trying again. There's a real metaphor for life in there somewhere.

As skateboarding has increasingly become swept up by the seemingly irresistible wave of soulless, plastic American consumer culture, and is thereby represented more by people who don't skate than those who do, longtime participants have obviously bemoaned the consequent, suspected loss of its authenticity. But never fear. Skating will always be "realer" than most things.  So long as people actually skate, and so long as it doesn't become too jocked out, regimented, and predictable, the beauty of skating will always reside in the fact that you actually have to do it. And so long as there are still people who don't think there's really a wrong way to do it, that in itself will ensure that people will find new ways to do so in new places. As is the case with every worthwhile thing, it's the effort that counts, after all. Cheers to everyone who's still trying.

Duh!

In response to the post entitled "Name that Spot," I came across this picture today which gave me a definitive answer: Oregon. Duh! The reason we didn't skate the previously unnamed spot was because we were skating this one on the same property. Damn. 2003 was a good year.

I later learned that a guy I knew from New Mexico who grew up in Oregon was really mean and used to throw the guy who built this spot, as well as the previously unnamed spot, in the trashcan every day before school. Every day? Geez. That seems a little excessive.

Nevertheless, the guy who built this bowl ran into us at Donald and invited us over to his crib to hang out and skate this thing right around the time the construction on it was being finished up. Really fun and, at the time, incredible that people were doing this sort of thing. Notice something? That's right. It's a barn constructed over the bowl. I.e., this is something similar to what they're trying to accomplish down in Shelby right now if you'd get off your ass and go donate $100, or whatever you can part with, to preserve that bowl. Few better causes have existed in the history of mankind, so make sure you come out on the right side of events and can actually tell your kids you accomplished something during your otherwise failed existence.

In Humbler Days...

Sorry but I can't resist lame puns. Anyway, today everybody's down in Shelby skating the bowl and probably hitting up Bridge's BBQ while I'm working (as you have already obviously noted). As many of you know, Caleb's first bowl, the "Humbler," was legendary until it *GASP* eventually rotted. Here's a pic of the Humbler in its later days... that's me in there I think, and you know I can't resist my fat face in lights.

So what's the point of all of this shameless self-promotion, you ask? Well, get your ass down to Shelby and donate $100 bucks so that the same fate doesn't befall this newer, bluer Humbler. Camp. Skate. Eat. Smoke. Skate. Have good time. Give $100. Preserve bowl.

In other words, for all the shit I talk about the Humbler, I probably skated it a grand total of five times. Lewie, who took this picture I believe, and who has sworn to bail out this site by sending video of people actually skating so that you don't have to read my relentless sales pitches (buy American, by the way, it's way better than communist and costs more, too), could have skated this all the time but sat around drinking beer instead. He never gave $100 to preserve the Humbler and now it's gone. So there you have it, moral and all. Get to Shelby, buy American, and save skateboarding from communists like Lewie.

Sick New Bowl

Some homies from down in El Paso sent in pictures of them finally finishing up the "Webbo" bowl. They dug the bowl by hand, did all the rebar, etc., work and then had the Grindline guys come in to shotcrete it. Came out rad, right? Check out the progress from the original dig to the finished product!

Rad! The dudes were way cool and told me about the bowl just as soon as it got finished up, which they kept telling me was last weekend for some reason. They even gave me easy directions that follow the hardcore skate rules for ultra-secret spots like this one: "Hey you stupid wetto, make sure to blindfold yourself before you come over, and then go stand on the railroad tracks and wait for the next train to come by, Way." Thanks! I have to admit, I didn't try to explain that I'm not Danny Way. But it's weird that they think I want to swim in the bowl... they callled me "wetto" like five or six times. No wonder they think I'm stupid! They also kept asking me if I had a "bacho," which I assume is some sort of bowl building tool or something. "Hey, got bacho?" When I didn't answer right away they kept saying "fuck you." Or sometimes they'd just say "fuck you got bacho." I guess I don't have all of the hardcore skate culture worked out, but I will try to get a bacho before I head down there. But no worries. I can't wait to skate the "Webbo" and eat killer Mexican food down on the border.

