Review of Transworld Skateboarding 30 most influential skaters.
Posted: December 21, 2011 Filed under: My reviews, Skateboarding | Tags: 30 most influential skaters, matt hensley, rodney mullen, steve cabellero, tony alva, Transworld Skateboarding, transworld skateboarding magazine Leave a comment »Transworld 30 most influential skaters , (link to Transworld online article)
I’m not sure if many people review magazines, but I think it’s worth giving a shot. Out of my library I checked out the new Transworld Skateboarding magazine, January 2012, and I think I’ll return it, go to a store and buy a copy.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Transworld they decided to highlight the 30 most influential skateboarders of all time. Thrasher also celebrated their 30th anniversary recently, and it’s interesting they both started around the same time. What makes this issue of Transworld so unique is that they interview all of the 30 people listed, and about 6 additional people about their own careers and the history of skateboarding. Also throughout the main article they have a timeline of important events in skateboarding.
They list Duane Peters, Tony Alva, and Steve Cabellero in the top 30. Duane Peters and Tony Alva are over 50 years old, and Steve Cabellero is approaching 50. All three continue to skate well. In the magazine Steve Cabellero states he now likes getting older because he can continue to push the boundaries and can see how long he can keep at it.
Also listed were several vert and street skaters from the 1980’s. Lance Mountain says some interesting things in his interview, and I also enjoyed Matt Hensley’s interview.
On the timeline for the year 2007 the magazine states this about the Lakai video, “Mike Carroll and Eric Koston prove the 90’s generation is still comfortably in the driver’s seat.” (page 129) I always felt it amazing that some of this guys were popular when I was in high school, and still are pro and testing the limits. Several skaters on this list are from my generation. I think skaters in their mid thirties now that skated through the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s did see skating become dynamic. In the magazine it states that Rodney Mullen invented the 360 flip in 1987. That was right before I started to skate. That trick must have caught on like wild fire, because by 1989 it was common. Also Blind’s Video Days came out in 1991, and The Questionable Video came out in 1992, and they had a much different image and trick variation with just a year between release dates.
Anyone that would think about the most influential skaters would agree that Rodney Mullen, Tony Hawk, and Mark Gonzales would place at the top of the list. Out of the 30 skaters though, I recognized almost all of them, and could think a few important skaters not on the list. It really shows that even though skateboarding is very individual, a lot of people contributed to the progression of the sport. I also enjoyed that this issue interviewed the skaters, and had a long interview with the rated most influential skater Mark Gonzales. A running theme of the skaters that made the list was longevity. Their impact was over a long span, and they still skate.
Anyway I’ll keep this short. If you skate or skated at some point, go get this issue of Transworld.
Here is one of Mark Gonzales’s famous clips:
My thoughts on Rodney Mullen’s ‘no stance’ goal.
Posted: December 1, 2011 Filed under: Skateboarding | Tags: rodney mullen, skateboarding 2 Comments »One of the beautiful things about facebook is that people post links on there from other parts of the Internet. From my library friends I get a lot of career related articles to read through people posting links on facebook. And my skateboard friends from Baltimore, Ohio, and now New York City post interesting clips on there too. This gem of a recent interview of Rodney Mullen someone I knew in my teenage years posted a few days ago, and I’ve watched it several times since then. Now I’ll blog about it and hopefully embed it correctly onto my entry.
First I’ll sum up Rodney Mullen as being the most influential person to the progression of skateboarding. Ollies on flatland, kickflips, 360 flips, impossibles, and perhaps a hundred variations were first done or created by Rodney Mullen. He learned these tricks as a freestyler skateboarder throughout the 1980’s. In the late 1980’s and to present day he continued to innovate street skateboarding. So in the 1980’s with a smaller freestyle board he invented the standard tricks, and then in the 1990’s took on trick progression on obstacles and street skating. In 2005 he wrote his autobiography called, “The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself.” I read that book, and he details his life experience of skateboard tours, and it ends with him being financially successful from the sale of World Industries in 1998, an infamous and famous company that he co-owned.
About a year ago Tony Hawk interviewed Rodney Mullen, and that I also viewed that because a friend posted it on facebook. I should try to find that interview too. This interview that I saw this week, shows that Rodney Mullen still has the drive to innovate, which is amazing to me. He looks young but is in his mid forties I believe, and already has done so much for the sport. To me it shows that skating on that level has creativity that maybe other sports do not. Writers can write into old age, and I think skaters could probably imagine variations of tricks forever, but the question is how long can the body continue skating as one gets older. I think Rodney Mullen and people a little bit younger are the first generation of street skaters, so I don’t think people know. You look at a lot of the top pros and they are a lot of them well over thirty, so it is not simply athleticism. This interview also shows that there is very much a thought process to thinking up new tricks.
In this interview and the one with Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen talks of ‘having no stance.’ There are two basic stances in skateboarding. Regular is with the left foot in front, and Goofy is with the right foot in front. Over thanksgiving on a family walk I bought my skateboard with me. My oldest nephew is 12, my niece is 9 and my younger nephew is 5. All of them had fun learning to ride on a board for our hour or so long walk. I told them to stand the way they felt more comfortable. My two nephews gravitated to regular stance, and my niece chose goofy stance. My niece is left-handed so that might have something to do with it. In general people are more comfortable with one stance as opposed to the other when starting to skate. As people progress they start to do things ‘switch’ is simply in the stance they don’t usually ride. So good skaters ride both ways, but still have a dominate stance.
By the time I was in my prime of skating, at like age 17, in 1993, I was good at switch and tech tricks. As an adult unfortunately I’ve been off an on with skating. Every time I start back up I can ollie relatively quickly, then I get my kickflip back, and few other tricks. But even though I want to be good switch and tech tricks, it takes a long time for me to get comfortable with switch when I’m relearning. Sometimes I can switch ollie a couple of stacked boards and sometimes I’m not even close. So regular stance is by far my preferred stance, and what I’m comfortable with.
I think everyone is more at ease with one stance as compared to the other. In this interview Rodney Mullen talks of breaking down the stance so there is no stance. That seems like a weird thing to think about, but what he is trying to say is what if skating was a continue flow with no limitations of tricks from stance or anything else. He also says a draw to skating is the idea of learning things new and the feeling from figuring nuances of new tricks out.
I do think that Rodney Mullen is forward thinking to the future of skating, and I’m glad he’s not simply resting on what he already has done. There are still major skate videos were the riders do not do much switch tricks, and concentrate of going big. The future is more fluidity of tricks from all stances, including fakie and nollie tricks. It already has gotten to the point that it’s hard to tell with some skaters what their stance is in videos, that’s a good thing.
