Gas Money Skate Auction

With gasoline prices averaging $3.36 a gallon nationally and, by the looks of it, some psychotic free market worshiping libertarian likely to be elected the next president, I can't just be hauling people around to remote skate parks for free... even considering the bank the Daily Coiler staff hauls in off this web site. But if I do, you'd better not leave your shit in my ride or it's going up for auction. So, without further introduction, the Coiler is proud to present the first Gas Money Skate Auction.

Item Number One: Mini Broom

The next time you and your friends venture out to a skate park located as far from civilization as humanly possible, make sure to bring along this tiny terror. The joke will be on your friends when they realize that it'll take them three times as long to sweep out the bowl than with a regular sized broom. Don't worry, you'll be relaxing in the shade draining some of the beers you bought with the money you saved by not chipping in for gas. This item is sure to provide its owner with sadistic laughter for years to come.

Opening bid: $2




Item Number Two: Coleman Mini Cooler
The number one rule on road trips? Pack light. Especially since you know that by not contributing to the gas fund, you're pretty much considered dead weight yourself right off the bat. The beauty of this little cooler is twofold. One, it only holds about six beers, so you can pound the PBRs you bought with the money you saved by not contributing to the gas fund and dig right in to the driver's cooler, thereby drinking for free. And, two, the thing doesn't really keep anything cold anyway, so, not only will it provide you with incentive to hurry up and drink your beers and get into everybody else's, it'll also leak all over the driver's car after you "forget" it there. This little gem is a skate trip must have.

Opening Bid: $2.50


Item Number Three: Tôn Loc Shades
We understand your quandary. You gotta look cool skating outdoors to make it in today's ultra-hipster skate scene. Yet, you also have to look cool enough indoors to wack yourself off in the mirror between sessions. Don't worry. The Coiler's got you covered with these vintage Tôn Locster shades donated to the Gas Money Skate Auction fund months ago. They even come with custom, dried up over-spray from the previous owner's last few bed air sessions. With these shades on, no one will ever see you eying the escape route to your own vehicle after your free ride to the park. In fact, with this type of anonymity, you can make sure to rub in the fact that you didn't pay shit for gas... who would ever notice? Just don't get carried away and think you're too cool, now. You gotta save some for the ladies!

Opening bid: $2 (free beer in photo only)


We'll accept bids through Saturday, October 22. Shipping not included.

Skate Jocks

I remember back in the '90s seeing an interview with MC Hammer wherein he defended himself against charges of "selling out" by arguing that anyone who criticized anyone else for "selling out" was essentially jealous of the accused's success. I.e., his working assumption was that anyone who could make money and become a big star would invariably do so, as if no one could possibly have any sense of integrity or vision that might complicate the matter. All art must be crap, he seemed to be saying, so why not get paid for creating said garbage? 

These days there seems to be a similar line of reasoning among "skate jocks," you know, the dudes stressing over skating--how they look, whether they did the trick "right" or if anyone noticed them doing it. Skate jocks think they get accused of being skate jocks because everybody's jealous of their skills, that indeed everyone is an aspiring circus gymnast, a mere monkey in training waiting to unleash a slew of stylistically inept, textbook, soulless "maneuvers" on the perfect skate park terrain (skate jocks have to have a perfect park, now). Skate jocks think they rip and they "prove" it by doing the trick their homie has been trying right in his or her face.

Skate jock: "DIY trannies are inconsistent and often too tight"

Skate jocks look forward to contests. They have something to prove and, at the end of the day, think skating is basically like any other sport wherein the idea is to be the best in everyone else's opinion. They crave others' approval but really only have their own. Skate jocks get mad all the time and don't ever seem to have fun skating. They only skate certain things (the things they've mastered) and are notorious for complaining about terrain they didn't build, or even help build, but was put there for them to skate, which of course the skate jock claims they would have made better. Skate jocks don't seem to grasp the difference between ripping and competing... when they push it, it's always in an effort to make something someone else has already done. They've got a list of tricks they want to do before they "hang it up," because all skate jocks think in terms of some sort of skating "career." In fact, unlike the real lifers, skate jocks wouldn't skate at all if they didn't get recognized as the "best" because it really isn't that much fun for them anyway... and of course it doesn't mean anything to them, so they may as well get paid doing it, too. Anybody in their right mind would, they claim.

Skate jocks don't get it. And no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to convince them that, for something to be important, it can't be taken too seriously. But they want skating to be "popular," and work diligently to improve the public's perception of their beloved "sport." They sure as hell never spray painted the bowl at the local concrete park to make sure the surface skated better. They skate like they have a stick up their ass, and act a lot like that too. And, I suspect that if any of them saw that interview with MC Hammer back in the '90s, they understood his pain, the rest of us being jealous and all.  Perhaps most curiously, skate jocks tend to value other human beings based on their ability, rather than their desire, to ride a fucking skateboard, and then wonder why it is they don't seem to have any real friends.

Fucking Hippies

I guess that to be "punk" these days, at least among the younger types who just discovered it, you have to throw out frequent references to your complete and utter disdain for hippies. "What are you, some sort of hippie?" I hear, over and over again, every time I suggest that used baby diapers belong in the trashcan or that it's possible to go outside without strewing broken glass all over the sidewalk. "You talked to another human being without punching them? What are you, some kind of a fucking hippie?" "You read a book? What are you, a goddamn hippie?" The interrogation goes on endlessly, despite lacking historical consistency. For instance, even though I've never tried it, I get the idea that if I did something a first generation hippie may have actually done, like, say, take a big old stinky, hairy dump out in public, I'd be embraced as "punk" by today's hipster hooligans, whereas, if I were to do something that a first generation punker might have actually done, like, say, think, I'd be reviled as a worthless, bigfoot-felching hippie. Funny how times have changed.

