More from the Mail Room

Well, the support just keeps coming. It's amazing that we're able to have such an impact on the lives of everyday people all over the global village and beyond just by producing our little skateboarding blog. This month I've decided to post a couple of the best exchanges that we've had over the last few weeks with our seemingly endless list of ultra-supportive and financially generous readers. Thanks to them, running the Coiler has been something like a Fang song come to life: the money just rolls right in.

Dear Mr. "Coiler,"

I recently discovered your blog while disciplining my young, impressionable, skateboarding son, Michael, who apparently reads the utter filth you so mindlessly and irresponsibly post on your satanic web site. In future, please think of the children who might happen across your devilish musings before you compound your previous sins. Due to your misguided influence, little Mikey speaks of doing "grinds" and "banging sluts" constantly. Have you no shame? I fear where Mikey's life as a skateboarder may lead him!!!

Yours in Christ,

Liz C. Worth

Dear Ms. WORTH, LIZ C. UNTil little Mikey does a grind and bangs some sluts he ain't no skateboarder, so don't worry about it, bitch. And for your information, I AM thinking about the kids. Who the fuck else would I be thinking about??? Just remind little homie that going to Satan is stupid... especially since he'll come right to you if you just raise a little hell. If you'd have taken it up the ass like you normally do, you wouldn't have this problem so don't get all "morals" on me now, slut. 

Sincerely, 

Mr. "Coiler"

PS: Just for the record, I don't seem insensitive, do I? I've really been trying to work on that aspect of my personality lately. Any feedback would help. Thanks!

What up, man. Don't mean to be overly critical, but when I log onto a "skateboarding" site, I don't think its' too much to ask to see some good pictures of skating... I mean, all I really see here is like 20 years old or you just have some not so funny crap. I mean, I'm down with the site and all but you really need to step up the coverage. Here's my "top ten' list of what you can do to improve the site:

1-10: More good skating pics, dude! (ha ha just kidding... kind of!)

Darren C.

Lakewood, Michigan

Dear Darren. Let me list the "top ten" reasons why you're a faggot.


1-10: You're a faggot.

 --Ed.

Hey man,, Just so you know, our web site is monitoring you, dude, so every time you fuck up and say some uncool shit about longboarding or whatever we'll just bump the thread about what a gay ass blog your running. Alls you do is steal our ideas anyway, it's just that we're way funnier and hipper than you when we do it and if people voted they'd like us way better, probably because we invented skateboarding and humor. Just give it up already.

Editorial Staff
Stingray Skate Zine

Let me list the top ten reasons why you're a bunch of faggots. --Ed.

Keep sending in the cash folks! Thanks to your undying support, retirement is only a few short decades away. The Daily Coiler: Utter proof that you can't sell out if you can't even give it away!

How Not to Fuck Up DIY Coping

Pouring your own concrete coping is fun, easy and--like all things skate related--eternally rewarding.  Follow these simple instructions and your trucks will be showering the neighborhood with sparks in no time.

Step 1) Invite over your most trustworthy skateboarding friends to help. Yes sir. It takes real dedication from the whole skating community to build a true scene.

Step 2) Get drunk and figure that, since you've done this before, there's no need to follow the directions on the bag of Kwikcrete. Add water liberally. Go ahead... pour some beer in there too since you've convinced yourself it'll make your grinds more "manly."

Step 3) Spend rest of afternoon frantically trying to trowel out excess liquid until you've achieved a somewhat acceptable-looking pour. Notice disappointed friends abandon scene after it's too late.

Step 4) Let cure and voila! Perfect concrete coping reminiscent of world's finest.

Simulated photo

Any questions? I didn't think so. Feel free to send money.

Real 80s Suck Weekend

Despite my carefully laid plans to "80s out" this past weekend, only speaking to people who skated in the 80s and, of course, only skating 80s-type terrain like jump ramps and shit, my weekend was doomed from the get-go. One, we fucked up the weekly budget so I wasn't able to buy a piece of plywood to build my jump ramp... a poorly conceived 80s retro idea to begin with because, back then we obviously would have stolen the wood anyway. Then I was dumb enough to listen to some dumbassed kid who told me that a certain park had an "80s style" mini ramp... which he swore was a vert ramp chopped down to "eight feet."  I figured if this panned out I'd easily salvage the weekend, 80s style.

