Hippie Mike is a man of many talents, many skills and many creations. A master of construction, Mike loves to build and create unique and custom projects, but he also takes the same mind frame to everything else he does.
Another amazing and unique video montage of Kilian Martin created by Brett Novak. Named “Internal Departure”, it looks like it was filmed in some art gallery somewhere. Either way, it another chance for you to boggle your brain trying to figure out half the tricks that Kilian lays down. Primo Slide to Crooked Grind… what?
It awesome because there isn’t much comparison for Kilian Martin’s skateboarding style other than Rodney Mullen, but even at that, they are very different. Rodney Mullen invented tricks that changed the world of skateboarding forever and helped it to progress to the point it’s at today. Kilian lives in the generation of today where boards have not changed for almost 2 decades and the population of skateboarders around the world are fixed in their ways. The only other younger skateboarder I can think to relate to Kilian is William Spencer. Not that they do any of the same tricks, but they relate by being inventors. Maybe we could have a battle video between them one day like the old Rodney Mullen vs. Daewon Song (A-Team vs. World Industries) videos…
Watch this new video of Kilian and be amazed by his talent once again, and if you’re interested in seeing him skate live, make sure you show up to The World Round-Up Freestyle Championships this May 17-20 at The Cloverdale Rodeo.
Jenkem Magazine released an article focused on how the true companies behind the real success of skateboarding are the smaller, unknown ones. And this is a great point. It features the background of Pontus Alv and Polar Skateboards and how he has encouraged the skateboarders of today. We have to always thank people like George Powell and Stacy Peralta, along with Tony Hawk and the other true hardcores of the 80’s who never let skateboarding die for helping it get to the point it is at today, but has it gone too far? Is it now so popular that too many mainstream companies like Nike, New Balance, and Target are trying to take over our industry. How many awesome skate companies from the 90’s have been sold to some mainstream company now that the original owners would have considered embarrassing and illegal to even accept sponsorship from back in their Glory Daze? It’s sad. The world has definitely changed, and people have forgotten their roots.
But there will always be those independently owned companies that don’t sell out, and really don’t sell anything, but just love to promote skateboarding.
This article written by Rich Kaminski brings us back to the reality of before the times when skateboarders were striking gold mines by doing the same tricks over and over at a bunch of big televised competitions. And it reminds the next generation to stop following the trends and worrying about what the next big trick everyone is learning is, and just to go skateboard and enjoy it. Invent something on your own for once.
Life as a skateboarder was never supposed to be about being rich and famous, skateboarding originated from the rebels, the outcasts, and the unwanted. And that’s where it belongs. No matter how big it becomes, there will always be the “True Skateboarders of the World” who understand this, the difficult part will be getting the message through to all the ignorant kids in the next generations that think they are going to turn pro, get rich, and die laughing…
It reminds me as to why I created Protest Skateboards 10 years ago. I was always an outcast, usually pushed away from society, and never fully understood. I preached for what I believed in everywhere I went, and didn’t care whether people respected me for it or not. I had goals to change the world to be more accepting to our society, and I’ve worked hard to achieve those goals. Protest Skateboards is a small company that lots of people will never know ever existed, but that’s the way I like it, that’s what it was meant to be.
Real Skateboarders skateboarding for the love of skateboarding…
Take a read of this awesome article that Rich put together. Here are some of the most influential quotes I could pull out of it for those quick skimmers out there, but if you have 10 minutes, definitely click the link and read the whole thing
“These smaller companies reinforce what is arguably the most sacred realm of the skateboard industry and maybe even the subculture in general.”
“When bigger companies, regardless of what they make or who owns them, become repetitive and rely on merely copying one another, the subculture and its participants suffer for it.”
“These brands are forcing people to think about the companies they support and what they represent both inside the skateboarding world and outside of it. They are telling skaters that what they ride says as much about their point of view and their idea of skating as the skaters they like or the photos they hang on their walls.”
“We should not simply watch and forget the daily dose of online videos, go to the same boring skate park to learn the next logical trick, buy whatever gear is needed regardless of what the company does or does not stand for. These brands, knowingly or not, are saying that skateboarding has changed all of our lives and it’s about time we start treating it with the respect and thought it deserves.”
