Volume 5, Number 3 (Special Photography Issue)

a skateboard kulture quarterly.

a skateboard culture magazine.

a skateboard kulture quarterly.

SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHY EDITION

boogie angela boatwright j. grant brittain jerry hsu todd jordan jeff kutter scott pommier arto saari alain levitt mike rusczyk rick mccrank shawn mortensen FineLine Technologies patrick o’dell JN 84210 Index 4 80% 1.5 BWR PD the polaroid kidd V5.3 ISSUE

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0

74470 58053

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The 13th Signature Model from Colin McKay. BACKSIDE SMITH 180 OUT. BLABAC SEQUENCE. WWW.DCSHOES.COM

Fotofeature, page 44 [ o ] SNOW

Gabriola Dreaming, page 78 [ o ] BARBER

Arto Saari, kickflip to fakie [ o ] ANNTON

ARTO SAARI.

[ o ] COURTESY OF PATRICK O’DELL

page 160 [ o ] POLAROID KIDD

130

A ROLLING PERSPECTIVE. 68

some of skateboarding’s spawned photogrpahers, including rick mccrank, mike rusczyk, jerry hsu, and todd jordan.

GABRIOLA DREAMING. fashion editorial by tim barber. 78

FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHERS: 94

new bodies of work from photographers scott pommier, shawn mortensen (100), jon bocksel (102), angela boatwright (104), patrick o’dell (106), boogie (110), grant brittain (118), alain levitt (120), jeff kutter (122).

THE POLAROID KIDD. catching a freight with one of the most elusive and prolific documentarian photographers of our time. 160 (far left) Jerry Hsu and Patrick Odell at Max Fish, LES New York.

8

contents5.3SE

[ o ] NICHOLAS

LINDER

Works 1976-2006 (JRP Ringier) This luxurious compendium of Linder’s work from high-brow Swiss art publisher JRP Ringier attempts to re-present the career of one of the unsung heroines of punk. Best known for her iconic record cover collages for the Buzzcocks and Magazine, Linder’s revival of Dadaist cut-and-paste pretty much set the template for ‘zine aesthetics from the late 70s to the present. Her stock-in-trade was the pressure placed on women’s bodies by different media (she stitched porno to domestic appliances, foods with nudes), but this book also displays the greater breadth of her work: her art-terrorist performances as Ludus, playing S&M-punk at the Hacienda in a rubber suit covered in meat, her later installations and film works, and several series of self-portraits that show her in guises that vary from a lipstick-smeared death’s-head to a toughbut-tender blonde ingenue in her Belgian phase. The essays run the gamut from high academic obscurity to intensely personal praise, with contributions from Morrissey and punk historian Jon Savage.—s.twerdy

AMERICANS

epic shows. With amazing photographs from leading rock photographers, you’ll wish you were born 60 years earlier.

FROM THE EXHIBIT “AMERICANS. MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY 1940 – 2006” Ed: Wien, Et. Al (grafiche damiani) Thirteen soul-stealers and light-magicians line up to present you with their take on the state of America, including none other than the once “red-helmeted” Ed Templeton. It is nice to see him fit in so comfortably with the likes of such wellestablished visionaries as Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Bruce Davidson, Larry Clark, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Helen Levitt, Gordon Parks, Rosalind Solomon, Peter Hujar, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Frank. The book, spanning six decades of social commentary, reads as a list of who’s who in American photography, and deserves to occupy space on or in many a bookshelf, coffee table, backpack and library. —d.doubt

RICAS Y FAMOSAS Daniela Rossell (turner)

—g.nicholas

After dropping out of the National School of Visual Arts in Mexico City, Daniela Rossell, a member of Mexico’s upper-class herself, began to photograph the trophy wives and daughters of Mexico’s ultra-rich in their opulent and, for the most part, completely ridiculous homes. continues on page 149

I WAS THERE: Gigs That Changed The World Mark Paytress (cassell illustrated) So you’re lurking in your basement listening to all of your pop’s old rock n’ roll vinyls, and you can’t stop thinking about how you wish you were there, in the crowd, hearing firsthand all of those tasty licks. Well, fear not young padawan, this book, edited by Mark Paytress, showcases the best of the best concerts over the last 60 years. From Elvis, to Queen, to the Smiths, I Was There gives you a firsthand look at what it was like to experience these

THE BIKERIDERS Danny Lyon (chronicle)

“If anything has guided this work beyond the facts of the worlds presented it is what I have come to believe is the spirit of the bikeriders: the spirit of the hand that twists open the throttle on the crackling engines of big bikes and rides them on racetracks or through traffic or, on occasion, into oblivion.”

A telling intro, indeed. With this book, Danny Lyon tore the world of documentary photography a bit of a new asshole.

Working in the style called “new journalism”, he immersed himself in the subject matter. Lyon became a member of the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club, traveled with them, and shared their lifestyle. Many of the photographs in this

book were in fact shot from the saddle of his own ’56 Triumph, a bike that was assembled largely from random bits and pieces from various garages. He says of his bike, “It had a black gas tank, a knobby tire on the front, no front fender, and no headlight or muffler. The explosions of the 650-cc engine went straight out the exhaust pipe that ran along its side.” Now there, my friends, is a man not afraid to live. This book is, in fact, rumoured to be the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969). —d.doubt

FLOW

SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS 1982 – 2006 Ari Marcopoulos (veenman) Some snowboarders, some skateboarders, some portraits, some landscapes, some birds, some bees, some sexy ladys, some naked, some not so naked, a few days, and nights, all this this and a lot of nice light. Get “The Cat”, the first book of Ari’s in a new series. —g.nicholas .inspirationbound

9

[ o ] NORTON

We decided a long time ago that this photo of Nathan Olokun ollieing through the sunset was the staple “Photo Annual” shot. So seeing that this is Color’s first stab at the “Photo Annual” concept, we’re getting this one out of the way early.

S

10

5.3SE

ince the first surf-like turns were carved on concrete, skateboarding has shared a relationship with photography. Young, like-minded artists made it their unconscious obsession to try and translate the feeling that skateboarding can bring. And their fixation with capturing this in a single, still frame is still being pursued today with many new recruits joining the crusade, giving their best while presenting how they perceive the world through technical and aesthetic methods of photography.

Issue” we asked some of these prolific skaters to share their own photos, and the results were interesting. We didn’t find action photos shot via helmet-cams or anything of the sort. Instead, we kept getting images of serene landscape, photos of strangers – street people and vagrants. We got everything from quirky irony to Iron Maiden; photos not clearly shot by skateboarders, but explorers in pursuit of freedom and discovering the unknown by looking through from another perspective.

Fortunately, skateboarding has evolved from a kid’s toy to a vibrant culture, making it all the more difficult to translate in a single photograph. We have tried videos and Hollywood films, and today the fight has moved on through digital photography sequences, but nothing has harnessed as much personal style as still-photography.

While skateboard magazines release Photo Annuals of the best attempts, they come off as lazy, quick-fixes of skate photos we should be getting in regular issues anyway. We’ve come a long way from making sharp carves and mimicking surfing to a point where we can truly see the potential of a skateboard. With skaters such as Rodney Mullen, Danny Way, and Tony Hawk constantly rediscovering the possibilities on a skateboard, other skateboarders (whether they know it or not) advance the aesthetic and enrich the culture. So for our attempt at the “Photo

We hope you’re enlightened and inspired by the range of photography found in this issue. Skateboard culture is a complex reality that can only be transcribed by the plethora of photographs shot by those who skate and the like-minded artists who inspire us. This issue is a bound supplement we put together with the help of New York/Los Angeles based photographer Christopher Glancy. This is how we see skateboarding today and where it fits into the lives of others. The photos work together to describe the mood and aesthetic and vast culture of skateboarding through the lens of an artist’s trained eye. If ever there is a single photo to sum up the act, mood, feeling and culture of skateboarding entirely, I hope there will still be people who will argue otherwise nd the quest continues.

—Sandro Grison, editor-in-chief / creative director

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Committed to Skateboarding. www.C1RCA.ca

[ o ] BARBER

SANDRO GRISON DYLAN DOUBT

editor / creative director photo editor sandro@colormagazine.ca

dylandoubt@colormagazine.ca

CHRIS GLANCY NICHOLAS BROWN guest editor arts editor

cglancyphoto@gmail.com

nbrown@colormagazine.ca

CRAIG ROSVOLD SAELAN TWERDY

advertising director music editor

craig@colormagazine.ca

music@colormagazine.ca

BEN TOUR STAFF WRITER

illustratior matthew meadows

tour@colormagazine.ca

mmeadows@colormagazine.ca

JENNIFER MACLEOD STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER circulation gordon nicholas

jmacleod@colormagazine.ca

gordon@colormagazine.ca

MILA FRANOVIC RHIANON BADER fashion copy editor

mfranovic@colormagazine.ca

rbader@colormagazine.ca

CHRIS BARIL SUBSCRIBE!

web to our magazine at

baril@colormagazine.ca

www.colormagazine.ca

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS alain levitt, alex irvine, allen ying, andrew mapstone, andrew norton, andy cook, angela boatwright, antton, arkan zakharov, arto saari, bart tararuj, ben colen, boogie, brian caissie, chris frey, dalas verdugo, dan neufeld, dan zaslavsky, david broach, david stuck, dylan thorstonsen, felix faucher, ian snow, j. grant brittain, jai tanju, jeff delong, jeff kutter, jeff thornburn, jerry hsu, jon bocksel, Kim Lostroscio, liz flyntz, mike rusczyk, patrick o’dell, rich odam, rick mccrank, sandra croft, scott pommier, shawn mortensen, tadashi yamaoda, terry worona, the polaroid kidd, tim barber, todd jordan, zach malfa-kowalksy

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS brock thiessen, dalas verdugo, dan neufeld, jake goodman, julia lum, julie colero, liz flyntz, mark e. rich, matt goody, matthew meadows, mike christie, nathan ripley, scott pommier

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS dave ko, aaron winters

INTERNSHIPS colleen keith, joel dufresne, travis jeffers newstands: disticor.com | magamall.com

Publications mail agreement No. 40843627 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: fourcornerpublishinginc.

