StrangeLove
wait, that's not a… is it?!
Sean Cliver
Why yes, it most assuredly is, and why not? After all, we do appear to be in the midst of a cultural "penaissance,"as Rob McElhenny, Charlie Day, and Glenn Howerton astutely observed during a recent episode of the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia podcast. It's a long time in coming, too, but if you happen to be a former reader of Big Brother skateboard mag then you know we were way ahead of the curve when it came to the curious case of full-frontal male nudity.
tic tac: a peculiar analogy between skateboarding and tourette's syndrome, by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
A couple years ago I read a book by the late neurologist, Dr. Oliver Sacks, titled, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. (Sacks is also the author of the book-cum-movie Awakenings). Sacks employs a jaunty literary style in the stories he writes about his patients and the bizarre neurological disorders they suffer from. There is, for instance, a series of patients who can no longer recognize faces or common objects; others can’t remember their pasts, some can only remember their distant pasts, but nothing just seconds prior; some have phantom or alien limbs; and one mistakes his...
TRANNY: act 1, part 2, by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
We looked at the birth of transition skating in the TRANNY: Act 1, Part 1, and we will continue extracting that bloody, snot covered baby here in Part 2 of Act 1: The emergence of the backyard ramp scene and transition skating’s continued evolution.
TRANNY: act 1, part 1, by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
A few years ago I was approached to be the director of a documentary about the history of vert and transition skating. I was very excited because I started skating in the late '70s, was a vert skater in the '80s, and have championed transition skating ever since—if there’s anything I nerd-out on in skateboarding it’s the history of vert. I excitedly began prepping for the doc immediately and, as is my habit, I over-researched and took way too many notes, most of which I knew would never see the light of day. While my “extreme” research and development looks like a waste of time, I know this longwinded process often provides me with a richer, fuller background from which unusual connections arise (there’s nothing surprising in that because if you stare at a pile of trash long enough you’re going to connect with something, even if it is just trash). Unfortunately, after nearly a year of writing, writing, and more writing on the history of transition skating, the project was cancelled.
it is a new year… again. by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
I don’t celebrate the New Year. I don’t make resolutions or entertain ambitions about “renewal” or, “new beginnings” or, “dry January”—fuck off. To me it’s “just another day,” as the Oingo Boingo song goes. There’s really no difference between December 31 and January 1 except that we begin our arbitrary human calendar again. New Year’s Day could be any one of the 365 days we’ve decided make a year. If it were up to me, I would choose December 21, the Winter Solstice, to be New Year’s Day because something cosmic actually occurs on that day that does in fact signal renewal: our planet’s northern pole reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun making 12/21 the shortest day and longest night of the year. Thus the next day, 12/22, marks the rebirth of the sun and daylight hours grow longer thereafter. My mother always loved the Winter Solstice because, as she would say, “The days start getting longer again.” I rejoiced with her because that meant we could skate the ramp longer every day. Hooray.