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Battle of the Berrics 2: Overview and Upcoming Matches

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Chris Cole defeated Mike V. and “The Chief” fell short of a victory to the fastest skateboarder on the planet, Dennis Busenitz. Both were unique matches and I’ve already lost when it comes to getting the winners pole accurate. Some of you out there on the other hand are still dead on with your votes.

The Chris Cole and Mike V. match was interesting because it was the first match of them all and the two riders are complete opposites. Chris Cole was the obvious favorite for the win by pretty much almost everyone out there, but Mike V. did have a good point when he stated, “Since when does skateboarding have rules?”. I totally feel that holds truth in the skateboarding world. There should be NO rules at all on how you skateboard but when it comes to a game of SKATE, I guess you really have to put limits to what can be done otherwise things would get to complex.

Then there was the Jamie Thomas and Dennis Busenitz match. Jamie held his ground for a good while but Dennis was just on fire that day. You could tell the dude had been prepping for this match against one of skateboarding’s greats. Even though Jamie lost, he did super good and I give the man props for being able to still participate in a match like that when heaven knows how busy he is. The dude runs an entire skateboarding distribution and still finds the time to practice some flatground trickery for a match against “The Flash” of skateboarding. Now that’s tough!

The matches were good and next up is Heath Kirchart vs. Lizard King which will seriously be one of the most unpredictable matches ever assembled. Heaths got some flat skills but Lizard has some tricks up his sleeve that I am sure we will be surprised upon viewing. Its going to only get better and already this 2nd round of Skate battles is turning out to be even more amazing than the first!

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Retire from Skateboarding?

Monday, June 29th, 2009

HUH? Two of the biggest names in skateboarding have recently come forth to bring the news that they are hanging up the skateboard for good. This is both shocking and a loss to the skateboarding world.

Jereme Rogers single-handedly quit skateboarding to pursue a rap career. Which we all totally saw coming but had no idea he would just completely say he was over skateboarding. The dude did not even mention that he’d still be skateboarding for fun or anything even remotely close. It truly sounds like he is over it. He even threw a party celebrating his exit from the skateboarding world. Jereme had an incredibly long career ahead of him and was still relatively young. But I guess if your hearts not in something, then the passion is gone and you might as well pursue what you truly want. Best wishes to him in the rap game I am sure he’s already made some good connects with big names in the industry.

On the other side of the retirement table is skateboarding legend Danny Gonzalez. Now many wouldn’t see him as a legend, but to me he is. He was one of the few skateboarders that brought amazing tech and innovation to the industry. Things get boring after a while yet Danny never seized to amaze me. He always had some new shit he was working on and his video parts were always the ones getting frequent mileage on the rewind button. According to Danny and his official press release, his leg injury is the reason he’s quitting professional skateboarding. I am super bummed to hear this and it makes me not want to believe that he can’t skate. Look at Danny Way, the dude is a half man, half artificial body part droid from all the injuries and yet he is still ripping. I know Danny Gonzalez still has a lot of good skateboarding in him. And knowing Danny, I would think he would still try to skateboard anyways. I wish him the best and a speedy recovery.

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Greg Lutzka Moves to K-Swiss

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Did you notice Greg Lutzka missing on the United By Fate Globe site? He is missing from the majority of the website entirely. If I am not mistaken I have been hearing he did his own press release via myspace and other social networks of his that he has split from his long time shoe sponsor Globe.

Did anything prepare us for him moving to K-Swiss though? First, Koston to Nike and now, Lutzka to K-Swiss. You would have thought he made the bounce to another, already skateboard shoe based company. But he pulled a complete 360 on everyone and actually seems to be spearheading the entire skate shoe program itself over at K-Swiss. Which could possibly mean he is making even more bank than Koston is. WOW!

Greg Lutzka by now probably owns a mansion somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. The dude can market himself like crazy and pulls off insane deals like these. Once again, you can hate all you want but truth be told if you had the offers these dudes were getting you would jump on the bandwagon as well. They even gave him his own office and a pro shoe right off the bat. Props to Lutzka and if anything he will make the shoes look a hell of a lot better, because to begin with the K-Swiss kicks were not that great looking at all. Peep the video for a look into the headquarters and what Lutzka has in store for the future with his new deal.

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Koston and the Swoosh

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

So by now the entire world finally knows who Eric Koston has chosen to keep his feet covered with. Is it that much of a shocker though? And despite all of the hate that I am sure the man is getting, what would YOU have done? Would you turn down 1.5 million dollars? Would you even turn down $500,000 ?

