SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

Collin Provost has bloomed from a little short-haired lanky guy to a bigger, long-haired lanky guy over the past five years and seems to have grown apart from the Element Skateboard image, which makes his most recent switch to Toy Machine even more fitting. I caught up with him to ask about how the change went down, how things ended up with Element and what it's like to be on Toy with Ed Templeton and the rest of the crew. Read this exclusive interview about Collin's recruitment as Toy's newest Loyal Pawn

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

A snapshot of the California Heritage Museum's skateboard exhibit.
Skateboarding is a relatively new past time, when you compare it to the history of some activities. But because of the speed of progression, in those 60 some years, there are tons of events and progression that fit into the 60 some years since a load of surfers took the wheels off of skates and nailed them to a piece of wood. Last night, the California Heritage Museum opened a show of skateboards from the 40s until now. On the walls, you can see how boards have become a sort of symbol of the state where they originated and witness the evolution of art, from standard logos to the point that boards have reached today—veritable works of art. The collection is a consolidation of various separate collections and has amazing sites to see.

Our contributor, Micah Abrams, was able to snap some photos of the walls at the event, before being told that no photos are allowed. It's not much, but it's a taste of some of the history. If you are around Santa Monica, take a stroll through the walls and walls of history, at 2612 Main Street in Santa Monica.

The show also features work by C.R. Stecyk III, Glen E. Friedman, Craig Fineman, Wynn Miller, Kevin Ancell, Wes Humpston and more.


The beginnings of a cultish past time. I doubt anyone who made these boards back in the days could imagine what people are doing on skateboards today.

The seventies brought some innovation from the boards of the 40s. Weird shapes became the norm.

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

New York City's premiere skateboard brand has come together with one of New York City's original MC's for a very special deck collaboration. In their December holiday product release, Zoo York will drop limited edition Rakim decks to honor one of the godfathers of hip hop. The limited edition decks will come packaged with Rakim's brand new album "The Seventh Seal" which drops in stores and online November 17th. The dekc will be available through the Zoo York and Rakim websites.

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

The Quiksilver Tony Hawk Show Arrives In Paris November 20-21 To Kick Off Quiksilver’s 40th Anniversary Festivities

Over 30 Global Quiksilver Surf, Skate and Snow Athletes Will Join the Celebration including Reese Forbes, Danny Garcia, and Alex Olson.

Quiksilver announced its 40th anniversary celebration in Paris, November 20-21, 2009. The event will feature two days of skateboarding, music, art and fashion at the historic Grand Palais–culminating in a Saturday night finale featuring The Quiksilver Tony Hawk Show, followed by a concert with Dead By Sunrise (Chester Bennington of Linkin Park with his newest band) and a late night with DJ Mix Master Mike.

This will be the first action sports event ever held inside the Grand Palais, with the largest vert ramp ever built in Europe and an immense street course open to skaters of all ages and skill levels—free of charge–for the entire two days. And a Street Contest Invitational will feature a prize purse of 20,000 Euros. This is a rare and unique chance for pros and locals alike to skate inside one of the city’s massive historic monuments—for the last 109 years its held boxing competitions and horse racing but never before has it been open to skateboarding.

In addition to the insane roster of Quiksilver athletes, The Tony Hawk Show is bringing friends such as skaters Andy MacDonald, Kevin Staab, Sandro Dias, Jean Postec, Sergie Ventura, Jesse Fristch, and four of the biggest names in international skateboarding will be our very special guests: Christian Hosoi, Daniel Cardone, Javier Mendizabal and Omar Hassan.

The weekend’s events also include exhibition areas for art, music and cultural events. Special guest and renowned graffiti artist André will be transforming giant ramps into unique art, giving the public the exceptional opportunity to watch the notorious artist at work. Quiksilver has also assembled a 40 year fashion retrospective inside the venue.

Entrance is free to the public for the daytime events (10:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m.). Saturday night’s performance is a ticketed event for 40 euros. For ticket purchase information and a schedule of events, please visit: quiksilverlive.com.

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

Billy Marks caused quite a stir with his part in last year's Fallen footwear video "Ride The Sky." After that accomplishment and the promotional tours that followed, Marks didn't slow down for long logging tricks at The Berrics for his Battle Commander segment that turned some heads once again. Some time between all that he managed to become a new father as well. Now he's already deep into filming for the next Toy Machine project. How does one man with such a great moustache do so much? Marks' good friend Mike Sinclair caught up with him to find out what his rollercoaster life has been like lately and just what he would do if he ever became truly rich.