Welcome to Episode 8 of GLORY DAZE with Hippie Mike. Today we’re chillin’ out at Bonsor Skate Park in Metrotown with the kid I simply call “The Dominator”. He’s young and full of talent, and wins a lot of competitions. His sponsors include Chance Skateboards, Volcom and Vans Shoes. He recently won Wild in the Parks last year and was also named King of Surrey for winning the most Hippie Mike’s Tour de Surrey contests in 2012, give it up for Dominic Devries!!
Hippie Mike: Welcome Dominic. Please, tell the world how old you are and how long you’ve been skateboarding
Dominic Devries: I’m 16 years old and started skating when I was 9
HM: What was the first experience you remember as the moment you decided that you loved skateboarding?
Dominic: Um, my cousin got me a Hulk Skateboard on my 9th birthday and I just had a lot of fun with that. And I just kept skating since then
HM: You just broke your arm for the second time last September, what are some of the worst injuries you’ve had?
Dominic: Well, those are probably the worst, but I’ve broken my elbow twice too. Yeah, and my foot
HM: Ouch… Do you ever just feel warn out and tired, and not want to skate anymore?
Dominic: No, never
HM: Tell us the best accomplishment you’ve had as a skater
Dominic: Probably the biggest one was winning the “Element – Make it Count” contest here at Bonsor
HM: Cool. Who are the people that influence you the most?
Dominic: Um, I don’t know, I like watching Micky Papa skate. He stokes me up to do new tricks and stuff
HM: Okay, I notice in the contests that the other kids cheer for everyone but you during the runs, almost like they’re more depressed when you land stuff than excited. Does that hurt your feelings at all?
Dominic: Not at all
HM: Does it pump you up?
Dominic: It doesn’t pump me up, or stoke me up, it’s just…
HM: Just Life?
Dominic: Yeah, it’s just life…
HM: Do you think you’ll ever become a Top Name Pro?
Dominic: I don’t know, no idea. Hopefully, that would be pretty cool (laughs)
HM: Are we gonna see Dominic Devries on the TV tearing up X Games or Street League some day?
Dominic: Maybe (laughs)
HM: So I gave you the nickname “The Dominator” a couple years ago. Do you like it?
Dominic: Uh, yeah. It’s cool, but… sometimes people make fun of me for it (laughs)
HM: Last year you won your share of competitions, and you finally accomplished winning the King of Surrey Trophy at my Series with three 1st Place and two 2nd Place finishes out of the 5 contests. How did that feel?
Dominic: It felt good. That was one of my goals last year
HM: Name your 3 favourite Skate Parks
Dominic: Probably Bonsor, Chuck Bailey and Plaza
HM: 3 favourite Street Spots
Dominic: Granville 8, and uh… Terry Fox Plaza, and maybe… Hot Spot
HM: 3 Best Tricks you’ve ever landed
Dominic: Probably Tre Flip down the 12, and Kickflip Front Board down Bricktown 10, and…. maybe front blunt shove on Granville 8
HM: Nice!, and the 3 coolest people you’ve ever skated with
Dominic: Mark Appleyard, Chad Tim Tim, and, and I saw Nyjah Huston for a bit (smiles)
HM: Nice. So, what’s next for The Dominator in 2013?
Dominic: Uh, skating a lot, going to lots of contests, and filming lots
HM: Okay. Well Dominic, I’d like to thank you for being on GLORY DAZE with Hippie Mike. I’ve been watching you grow up as a skateboarder for a few years now and I am always stoked when you show up. You’re one of my favourite people to watch skate and I know a lot of kids look up to you. I wish you all the best in your future and really hope to see you on the TV someday getting paid for doing what you love – The Dominator everybody!!