Spring Fling

Looks like Caleb's is ready for this weekend's fund-raiser session. The idea is to collect money to put a roof over this ridiculously radical bowl out in Shelby, NC built by skate artisan Caleb Moore. If I were you, I'd get down there and make sure this gets done ASAP so as to preserve what has to be one of the best bowls in the Southeast, if not the country. Word is that the Cockfight dudes will be there early and the weekend will probably be an unbelievable blowout that you shouldn't miss. Bring $100 and show your manliness. Here's a pic of the resurfaced bowl just waiting to get annihilated.

It's interesting that unlike the old "Humbler" out in Denver, this one doesn't really have a nickname yet. I've heard the "Numbler" tossed around, but I don't know. I guess they could name it after me, since I fucking destroy that place... well, ok maybe not. Undoubtedly, the fact that this thing got built, basically single-handedly by Caleb over the last year was, in all seriousness, one of the greatest and best surprises I've ever experienced in skating. So many thanks to the man himself and also to Ricardo who was down there helping and sent this photo in to me. 

Ode to Pools Past

"Oh curved walls of by gone days
whose gnar-dog coping I did slay..."

Well, maybe the attempt at poetry is a bit much, but considering the lag around here I guess I have time for just about anything. Since we're not finding shit around here again this season (I hear it helps to actually look!!!), and especially since the only decent pool we know about has pretty much outsmarted us (that's right, I've been outsmarted by an inanimate object yet again), this week I thought I'd pay homage to a couple of the best pools I've ridden over the years. The one pictured below was called the "Waco Bowl" and it was going in '03. Just click on the image and look at the fucking deep and tell me a three-year old couldn't get ahold of that coping. Dude, it was sick! Plus the coping itself was weird. It felt like chalk and made no noise--NONE--when you hit it. Freaky. Like all the good ones it didn't last long, but I used to drive an hour and a half three times a week to skate the bitch.

Man. Those were the days. The dudes who found it and drained it and inexplicably used to just call me up and say: "she's ready to go, come on down" are pictured in there. Or maybe they said "haul ass" and I just misinterpreted their meaning. Hmmm. Anyway, being the hardcore secretive types who seek no recognition for their exploits and who would likely kill me if I mentioned their names, I won't do so. A picture, maybe a video, directions to their house, and a few autographed memoirs should keep their operations sufficiently hidden from public view, just like their heroes in the Barrier Cult.

*UPDATE* East Tennessee 'Crete

Well, like I said, the Kingsport homies are down to build some DIY shit when they're not felching out at the skate church. They came by and hand stacked the bowl today and just about finished up when they started arguing about who was gonna "give it" and who was gonna "get it" during their next week-long homosexual orgy. Damn! Every time we're about to finish this bowl up these dudes run off and terrorize the local rodent population...

I'd ask everyone to send money to support the local DIY project but I know damn well it'll just get blown on leopard print g-strings for the Kingsport crew. In fact, we would have shot 'creted the damn thing but the hose didn't make it past the fence before six or seven dudes stumbled over one another trying to inhale the concrete out of the fucker. Here's a picture (not another "shot" thank God) of what got done besides Paco, Chuy and Esteban.

Armchair Skate Historians

Okay skate historians. This photo should give you a lot to think about. Where in Texas is that pipe? What year is that? What exactly is that deck second from the right? Can you name any of those wheels or perhaps guess who's in the photo?

I definitely know where this was taken, but exactly when is a good question, though the pads are a pretty good indication. Obviously, I was only like forty years old when this was going down, and hadn't even started skating yet. So, I had nothing to do with this, but one of my Texas bros sent it to me at one time and I've kinda wondered about it ever since. Of course, it's probably been run 100 times in Thrasher by now but since I don't get out much how would I know? I'm sure several people can nail this shit. Lemme know what up. My guess: L to R: Schlag, Kevin the Hesh, Joe Dirt and Frank Gardner in 2006 or so.

Fan Appreciation Day

Well, since we only have one fan, this will be easy. Here's a picture of our fan skating a long, long time ago. That pool was rad, though, and having a no bust right-hand kidney in the desert and out of view of any passers-by encouraged our "fan" here to plant an adjoining flower garden that eventually bloomed quite nicely, as I recall it. Thanks C, your undying loyalty to skating, outdoor cultivation and this blog is unparalleled!