Not surprisingly, the mini turned out to be a typical, lame-ass 6 x 16 pre-fab job at some ghetto-ass municipal park. "Fuck it. It's my day off, I'll skate anyways," I thought. Not so fast. The chain link fence was pad locked and the parks and recs maintenance guy who happened to be tooling around said the place was closed indefinitely due to a "big hole" in the mini ramp, as evidenced in the photo. "Don't worry about it, though. There's an even better park twenty minutes down the highway in the next [shit hole]," the guy informed me. To my persistent queries of "is it concrete?" his answer was a resolute, reassuring "yes sir!"

Great. No problem. It was still early on Friday, so I figured I'd head out there and check it out. Perhaps not surprisingly, I started getting suspicious about ten minutes into the drive. I mean, what were the chances of a concrete park within an hour of my house that I hadn't heard about? Sure enough, the next park was obviously built by the same pre-fab scam outfit. Who knows how many years ago? The set up looked alright from a distance, though, so I figured I'd skate the bitch.

Unfortunately, the only real difference between the first and second pre-fab parks was that the hole in the mini ramp at the second park wasn't quite as large as in the first one, so the park was still open. The mini and in fact the whole park was in awful disrepair with screws jutting out everywhere and unfastened edges gaping out all over the place. In retrospect, this dump's rabid sketchiness was really the most attractive, fun feature about it. I skated about an hour and a half and, of course, not one other skater showed up despite that it was a super nice day. Later on at home I looked the second park up on line and the pre-fab company who built it had the nerve to advertise it as "skater made." What a crock of bullshit, unless by "skater" they meant "roller-blader," which may well have been the case.

Anyway, I figured "fuck it." 80s weekend had become late 90s pre-fab weekend. It was still Friday so I was sure I'd salvage some sort of retro action. But it wasn't to be. It rained all goddamned weekend from that point on. So, skating took a back seat to brew drinking and lazing around the pad watching videos of other people skate. Which, had I planned it that way, would have worked nicely as my "Real 80s Shit Weekend" to begin with! Overall, I did learn an important lesson by trying to go retro, though, which is that the only disadvantage I've got in comparison to the good old days of the 80s is my geriatric age. In a lot of ways, I think skating is better, at least for me, nowadays than in the desperate, difficult days of yore, when things to skate--even shitty things--were often at a real premium. Perhaps more importantly, I know I appreciate it a lot more. That's for sure.

You Kick Shit and Fuck Cows?

Dear faithful readers:

The Daily Coiler is very proud to bring to you the first of our promised guest contributions, and  especially proud that our inaugural guest spot is being filled by none other than C Bad, an original Leathasak and Daily Coiler co-founder and contributor. Hopefully C will continue to bring his high quality journalism to the Coiler in the near future.  I believe a standard disclaimer is required for this one, despite that the Coiler secretly does endorse C's views. So, without further ado, "You Kick Shit and..?" Well, I'll let him tell it. Pics are from DC issue #1 back in 2000... and you think the layout of this blog is bad!

So I’m drinking and rapping with this beardo who goes by the handle of El Desmundo, which I believe is Mexican for Desmond.  Anyway, he tells me of this intronet thing and a little place where he tells skateboard stories.  I ask if I might contribute a piece.  He’s pulling a swig when I ask him this and suddenly he spews out brew from his mouth and nose.  He looks up at me, eyes watering, and beer dripping from his nose.  He wipes the slobber from his chin and says “You fucking asshole!”  So I took that as a “sure, write me up a story, you are a talented mutherfucker.” Anyway this story is an all-time favorite, true as shit of course.   