Old punk, new look: Embrace your inner hippie

I didn't get into punk rock or skateboarding until the 1980s, so I'm no expert on their origins. But, when it comes to the punk rock scene I was aware of as a kid, I distinctly recall that, during that time, the basic attitude we embraced was one of social defiance, not of social conformity. In a nutshell, the opposite seems gratingly true in today's so-called "punk rock" scene, which conveniently misrepresents lethargy, disinterest, and mindless destruction as appropriate "punkness," in effect, as a way to represent a well-established, ultra-conformist, neo-conservative rationale for complete and utter capitulation to the dominant social values of greed and convenience. What can I say? Stupid, arrogant and lazy don't add up to "punk" to me. They add up to mindless, ignorant, hedonistic, conformity; you know, the type of shit we claim to hate? But if being a stupid, worthless, lazy piece of shit is "punk" to you and all your hippie-hating, "punk" homies, then please, by all means, consider me a Birkenstock-wearing, nature-loving, 'chuley-oiled, dingle-berry gargling hippie (just not a credit card hippie, please!). In the meantime, I already consider you a fucking kook.

Western Wallride

Mocoso of the Wallride Side crew sent in this pic of a backyard bowl build he's been helping on out West. Looks like Wallride Side got the permanent shut down by the city recently, which went so far as to send in a SWAT team to bust up the park and haul in whichever of the loc builders lurking at the site they could nab. Mocoso, Matamaricones and Estéban all escaped and decided to cool it for a few months by signing on to this job out West.

Click on the bitch

Fucking weird, but that backyard looks kind of familiar to me. I asked Mocoso who was behind it, though, and he said I wouldn't know the guy. "I recognize that place," I insisted! "It's like I've been there before or something." But to no avail. Mocoso ain't say shit, other than to throw out some cryptic explanation about Jimmy Acosta's goofy-footed stunt double or something. So don't get your hopes up.

One thing's for sure: It's hella cool to see people getting right to the point on this whole "backyard revisionism" thing that came out in Confusion Magazine a few months back. I mean, it's good to know that even with all the sick skate parks out West there are still people dedicated enough to make a backyard scene happen, which is the best way--in this age of predatory corporate colonialism--to build skating, since projects like these do more than just make skating possible. They protect its integrity, if there is such a thing, from the seemingly endless onslaught of cocksuckers trying to fuck it up. And that ought to be commended.

Falling Down

Nothing says "Autumn" around where I live like grabbing the ride and hitting some nearby hills. Shit, within a mile of my house I've got a bunch of good ones with about everything you can ask for when it comes to hill skating. There's blind curves, serpentine double and triple drop hills that weave through area farm and forest land. And, of course, you've got a straightaway shooter like "The Hill that Really Killed the Dead Man that Dead Man's Hill is Named After Hill," pictured below.

Dead Man's Reeking Stinking Maggot Infested Rotted Entrails Hill

I mean, it's not San Francisco: these hills ain't actually gonna kill anybody and, despite the goofy names I've given them, I'm sure the reputation of your town's "Dead Man's Hill" is perfectly safe. And no one would ever bother shooting video of bombing my neighborhood hills--well, unless some total fucking douche bag ripped his head open or something. But, when the leaves start turning, the temperature starts nipping a bit, the breeze kicks up just enough to strew those leaves about, and those Sunday brews start tasting extra savory, I can't think of a better way to spend the afternoon. Or, even if I could, I'd probably be out skating these hills anyway. It's become kind of an annual rite of passage for me. One that serves as yet another metaphor for life that seem to abound in skating. It's about keeping things simple. Much like life, when it comes to hills, you just gotta get on the bitch and go... and of course hope you don't get hit by a car. One way or another, you'll get to the bottom. The idea is to avoid being called a "pussy" in the process. No matter how you look at it, though, everything seems to come together this time of year when it comes to skating. Whether it's the cold ones, my skateboard, or just me, things have to go down in the Fall, right? It's the way nature meant things to be.

Coiled Again

If you ask people what trick they would do if they were only physically able to do just one, "frontside grinds" is almost always the answer. Sometimes it's frontside airs, and I suspect that a lot of people couldn't give up being able to crack an ollie anywhere... though I've yet to meet a well-rounded skateboarder who rates ollies above frontside grinds. No one ever says backside grinds, which really aren't even considered a trick unless you smith one out, but I bet backside airs make several peoples' short lists. All told, nothing seems to rank up there with the frontside grind... in fact, I've heard a lot of people say things like: "I would definitely still skate if I could only do frontside grinds." That's a lot of respect for something considered "basic" when it comes down to it.

The fact is, like everything in skating, "basic" is a completely relative assessment, especially since fronstside grinds can be done in so many ways and in so many different places by people of all skill levels. The "travelability" of the frontside grind ensures that it captures everyone's attention pretty much anywhere. You can frontside grind everything from a curb on flat ground to (theoretically) the edge of a capsule while carving upside down, which I saw this guy almost do at Lincoln City II (I always wondered if that ever went down) and just about everything in between.  When you can nollie kickflip nose-grind 900 all those things, let me know... I've got a shop deck with my name on it for you that'll only cost you $30: you're sponsored! Until then, gimme frontside grinds, ro-ros and backside airs, and I'll still be skating in another twenty years no matter where I happen to be.