Check out the montage of 2012 Summer from The Dominator
In the 8 1/2 years I worked at The Cloverdale Youth Centre, I got to know a lot of kids and William LeTourneau was always one of my favourites. I remember him when he first started skateboarding, super long hair, and just loved to flow. He looked up to Mitch Salter back then and they were two of the few that would actually venture into the nasty assed death bowl at the Cloverdale Skate Park with speed and air that peninsula. Back then William could cruise that park and was just hittin’ up early grabs and coping grinds all over the place, but as he got older, and trimmed that hair so it was only hangin’ down to ears, he fell into the traps of those ledge skating locals proving himself to be an all around shredder. I think that skaters who learn in tranny first and then pick up the street tricks seem to have a better sense of commitment on their boards. They’re used to stayin’ on, grindin’ long, and goin’ big. Look at Andy Anderson – perfect example.
William LeTourneau has been ripping for many years now and has won his share of prizes in the past as well. I was there when he started, I was there when he quit and started again, I was there when he had long hair, I was there when he chopped it, and I’m still there – lovin’ to see another natural skateboarder grow up strong.
Known simply to the world as “M.J.”, Michael Jordan may have been the most influential sports player of all time. Growing up with a dream to play baseball professionally in the MLB, M.J. Worked hard when it came to sports. He also shot hoops quite a bit and was extremely talented at basketball. Michael Jordan was drafted into the NBA after proving himself to be amazing with North Carolina University and he proceeded to change the game. M.J. Was one the first players that taught the world how to fly, he could literally leap into the air and hang there for a long period of time, manoeuvring the basketball from hand to hand until he would finally have the opportunity to get it past his defenders. They had to invent the Air Jordan’s just to prepare for the next generation of players. This man could shoot, he could dunk, he was one of the best defenders the game ever saw, and he was the all-time go-to guy in any clutch situation. NBA TV and Ahmad RashadinterviewMichael Jordanas he turns 50 years old, and reminisce about the good times and all the bad, and really get down to the nitty gritty about how Jordan feels about the way his life went.
Watch this interview and wonder what would have been different if Michael Jordan had never played basketball. It would be the same question to us if Rodney Mullen, Tony Hawk, Mark Gonzales, Danny Way, Pat Duffy, Duane Peters, Chad Muska, Tom Penny or Ryan Sheckler never picked up a skateboard. These guys were all natural sports players that ended up concentrating their energy to the one they loved and changing the world around them. Where would Tiger Woods be if he never picked up a golf club? Chances are still being amazing at whatever else he chose to adventure in. Some people are just natural born innovators…
Every day I think about where skateboarding would have ended up if certain people had never been in the industry –
Without Rodney Mullen, would skateboards look like they do today? Would we be skating street or would the pools have been the only real skateboarding surface? Or would there even be skateboarding today?
Without Danny Way, would we have these Big Air Jumps that all the vert skaters are flying over fearlessly doing backflips and 720’s?
Without Pat Duffy, when would people have started to skate tech tricks on all these huge rails out there?
Without Ryan Sheckler, would we believe that a 12/13 year old could beat out he entire pro category in large competition?
And without Tony Hawk, would the world recognize and support skateboarding as much as they do right now?
The answer to most of these questions is no. Everyone brings a different style to their sport, or hobby. Each person makes a difference in the world. But we need to feel blessed when the true world changers enter the correct lifestyle, and stick with it. But they can’t always do it on their own, so please show them the support they deserve. You never know who the next legend is gonna be when it’s their first day.
Industry & Interest Magazine did a recent interview with the world’s most popular skateboarder right now – Kilian Martin. Kilian if you don’t know, is the next leader in Freestyle Street Skating. Pro for Powell Peralta he is definitely ready to represent at any given moment, and the tricks he throws down are mind-blowing taking freestyle tricks to the street obstacles – Rodney Mullen style. Kilian has been getting a ton of publicity this past year through montage videos filmed and edited by Brett Novak, but this is a great interview to get to know the boy behind the man.
A true inventor, a young creator, a dedicated learner – Kilian Martin
The NBA All-Star Weekend starts today and it reminds me of why we all do what we do each and every day. You grow up trying new activities all the time as a kid and certain ones become your passions. These are the things that make you the most happy in life and are usually what you spend the majority of your free time doing. It could be Baseball, Football, Hockey, Basketball, Skateboarding, Snowboarding, Biking, Cooking, Reading, Writing, Knitting, whatever. But when you find that hobby that keeps you alive you work at it, and strive to learn as much as possible to be better at it than everyone else.