Whether there is a moral to it or not remains to be seen.  Specially since I ain’t sure what morals are. We must have been about 16 or so, still at that scrawny-little-fuck stage, and were driving down the street just after a heated sesh somewhere.  I believe it was three of us, Desmond, Jeff, and me.  Anyway, we’re rolling through a hospital zone where you have to slow down to 15 mph.  This truck pulls up along side of us.  Now we live in the southwest so seeing a beat up pickup filled with real cowboys was nothing unusual.  There was about three of them in a single cab.  Judging by the pubic hair growing on their faces, they were at least of drinking age.  So as they pass us, the driver leans out his window and asks “You all ride skateboards?”  Obviously the genius saw the skateboards piled into the back of the hatchback and put 1+1 together (well done Brokeback!).   

Now while this may seem like an innocent question to most, I should tell you something about skateboarding.  Not too long ago it wasn’t considered cool to be a skateboarder.  What! You say. Not cool?!? That’s right bitch, skateboarding was nothing like it is today. No Boffo and Dildo’s TV skate show or longboarding with the local frat fags or your dad with his cool DC shirt and Hurley hat (are those fags even a skate company?)  Skateboarding was not cool and it still isn’t but that’s another rant.

Anyway, Brokeback asks us if we skateboard.  So Desmond, curious as well, calmly asks him, “Do you kick shit and fuck cows?”  Now, judging by the look on Brokeback’s face, he’s not asked this question very often, if ever.  He seemed quite surprised.  They all seemed quite taken aback, I believe is the phrase.  Come to think of it we were all pretty fucking surprised and laughed our asses off as soon as Desmond blurted this out.  Now I guess these guys take offense to their cow-fuckin' because they were not laughing.  In fact, Brokeback was now hanging half-way out his window and demanding an apology.  Naturally, Desmond calmly replied, “fuck you.”  Now Brokeback just looked utterly confused.  This quickly turned to anger.  It was still funny as shit though. 

So now Brokeback did the only thing he could do.  He pulled his truck in front of us, in the hospital zone, in front of the hospital.  This was pretty surprising to us.  I should mention that in this weird Twilight-Zone-Spaghetti-Western surrealism, there was absolutely no one around.  No other cars, no pedestrians, nothing.  I thought our final showdown had come. So Jeff, who is putting the car into reverse, starts yelling out the window, “This is against the law!”  Brokeback, now parked and blocking the entire road, steps out of his truck, grabs at his ginormous belt buckle and states, “I’ll show you some law boy!” and starts walking toward us.  I swear I fucking heard spurs clinging.  Jeff is now yelling for help, I’m thinking I’m gonna get beat down by HeeHaw, and Desmond is yelling at the dude to get his piece of shit truck out of the way.   

By this time the other Brokebacks have gotten out of the truck and are walking toward us.  “Desmond, just fucking apologize,” Jeff and I say.  So yeah, Desmond said he was just joking and surprisingly those dumbfucks bought it.  Like some sort of weird Cowboy Law where you accept an apology and be on your way, they got back into their truck drove off.  We looked around at each other and started laughing our asses off again and decided to get some beer.  

So the moral of the story… I don’t know.  Maybe it’s be proud of who you are and stand up for yourself.  If you kick shit and fuck cows, be proud of it.  You don’t have to rub it in people's face or brag like you're some fucking rockstar.  Hell, I tried to fuck a cow once.  I was super drunk and so it probably wasn’t the caliber of love making that some of these guys are used to performing.  It was more like cramming an old soggy banana into a wet sock.  Anyway, I’m gonna go skate.

C Bad

Real 80s Shit Weekend

By now everyone's seen and of course bitched about Quicksilver's "80s Vert Jam" event wherein a bunch of 80s vert pros--you know, from Hawk to Hosoi--throw on some flowery shorts, show up with a flock of seagulls coif, pull out an 80s retro model and proceed to shred... a 13' vert ramp. Actually, I've no idea what the actual dimensions of the ramp are, but it sure looks to me a lot like a standard 13' tall, 11' tranny vert ramp. I'm sure I'm wrong about that, but I'd nevertheless like to see some of those dudes skate a "real" 80s vert ramp, or at least a typical backyard vert ramp from that era. I'm talking 9' tall with 8' trannies and a foot of vert. You know, the one that seemed to be on every corner in the mid-80s... the one you couldn't skate because the owner didn't allow drinking, or because he just didn't like your little ass.

