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croknok.com

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Second page done

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Experimenting

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Practice

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I think the nbd thing is probably always going to be a thing in the more mainstream aspects of skateboarding but for people like me, an older man that's been skateboarding since young and actually having a passion for the activity I feel like skateboarding, even if it seems that it evolves really fast it actually evolves really slow. Yeah people get more buck, and crazy with the tech tricks for example but the skaters that come around and actually does something that when you see it you really go: "yesss, that's dope!" are very few and far between. I'll still watch everything because I love skateboarding. But sometimes I take breaks and don't watch anything for a long time and when I come back I see how skateboarding actually progressed as far as tricks. And its always great. I need to watch that video.

I Shall be Released

It took me two whole weeks to create the right ambience to sit down and watch Sour III. Truth be told, the right moment never came and feeling a little out of sorts I figured I would give it a shot and try and squeeze it in amidst everything else. The result was a deeply introspective one. I marvelled at the novelty of the skating and drifted off into a meditation about the snug fit between the history of jazz and skateboarding. I tried to position Sour III in this timeline and got lost somewhere between post-bop and free jazz.

The conclusion I have is pretty straightforward and might be of interest to anyone trying to theorise the weird position skateboarding is currently in. Simply put, there are only so many notes in music, and only so many possible variations in what you can do with a skateboard. Please can we surrender the NBDs and instead pursue HIBD. No more ‘never been done’ and instead ‘how it’s been done’, what sort of combination, what run up, follow through, and combination. It’s also about the document, who, where, when, angle, pedestrians, roll out… etc. If Jazz is about improvising over standards and reworking conventions, so might be skateboarding. People re-work St Louis Blues and All The Things You Are endlessly. Just as someone continues to outdo the last trick at Hollywood High. Hopefully, we can move on and innovate and keep a healthy relationship with the past. What remains interesting is keeping that tension between familiarity and novelty. Music is about tension and release. I suspect a good part of skateboarding might be too. In crafting a line, we seek to communicate something familiar while pushing the newness to the realms of acceptability. Too safe, too whack, too stiff, and it goes wrong. The tension must be released, otherwise it snaps.

As the final part of the video rolls on to the screen with Simon Isaksson tre-flippin his camera, Bob Dylan starts to play. It’s not the original rendition of the song but the live one by ‘The Band’, a star studded cast. It’s a reworking. Just like the Nina Simone version that Tom Knox skates to in the Isle video Vase.  Another Euro video in 4:3 format. Skateboard videos are notoriously formulaic. We expect that and we want that. But we also want the nuance, the difference. Just like Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” we want the familiar in a different face.

In 2022 skateboarding is many things. The best of it is a Palimpsest. A constant reworking of not the new, but the same notes. Perhaps in a different key, a non-chordal note here and there. Building the tension and getting ready to release it.

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Watch "The Chats - 6L GTR (Official Video)" on YouTube

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For the past eight years or so I've worked by myself, alone, nobody to bother me not even my bosses. I hate work, I just do. When I spend eight hours of the day working it fells like I just wasted eight hours of my life and that shit feels somewhat depressing, it actually makes me feel like my life is shit. Its not, its not shit and I'm cool but it does feel like that to me. I just started a new job where I'm working with people again, coworkers. Today is my second day and this shit is retarded. The job is cool I guess but these people around me, its just the same old gossipy, competing environment. Getting payed minimum wage, eight fifty in Puerto Rico for being in a room for eight hours with these people is straight up draining. Could I actually make my hobbies into an income? I mean, matching what I make now shouldn't be that hard right?

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Note to self

✍🏽✨

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“I don’t want more, I want less. I want to have less, so I will have more time to devote to this gift that I have. Because in the final analysis, the only thing that we have that is not renewable is our life. When I am dead, they will still make money. My time, I have decided, is more important. To claim my time to do what I want to do in that time.” —Amos Kennedy, Jr.

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Delta Spirit "California"

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Had an idea the other day for some comic book characters and the beginning of a story. Decided to break out my sketch book and give it a try. making comics is so hard. I keep saying to myself to just make it even if it looks kinda badly drawn but when the drawings don't look like I want I just keep giving up! One of the hardest things for me is drawing girls. I'm going to try and go through with this, I have to make at least one comic book in my lifetime!

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