321 RAILWAY STREET, STUDIO 105 VANCOUVER, BC V6A 1A4 CANADA p.604 873 6699 f.604 873 6619

14

credits.

DISCLAIMER: the views and opinions expressed here are not neccessarily shared by fourcorner publishing inc. or Color Magazine, but by the author credited. Color Magazine reserves the right to make mistakes and will do so on a bi-monthly cycle without liability. No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form [print or electronic] without permission from the publisher. The publisher of Color Magazine is not responsible for errors or omissions printed and retains the right to edit all copy. The opinions expressed in the content of this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of Color Magazine. Color Magazine reserves the right to accept or reject any advertising matter which may reflect negatively on the integrity of the magazine.

Color welcomes submissions for Photo and Editorial content, but is not responsible for unsolicited material or liable for any lost and/or damaged material. Please provide a return envelope with postage with your submissions. Color Magazine is published by fourcorner publishing inc., printed four times yearly and distributed direct to retailers throughout Canada and to newstands by Disticor Distribution. Subscriptions can may be ordered individually or in bulk by retailers for resale. Subscribe: 6 issues for $39.99 in Canada, $59.99 CND in the United States, $89.99 CND for all other countries. Contact Color Magazine with any subscription inquiries or visit us online: www.colormagazine.ca

Printed in Canada

departments.

8 contents, 9 inspiration bound (149), 10 intro, 14 masthead, 26 product toss, 32 anthrax, 153 faces n’ spaces (155), 36 show (149), 42 city (146), 44 fotofeature (46, 48, 64, 65, 90, 91, 116, 128), 52 contest, 54 cmyk, 150 sound cheque, 156 contributors, 170 tattered ten. 174 over&out Alex Olsen and Marc Johnson [ o ] colen someone’s backyard, somewhere in america.

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92

.BOOK OF LISTS YACHT ON A YACHT. chris frey’s vancouver sound and vision.

dalas verdugo reports on portland’s best party, thrown by jona bechtolt.

.MOCCA BALTIMORE REBORN. 36

146

dan deacon spearheads the charm city renaissance.

julia lum discusses the constructed image: photographic culture.

.EARTHLESS PETER RAMONDETTA. 147

170

tattered ten.

san diego’s cosmic rock conquerors space out.

16

contents5.3SE

If we all listened to the same tune, we would understand each other better. To listen is to learn. Employing the smartest technology and smoothest design, WeSC interacts a level

deeper with friends and family. No matter what activity you do or how misaligned planets will make you feel, you will still feel at home grooving with us.

photo: Dante

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22

COLIN LAMBERT frontside slash [ o ] neufeld.

words and photosby dan neufeld

I

first heard about this place from a local photography forum, where someone had posted photos of a graffiti-covered full pipe (not skateboard photos, just ‘art-stuff’).

They mentioned what it was near, but no exact directions.

So, in comes Google Earth. After a quick search in the general area where it should be, I find it. Old storage bins and trailers, just sitting around rusting.

I forget about it for a while, but as luck would have it, we end up driving right by it on the way to another spot. I pull a u-turn, and we’re there.

It takes a walk through some trees to get there, all along a well worn path. As you can see in the photos, this place has been used for more than one overnight stay.

We take a look around the area, but only find one skateable pipe. There’s a pile of dirt and bedding, but we clean that out, all the while trying not to breathe in the vast amounts of dust.

It’s amazing (and depressing) to see what lengths people will go to for shelter. (clockwise) Akeem Kamara, sweeping with a branch. Colin using a stick, trying not to touch anything. The look on his faces says it all.

It gets cleaned out, and we start to skate it. The while pipe is a bit wobbly, but Colin and Akeem still manage some tricks, even on the big hole in the side of the pipe. Colin gets his 5-0, and we’re pretty much done. A couple more tricks, and we leave.

I put the blanket back in the pipe figuring that the next occupant might prefer that it stay inside the newly cleaned pipe, instead of it laying outside in the elements.

.roomfortwo

23

BRENT ATCHLEY

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SEE BRENT’S PART IN THE NEW FULL-LENGTH ELEMENT VIDEO

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[ o ] NICHOLAS

summer selections.

Take prints and tie dye tee shirts with coloured denim from the streets to the beach by throwing a free and easy straw fedora on and unbuttoning your flannel. Summer is never really here until you wear your teeny weeny Billabong bikini or your stallion black speedo under those C1rca stripes, Roxy solids, RVCA tights or cut off Matix jeans. Basically cut all your tees into crop-tops and roll up your jeans because it’s summer!

26

producttoss.

clockwise: BILLABONG, Shell Bandeau bikini ROXY, Rio Grande Bandeau bikini C1RCA, Stripes ladies tee BILLABONG, Hedy fedora FENCHURCH, Shamya mens long sleeve ROXY, Hot Child shorts DC, Pronto mens flip-flop ELEMENT, Artemis Draunpipe ladies denim

STICKERS@TIMEBOMB.BB.CA

WWW.TIMEBOMBTRADING.COM RVCAANP.COM

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[ o ] NICHOLAS

summer selections.

clockwise, starting with: ADIDAS Super Skate Vulcanized FALLEN Ripper C1RCA Select 50slips ETNIES X STEREO Fakie DVS LUXE Trades EMERICA Leo Romero DVS Anna DC Gatsby ELEMENT Jasper Mid EMERICA Laced Tie Dye 28

producttoss.

30

producttoss.

Japan photo by OBEY , QL by Lakai, Decibel by DC, STUSSY x Josh Cheuse , Mile High-Sub by QUIKSILVER

[ o ] NICHOLAS

photo-tees.

TIMEBOMB DIST.: 604.251.1097

ARTO SAARI. WWW.ETNIESSKATE.COM

[ o ] CROFT

Let’s Get Friendly That’s right. Color has joined the zillions of people hooked on Facebook and we’re trolling for more friends. Just search for Color Magazine and add us so that you can check out the latest never-before-seen skate and release party pics as well as connect with other Color readers.

Destructo Vs. KLF

While you’re at it, you might as well become our myspace friend too.

MYSPACE.COM/COLORMAGAZINE

The first person to add us as a friend on both Myspace and Facebook, then email their complete mailing address to: fourcorner@colormagazine.ca subject: “YOU’RE MY DADDY” will receive a free deck courtesy of Father Skateboards.

Destructo celebrates the British creative partnership KLF’s (Kopyright Liberation Front) 20th anniversary with some collabo trucks. Now known as the K Foundation, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty are continuing on their campaign of extravegent exploits to challenge and subvert the stuffy art establishment. Destructo feels that the K Foundation represent freedom, rebellion, and non-conformist attitude, everything that skateboarding itself stands for.

Cityscape Contest Winners.

Congratulations to Sandra Croft of Toronto, Tyler Kline of Philly, and Colin Moore of Vancouver for their winning entries. They each sent in a representation of their own cityscape in different formats. One photograph, one mural, and one amazing skateboard graphic. The winners will each be taking home a prize pack, courtesy of Zoo York and a subscription to Color.

DESTRUCTOTRUCKS.COM

[ o ] NICHOLAS

[ o ] NICHOLAS

[ o ] OAKES

ZOOYORK.COM

Black Metal.

“THE MOST EVIL VIDEO YOU WILL SEE ALL YEAR”, Creature lived up to its name by showcasing some of the gnarliest bowl shredding around.

The latest video installment from the creature army, Black Metal premiered June 1st at the Hastings bowl. Fun times and coping thrashing was had by all before screening the video in the deep end.

Volcom Let the Kids Ride Free.

This summer Volcom is giving back to the community by hosting a series of free contests called “Wild in the Parks”. These events are run as an arena for up and coming skaters to show everyone what they’ve got. Giving kids without sponsors or lots of cash a chance to enter, Volcom’s contests are absolutely free. Contestants pay nothing, get free grub and lots of free product thrown their way too. These North American wide and International events have three age categories – 14 and Under, 15 and Over and Open (pro-am). There are ten events spread across Canada and the US, culminating in an invite only championship in Austin, Texas where there is a purse of $15 000 up for grabs. There is also a European and an Australian contest series too.

VOLCOM.COM

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anthrax.

CREATURESKATEBOARDS.COM

Get Out and Skate!

It was that time of year again, and Vancouver knew it!

With events happening all over the city, and ‘‘harsh barges” at downtown spots such as Red Brick and CIBC, the police were called to the scene more than once. The maiin event was the charging of Georgia Street viaduct whioh stopped traffic completely— overrun by skateboarders. Until next June 21st...

GOSKATEBOARDINGDAY.ORG

SUBSCRIBE TO COLOR AND GET A FREE DVD! SEND IN YOUR SUB CARD WITH THIS COUPON TO RECEIVE A FREE COPY OF MONTREAL BASED “LAZY PAPARAZZI” (while supplies last) COLORMAGAZINE.CA/shop

Jeff Wall Exhibit.