C Bad would fuck up a jump ramp back in the 80s

Or scratch that. Fuck the old pro dudes: I'd like to skate a good old 80s vert ramp with those dimensions. And, since everyone claims I'm living in the 80s anyway, it might be a good idea to practice what I preach and simply accept that I'm what everyone claims I am: that is, an 80s retro moron who's completely out of touch with today's skateboarding scene.

No problem. Done. But I'm going to take it a step further. Not only am I going to seek out real 80s type terrain to skate this weekend, and possibly for weeks after that depending on whether I can find anything good, I'm literally going to attempt to live in the 80s by refusing even to talk to anyone who didn't grow up skating in the 80s! That'll teach anyone not to be as old as me! In fact, I think I'll compound the idiocy by acting exactly like I did back then, meaning I'll be a total dick to every other skater I run across, if any (that should be the easy part, I'd guess.)

So rather than head out to the brand new, state of the art concrete skate park down in Cherokee, I'm going to build a jump ramp and skate it in my driveway this weekend. I've also got a line on an 80s-style mini ramp that--get this--is located on South Central street, of all places, so I can get my 80s "Bloods and Crips" on as well. I doubt many 80s gangstas skated, but we're making the rules here, so fuck you. The point: there's no reason to run a blog if you can't find excuses to act like an idiot. Plus, I want to find out just how comfortable I am with my 80s self, you know, for the kids. Anyway, I'm off Friday. So, if you grew up skating in the 80s, know who I am, and can hang with some real 80s shit weekend shenanigans, gimme a call. If not: don't talk to me! Or I mean: shine, dude! I'll be out shralping. Definitely more to come on this one.

We're Back

Well, no thanks to Blogger we're back. I spent all weekend emailing the Blogger techs complaining that Hulksta had hacked the site and started posting largely unintelligible crap about "wait liffin n shit," as he put it, and didn't get so much as one word in response! Fortunately, Tom and Elmer (the Piney Flats crew) showed up over at Hulksta's house late last night and--as promised--they "took care" of the situation for me... Not sure what all went down but after one hell of a lot of screaming and gun fire I'm able to log in as per usual and post and stuff, though I can't seem to delete any of that fuckhead's posts. The Piney Flats crew wanted me to post this picture of pre-roided up Hulksta though, which I agreed to do just to add insult to injury to that prick.

Looks like the fucking Hulksta wasn't so damn impressive before he met the roids! That dumbass used to box or some shit I guess. What a fucking goober. But the coup de grace came when Elmer handed me the following photo... seems that Hulksta used to be a roller skater for a traveling circus show! Ha! Look at that skinny-asssed little bitch! I guess his story is that he hates skating now because roller skating has basically disappeared from popular culture and he blames skateboarders for "exposing the gay element" in roller skating and blading.

So the short of it is that Tom and Elmer have assured me that the Coiler won't have any more problems with fucking Hulksta any time soon. But we'll see. That bastard's been a bigger thorn in my side than even the BFRO, which you may recall ransacked our offices earlier this year.  All I can say is thanks fellas. Anyway, moving on, the Coiler is doing some guest columns in the coming weeks, the first of which will feature original Coiler correspondent C Bad. We look forward to it and hope you find it entertaining. In the meantime, "Yo fuck da Hulksta, yo!!!"

Haha ha U STOOPID

Hahahaha U sk8-borderz is STOOPID!!! U thot da coyula waz changin it's shit up to cover wait liffin n shit hahahaha!!! Hey dumbazzes da HULKSTA pulled some shit on U cuz I B runnin the coyla now bitches word i hacked in tha web site i aint so dumb bitch!!!! haha fooled ur azzes yo!!!

