From: ez006882@rocky.ucdavis.edu
Newsgroups: alt.skate-board
Subject: Re: re:hello
Date: 10 Apr 92 19:23:15 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, UC Davis

Hello all, 
last night I had a rousing bout with insomnia so at 3:30AM i called up
my very good and long time friend Mike Kinney (ex-Schmitt Stix, Vision
Street Wear, Tracker, and Vans) and had a long talk about skating, particular-
ly freestyle.  Its really strange how skating is not as fun nowadays. I look
all around and all I see are kids (and men) trying to do all these technical
flatland tricks and just getting really pissed off. The emphasis today is
too much on "keeping up with the Jonses," so to speak. People yell "yeah!"
when they see a rad trick, but secretly curse them for landing it before 
them. I guess its because I am living around in both the San Francisco and
Sacramento areas, where there is a high concentration of good and very
competitive skaters.
Anyway, as I was telling Mike, when we were skating the freestyle contests,
there was a SMALL group of maybe eight of us who were at all the CASL contests
and we were the best amateur f-style skaters in the US. It was like a small
group of friends, but the thing that made it so rad was that there were so
few of us, and we were doing things that no-one else was doing. Also, since
there were so few of us, we all were good friends with all the pro freestylers.
The sessions we had were so fun and intense at times. Some days and nights
at "Pay and Play" and Huntington Beach Pier we skated 6 hours in the same
area and every now and then one of us would be on the spotlight when the others
were tired and everyone would focus on that person's skating and comment
and help him on tricks and help think up variations. I guess kind of the same
thing goes on today, but it was still different because we all knew each other
and when you saw another freestyler , you were stoked and you never cared if
they were better than you. Ah, well, I'm just reminiscing because skating
has changed so much, and still is.
Another thing I'm sure you may be aware of is that most of the street tricks
today are old freestyle tricks. I wont go into specifics, but it is safe to
say that I have yet to see a street flatground trick that I didnt already see
three years ago. Honestly. you really would be surprised. Every now and
then I will teach a history lesson to the streetskaters in town and bust out
the old videos we took of amateur freestyle contests and show them all the
shove-it, ollie flip, pressure flip, manual, impossible, etc, variations
that are considered new and trendy and avant garde, but all done wearing
converse and vans (Airwalk was not even around or popular yet) with Madrid
banners in the background (remember them?)
Anyway, the point im getting at is that I'm jut upset that credit does not
go to deserving people. NO, TONY HAWK, JUSTIN GERARD DID NOT INVENT THE
PRESSURE FLIP.  Jeremy Ramey, Sean Coons, Daryl Grogan, me, Mike Kinney,
Andres Comacho, Robert Rodrigues, Tim Waldusky, Matt Wood. Are any of these
names familiar? I thought not. Its too bad, but I dont even think any of
these people skate anymore. Their sponsors all dropped them, they got
jobs or went to school, or they just got burned out from skating alone
and getting no credit or enthusiasm from other skaters.
I'm sorry this letter is so long, I shot off longer than I thought I would.
My apologies if this seems like a "bitter old man" type letter, but I just
felt it needed to be said, because there simply are not any freestylers 
still involved in skating left to speak for us. Ah well, that's life.
-clif
PS: Not that I dont admire the skill of today's best street skaters, but they
should just realize that for over 10 years freestylers have been thing up
ways to flip their boards around. That's all they do. period. It's pretty
safe to assume that we covered almost all the bases.
PPS: normally i wouldnt write a letter this long, but there are 2 reasons:
1) I have time to kill before my next class.
2) I went skating the other day and heard a bunch of skaters go "YEAH! Thats
so rad!" when a guy did the very same trick that I did in front of them
2 years earlier (on my street board even) that most didnt even notice.
Dont get me wrong, I dont skate for glory (God knows I've never gotten any)
but after a while stuff like this can get to you, y'know?
Hopefully Ive managed to get to some of you, even though this newsgroup is
a very very small percentage of the skate population at large, you are all
still skaters.




Newsgroups: alt.skate-board