Underworld Game Of S-k-a-t-e.

On an unseasonably cool and windy Saturday in June, Vancouver skaters gathered under the Cambie St Bridge for the Underworld Game of SKATE on Ledges. Consistent skating made for some epic games, most notably a 30 to 40 trick marathon between Bradley Sheppard and Spencer Hamilton. It was SKAT vs SKATE and Bradley came out the winner, setting up the final game with a 300 dollar purse up for grabs between Magnus Hanson, Bradley, and Paul Trep. Magnus ended the game and took home the cash.

Leica Camera Special Editions For all of you camera buffs out there, Leica offers three special edition cameras, each designed to commemorate special historical events. The most recent Jeff Wall, Milk (1984). Silver dye bleach transparency of these special cameras is in light box. 741/2 in.x901/4 in.)The Museum of the Leica Historical Society Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Mary of America Special Edition, Joy Thomson Legacy. ©Jeff Wall. made to celebrate the anniversary of the Leica MP. 500 black lacquered and 500 silver chrome-plated models were produced, echoing the very limited original MP run Each of the special cameras was of just 400 units. Another special edition is the M7 Titanium. This ultra produced in limited numbers, so strong and light weight model has solid a titanium cap, base cover, and good luck getting your sticky little controls, is corrosion proof and is vapor-coated with an ultra-thin layer trigger fingers on them. Sometimes of silicon dioxide to eliminate the problem of fingerprints. So you can eat it’s best to just admire a thing of fried chicken and shoot at the same time without worry. And rounding beauty from afar. off the special cameras is the Leica MP Anthracite model. It was deLEICA.COM signed especially for the Japanese market with an entirely hand-applied lacquer coating and made to be abrasion resistant.

May the (Dark) Force Be With You. At the 30th anniversary Star Wars Celebration held in Los Angeles this past May, amidst 25,000 Obi-Wans, Lukes, and Chewbaccas looking for some intergalactic love, was the opening of the landmark gallery exhibition, The Vader Project. 75 of the world’s hottest pop and underground artists were invited to customize scaled replica Darth Vader helmets. Some of the artists that added their vision to one of the most iconic evil characters in pop culture include Jeff Soto, Buffmonster, Seen, Mr Caroon, and Jeremyville. The exhibit is now traveling to museums, galleries, and events around the world. At the end of the tour the helmets are being offered publicly at auction so fans can lay claim to a piece by one of their favorite artists and still geek out on their love for Star Wars.

MYSPACE.COM/THEVADERPROJECT

Vancouver born artist Jeff Wall is the subject of a major retrospective exhibition currently being shown at the Chicago Art Institute until September 23. The exhibit displays Wall’s ability to capture brief moments and everyday details and turn them into staged and constructed scenes for a worldwide audience to experience.Take this opportunity to view work spanning across 30 years from an originator in the field of contemporary photography.

DC’s King of L.A. To follow up on the success of last years DC’s King of New York, DC is hosting another round of the amateur contest on the west coast, starting on June 23rd.

The format is the same as the New York contest. It is a three week long series held at four different spots around L.A. with the winner of each spot taking home a cool $1250.00. The contest is run in a jam format with 10 skaters competing in 20 minute heats with the top 2 advancing. At the end of the contest the overall winner (the person who has accumulated the most points) will be awarded $5000.00 and the title of DC King of LA. The series begins on June 23rd at Lockwood Ave Elementary School where the contest will be held on DC’s picnic tables. The next leg of the contest takes place the next day, June 24th at Hubert H. Bancroft Middle School on the school’s bump to table. The third event is being held on July 1st at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. This empty airport hanger is housing a replica Chino Hills 4 block and a complete demo course. And finally, on July 7th the fourth installment of the contest series is being held at Los Angeles City College on a replica of the Wilshire 10 stair rail.

The DC team will be judging the event. Expect to see US, Canada, European, and Australian team members at each event including Danny Way, Colin McKay, Sean Malto, Sascha Daley, Paul Trepanier, Jody Smith, and Aussie Andrew Currie.

Got Jeff?

These Nike SB Fly Milk Blazer Premium are homage to Jeff and his Fly Skateshop, located in Shanghai, China. The shoe was designed for Nike by Matt Irving who used colours from a Chinese milk carton, referencing Jeff’s previous job in a milk factory. The special Blazer, the third shoe that Nike SB has done for Shanghai, has an illustration of a milk carton on the tongue and a Chinese character which means ‘milk’. On the back of the shoe is a picture of Jeff and a ‘missing’ label listing his measurements and the message “Last seen at FLY Skateshop on Chang La Street in Shanghai, China. Tell him to come home, we love and miss him greatly”.

Jeff, if you’re reading this, please call home. For everyone else, try and get a pair so that you can spread the word…and keep an eye out for Jeff.

NIKE.COM/NIKESKATEBOARDING

34

runningfooter.

DCKINGOF.COM

JOSH CLARK ollie [ o ] jeff delong

35

ILLKA HALSO Museum I, 2003 From the series Museum Of Nature. digital print on aluminum 39 x 53� (courtesy of the artist)

36

the constructed image: photographic culture.

SIMEN JOHAN Untitled #133 (Moose), 2005 From the series Until the Kingdom Comes.

Digital c-print 71 x 92.5� framed Š Simen Johan (courtesy yossi milo gallery, nyc) collection of john and manuela wee tom

38

the constructed image: photographic culture.

Jose Rojo half cab nosebluntslide www.royalskateboardtruck.com / www.supradistribution.com mike mo capaldi / mike carroll / justin eldridge / danny garcia / andre genovesi / kerry getz / austyn gillette / jerry hsu / raymond molinar / cale nuske / brad staba / kevin taylor / canada / jai ball / carl labelle / devin morrison

ERWIN OLAF The Hallway, 2005 Lambda print on kodak endura 48 x 66� (courtesy of erwin olaf and hasted hunt gallery, new york)

40

continuedp149

Win

e Th

ns Tra

ist

a ha n d p aint ed E d Te mp l e to n

deck a nd h

is new shoe, The Transist, at cask emeri

om ate.c

Timebomb Distribution: 604.251.1097 www.timebombtrading.com stickers@timebomb.bc.ca

[ o ] FLYNTZ

For a good time you can drive out to the Prettyboy Reservoir in the county and go swimming naked. Watch out, the cops are against it due to some kids drowning in the city drinking water last year. Also there are many good apartment pools to “break� into... the best top secret one being on the top of the Carlyle Hotel (500 West University Parkway). Just walk in like you own the joint.

42

baltimoremaryland.

baltimore, maryland.

EATS.

CHOPPING.

Holy Frijoles 908 W 36th Best bartenders (say hi to Applehead Tom), mojitos, and serviceable faux Mexican.

Victoria Legrand, my ex-roommate and 1/2 of Beach House works here!

Charm City Skatepark and Shop (Canton) 4401 O’Donnel St. The city’s oldest skate establishment, around 13 years. Knowledgeable staff!

Golden West 1105 W 36th Basically across the street from Frijoles (they are both in Hampden).

Southwestern food and a smoke-free bar. Best touring-band-friend brunch spot.

Yabba Pot 2433 Saint Paul Street The world’s slowest Rastafarian vegan and raw foods.

There are some fun Korean restaurants uptown with private karaoke booths for rent...

University Minimart 3230 Saint Paul St The best cheap falafel sub, where you can also buy ping-pong balls and Arabic chicken spam. It’s in Charles Village, a part of town quickly turning into a mall for Hopkins students. We didn’t have any Starbucks two years ago. Now we have two on one block.

SHRALPS. Charm City Skatepark (Canton) 4401 O’Donnel St. Port Discovery Hubba downtown a long 12 stair hubba with a kink at the bottom. Only a few people have manned up to this ledge due to it’s sheer length and height.

Fort Howard roof over fence spot This is at an old Fort used in one of the early American war battles. Skater starts out ontop of a roof, they does a trick over a 4 foot gap to over a fence then land on another roof.

Charm City Skateshop (Dundalk) 7919 Wise Ave Currently just a shop, but soon expanding to include a pool, concrete plaza area, and indoor warehouse.

Red Emma’s 800 Saint Paul St An honest-tono-gods-no-masters anarchist collective coffee shop and bookstore.

Has free internet access and loud political conversations as well as bagels and stuff.

True Vine 1123 W 36th Is a good record store for world-spanning genres, knowledgeable dudes, and experimental variety.

Has a bit of a back room that occasionally hosts shows and events. Also in Hampden.

Sound Garden 1616 Thames St. Is a record store in Fells Point and is a big place with everything, including annoying kids. Jason Urick of Wzt Hearts and Floristree works here.

Barnramp Edgemere, Maryland inside of a bard, it is a wide minipipe with an extension.

Atomic Books 1100 W 36th St In Hampden carries all the cool comic books and magazines you could want and also interesting and salacious books.

Shop Gentei 1010 Morton St. Hard to find tiny skate/fixie shop with really special sneakers and clothes (mostly) for dudes.

Velocipede 4 W Lanvale St A bike co-op where you can fix your ride or build out a frame for cheap.

The Ottobar 2549 N Howard St For big stuff.

Charm City Art Space 1729 Maryland Ave For hardcore kids stuff.

ROCK.

BINGE DRINKING.

Floristree Space 405 W. Franklin Street, 6th Floor

Mt. Royal Tavern 1204 W Mount Royal Ave For straight up booze.