I gots anutha one fo all u dumazz sk8az G! i IZ gonna put wait liffin up now cuz I run dis shit!!! In dis pitcher my heroz from Mr olimpia iz shgowin dey fhyzzeeks. All u kidz out der shud persire 2 B big liik a REEL G! like dis!!

remembr kidz reel Gs dont youz to many steroydz cuz dey bad 4 ur pecka n shit so eat good liik mama saiz. Also dont B sk8en dats fo fagguts n shit on da fo reela u don wanna b no faggut right lil G??? word up an oh yeah FUCK DA COYULA!!!! Sk8az is STOOOPID!!! oh YEA yung Jeezy b da shit yo he doper then hell

YO FUCKK DA COYLA!!!!!!!!!

Yo dis be da coyula no body hacked into our shit dog word. I no da coyla be talkin maad shit bout da nay-bah n shit but hulksta be da shit yo fuyck the coyla!!!!!! i always ferget to ritght that da coyla SUCKS DICK aqn dat DA HULSKA iz tha shit word i shud defineetly be wrightin thqat G

yo check out the new shit sk8-boreding iz stoopid yo



i alwayz ferget too say dat da coyla iz a bunch of fagguts who dont never have good sk8 pictures anywayz bitch plus them fagguts I me4an we dont neven liff waits n shit wut a bunch of pusssies wee iz haha ha fuck da coyula!!!! oh yeah now da coyula iz gonna cover wait liffin fuck sk8ing!!!!!!! ohyeah we iz also gonna hav e alot mo naked bitches n shit cuz we aint no fagguts!!! well be like silverfish n shit word!!!!!

La Llorona

Don’t go down to the ditch, my child,
Don’t go skate alone;
For the sobbing woman, shrill and wild,
Might claim you for her own.

She weeps when the sun is murky red;
She wails when the moon is old;
She cries for her babies, still and dead,
She slammed on the pavement cold.

Abandoned by a faithless love,
Filled with fear and hate.
She flung them from the ditch above,
And made off with their skates.

Day and night, she heard their screams,
Borne on Don Roser’s crest;
Their tortured faces filled her dreams,
And gave her heart no rest.

 

Crazed by guilt and dazed by pain,
Weary from loss of sleep,
She leapt in the ditch, lashed by rain,
And drowned in the waters deep.

She seeks her children day and night,
Wandering, lost, and cold;
She weeps and moans in dark and light,
A tortured, restless soul.

Don’t go down to the ditch, my child,
Don’t go skate alone;
For the sobbing woman, shrill and wild,
Might claim you for her own.

Ode to Pools Past: Picacho Hills

Picacho Hills pool was the centerpiece at the club house for a relatively affluent golf course community in southern New Mexico. Such a pretentious recreational neighborhood seemed painfully out of place amid the desolate poverty of the dust-choked Spanish bad lands. Overlooking the Organ mountains from the West Mesa across the Chihuahuan Desert, the pool was located on the same heat-soaked stretch of brittle highway as another long-time favorite at an old, dilapidated water slide park. Any sun-dazed desperado could tell that Picacho Hills was a dying dream, a shriveling desert oasis even in its hey day. After all, Don Juan de Oñate himself had failed to find his cities of gold along the jornada del muerto. You think some pendejo with a golf course was gonna realize his gilt-edged dream here?

Lewcifer did rock back around 1989

Like the desperate region surrounding it, Picacho Hills had a long and violent skate history. Many, many veteranos skated here over its quarter-century run as one of the gold standards of pooldom in the area. In fact, the pool was a veritable goldmine--the lost Dutchman come to life--where only broken desert dreams and the dissipated haze of hopeless mirages once reigned. A posse of Pat Garretts couldn't keep Billy the Kid's gang of bullet-scarred banditos from blazing away at its shimmering walls. Victorio, Taza, Cochise and Geronimo himself were said to have skated here, too, trading their proud Appaloosas for plied maple and a few stout swigs of King Cobra.

