While everyone is busy on the Maloof Money Cup hype, many of you are also wondering what that board was that Nyjah was riding? Well its an I&I skateboards deck.

Nyjah Huston did start his own skateboard company and it looks dope! This time, he’s also a professional signature rider for the company where as before he had no signature product. Other pros on the team include Richard Jefferson and a group of up and coming ams.

I am positive with a little time you will start to hear tons about this company. And don’t be surprised if many big names jump aboard the Nyjah train. The kid rips and also took 3rd place honors this year at the 2nd annual Maloof Money Cup. Last year he took 2nd and I honestly think he had a 1st place performance. Bigflip frontboard on hollywood high 16 replica? DAMN! This year he tore it up at the contest as well. He completely nailed almost every trick he tried with consistency. I don’t think I ever saw him even spend more than 3 tries on any one trick. He was landing everything.

There is still no word on a official website yet and a preview of the product but anything run and owned by a true skateboarder is worth backing. Big ups to Nyjah and the Huston family.

With every skateboarder comes a unique style of skateboarding. Two individuals might do a 360 flip down a set of stairs, but neither will be exactly alike. From the catch to the speed, to even the way the individual dresses, style is unique within every one of us and should be brought out and not hidden or disregarded.

All to many times people get hated on and try to change themselves just to try and fit in. What everyone should just do is be themselves and embrace how they really are. Go with what you feel and what stokes you, not someone else. It gets really boring when everyone tries to skateboard like exact robot replicas of each other. Who said everyone has to land clean? Everyone needs to realize that its okay land a little sketchy sometimes. That almost slipping off the board on the land and barely hanging on actually gives the clip more character. And that being yourself actually makes you stand out more sometimes than when your trying to stand out on purpose.

Everyone is so hung up on perfection nowadays that it kills the individuality that skateboarding is supposed to give you. If your homie pushes mongo you can try to correct him but truth is, that’s the way he is used to pushing. That’s him and that’s the way he wants to skateboard. I mean who really designated that “it’s wrong” in the first place. Do you really care that much?

When it comes down to it, it’s always going to be a piece of wood with wheels. Skateboarding shouldn’t have rules and if someone skates to slow or fast, who is to say what’s right or wrong? You do what you want. Its skateboarding, its individualism, its YOU, and it should be everything you want it to be.

Don’t ever pay attention to what anyone ever tells you. And remember to always keep the fun in skateboarding. ALWAYS!

There are no rules to skateboarding!
Embrace individualism.
Skate what you want.
How you want.
And be yourself.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.