Otherwise known as the Dirt Church. The whole place smells like an old ashtray doused in pee. It’s right on MICA

Current Gallery 30 S. Calvert The Copycat 2448 N Charles St

campus practically, and the clientele comes for the art school and stays for the cheap drinks until they become wizened bikers, apparently.

Liam’s Pint Sized Pub 911 N. Charles Street Is good, if it’s open.

Boston Street Rail Boston St. (Canton) 8 stair rail, really big and round.

Office Parks 8 Northpoint Not visible from the road, most locals know of it. pervect 8 stair and an 8 stair ledge to the side of it.

Strip mall bank to wall off of northern parkway, behind the stripmall. skate the top of the waxed bank, or ollie up to the brick ledge for a stall or nosepick.

Ponka St. Upledge off of Ponka St. (Canton) on the 1st floor of an industrial warehouse.

Popular with locals.

The Fullpipes in a field surrounded by a forest and a housing developement. There is these 2 full pipes next to eachother and lots of other smaller full pipes that are skatable.

Lansdowne Skatepark Bero Road It is a relic from the skateboard revolution of the late 70’s early 80’s.

Caroll Skatepark 1500 Washington Blvd. in a neighborhood called “Pigtown” so watch out for junkie prostitutes and hectic BMXers.

Dizzy Issie’s 300 W 30th St Is like home for me, perfect cheap burgers, fireplace, cheap beer, and precariously placed moose skulls.

Gumbie, kickflip by david stuck Justin Lennon, Barn Ramp backside disaster like a piece of pie—i mean cake—i mean ply... photo by bart tararuj .continuespage146

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PIERRE-YVES GAUTHIER blunt fakie [ o ] terry worona.

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WES LOATES smith grind [ o ] arkan zakharov.

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PAUL MACHNAU backside 50/50 [ o ] dylan doubt.

Available at Antisocial, Livestock, Momentum, Island Snow and select skateshops.

For a full list of retailers visit...

FCONTEST. Send in one 8 x 10” print of your own spontaneous photography, observing strangers or family and friends in natural settings.

Photographers such as Boogie, Bob Kronbauer, and Andy Mueller possess a common spontaneity in their work. Be inspired by the photographers in this issue, grab a point and shoot camera and ‘shoot from the hip’!

One photographer will be crowned the “winner” and receive a fully editable online portfolio website subscription for a year from Parade Portfolio Management Tools worth $1000.00. This includes free website hosting, free domain registration, up to 5 email accounts, and ALL portfolio management tools – including all new feature updates and additions. The top five entries will also receive a one year subscription to Color Magazine and a tee shirt.

Entries will be judged on concept, composition, spontaneity, and general visual appeal.

Mail entries to Color Magazine, 105-321 Railway St, Vancouver BC, V6A 1A4, Canada. All submissions become the property of Color Magazine and may be used as future print and online content.

DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 10, 2007 GETPARADE.COM

— Color Magazine

[ o ] TADASHI

p i H e h t rom

“Parade Portfolio is a great way for any photographer to organize and display their work to the world!”

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BRAD SHEPPARD frontside disaster fakie flip fakie nose manual [ o ] dylan doubt.

[ o ] DOUBT

.18 stair

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[ o ] NORTON

garage

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cmyk.

.MATT CROOK switch bigspin nose manual [ o ] andrew norton

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[ o ] CAISSIE

birds 1

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cmyk.

.RYAN DECENZO ollie up backside 360 kickflip [ o ] brian caissie

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[ o ] FAUCHER

barcelona

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.MIGUELITO switch backside flip [ o ] felix faucher

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[ o ] ODAM

parliament

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.SPENCER HAMILTON fakie heelflip [ o ] rich odam

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REUBEN BULLOCK noseslide [ o ] ian snow.

GAILEA MOMOLU switch ollie [ o ] david broach

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ras. e m a c h it w s r e skateboard

H

ow many times have you seen a photo of someone skating a spot and thought “Wow, that looks amazing, that spot can’t be in my town, it looks too good,” and then later you realize it’s right down the street from your house and you’ve walked past it every day for the past two years on your way to work but you’ve never really seen it. This is the mystery of skateboarding. This is the way it turns the whole world from merely a place to be navigated and moved through into an endless unfurling possibility. This is the search for spots, a unique kind of looking—often called skate goggles—and I’ve heard that even years after people quit skateboarding, they find themselves doing it habitually because imagining is a thing much more difficult to quit. This is the way skateboarding forces us to examine, and continually re-examine, the topography of our world, to be conscious, to actively look, to see what is barely there. This particular way of looking has spawned some really interesting photographers. This is because for some the urge to document, capture, and represent their experiences is an important part of the experience itself.

In the following pages, we find several individuals, who chose to step to the side of the main event, to focus on something unseen by most. The photos collected here were taken on the way to spots, at spots, in search of spots, around the world, in studios, in alleys, in places where there wasn’t concrete for miles, but all of them are discoveries, all of them remind us there is wonder and interest everywhere, even right down the street.

From shocking situations, to beautiful moments and epic light trip-outs, here are a handful of skateboarders who’s attention is drawn to documenting the subtleties of their experience. —mike christie

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(left to right) Self portrait, 2006 / Kenny Anderson, 2006 / Kalea, 2007 / Untitled, 2005 Tiger, 2006 / Lamb, 2006 / Fox, 2006 ANTISOCIALSHOP.COM

WHO ARE YOU: Rick McCrank WHAT DO YOU DO: Jump stairs.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Polaroid 690 WHAT GOT YOU INTO PHOTOGRAPHY: One of them Lomo cameras.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: Unconscious desire FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH(S) AND WHY: I like this photo from Joel Sternfeld called “Exhausted Renegade Elephant”. It’s a large format photo of an elephant that has run away from a circus and has collapsed in the middle of a tiny country street.

There are two cars and a truck in the photo and a few people around the elephant, someone is hosing down the elephant to cool it off. When I first saw it I thought that a car had hit it and the water around was blood. I like it because it’s so eerie, it’s taken from quite far Away and as far as I know it’s a big hassle to shoot in large format.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER(S) AND WHY: I like James Nachtwey because of his humanity.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Revelations by Diane Arbus OTHER INFLUENCES: Preservation.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Holograms.

(left) Eric Koston snaps one to take home. Photo by Ben Colen. (above) Rick McCrank frontside ollie, also by Colen. .rickmccrank

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(top) Eastern Washington (bottom) Window Spain, I wish I was Brian Gaberman, Ambient 1: Music for Airports

WHO ARE YOU: [Mike Rusczyk] Most of the time I have no idea, but I figure as time goes on I’ll get more comfortable with this or just become someone I’m not.

WHAT DO YOU DO: Eat, stress, skate, make art, make websites, partake in many coffees every day, socialize, and sit on a beanbag in the backyard and stare at the sky listening to music.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: For now I have been shooting most of my photos with a Canon SD 500 point-andshoot. You can get a lot out of the little Canon pointand-shoots. I’m no Lomographer but I do like toy cameras, I also have a retired Pentax K1000.

WHAT GOT YOU INTO PHOTOGRAPHY: My friend Chris Becker is in part responsible, It also helped always being around skate photographers. So it became a natural course of action to start shooting photos.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: It’s pretty simple, I see things that stand out and seem to be a bit more active or have a value to me. These objects, people, situations or whatever seem more important, l try to use a camera to get at why these items stand out to me.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH(S) AND WHY: I like fairly mundane photos, like photos of parking lots, the insides of old diners, old buildings, that kinda shit.

When I see most of the photos that other people are shooting I usually find something I like in them.

As for me I lean more toward composition and then content so I usually shoot pretty sterile photos. I’m not the biggest fan of awkward point-and-shoot party photos – awkward tension is creepy.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER/S AND WHY: Henry Wessel, I saw his photos recently and really got into them. His portraits or people photos are perfect moments. This guy Bill Owens, I saw his book Suburbia – it’s a glimpse into American subdivisions in the 60s and 70s. It says a lot about what people were thinking and doing in this weird era of suburbs and sprawl that was going on in America in the 60s.

I like Andreas Gursky as well. Also this Cera Hensley chick has been quite inspiring lately. I know nothing about photography I just like the above dudes.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Check out The Journey Is the Destination by Dan Eldon, Carlos Castaneda books, 20 Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forest of Rock and Roll: the GBV (Guided By Voices) Almanac was rad. I don’t read much I just look at the pictures.

OTHER INFLUENCES: My friends of course, Chris Wells is one of my buddies who introduced me to conceptual art and the train of thought that goes along with that game. Chris introduced me to Maurizio 70

mikerusczyk.

Catalan, Gabriel Orozco, Tom Friedman, Dan Eldon, Gerhart Richter and anything else I’m lucky enough to come across.

I know nothing about art I just like the above dudes.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Mine: Get a better camera and focus more on trying to progress at shooting the things that stand out to me. If you mean the whole deal: Fuck if I know, with advertising, movies and media shit getting so clean and current with the minds of the youths who knows what images of the future will make impacts. With over-saturation of impact-full image, the life span of things that catch your eye is getting shorter and shorter. Like I said, “Fuck if I know”.

UPCOMING SHOWS: Come to Santa Rosa and hang out at one of our backyard OFAD freak-outs or art BBQs: “When we do them we do them right”.

HIDEAWAYLIGHTS.COM

“I’m not the biggest fan of awkward point-and-shoot party photos – awkward tension is creepy.”

MIKE RUSCZYK no comply [ o ] irvine

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JERRY HSU beanplant [ o ] tanju.

