BlogSkate
WORDS TO LIVE BY December 11 2008
One of the sites I've patroned for a couple Christmas gifts has been Vans.com. The brand is definitive in both skate and street culture, and in my opinion, has become a staple in the Southern California repertoire. Their website matches in strength. I've revisited many times after purchasing because of their flash oriented homepage that has a pretty inspiring piece by Vans team skater, John Cardiel.
Given my infatuation with East Asian religions like Taosim, I especially liked the "true freedom is within the flow" part.
I failed to realize, though, that Cardiel's story was actually part of a bigger Vans project called ICONoclasts. It features Henry Rollins (Black Flag), Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead), Stacy Peralta (Z-Boys), Robert Williams (Juxtapoz), the abovementioned John Cardiel, Wes Humpston (Bulldog Skates), Joel Tudor (surfer), and Sarah (Collette Paris). I have a lot of interest in these people and in this endeavor because of the core message. Taking away the religious undertones, an iconoclast breaks the rules and goes against the norm. In some ways, that's what we're achieving here at CA. I've said this before - we want to creatively modify the way you think about cultural brands and about your identity. We march to the beat of our own drum, releasing shit that might only make sense to us. And still, that's all good.
SPOKE TOO SOON? December 5 2008
In the Fall, we released a t-shirt that made the statement, "People in Manila Don't Skate". The shirt was heavily inspired by my experience in Manila; I was bummed that kids didn't have an outlet like skateboarding. I'm not sure what contributed to this reality - economy, poor infrastructure, whatever - but that's what I noticed. Our shirt fell into the awareness category, as we wanted to help bring skate culture to the pacific islands.
Lately, it seems that its getting there. Team Manila now carries long boards in their lifestyle store. The Daily Grind had a photo spread on skaters in Subic Bay. And then today, Tim (Sunday) sent me an article from Volcom. Some of their team visited the capital city and had themselves a three day session. Check it out HERE.