The truth is at the end of the day, no matter what Koston decided to do he chose what he felt would be the most beneficial for him in this one-life he has here on earth. He’s still an amazing skateboarder no matter where he ended up. If anything, I would say Koston’s a smart man. I mean, to begin with he is one of the older dudes still throwing down. He has put so much effort and memories into the skateboarding industry that he deserves something big like this. And should we even question a pro shoe coming out? I bet there is already one complete and ready to ship as we speak.

Koston said it himself that when it came to shoe design, a lot of his previous kicks were modeled after Nike shoes. I am sure Koston will probably have the better looking Pro Nike shoe of them all.

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Kicked Out of Everywhere

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Has anyone ever seen the old Real video entitled “Kicked out of Everywhere”? It’s a classic skateboarding video that recently popped in my head on a recent road trip to a distant city.

I swear, on a single day I was kicked out of 8 different skateboarding spots. And I am sure that’s a small number of times compared to what others go through. But seriously, it gets so frustrating when you travel to skateboard new terrain and you cant even session an empty parking lot.

On one given situation, I opened my car door pulled out my skateboard and was beeped at and kicked out by a rent-a-cop on a segway. The dude looked straight out of the movie “Mall Cop” it was ridiculous. I also had to pull the old “look around trick” in which even though I’ve been kicked out, I stay ’til the dude leaves and commence to get in try after try all while watching my back every 3 seconds, which can get even more frustrating and make you loose focus on whatever your trying. Plus, the phrase “why don’t you go skate the skatepark”, popped out of half of everyone’s mouth kicking us out.

Skateparks are great and all but they can get tiring quick and there is nothing like the feeling you get skateboarding raw street spots.

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On the way to Wallenberg

Friday, June 5th, 2009

For the record, Wallenberg is 22 feet 6 inches long. DAMN… I know. Those steps are long and it’s no joke. I honestly don’t think a lot of those tricks would have went down if it weren’t for that ramp they had set in the back. It seriously kicked all the riders a ton of speed and made things so much easier. Not to mention having to pedal and haul with all your might for every try, would’ve gotten them tired by the 3rd try. Which makes it even more amazing to know when you look back on the past tricks that have been done down the stairs before there was anything but the two feet below you to build enough speed just to clear an ollie.

This past weekend, you’ve witnessed the trick annihilation that went down as well. Heelflip varial, hardflip, backside heelflip, airwalk, ollie north backside 180, switch frontside flip, and of course the backside 360 from Chris Cole. If you haven’t seen the video here is the link. And if you should watch this video of Jimmy Carlin on the way to Wallenberg. It’s a hilarious look on the trip to Wallenberg from the Black Box warehouse in San Diego. Keep in mind that Chris Cole was with them the whole time during this trance dance. Perhaps this was the secret to Cole’s trick onslaught during the competition? Did Jimmy Carlin’s antics and dance routine bring good luck to Chris Cole? Perhaps it did. And check the Cole backside 360 down the curb. That’s what you call hammer preparation.

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Top 5 Skate Spots That Should be Resurrected

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

5. San Dieguito - This ten stair rail has seen the likes of Tom Penny and plenty of others throughout it’s life span. It was a perfect hallway rail that was featured in countless videos. Nowadays it can be seen hauled around by the dudes over at King Rails. Jeff King used it on an episode of “Built to Shred” as well. They pretty much got a hold of the rail after it was cut off and now use it for their demos and events. Sun Diego Boardshop has been seen renting the rail for various contests in the past. Thus, showing how perfect this rail truly was and still is. Unfortunately, this is one spot that we will never see resurrected in it’s original state. We will just have to settle for the transplant version of it.

4. Embarcadero - The “Gonz” gap is just one of the many famous spots bundled up inside Embarcadero. It’s mistakenly known as EMB by many. EMB is actually something else completely. Henry Sanchez, Mike Carroll, and various others are examples of skateboarders bred out of Embarcadero. This spot was best known and most recognizable by its brick ground and amazing ledge patterns. There were crazy ledge formations throughout the inside. Embarcadero is a legendary spot for sure.

3. Hubba Hideout - To skate Hubba Hideout was a true test of balls and courage. The ledge is HIGH! Anyone who thought they were going to roll up to a fun and regular sized ledge was automatically proven wrong. The authorities keep making this spot unskateable and until someone rolls up with an entire elite de-knob squad this spot will stay unskateable. But there is hope of course and I truly feel that there is still a lot of skate life left in the ledge. My mind is absolutely shaken when I watch dudes throw down what they do on that ledge. Eric Koston backside noseblunt? OMG!