WHO ARE YOU: I’m Jerry [Hsu] WHAT DO YOU DO: Sell out to eat out (here) Jerry with his dislocated elbo in London, UK (below) MJ on a wheel, Frankenstein, Train window in Moscow.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Easy to use WHAT GOT YOU INTO PHOTOGRAPHY: Patrick O’Dell ‘zines REASON FOR SHOOTING: Bad memory FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH(S) AND WHY: Misery and confusion. And love too.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER(S) AND WHY: Everyone FAVORITE BOOKS: Ones with pictures

.arollingperspective

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(left) Breakfast at Myriams, New York, 2003 (right) Myriam at Pierre’s, Paris, 2004

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toddjordan.

todd jordan

TODD JORDAN backside nosegrind [ o ] ying.

WHO ARE YOU: [Todd Jordan] Not sure right now.

WHAT DO YOU DO: Skateboard and take pictures.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Leica M6.

WHAT GOT YOU INTO PHOTOGRAPHY: My mom.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: Love.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH(S) AND WHY: Right now Ryan McGinley’s pictures of Kate Moss. I just saw them and thought they were beautiful. I love his photographs. It always looks like he had a lot of fun making them.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER(S) AND WHY: Ryan [McGinley] for one. Mark Borthwick, Nan Goldin,

Wolfgang Tillmans, Juergen Teller. I like all of them. To me, their photographs have a nice balance between candidness and being staged, which I really like.

FAVORITE BOOKS: I have too many, I can’t pick a favorite right now. I look at a lot of magazines too.

Purple and Capricious are two really great mags.

OTHER INFLUENCES: Traveling, friends, good

experiences, bad experiences.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Digital relapse back to film. That would be nice.

UPCOMING SHOWS: Solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, not sure of the exact date yet.

PHHFINEART.COM

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(left) Space Cowboy “Since the country music fests popularity has skyrocketed, the township of Merritt B.C. has created a western facade consisting of larger than life murals, a walk of stars and saloon style renovations of downtown buildings. People come from far and wide to immerse themselves in this country stew. Cowboy hats are sold for a buck a piece at the local street mall and before you know it your surrounded by a sea of weekend ranchers This photo reminds me of the one true man of the range that sits back and laughs at the whole event.” (here) Leantwo, self portrait “The thought of being able to survive alone in the woods is reassuring these days.”

switch crooks [ o ] NICHOLAS

WHO ARE YOU: Dylan William Roy Thorstenson WHAT DO YOU DO: Tough question.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Minolta srT100 WHAT GOT YOU INTO PHOTOGRAPHY: Traveling.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: It reinforces a thought.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH(S) AND WHY: The cover photo on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited because of everything in it.

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arollingperspective.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER(S) AND WHY: Anyone who enjoys the peaceful state of taking photos.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Happy endings.

OTHER INFLUENCES: Nature.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: More photos of trees.

UPCOMING SHOWS: Delta Aquarids meteor shower, July 28.

miki, senka, jeffro, aaron, gordon and kat.

photographed by tim barber. styling by mila franovic location: alana paterson

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REVERSE: KAT WEARS EPIC EMERICA JACKET, SLIM FIT MATIX JEANS IN DESERT STRETCH, DOZE SHOES BY DVS. HERE: SENKA WEARS SOFIA JUMPSUIT BY WESC.

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gabrioladreaming.

MIKI’S WEARING DALLAS DRESS BY HOOCH, CIVIL WAR TEE BY FRESHJIVE, HANSEN SUSPENDER SHORTS BY ROXY MAXWELL JR. WATCH BY VESTAL. JEFFRO WEARS FASHEEZY FANCY SHIRT BY QUICKSILVER, SLIM JIM BLUE JEANS BY NUDIE.

.gabrioladreaming

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GORDON WEARS MOD TEE BY C1RCA, OLDTOWN FLANNEL BY MATIX, DWAYNE PANTS BY WESC, LEO ROMERO EMERICA SHOES. OPPOSITE: (LEFT) KAT WEARS BLOODSTONE CREW BY INSIGHT, SLY BIKINI BY BILLABONG. (RIGHT) KAT HAS ON THE BETTY BIKINI BY BILLABONG, POLLY TUBE JEANS BY INSIGHT.

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HERE: MIKI WEARS ELANA LEGGINGS

BY HOOCH ELLE WATCH BY NIXON. STYLISTS OWN PHOTO TRANSFER TEE. OPPOSITE: (LEFT) MIKI WEARS DARLA DRESS BY BILLAGONG. (RIGHT) VANS ERA SHOES, CHA CHING SHORTS BY VOLCOM, YELLOW AND PINK GRUMARIR BIKINI BOTTOM BY SALINAS, BLUE DIANA SHIRT BY DC, L’SPACE POSH PAISLEY BIKINI TOP, TIKI SHORT SHORT BY ROXY.

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MIKI WEARS MAY DAY BIKINI TOP BY BILLABONG AND CROCHET COCONUT BOTTOMS BY ROXY. AARON WEARS NATURAL BORN FLANNEL BY MATIX. OPPOSITE: JEFFRO WEARS VAGRANT BOARDSHORT BY BILLABONG.

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AARON WEARS KING JACKET BY ALTAMONT , BIG BLOCK TANK BY RVCA, MJ STRETCH CORDUROYS BY MATIX, ERA SHOES BY VANS .

SENKA WEARS BARTEN BOXERS BY MATIX, PERVERT FLANNEL BY INSIGHT.

.gabrioladreaming

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KEVIN LOWRY gap to 5-0 [ o ] jeff thornburn.

.CORY WILSON backside kickflip [ o ] dylan doubt

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[ o ] VERDUGO

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TREVOR RIBYERE kickflip [ o ] gordon nicholas.

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THE ZOOM HARBOR BY BY

NIKE SB

GRANT TAYLOR

[ o ] FREY

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.chrisfrey

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The best in film and video link up with a photographer and three skaters of their choice to produce the best five minute reel using Super 8.

Sign up by August 10th.

for more infortmation or to apply, visit http://www.colormagazine.ca/shoottothrill

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ARTO SAARI switch bluntslide revert [ o ] mapstone.

ATMOSFERICO DE VISUAL the photography of arto saari.

Arto Saari is a massive man, some may call him a lerp. But he wears it well. Somehow, this Finnish monster has a gracefulness all his own. He has come a long way from the slightly awkward young man, who spoke broken English, had a weak heart, and attacked massive rails as if they were parking blocks. He is a well-rounded shredder, still hammering away, but his skateboarding has matured, and he certainly seems to be enjoying himself. He has embraced the worldly lifestyle of today’s professional skateboarder, and along the way stumbled upon a camera, and has gotten pretty good at capturing light and documenting the goings on around him. It’s hard to imagine a man of his stature sneaking around inconspicuously photographing people in the street, but he succeeds. Color caught up with Arto while he was in Greece, ordering an eggplant salad.

Here, he found himself needing to extend his stay because, well, it appears that the “vibals” were too radical to do anything but…

I

f there’s one thing that’s apparent the moment you begin speaking with Arto, it’s his positivity and general lust for life.

While many people who have been involved in skating for as long as he has tend to become jaded and complain about everything going to shit, he is able to state simply: “I like skateboarding these days.

Skateboarding tastes good.”

At the time of this interview, Arto is having an “epic” time in and around Athens, Greece, with Omar Salazar, Stefan Janowski, Dylan Reider, Jon Goeman, Greg Hunt and Antton “the Beastmaster”.

Even though they prolonged the trip, they are still having trouble fitting in much else besides skateboarding. “We didn’t really explore the other towns because we had so much shit to do here,” he says. “We kept trying to take a day off, but there is so much shit to do that we have been skating every day. I definitely want to come back.”

“The sea is really salty. It is dense, so you can float really easily. All we have been doing is swimming, skating, eating salad, smoking, driving around like a mad man…

No time for any tourist shit. Just a mad mission, skating everyday.

than back home. As time goes by though, these differences in culture are becoming less pronounced, which is evident in how Arto, a European himself, talks of the old Euro culture in Greece.

“People here have a very old fashioned European attitude. There is cigarette smoke everywhere. It’s amazing, I love it. You can smoke, blow smoke all over the place, in restaurants, in people’s faces.

There is a nice beer here called Mythos. Good cigarettes too, the best in the world.”

It is great here. I would definitely recommend any human visiting.”

Despite the busy schedule, Arto has still taken time to appreciate the culture and quirks of Greece.

“There’s 3000 years of recorded history, so there is a lot of old European styles. Driving styles are absolutely rad on the roads.

Complete mayhem. It’s every man for themselves. Scooters and bikes and cars and buses and who knows what on the street zooming around doing who knows what, you just have to barge it. Small brick roads, a lot of motorbikes, shitty beat up scooters and massive Enduros. We were at one skatespot and people were driving up and down the stairs, all over the place looking for a place to park.

If there is pavement, you can park there. Total chaos.“ He’s also a fan of the Greek eating habits, which are healthy and simple, and of the people, who are for the most part are pretty mellow.

“We met some angry ladies.

They don’t like you to skate their churches that much. They send some wizards to kick us out. You can do a little stuntman hiding like Salazar, and you can get away with it.”

SELP-PORTRAIT WITH HAT Huntington Apt., Summer 2006

Somehow, we get on the topic of childhood.

“Being a child is one of the greatest things in the world,” he says, “Children are fearless, you have no worries until you become an adult and have to start taking the world seriously, and that is when it starts sucking. Anything is possible for the child’s mind.