This happens constantly in the skateboard industry. As a young kid, you get your first skateboard and you start riding it around, then you meet some other dudes that like to ride their skateboards around and you start to learn tricks, now it becomes something that you really love to do and you drop a couple of your other hobbies to make more time for it as this is your passion, then the word passion becomes the word addiction. Now you’ve decided somewhere along the line that you are going to dedicate as much time as possible to skateboarding and go out there and learn and learn and learn. This is now your love.
Any professional sports player works very hard, and has to be fully dedicated to the game they play. All we see is what they show on TV which is just the exciting part, but we don’t see the hours of practise and training that happens behind the scenes. We don’t see the arguments and frustrations that happen constantly from being overworked and always travelling. All we see is the highlights, the end result of what all that hard work has produced.
No matter what your passion is, if you are trying to turn it into a career, at some point you will start to hate it. You will overdo it and begin to wonder if all this was just a waste of your time. And when you realize that you will never be able to make it a full time career, if you allow the frustration to take over, you will eventually quit altogether…
I never understood how people dedicate years of their life to something that they cared so much about and then just completely walk away from it and never do it again, ever.
Where’s the love?
What happened to the passion?
What happened to you?
It’s always the people who actually fell in love with their hobby that stick with it for life. As you get older, your body changes and you can’t always continue to work as hard as you used to, and for all the sports guys, you can’t take the hits anymore. But you can still play, you can still go out and be active and have fun with your friends. Maybe you can’t handle doing it for hours every day anymore, but that doesn’t mean you should quit. That means you should go back to your roots of when you first discovered this passion that was so great it took over whole your life, and just do it for the love again. Quit striving to be the best, and just be a survivor.
These crooked institutions teach you from day one how to allow them to manage and control “Your Money”. Even as a little kid when you’re mom or dad tells you to put some of your money in the bank and save it. You’re already sad because it’s your money and you’re not gonna be able to spend it right away, and then you get the bank telling how to save it. You could put it in Savings Bonds, which make you absolutely no profit unless you sit on them for 10-20 years. You could put it in a separate savings account, which the bank will just happen to charge you a small monthly fee that will eventually eat up your entire amount of savings. Or you could invest it in your future but having RESP’s, which are great if you’re gonna go to school later, but if you don’t, did you make any profit?
The thing about banks is that the majority of the world has allowed them to establish themselves to the point that they are at now, and it almost makes them an inevitable necessity. Way back in time, there was only cash money, no cheques,no credit cards, no debit. So if you didn’t want to risk getting your cash stolen, you would put it in the bank for “safe keeping”. But now a days, the banks rule the world through credit – money that doesn’t even exist. Sure, they’ll lend you $300,000 for a mortgage, but it’s gonna cost you over a million by the time you pay them back. How the hell is that legal? I know that if a regular person lends another regular person money and sets up an interest charge on it, they could go to jail, so how is it legal for the banks to do it on every feature they offer? Last year we paid over $25,000 towards our mortgage and $19,000 of that went to interest, straight into the banks pocket… It’s disgusting. You can’t own a house in these times without a mortgage, unless your born into wealth like Paris Hilton or something. So you’re an automatic victim of society by being forced to utilize the banks. TD Canada Trust, PC Financial, CIBC, Scotia Bank, Royal Bank – they should all be on the Top Ten Most Wanted Criminals List…
There’s high interest credit cards, straight up loans, and the fees they charge you for services. All scams. Please explain to me again why it costs so much money for you to hold my money and then not even let me touch it for 5 business days. My favourite is when you get charged a fee for depositing cash. Is that for real……….a cash handling fee………at the bank? And then there’s Debit. This to me has got to be the easiest way for people to spend more money than they planned on. The day they created the debit machines where you could spend your money right at the store, was the end of an eternity. Now I’m not complaining about convenience, because that is the benefit of it. What I’m complaining about is that the little machine that allows the stores to take your money directly from your bank card, never tells you how much money you still have, only what you spent. And you just go from store to store spending more and more until finally – Declined!