2. Love Park - An entire natural public park filled with ledges, stairs, kickers, a few rails, benches, and countless other obstacles sounds like heaven. This spot should be on everyone’s “must skate before you die” list. Its super bumming how skateboarding has been banned from here. I grew up as a kid always wanting to skate here. To me it was the United States version of Barcelona’s spots. I felt it was the closest we could get. And since Philly isn’t as far it was much more exciting to think about. Not to mention I always wanted to see how big that Love fountain really was. Will we ever get back Love Park?

1. Leap of Faith - If someone could make the “Leap of Faith” skateable again I guarantee you we would have a successful land within a month. So many coverage hungry skateboarders out there would be hucking their carcasses off this monster of a drop. And you and me both would love to see someone pull it off. But alas, due to the elevator in the way and heavy chained gate blockers things don’t look to up for the “Leap of Faith”. The successor of the ollie would get a Magazine cover for sure. I would almost think it would be enough to be a one trick career startup for somebody. It feels like El Toro took all of the “Leap of Faiths” hype. But the El Toro itself is soon to be skate-proofed enough to join this list as well.

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Rob Dyrdek Twitter Interview Today at 5:30

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

The Rob Dyrdek interview we’re doing live over Twitter that we mentioned the other day is happening today (Thurs, May 28th) at 5:30 PST. That way it’s going to work is–we’re going to ask Rob a question over Twitter and he’ll answer the same way.

We’d like to give a shout-out to both our readers for participating & submitting a lot of good questions as well as DC Shoes for facilitating this interview and throwing in a pair of free DCs for the best reader question.

Make sure you’re following both Rob Dyrdek and 5ones on Twitter to keep up with the interview. We’ll also be posting a transcript after for those who miss it.

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Skateboarding Needs a Tune Up

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

The average skill level of skateboarders nowadays is the equivalent of a seasoned professional just a decade and a half ago. There are too many ABD’s or “Already Been Dones” in videos and skateboarding as a whole is in another realm. The 17 year old pros are killing it harder than the seasoned veterans in most cases and a lot of skateboarding has turned into a carcass tossing contest. So much that things have gotten a little to repetitive and it has become a lot harder to be impressed by anything.

ruben najera

A lot of times I feel some skateboarders are forced to skate certain things and if not that then they feel they “have” to skate certain obstacles. That’s when it gets to a point where people are either skateboarding for the wrong reasons or they are going to be so over it that they will just quit all together. Which I have seen happen all too often. It’s called getting BURNT OUT! People need to get back in touch with themselves and bring the fun back into it.

If you love skateboarding and want to make a career out of it, GREAT! But by all means don’t skateboard strictly because you want to end up with a TV show on MTV. Or because you’re entire goal is to one up every other local skateboarder in your hometown. Nobody likes the dude that tries to outdo everyone else or beat you to a trick. You know what I mean? You know you’ve seen him around. The guy who always tries to do “your” trick before you on purpose to show off or attempt to show you up to make himself look better and be the hero. Man don’t you just despise that?

Skateboarding in it’s entirety needs a tune up. A giant bucket of water to be poured over its entire entity to give itself a wake up call of why it all started to begin with. For the love, freedom, and feeling of riding your skateboard. A lot of people need to open their eyes and realize that.

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Rob Dyrdek Twitter Interview: Win a Pair of DC Shoes

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

We’re pretty stoked about this: We’re going to be interviewing Rob Dyrdek live over Twitter. We’ll be asking all the questions on Twitter and Rob will be answering the same way. For those of you familiar with Twitter, you know that messages are limited to 140 characters. This provides a unique challenge being that each question asked by us will be limited to 140 characters and all answers by Rob will also be limited to 140 characters.

To our knowledge, we’ll be the first ones to conduct an interview live over Twitter like this. At least we’ve never seen it done. If you have, let us know and we’ll retract that statement. We’re trying to be innovative and cutting edge and all that schnaz.

Here’s the thing though; we don’t want to be the only ones asking the questions. We want you to have some fun too and help ask some of the questions. And to make it even more interesting, DC has graciously offered to throw in a free pair of shoes to the person who comes up with the best question, which will chosen by Rob.

So submit your questions below in the comments and we’ll narrow it down and use them the best in the interview. Remember though, each question is limited to 140 characters, so if you submit one longer, we won’t be able to use it.

Update: The interview will be going down on Thursday, May 28th in the evening. We’ll give you the exact time at a later date. Monday is the last day to submit your questions for a chance to win the DC shoes. There is no limit on the amount of questions you can submit.

Make sure you follow both 5ones and Rob Dyrdek on Twitter so you can see this go down.

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