Besides dissing the “Save Rollerblading” post that accompanies the phony photo above, lamenting missing the Hoedown, and paying respects to a fallen roller, Krans delivers that thing he does. Now do your part and read it. — ONE
Something’s Not Right
Sometimes being vague is a good thing, like when your girlfriend asks where you’ve been all night. However, posting the headline “Save Blading: (Tony Hawk), Mission Complete!” on Rollernews and not having anything else to support it is fucking annoying.
So many things wrong there. One, blading doesn’t need “saving.” We need better marketing and a stronger base of skaters.
Two, does rollerblading need Tony Hawk? Is he the go-to healing messiah for all wheeled sports? Fuck no. Does anyone else remember him “retiring” from wood pushing, only to come back to it when it became popular again? Way to abandon a sport you helped make popular, ass hat.
Yeah, maybe Tony can do a spectator tour like he did with boards, biking and motocross, complete with sponsors like Jeep, some hair gels and all sorts of corporate whoring so when people come to watch all they get is more commercialism.
If an obviously poorly-Photoshopped photo posted on a Web site is all it took to save blading — hence the Mission Accomplished — then how bad off were we to begin with?
Then again, if it wasn’t forged, maybe that strange black cloud around his head is looming evil that follows him.
[Editor’s Note: Pretty sure the foundation of that photo is James St. Ours’ body. Skinny as all hell. Roces M12s with Able frames. Heat T-shirt. If not St. Ours, then the real person come forward!)
Hoedown
Wow. It looks like this year’s Hoedown, now into it’s 13th year, was one I should whoop my own ass for missing. By the looks of photos and edits pouring out of there, there was some hellishly mean blading going on.
Check out Brian Moore’s edit here:
With that level of blading right there, its sets the stage quite nicely when bladers invade Vegas in two weeks for the World Rolling Series finals. The well-traveled Aragon and Haffey are close at first and second place, but I’m not discounting anyone in the top 10.
It’s going to be epic, especially because of the industry-wide cooperating that went down to get it together.
Ubiquitous Item of the Week
Rolling lost another good one this week. Brian “Cozmik” Scott Jr., a blader out of NYC, was shot inside a restaurant in Brooklyn. Investigators have said Scott was an innocent bystander.
It’s yet again, another sad moment for rollerblading, losing a talented young skater who could have easily pushed our sport into the future.
I believe Angelo Ferrer said it best in a piece he did for us earlier this week: “For everyone who knew him, to those of you who don’t, make sure you keep his passing as a reminder to enjoy the days ahead and to leave a mark with your great personality and your overall presence, because in the end, when people remember you, they will remember who you are and not what you have done.”
Roll in Peace, Cozmik.
Comment of the Week
Michael Obedoza had an epiphany this week. It’s one everyone should have if they’re only going out to get clips, make sponsor-me edits and trying to get their name on a wheel. Roll for the love and everything else will come naturally.
The Ultimate Look Back
You ever ride the bus or go to the grocery store and there’s always that one creepy guy who’s always staring at you, no matter how many times you catch him doing it?
Okay, so watch the last minute of this edit from the Conference and see what I’m talking about.
Seriously, Romain Godenaire, you’re creeping me out.
Yes, I own a Tony Hawk game. Do I regret it? Slightly.
The videogame was well traveled… if only there was a rollerblading one that wasn’t complete garbage. Hmmmmm?
Hoedown looked amazing. Too bad Iowa wasn’t there to hold the after party 😛
There are reasons skate boarding games can be made and rolling ones cannot. Most obviously financial backing. However it takes a good while to create a game and any rollerblading game that comes out is going to be out of date by the time its released. “Rolling” was a game that was supposed to come out in the U.S. (think it was released in Europe) but never did because it kept getting swapped from studio to studio and each time they started over because the skates/skaters and tricks kept getting out of date.
I do agree I would love to see at the very least a fun skating game even if it is just a down loadable one. Until then I am going to keep playing Skate2 for 360 and doing outspin bluntslides with a tailgrab and pretend it was a ao fish.
No, Ill tell you what rolling needs: We need an image, a frontman. We need a star. F the bull boys, Tony Hawk straight murked the world with his video game and now every kid wants to skateboard like the skaters they can emulate in his game.
So I say we grab the bull by the horns and choose a skater to take us into the future. Just because the skateboard world used Tony Hawks name as their superstar does not mean that other pro skaters were not being promoted in his games.
Does anyone remember how great our numbers were when Aaron Feinberg won the X Games on his sixteenth birthday? Pretty much every kid wanted to rollerblade after they saw Aaron Feinberg taking 1st place and beating out all the older pros. After that his rollerblading career took off but nobody with any kind of real power was their to market him.
Just a thought.
i wanna skate