Name that Spot

Over the years, I've amassed a pretty large photographic archive of DIY spots that, due to the sheer number of years involved, I'm either hazy on when it comes to details or have forgotten about completely. One such hazy spot  is this wooden job. I'm pretty sure I took the picture but I don't remember: 1) skating it; 2) looking at it; 3) where the hell it was. By process of elimination, I'm guessing this must have been either in Oregon or Colorado, but if it were in Oregon, I would have remembered because I really didn't drink much when we used to go up there. Colorado? Maybe, but for the life of me I can't remember where. Anyway, if you know fill me in because I'd like to know the story on it and maybe even skate it some day if it's still out there.

 

Since this blog is pretty much a way for me to waste time while hanging out with my newborn little homie, I'll periodically add pictures to this "unknown spots" post. If you have any info on them and can fess up, lemme know and the world will be better for it, I'm sure.

Serious Nostalgia

I'll be honest: I don't remember where I came across this photo. But for anyone who grew up skating in New Mexico in the 1980s, this pic has some serious nostalgia attached. It was taken at Kevin's ramp and, if you look closely, you can see pretty much all the Albuquerque bros from back in the day, including pretty much the entire line ups from Jerry's Kidz and the Hellcats.

 

 I can tell that's Kevin seated and it looks like C.P. sitting to his left. Up top I recognize (I think) Mike Prothero, Steve Eisland and of course Tom and John Muhlberger standing next to each other on the far right. Damn, I wish I'd never met any of those dudes! Nah. Fucking cool picture though.

My Backyard

I decided to go ahead and concrete out my backyard last weekend. Talk about hard work! Anyway, these kids didn't help at all and came and barged my Jaws Loop as soon as the shit cured (about 20 minutes). They even brought along some gay German dude to take pictures. I hate kids today, dude.

San Antonio: Spanish for SATAN

These pics pretty much say it all: My life really sucks in comparison to people who live where I don't. Apparently, the key to getting all sorts of concrete built in a particular state is that I move from there. Actually, the Claw was pretty damned rad when it was made out of wood. Now, it's fucking ridiculous. Or, in true Texas fashion, I should say it's fucking "ri-DQ-lous." Good thing I'm working so hard on all these East Tennessee concrete projects (see below). Note: Click on images and they grow.

Damn!

 

East Tennessee 'Crete

The square bowl took us about a week and I dug out the round one (by hand!) and added a few templates and some rebar during my lunch break yesterday. I hope you people appreciate what I do for skateboarding around these parts...

I do have to give special kudos to the crew over at the Kingsport skate park. Those kids may be a bunch of lazy drug addicts for the most part, but they are damned motivated when it comes to two things: week-long homosexual orgies and DIY skate action! This project would never have been done if they weren't such a down-ass crew.

Skateable Van!

This skateable van has been spotted cruising around the Tri-Cities area recently. If you can catch it at a long red light you might have a chance to get some of that action!

Bath Tub Season

Bath tub season, or what's usually referred to as pool season out West, has officially gotten underway over the last couple of weeks out here. We hit one today that was actually better than most. However, it did feature the six feet of vert that seems standard among our local tubs. Check the clean up on it.

The blue one is also on the radar but may not get hit any time soon. I'll keep you posted.

This one has a bonus pocket with a love seat that makes it too easy to skate, so we don't even bother hitting it any more.

We did run across this gem below some time ago. As you can see, my crew was stoked on Paul D.'s frontside carve! Paul's also a sick graffiti artist...

I'll keep this entry updated as we knock them off this year.

Welcome

Why not? As if none of us had anything better to do, why not further saturate the internet with yet another compilation of pointless musings about inane daily occurrences, in this case related to skateboarding way out East? It's what we do, right? Well, when it comes to "blogging," it's what I mean to do, anyway. One way or another, things may or may not get posted around here sometime soon. This blog is a continuation of an old skate 'zine me and my friend put out in New Mexico back in the Summer of 2000. I hope you enjoy some of this random material from close to three decades of skating in New Mexico, Texas, the greater West and now, of all places, the greater East? Come skate!