Now you need to pull out your Credit Card, usually issued through your bank for inconvenient situations just like this one, and overspend your budget of what you could actually afford. How many other people have noticed that since they’ve used Debit all the time, they never have any money in the bank?
It’s the expressway to debt.
Try going back in time for a while and take out the actual amounts of money you are prepared to spend before going to the store and see if there’s a difference. Stick within your budget and stop allowing the banks to force you to be poor. There are some necessities that come from the bank that we need to depend on, and we should be thankful that they exist, but do they really need to rob us as much as they do?
Born February 6th, 1945, Robert Nesta Marley was a legend from day one. The mind frame of this man was above and beyond every other human being around him. He may have looked up to many preachers and followed religious beliefs but he gained the respect of everyone who met him, or even heard of him, and Bob Marley lived a life with one purpose – to bring the world together and find freedom for all.
Bob Marley grew up in Jamaica through some of the most political warfare that any of us could imagine. And through it all he wrote and sang some of the most powerful lyrics ever recorded. To this day, even after Marley’s death in 1981, the record companies are still making millions off of his music, his passion and his life. Some songs were about freedom, some songs were about unity, and some songs were about love, but all songs were about Bob, about his life, about his strife, and about what he believed was right.
On this Legends birthday, I want you all to recognize the lyrics to the song War off the album Rastaman Vibration:
“Until the philosophy which hold one race superior And another Inferior Is finally And permanently Discredited And abandoned – Everywhere is war – Me say war.
That until there no longer First class and second class citizens of any nation Until the colour of a man’s skin Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes – Me say war.
That until the basic human rights Are equally guaranteed to all, Without regard to race –
‘Tis a war.
That until that day The dream of lasting peace, World citizenship Rule of international morality Will remain in but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, But never attained – Now everywhere is war – war.
And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes That hold our brothers in Angola, In Mozambique, South Africa Sub-human bondage Have been toppled, Utterly destroyed – Well, everywhere is war – Me say war.
War in the east, War in the west, War up north, War down south – War – war – Rumours of war. And until that day, The African continent Will not know peace, We Africans will fight – we find it necessary – And we know we shall win As we are confident In the victory
Of good over evil – Good over evil, yeah! Good over evil – Good over evil, yeah! Good over evil – Good over evil…”
This was most likely the most powerful song ever sung by Bob Marley and the Wailers, not just for it’s lyrics, but actually from where the lyrics came from. Ethiopian Emperor Haile SelassieI (Imperial Majesty and Leader of Rastafarians) read this speech in his Ahmaric language in the UN in 1963 which was written by Lorenzo Tazaz. Bob Marley and the Wailers turned it into a song by using the part of Selassie’s speech that calls for equality among all without regard to race, class, or nationality in his hymnal cry for peace. It also asserts, quoting Selassie directly, that until the day of an equal society, there will be war. In the original speech, Selassie urged U.N. officials and country representatives to disarm nuclear weapons, and to end international exploitation (specifically with Africa). The song honors Haile Selassie I while calling for action against racial inequality and international injustice. The part of the speech used by Bob Marley was preceded by the following words:
“Last May, in Addis Ababa, I convened a meeting of Heads of African States and Governments. In three days, the thirty-two nations represented at that Conference demonstrated to the world that when the will and the determination exist, nations and peoples of diverse backgrounds can and will work together. In unity, to the achievement of common goals and the assurance of that equality and brotherhood which we desire.”
Some seriously powerful lyrics recognized and relayed to the world by the Legend – Bob Marley.
All you artists and graphic designers, One Love Skateboard Shop has put out a contest to see who can design their next Logo. It’s pretty simple, make a design, email it in.
Winner gets $100 in prizes from the shop.
You got till February 20th to submit your design and the winners will be announced at the Kick Off Contest in Pitt Meadows on March 9th, 2013.