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

In anticipation of our world premiere of Globe’s United By Fate 6 here on skateboarding.com on November 18, here is a sneak peek behind the scenes in the mysterious warehouse with David Gonzalez, Louie Lopez, Jake Duncombe, Mark Appleyard, Chris Haslam, and Ryan Decenzo. Peep the UBF 6 trailer here. Mark Appleyard & Louie Lopez Q&A Part 1 & Part 2.

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

Insight proudly welcomes Jamie Thomas to the team. As a skateboarding icon with over 15 years as a professional skateboarder Insight is proud to have Jamie along for the ride. Thomas will work closely with Insight designers to develop a personally inspired and tailored capsule collection to be released early 2010. Look for footage of Jamie in the Insight short film, Repeat After Me; I am Free, launching this Friday November 13th, 2009 via insight51.com. There is a teaser for the video there as well.

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

Indy air—Duane Peters invented the Indy grab and Christian Hosoi took it to the 2009 Rumble in Ramona. When you have a backside air that's as stylish as Hosoi's, it doesn't seem out of place for a clean, highly devout person like him mixing with the seediness that was the Rumble. It kind of makes him untouchable. That backside air of his is legendary.

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

Tom Penny has amassed a cult following over the years that borders on something of a religion. For those of us who witnessed his maiden voyage assaults—either on video or firsthand—back in the early 90s, his Midas touch and supernatural reign over skateboarding are a given of biblical proportions. Tom was like urethane that fell into in a box of clay wheels. Once he landed, skateboarding could never go back. Any questions are null and void. Yet, for the younger readers out there (yeah, that’s you COTG), looking back today and wondering exactly why old men far and wide see God’s gift to skateboarding in a soft-spoken, bearded, XXL-clad nomad currently residing in Argentina—or is that throughout Europe?—I can understand, or at least pardon, some confusion. As the trite expression goes, I guess you had to be there. The following dudes were.
SKIN PHILLIPS

pennyaugust961

The TransWorld front blunt cover was forever debated whether he made it or not. It almost didn’t matter. It’s not like he’d stop trying a trick because he slammed. It was more like he just got bored.
Yeah. For the record, he didn’t roll away from that. But that was Penny. I mean, most people were shooting photos of 50-50s or five-0s on that thing. Just to get into a front blunt and slide it that casually was amazing. He just did things or he didn’t. He wasn’t going to go back and force himself to do something. He just did what he felt. He didn’t go back to do the front blunt. He just didn’t care.

Was Tom’s approach to skateboarding there from the get-go?
Absolutely. He must have been about fourteen when I saw him at Harrow. It was around ’91. He was already pretty gnarly and smooth at a real young age. It was definitely baggy-pants, small-wheels days, so he was little bit lost in his clothes. But everybody was already aware of him in the U.K. It might be fair to say that it all kind of came together for him at Radlands ’93. There were all sorts of stories even from that where he showed up, did his one run, and left half way through the comp. When he won, they had to call him to get his mum to bring him back to find out he’d won. That was just sort of the way Penny was. He was nonchalant. He sort of didn’t realize—I don’t think he’s ever realized the impact he’s had on skateboarding. He never thought about it. Everything was just natural. Were his lines thought out before? Probably to an extent based on what he’d been doing in practice. But none of it was premeditated like, “Right, I’m gonna do this here, then hit the hip, then hit the pyramid.” It was just flow.

Describe the Earl Warren downhill line. Back tail ender on the rail.
Mind-blowing. F—king mind-blowing.

The beauty in that one to me was that some other guy could have done the same line, as gnarly as it was. But another dude would have been running through the first couple tricks and you’d just see the stress start to kick in like, “Okay, I got the kickflip down the three stairs, now here comes the rail—tense up, get ready.” But with Penny it was just in the now. He’s just messing with a switch ollie, messing with a switch flip, big switch 180, kickflip the stairs, and then, “Oh, here’s a rail. Guess I’ll back tail it. Sounds fun.”
Yeah, right [laughs]. Like, “Here we go. I’ll just let the board do the work.”