Although this oasis rarely held water, the self-proclaimed upholders of law and order--such a foreign concept in this bleak borderland--guarded its gates with the utmost vigilance. Pitched battles determined who controlled this wind-blown desert town and, in the end, the lawless skate-toting men of fortune undid the moralizing missionaries, burying their crosses in the dusty drain beneath a solemn
death box. The law of the West ruled here: only the most daring outlaws survived.

How many riders' blood stained Picacho Hills' mythic walls? None can accurately say. Even amidst the very bowels of Western folklore, the pool's legend manages to loom tall, shading even the rattlesnake-lined banks of the trickling Río Grande. Its lore contains all the mythic elements: rich and poor, good and evil, though, like the best pistol-blazing oater, the lines delineating them are too blurred, too compromised to make much difference.

Tiger looks for lawmen while hanging on to a G carve

There were no morals here; only lawless, godless men content to find their fortunes in fool's gold. They'd scout the pool like thirst-maddened zopilotes and take their chances even if the scarecrows were still posted. After an evening's shootout at this parched arroyo they'd clink frothy cervezas under a silver-lit moon until they passed contentedly into a demon stupor, like dusty skeletons still clinging to their X-branded bottles.

But make no mistake about it, Picacho Hills was no myth. It may have been the fabled lost mine, forgotten city, and a treasure trove of glinted jewels all rolled into one, but the pool was as real as the sting of one hundred scorpions. And the riders were real, too. Their legends, like the pool's itself, remain etched somehow in the blowing desert sand. And it's rumored that on the darkest and loneliest of desert nights, when even the most cunning coyotes have given up their shrill yowl, if one listens closely enough, he can still make out the distant rumbling of wild cowboys and Indians on wooden horses, carving their own legends into the bullet-riddled walls of Picacho Hills.

Straight Kooks

It's as inevitable as death, taxes and the piles. If you're into skateboarding, eventually you'll be called a kook. It happens to everybody. No matter how long you've been at it, how many proverbial dues you've paid, what you've built, skated, or accomplished, someone out there's gonna think you're a kook. Generally speaking, a dash of kookiness in one's personality is actually a good thing: it's an attribute of most skateboarders that distinguishes us from everyone else. No doubt about it, skating has always claimed among its eclectic membership the type of people who rank highly on non-skaters' kook lists. We're all obviously proud to be that type of kook. Or, at least we should be.

Kookiness is one thing, but full-blown kookdom is a problem. While I firmly believe that there are no rules to skateboarding and that whoever skates is down just by virtue of that fact, it remains that there are some people who just don't fucking get it. I'd hate to venture some definition of what skating "is," which would be down-right kooky in and of itself, but there are nevertheless people out there who truly merit the description of straight kook because, I repeat, they just do not fucking get "it," whatever the hell that may be.

In skateboarding, you don't wanna be called a "straight kook." You can be any sort of kook but that... though fucking kook is never good, either. Come to think of it, any time someone bothers to add an adjective to "kook" you know there's real antipathy there. For example, "I ran into so and so yesterday: he's a kook" might not mean anything bad at all, but throw "god-damned" or "mutha-fucking" in the mix and you know there's a problem. That dude's probably a serious kook.

It all comes down to getting "it," after all, which is a real shame because, when you stop to think about it, there really isn't any "it" to get. I think genuine skaters always have and always will basically understood that. So, when people have to stop and try to explain "it" to some total fucking douche bag, an adjective like "straight" is bound to describe "kook" shortly thereafter.

I've always found most skaters, even the kookiest of kooks, to be pretty tolerable in comparison to non-skaters. The really suspicious kooks, in my mind, are the ones who try to make something out of skating when it's not necessary... you know, the dudes always making a big deal out of shit. Would this make money? Could I be pro? Does this look right? In effect, kooks try to make an "it" out of skating where none previously existed; they take skating seriously. It's interesting that when skaters become pros and start making money off of skating they're usually described as having made "it." Good for them, I guess. But, while I'd never begrudge a skateboarder a living, there are certainly better ways to do it than others... You can tell, too, cuz all the pro dudes who do it suspiciously seem to start acting like straight fucking kooks, as inevitably as death, taxes and the piles.