Without fears and blocks, you learn so quickly. I would love to be a baby for a weekend. Lay back and mongrel out for a bit… it would be great.”

Angry ladies aside, he is making a pretty good argument for a visit.

“I learned a good expression… ‘nekala re malakas’. It means ‘yeah right, asshole’. People use it all the time. It’s quite a good one.“ I search the Internet trying to find a spelling. This is the best I can do… malakas (noun) † wanker, someone who masturbates frequently. A very common word in Greek. Its

modern meaning is just “stupid”, or “incapable”. Used freely among friends, quite offensive against strangers!

Sweet enough! Aside from skateboarding and picking up the local colloquialisms, Arto’s managing to live the good life and take it all in. Any North American who has gone on a trip to Europe can identify with the feeling of being immersed in history and culture that is magnitudes higher

In some ways skateboarding is like a fountain of youth though, and Arto acknowledges this. “I guess I am still a child. That’s one great thing about skateboarding; you can be a kid for a long time.”

I ask him about the time when adulthood, responsibility, and fear will catch up, he says, “I think I am starting to go through it right now in bits and pieces. I still live in a la-la land. I mean, I skateboard for a living. That’s pretty absurd.

It’s great being a child, riding a skateboard in different cities around the world. I guess you’ve got to grow up at some point.

Hopefully that isn’t any time soon.”

Finally, we get to the topic at hand… photography. Arto recounts his first photographic encounters.

“I was always fascinated with photography. Atmosferico de visual. When I was a kid in art class in grade seven, we all got Nikons.

They had the film developed for us, and taught us how to print. I was really into skateboarding back then, so we would go out during art class to “take photos” but we’d just go skating. Even if other kids were doing painting or doing other things, our teacher would let us go skating as long as we were shooting photos. Then it died down a bit. We got a video camera, and started filming all the time.”

He says it was awhile before he got back into it, and while filming for the Sorry video in 2000 he bought his first camera, a Nikon FM2 with an 18-35mm lens, from Skin Phillips. “I guess my first photos were pretty shit…” he says.

“Ever since buying that camera, the feeling has gotten stronger.

Being surrounded by it all the time, around all the photographers, carrying a camera has gotten more and more natural. At first you are kind of afraid of it. You are a bit scared to shoot photos, but now it is a regular thing. You don’t even think about it.“ I ask him which photographers he admires.

He has many favourites, including Robert Capa, Peter Lindbergh for his black and whites, Helmut Newton, “mammary exhibitions are always cool”, Andreas Gursky, Ed Templeton, Boris Mikhailov and Richard Avedon.

“Ansel Adams is so rad, He gets you stoked on America. Developing his stuff on the spot. He was gnarly.” .artosaari

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Skate photographers are also a big inspiration, he admires the work of Dan Sturt, Bartok (Oliver Barton), Antton, French Fred Mortagne, Joe Brook and Scott Pommier. “There are so many good skate photographers. They get you amped to skate and the vibals are generally fairly über with them.”

After giving this list he adds a disclaimer: “I don’t know fuck all about photography. I just like the cameras, and going out to shoot things. If you ask me about the history, I don’t really know anything about that.”

Having mentioned Daniel Harold Sturt, I dig for a Sturt story. They are a bit of a guilty pleasure, and it seems everyone has one.

“I was pretty young when I met him. I was like, ‘Who the hell is this maniac?’ he was a pretty intimidating person. He still is. I was probably 18, and Geoffrey [Rowley] told me that I had to go out with him, that he was really good. We’d go to spots, and he’d be climbing walls, spiderman grip. He’s a maniac, but it’s good ampage to go skating with him. He has stories too. He doesn’t shut up. Like, you can’t listen to the radio, you just have to listen to him talk. He’s a rad dude. You know that ditch where Geoff has the Thrasher cover doing the backside 360? You have to hike in a fair ways through these tall mustard weeds.

We went down there with Dan and he has this huge pack with like a saw, a big log-cutting saw, and huge gardening shears. I asked him about it, and he says, ‘Well the saw is for your leg, I have a friend who was walking through here and he got bit by a rattlesnake.

If you get bit, and the poison gets too far up your leg, I’ll have to cut it off. And the garden scissors…’, three foot tall scissors, ‘are to cut off the snakes head so that when we get to the hospital, we’ll have a sample.”

In the bag he also had Vicadin, because if I got bit, I would have to make it up the hill by myself, because he refused to carry me. All this, as we are walking down to the ditch to go skate. He’ll just tell you fucked shit like this before you go skate. He called me a week later to tell me that his friend that got bit was paralyzed for almost a year, because the poison had spread through his body and to his heart. He told me to think about that next time I went skating. To wear thick boots before walking through those weeds again.”

BOWIE AND CHLÖE Barcelona Apt. 2006

Getting back to Arto’s own photography, I ask him what he is using for gear these days.

“I have a small Contax for snapshots, Hasselblad Xpan, Canon markII, Rolleiflex, Hasselhofs, a Noblex, Mamiya23 super 6x9… anything that I think could possibly amp up the atmos.” .

On any given day he’s usually got the Xpan, Rolleiflex and the FM2 with him. “I always carry some sort of image capturing device with me… I’d like to have all of my cameras around all the time, but you can’t. I really like the Rolleiflex, especially walking around the city. (opposite) JIMMY TRIBAL BIKE SLAM, 2006 “I don’t know if he ever fell off his bike while riding across America or riding from England to Morocco, but i did somehow manage to capture this moment on a sunny sunday afternoon ride on the beach. I hold this photograph close to my heart.

Jimmy! Big ups!”

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BOWIE AND CHLÖE Barcelona Apt. 2006

.artosaari

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BCN MOSSOS ESQUARA keeping a watchful eye on the people of Barcelona while they celebrate their beloved soccer team winning the league championship.

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ALI BOULALA SMOKING Barcelona, 2006

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People are less intimidated by it. You hold it down at your waist, and it’s just this old box hanging around your neck. No one really even pays attention to it.”

ALEX CHALMERS, backside ollie, amarillo texas, King Of the Road, 2005

Arto gets talking about one of his favourite subjects to shoot during these city-walking missions. “I like shooting photos of old people. Like Popeyes and grannies. I learned a new term on this trip, ‘Cappies’.

I guess [Jason] Dill and [Chris] Carter use that term a lot. Sea captains. Old granddads that just sit around street corners in chairs, dudes that just hang out and smoke pipes… I actually feel a bit like a Cappy right now, rolling around in this hot heat, it takes the juice out of you. Old people are good to photograph… One of my favorite photographs that I shot is the one of the old man walking across a bridge in Girona.”

Talking about all these old places, old people and old cameras, I bring up a topic that embodies impermanence: digital photography.

“It will take over eventually, I guess it has taken over already, but there is something more satisfying about a film camera. That’s one thing about digital: why do they have to make the cameras so shit? They’re plastic-y toy-looking things, they break, they can’t handle cold or heat, the battery runs out, the sensor gets dirty. How long are they supposed to last? A year? Three months in my hands. Or I can carry a camera around from 1960 and it still works great.”

Arto explains his attachment to his many film cameras.

“With an FM2 you can shoot photos of people on the street and if they get angry with you, you can use it to defend yourself, and then still go on to shoot the next person. Not that I have ever had to do that, but it is reassuring. You could use the Xpan to hammer nails, and it would still work.”

He seems like a man who should be hiking around, with a big wooden view camera over his shoulder.

“I was looking into an 8x10 pinhole camera, just this big wooden box. It would be nice to have a 4x5 in the house to shoot friends that stop by… ‘Avedon’ out a bit. There is nothing digital that can match that.

It would be nice to fly around the world with people lugging around a white backdrop, and seven foot reflectors. Just go to different cafes and drink coffee and smoke and photograph old sea captains sitting around. “ We talk briefly of the process that comes after photos are taken. “It is always like Christmas when you get your photos back from the lab or if you end up getting a print framed. I like big fuck-off frames.” He tells me that he is close to having a darkroom set up again in his house.

Before we wrap things up, I ask him to describe a perfect day.

“Wake up as the sun comes up, prepare a pot of coffee and smoke some ciggies. Do yoga for an hour or so and then eat breakfast (English breakfast), maybe read a local newspaper for a bit. Call some homies to go skate with or ride motorsickos or both. Skate something fun first, trannies perhaps or

barriers, drink more coffee and smoke ciggies, maybe eat a pineapple for lunch. Late afternoon, get epic and do some sort of life-threatening maneuver on a skateboard. Shoot photos throughout the day and ride

more bikes. Bicycles are good too. Swim somewhere after I’m done with skating, in the ocean, a cold lake or a river. Head home, wherever that might be, and prepare wild salmon, potatoes and a Greek salad for

dinner, which I enjoy with my girlfriend by a natural fire... maybe one more cig in a hammock underneath wild starlit sky.”

Not a bad way to live. Not bad at all… .artosaari

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DEAD TREE RIVER VIBE Supai indian reservation, AZ. 2005

.artosaari

RUNE frontside carve while Gabe Friedman protects himself from the deadly Scorpenises, AZ. 2005

.artosaari

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Ride Flip Tom Penny

WWW.FLIPSKATEBOARDS.COM

.GUY MARIANO backside tailslide [ o ] dan zaslavsky

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the rebirth of baltimore. intro bysaelan twerdy

words and photos byliz flyntz

U

p until now, Baltimore, MD, was primarily known for being the gritty setting for The Wire, the home of club-music innovators like DJ Blaqstarr and Spank Rock and, occasionally, the murder capital of the United States. The abundance of abandoned and low-rent warehouse and loft space, however, is giving rise to a new scene of art collectives and punk houses that are turning the city’s back-alley hangouts into a humming warren of kids gone wild.