Tom’s infamous Earl Warren line (3:00) in the Flip Industry section from 411 Issue 11

It’s like the combination of his la-de-da composure with the difficulty of the tricks that just baffled me. Have you ever seen another dude that you could put in a similar class?
I don’t think there is really. I mean, Chad [Muska] had that going a bit. Jeremy Wray was doing monstrous things, and [Andrew] Reynolds was pushing the limit, but Tom’s demeanor was just unique. The other thing with Tom and really all the Flip guys when they came over was that they were absolutely unfazed by contests or demos. That’s just what they grew up skating.

You were at the chain-to-bank?
I do want to say that was probably the last time I ever filmed. The switch backside flip was probably the absolute last trick I ever filmed. I remember getting back to the office and they were like, “Where are the photos?” and I was just like, “Sh-t.” I just knew I was witnessing something special and I thought it just had to have two angles. So just based on how insane that moment was I made a decision to make sure it got documented. It was more important than my job as a photographer. That’s how much we knew it meant to skateboarding.

Tom’s chain-to-bank annihilation in TransWorld’s Anthology
GEOFF ROWLEY

In those days he was clearly leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else. But it was that kind of unconscious approach that made it just impossible to comprehend. How do you describe his approach?
Well, the people that knew him knew it was natural. He wasn’t trying to be cool and look nonchalant. He really did skate like that naturally. Left to his own devices, that’s just the way he rolled. He was insanely innovative, and it just seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him. He single-handedly opened up a whole new realm of street skating that at that time needed to happen. The constant drive that everybody started to have after that almost came from the push he brought to the game. He was a wake-up call to skateboarding, sort of reigniting the flame [Pat] Duffy had lit with his Questionable [1992] part. He made it okay to make an effort again—it put some balls back into the mix.

Give the story of the Cheech and Chong graphic.
cheechAt the time, all the graphics we were doing were very early comic book. Tom loved Cheech and Chong for obvious reasons. He’s had a bunch of rad ones that he’s brought to Flip. But that one, along with the mushroom board, is probably the most iconic. We winged it at first, then eventually they found out. Cheech Marin was rad enough to continue letting us make the board as long as he got some royalties. So we actually still pay him on a monthly basis. Cheech Marin has been on the Flip payroll since 2000. So you can thank Cheech for that graphic or it would have been long gone. It came out in ’96 and is still one of our best-selling boards today. So that’s thirteen years strong. Cheers, Cheech.
ANDREW REYNOLDS

Tell us about the San Dieguito rail assault [High Five, ’95].
Oh man. The switch flip. It’s unexplainable. That whole thing is just like the Penny package. It’s like a display. Not many people have got kickflip, frontside flip, switch frontside flip, and switch flip all looking exactly the same. It wasn’t even really that common to do tricks over handrails at that point. He just killed it.

What about Chicken’s pool [High Five, ’95]?
Oh man. I have to tell this one [laughs]. I went to Chicken’s pool this one time to skate and just thought like, “I want to try and frontside flip where he got the little hip,” you know? He did the kickflip back tail and then he just went down and did that kickflip stuck to the wall over that hip. I figured I could frontside flip on a quarterpipe, so I should be able to frontside flip this little hip right? I tried it, and seriously every time the thing would just shoot me out to the flatbottom [laughs]. Like completely out of control. There was just no way I could do it. After that I was just like, “I don’t get it.” His was just this delicate little thing, just stuck to that wall. Flatground and vert are like the same thing to that dude.

The article is called “The Church Of Tom.” Is it fair to call you a disciple?
[Laughs] Hell yes. We got to spread the word, man.

Tom’s San Dieguito rail assault and Chicken’s pool magic from etnies’ 1995 video High Five
CHAD MUSKA

Describe living in Newport Beach, with a beer sponsor and Tom.
[Laughs] Yeah. Man, basically a month after I met him we were both on TSA and ended up living together. TSA’s owner had a house right on the beach with one room available. We both moved into the room with our mattresses on either side of it. I was so psyched. It was the first bed I’d had in like six years or something. From then on we just skated together, partied together, and chilled pretty much every day. He started filming for the etnies video, the TSA video, and Flip, and I was filming for Welcome To Hell (1996). It was rad to just feed off of each other.