The hub of all of this activity was, until recently, a place called Wham City that, in the spirit of Rhode Island’s legendary Fort Thunder (the spiritual home of Lightning Bolt, Mindflayer, Forcefield, Jim Drain, and Paper Rad), erased the difference between art and life for its denizens. Not just a crashpad or a venue for art and music, Wham City generated variety shows, TV talk shows, video productions, theatrical productions, lecture series, potluck dinners, photo shoots, fashion shows, and dance parties.

The original Wham City was shut down by the fire marshall awhile back and now maintains itself as a secret/migratory collective, but countless new venues are taking up the calling. Wham City has also been immortalized in song by Dan Deacon, the scene’s fastest-rising star. Deacon’s fragmented electronic pop

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sounds something like a cultural recycling machine that feeds Disney movies to Kraftwerk and spits out club anthems that are too weird to dance too but too catchy to leave you standing still. Pretty much every organ of the music press has already tripped over itself trying to praise Deacon the most, but his music is only one spiky tip of a giant, ever-expanding constellation of new bands that are quickly getting snapped up and delivered to you and me via record labels like Wildfire Wildfire, Creative Capitalism, and recent Washington transplant Carpark, who put out Beach House’s terrific debut album last year and Dan Deacon’s debut, Spiderman of the Rings, this year.

Baltimore native Liz Flyntz gives us the rundown on some of Baltimore’s most notable locals:

(above) Dan Deacon was nice enough to hang out the window with that green skull friend even though he is afraid of heights and risked the Copy Cat landlord seeing him and calling the cops. (here) Current Artists’ Cooperative Members photographed within Adrian Lohmüller’s Installation “System Error 24/7”, part of Michael Benevento’s exhibition “Hacking Utopias” l-r: Hermonie Williams, Andy Cook, Murphy Wilkins, Monique Crabb, Hans Petrich, Michael Benevento [ o ] ANDY COOK

current space.

Current Gallery is an artist-run gallery, studio, and performance space, located in downtown Baltimore in what was once an abandoned office building. A rotating cast of artist members has organized the space since control was seized from the city by the original core cadre in 2004. Tons of stuff is upcoming at Current. Monique is having a show called Rumors.

Hermonie, who is an editor of Catatac Magazine, is organizing an exhibition in August called Endwise. Andy is having a print show at Current, makes photographs, and is in the band Presto Magenti. In August, Current is having an outdoor music fest located in the conveniently adjoining dark alley.

CATATACMAG.COM

CURRENTSPACE.ORG

(here) clockwise from left: Floristree Space’s Matt Papich, Nick Barna, (norton), Jordan Howard, David Zimmerman, Shaun Flynn, (Yarnacat), Jason Urick.

floristree.

A “floristree” is apparently some sort of crafty device to assist the aesthetically-impaired with flower arranging. It was manufactured in the building that now currently houses the pictured dudes and their showspace/workspace. Occasionally little old ladies with spidery handwriting will send in clipped order forms from 70s magazines for floristrees and shag rug-making kits and ask if the product is still in stock, sometimes even with checks. In its current incarnation, Floristree has been hosting art shows, music shows, performance shows, etc. and acting as a practice/recording space for all kinds of affiliated locals for about two years. Booking has been more dense of late as many other seminal Bmore venues (the Talking Head, Wham City v1, Tarantula Hill) have closed or been wounded. In this vein Shaun Flynn says, “Eight of us fit relatively comfortably over the entire top floor of a downtown warehouse, the PA is paid off, and having amazing shows has been the regular for about two years now. Floristree, in terms of space, technical capacity, and infrequency of cop intrusions and complaints, is probably unrivaled in Baltimore right now.”

Shaun and Jason are in the band WZT Hearts, on Carpark records. They are finishing a new record, to be released in September. Shaun makes sculptures and incredible complex hand-drawn poster art for bands near and far. Dave Z makes photographs. Matt P. is in the bands Death Set and Ecstatic Sunshine, also on Carpark Records. Ecstatic Sunshine tours frequently and is about to release a new album, which they are re-recording ‘cause the last one was stolen via Jared’s laptop by some sketchy dude who just walked on in.

MYSPACE.COM/FLORISTREE

lexie mountain boys.

Lexie Mountain Boys is a mostly acapella six-girl-and-no-boy performance art troupe. “Mountain Boys emerged on tape in early autumn 2005 in my bedroom as a series of laughing sounds and selfaffirmations,” says Lexie Mountain. Lexie is one half of Bad Girls, part of Geodesic Gnome, and does solo tapes and vocal stylings as Lexie Mountain. Her gang of “boys” does all kinds of stuff. Amy Harmon is involved in making community synchronized swimming events happen in Baltimore city pools through a non-profit called Fluid Movement. She also puts on a monthly film event called “Blue Mouse Movie Night” that is full of a lot of fun and weird movies. Amy Waller has a clothing label with Chiara Keeling called Made Inable. Katherine can be seen on cable television on the reality TV show Ace of Cakes, where she plays herself as a professional cake decorator. Roby is one half of the band Sand Cats with Rjyan Kidwell of Cex. She also makes stuff like videos of animated bottlecaps, puppets, and wooden tree mountain things.“Mountain Boys is an exciting and rare opportunity to be totally free with vocal noises for me,” says Roby, “I played in a lot of traditional bands before, like with instruments and stuff, and continue to do so [Milemarker, Sand Cats, Cex, Fartsnakes, and The Pooh]. I really like undermining the rote ‘show’ ritual invented primarily by dudes. I feel like that is when Mountain Boys is at our peak, destroying the boring vibe of a boring show.”

(here) Lexie Mountain Boys l-r: Amy Harmon, Katherine Hill, Roby Newton, Lexie Mountain, Amy Waller, Sam Cotton Garner.

wham city.

Now that Wham City as a space is kind of up in the air, Dan Deacon, of Wham City boosterdom and spastic table spaghetti electronics playing, is the Wham Citizen in the spotlight. So many awesome people are also involved with this particular space and zeitgeist, so check out their website. I happened to catch Dan on his literal way out the door to begin a national tour that lasts almost forever. I had to tell my boss I was going to the office supply store, and then tell the intern to say I was in the bathroom if she called. It totally worked out. He has a new record, Spiderman of the Rings, out on Carpark/WildfireWildfire, and has about 300,000 hits for his video (by Jimmy Joe Roche) on Youtube right now.

WILDFIREWILDFIRERECORDS.COM WHAMCITY.COM CARPARKRECORDS.COM

MYSPACE.COM/MOUNTAINLEX

.therebirthofbaltimore

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[ o ] LOSTROSCIO

san diego’s earthless rock the cosmos.

words bysaelan twerdy

I

n the psyche of America, California represents the dual myths of utopian paradise and the end of the road: if you want to live on the edge, you go to the coast, and you hope it doesn’t fall into the ocean. For both dead-enders and those looking to go beyond known limits, Southern California has been a cradle of subcultures: skateboarding, punk, and psychedelic scenes have all flourished here, and San Diego’s Earthless exist at the nexus of all three.

All three members of this emerging stoner-rock ensemble are experienced, in the Hendrix sense.

Guitarist Isaiah Mitchell mastered the arts of feedback and wah-wah during his time with Nebula and bassist Mike Eginton played with Electric Nazarene, but drummer Mario Rubalcaba has the most impressive resume. He was crucial in San Diego’s art-punk scene in the 90s as a founding member of Clikitat Ikatowi and a member of the Black Heart Procession and Sea of Tombs, and he masqueraded as Ruby Mars while drumming for Rocket from the Crypt. In 2004, he joined Hot Snakes, quite possibly the leanest, meanest punk-rock combo of this decade, for their third album, Audit In Progress, and the Peel Session that would prove to be the last before DJ John Peel’s untimely death. Before all this, though, Rubalcaba was a member of Tony Alva’s Team Alva skateboarding crew in the early 90s.

Now, with Earthless, these three veterans practice what they refer to as “cosmic nodding,” jamming their space-rock tunes out to the furthest limits in the deliriously zonked tradition of krautrock and hard Japanese psychedelia. Their shared interest in obscure, mind-warping records also led Mike and Mario into the business venture that now absorbs the bulk of their time: Thirsty Moon Records in San Diego’s Hillcrest district. Carrying only the finest psych, funk, garage, punk, reggae, soul, metal, krautrock, jazz and rock –n’ roll, Thirsty Moon might be the only record store you’ll ever find where almost every item in stock has been personally owned, at one time or another, by the proprietors, who know every last detail about every record and CD (the stock is about half-and-half) they carry.

Currently, Earthless is gigging around Southern California in support of their debut, Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky, on Tee Pee Records. It’s two twentyminute jams plus a note-perfect cover of The Groundhog’s classic hard-rock anthem “Cherry Red”.

Needless to say, it slays.

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earthless.

Color: I’m assuming that you stopped skating professionally because your music commitments became the priority. Is that right? Do you still skate?

Mario Rubalcaba: Yeah, music really started to take on its own schedule. I was still skating and doing everything. After awhile skating was getting really gnarl with the rails/gaps/hurl yourself off the building stuff and that is not the way I really skate.