What does the kid that’s scratching his head and furrowing his brow over why the Penny legend is so big need to understand?
At the time that Tom started on the scene, it was just unimaginable to see the kind of progression he was bringing to the table. Nobody was doing the things he was doing. Not even close. People might look at it now—they might look back and not realize how insane it was. Because these days that stuff is normal in skateboarding. But back then, nobody was kickflipping over ten-stair handrails. That was just something like, “Holy sh-t!” It just blew you away. Like the rail in Huntington—I think it was a twelve-stair at the courthouse across from the skatepark. I remember just being there and seeing him frontside flip over that thing. I couldn’t believe he did it. You’d watch him rolling away and it still hadn’t registered in your brain.

What about his demeanor?

Yeah. Damn. That was pretty much the craziest part of it all. It was almost like he didn’t know he was doing anything special. None of it was conscious. Nothing he’s done has been conscious [laughs]. It’s just all-natural. His whole life is like that. I remember we’d be at Huntington Park and decide like, “Hey, let’s go to Ed [Templeton]’s house.” Then on the way to Ed’s house we’d pass by these random sets of stairs that were f—king huge. We’d be walking up to them and I don’t think he even looked at them first—he’d just roll up and kickflip ’em first try. He’d be rolling away and you’d be like, “Oh sh-t, I better pick my board up and walk down these stairs [laughs].” That was just all the time. Anywhere you went he would just bust something—no cameras, nothing. None of it was ever planned in any way. It was never like, “I’m gonna do this and I’ll get this cover and be a superstar.” It was just, “Oh, there’s an obstacle in front of me and I want to do this down it.” Boom. “I’m just doing it.” For more on Tom, including new photos, pick up the December issue on sale now.

Tom’s part in TSA’s 1996 video Life In The Fast Lane

SKBSG SK8 NEWS UPDATES

Ed Templeton Interview 2009
Unless you’ve been living in a sewer with CHUD for the past few decades, you already know that Ed Templeton is a man who wears many hats—pro skateboarder, company owner, team manager, artist, photographer, husband and many more. Ed started skateboarding in 1985, and turned pro in 1990. After he married his life partner Deanna in 1991, Ed went on to start Toy Machine and an art career in 1993 and worked hard as hell to launch those and all other aspects of his life to stellar heights. Ed is one of very few pro skaters who loves doing interviews, so when you shove a tape recorder in front of him, you know it’s going to be epic. Read it all and peep the photos on the Emerica site.

Ed Templeton No Age Prize Pack!
Ed Templeton loves No Age and Emerica loves Ed, so we had No Age design a very special limited-edition colorway of Ed’s new shoe, The Archer. Enter right now on the contest page for a chance to win a pair plus a skateboard deck, a big Emerica sticker (those last three items were hand-drawn and signed by Ed) and a copy of the new No Age Losing Feeling CD from Sub Pop.


éS Game of SKATE Amateur World Championships Comes to Orange County, CA

Be Part of History As The First-Ever Complete Online Flat-Ground “Tricktionary” is Filmed – All Are Welcome To Come Film a Trick!

More than 12,000 skaters competed in over 100 cities in more than 25 countries around the world in the éS game of SKATE Global Tour. Each éS Game of SKATE Global Tour stop crowned their local winners and the winners of each location have been given an all-expenses-paid trip to Orange County, California to compete in the éS Game of SKATE Amateur World Championships on Saturday, November 14, 2009. The éS Game of SKATE Amateur World Championships is open to the public and admission is free.
This year at the éS Game of SKATE Amateur World Championships, éS is going to film the first-ever complete online flat-ground “Tricktionary” to give all skateboarders a chance to try and stomp their best variation of a skateboard trick. In the following weeks, éS will pick the cleanest variations of each trick and put the how-to videos in the first-ever flat-ground “Tricktionary” on the éS Game of SKATE website. The “Tricktionary” will give skateboarders the chance to see the correct footwork fundamentals of what goes into over 200 different variations of flat-ground tricks.

Visit gameofskate.com for a list of these tricks and to add your own suggestions.

What: éS Game of SKATE Amateur World Championships
When: Saturday, November 14, 2009
Trictionary Filming - 10:00 a.m. (PST)
éS Game of SKATE – 3:00 p.m. (PST)
Where: éS Headquarters
20162 Windrow Drive
Lake Forest, CA 92631