So I just started to focus more on drums and skating for fun. I currently still skate a lot. I work for Black Box Distribution, fine makers of Zero/Mystery and Fallen. We have an awesome indoor skatepark that I skate on a daily basis and I am still learning shit on a skateboard and still having a lot of fun.

How did you meet Mike and Isaiah, and what led to you and Mike opening Thirsty Moon records? How long have you had the store?

I met Mike just from running into him around Encinitas.

Lou’s Records is often a common spot to run into people and he was always shopping a lot, just as I was, as well. Isaiah worked at the local guitar shop that Scott from my old band Clikatat Ikatowi worked at. So I would see him there. One time I tweaked my ankle really bad in front of the store and he gave me a ride home and we rapped a bit, but I had never heard him play guitar until the first time we all got in a room together and WHAM!!! The Anchor was thrown out... Thirsty Moon has just had its two-year birthday.

Mike and myself had toyed around with the idea of something small and underground for a couple years, our friend Jeff was taking some time off of his normal job and was thinking of doing the same thing, so he asked Mike and I about it and we just decided to do it and go for it and if it failed then at least we would end up with a shitload of records after all was said and done.

There seems to be sort of a progression in the groups you’ve played in, from spazzy art-core to heavy punk and now into partially-improvised

psych jamming. Do you feel like your interests have changed a lot, or have you always been into the same stuff?

A lot of both. I am still into a lot of the same ol’ stuff I was into, say, ten years ago, and I like re-discovering shit, too. At the end of Clikatat I was doing these improvised shows with this guitar player Nels Cline who is this nutso jazz-cum-Sonic Youth guitar whizzo and every show I did with him was 100 per cent improvisation, just a little more on the jazz/avant side of things. With Earthless, we would just start playing and spontaneously create these thick rhythmic cycles of crud and muck and just keep going for the ultimate journey, occasionally ironing out some riffs to come back into, then just going off again.

What are your plans for the near future? I hear you’ve been approached with a number of tour offers from bands like Mastodon, The Fucking Champs, and High on Fire.

Well, we all have other responsibilities so we can’t really tour much. So we just play around San Diego, L.A. and San Francisco for now. We did the SXSW Festival in Austin and that was killer. We are going out to New York in the fall for a couple shows.

Anything you’ve been really digging lately?

I have been digging Cactus and Thin Lizzy a bunch, some Turkish rock stuff has been hot as well. Mike is a big dub reggae fan, Isaiah loves old ZZ Top (we all do) and we all have been digging Titan (also on Tee Pee)!

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THE CONSTRUCTED IMAGE: PHOTOGRAPHIC CULTURE Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, May 3 – June 4, 2007 Curated by David Liss and Bonnie Rubenstein

words byjulia lum

HOMAS DEMAND, DIONISIO GONZALEZ, ILKKA HALSO, SIMEN JOHAN, KIM JOON, SCOTT MCFARLAND, ERWIN OLAF, KAREN OSTROM, SAM TAYLORWOOD, MIAO XIAOCHUN.

O

n August 5, 2006, Reuters released a photograph that showed smoke billowing up from a Beirut cityscape after an overnight Israeli air raid. Independent sources quickly discovered evidence of digital doctoring – using photoshop, the smoke in the photo was darkened and repeated to enhance the appearance of devastation. After mainstream media picked up on the allegations, Reuters admitted to its mistake and removed the photo from its website. The commotion caused by this incident, despite countless historic uses of photography for political and propagandistic ends, proves that even in the digital age, an aura of truth continues to surround the medium.

What happens when an exhibition takes as its premise photography’s dual attributes – its ability to faithfully represent the world and its capacity to visually deceive? The recent exhibit at Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), The Constructed Image: Photographic Culture accomplishes just that. The Constructed Image is the feature exhibition of the annual Toronto Photography Festival, “Contact”, which ran throughout the month of May at 202 locations around the city. While it is unanimously held that photographic works are constructed to some degree (by the artist’s selection of framing, angle, subject, etc), the ten international artists self-consciously reveal to viewers the intentional manipulation of their subject matter. With digital photography now the norm, this kind of exhibition is a timely commentary on not only critical developments in ‘photographic culture,’ but of audience sensitivity to these conditions.

Although many of the works make use of digital technology, none asks the viewer to blindly suspend disbelief like today’s CGI Hollywood blockbusters ask of their audiences. Artists such as Thomas Demand draw you closer to the work to reveal the effortdriven artistic process. His Gate (2004) is a paper

and cardboard reconstruction of the security gate at Boston’s Logan airport on the morning of September 11, 2001. Using surveillance footage of 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta as a reference, Demand replicates the scene, but with visible imperfections: the seams of the paper edges show and the culture of surveillance is revealed as dangerously fragile.

While we cannot help but think about Demand’s meticulous process, we similarly wonder at Vancouver artist Scott McFarland’s artful blending of seasons in Orchard View with the Effects of the Seasons – Variation 1 & 2. Stitched together from images captured over the course of a year, McFarland’s garden is an impossible panorama of nature in transformation. We’ve come to expect this kind of work from a series of precedents, such as Vancouver artists Stan Douglas and Roy Arden, and the work is representative of directions that much contemporary photography has taken. Combining traditional landscape conventions with an ambivalent relationship to cultivated wilderness, works such as McFarland’s warrant further attention.

While the garden involves the human containment of nature, the museum is no less a space of order.

Finnish artist Ilkka Halso’s Museum of Nature series contains utopic and dystopic overtones, as it shows nature in its most commodified forms: an outdoor biodome-like apparatus that contains a forest lit in simulated daylight, a theatre structure built around a cascading waterfall, and a spectacular river valley protected by a glass canopy stretching infinitely into the distance. Likewise, in Kim Joon’s series We (2005), the artist shows the last frontier of corporate branding – the human body brandishing the logos of Starbucks, BMW and Gucci. Halso and Joon’s works cut straight to their hypothetical realities, perhaps at the cost of more critical and layered depths of meaning.

In Simen Johan’s series, Until the Kingdom Comes (2005/2006) nature symbolizes primordial instincts, as

ERWIN OLAF The Classroom, 2005 Lambda print on Kodak endura.

48 x 66” (courtesy of erwin olaf and hasted hunt gallery, new york)

animals exhibit human behaviour and ask us to draw the line between ourselves and the natural world. In one of the highlights of the exhibition, Untitled #133 (Moose), Johan invests his subject matter – two taxidermied moose locked in battle – with incredible life-like action, while small parakeets wheel around the mythic tableau. A visible contradiction, between the implied action of the animals and the stillness of their taxidermied state, heightens our awareness of the photograph’s artifice. Furthermore, the apocalyptic tone suggested by the prophetic biblical title is visibly contrasted by the absurd, even humourous, composition. Dutch artist Erwin Olaf’s series Hope (2005) appears to have the opposite effect – the stillness of the characters that inhabit his compositions point to moments in between dialogue, confrontation and enacted desire. Olaf’s works, evocative of film noir stills, are stylized and nostalgic portrayals of human relationships, rehearsed as endless deferred action.

With neither time nor space to devote to the full range of works and artists – among those not mentioned are Dionisio González, Miao Xiaochun, Karen Ostrom and Sam Taylor-Wood – it is clear that The Constructed Image taken as a whole successfully fulfills its premise.

The show features artists whose works attest to the medium’s uncertain position as an index of reality and conjured fantasy, of possibilities on the one hand and impossibilities on the other. The frictions between these functions emerge with forceful and thought-provoking consequences, as the viewer is asked to question how the image came to its final form. But does our knowledge that the images are constructed take something away from the aesthetic experience? What do we gain and what do we lose?

These questions will no doubt continue to surface as contemporary artists engage in self-reflexive studies of representation.

The results are poignant and hilarious and sad and creepy. Images of women draped over stuffed lions; women lounging seductively at the feet of massive gold-leafed Buddha’s that loom over entire wading pools filled with chilling champagne; women simmering in rooftop hot tubs – all of them making the pained and fake-sexy expressions of bad acting and soft core porn. As you flip the pages, the images generate a sort of absurdist mash-up of kitsch religious iconography, faux-finished theme rooms, Mexican bling, backcombed bangs, ugly modernist furniture, airbrushed portraiture, and Lycra bodysuits. It’s a place where the line between what is real and what isn’t is not only crossed, but has been completely obliterated. The clothing styles reek of the late 80s to early 90s but given the book was published in 2002, the photos must have been taken much later which makes these images all the more disturbing and funny. These people are so wealthy they are insulated from not only reality but from the very passage of time.

It would be easy to dismiss this book as a merely exploitive ‘look how fucking ridiculous rich people look when they pose with all their stupid shit’ kind of commentary, but Rossell succeeds in capturing the deeper sadness and isolation of these women in her images. These are not happy people, you can see it in their eyes. They aim to be viewed as beautiful objects, trophies in the literal sense, and fail miserably. And although they are easy targets, fish in the documentary barrel, Rossell manages to portray them so you end up feeling more bad for them than anything else.

But you also end up feeling bad for the half of the population of Mexico who live in grinding poverty.

People represented by the maids and service people who haunt the background of many of these images. And in a time where the worldwide gap between the rich and poor is widening at an increasing rate (yes, including Canada), you start to worry about the chances that you’ll be flossing in front of that golden Buddha one day, or more probably polishing it for three bucks an hour and no benefits sometime in the future. This is when the book gets even less funny.

- mike christie

.continuedtext

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VON SÜDENFED Tromatic Reflexxions (domino)

There comes a point in every record collector’s life when he or she asks, “How many Fall albums does one person really need?” Well, statistics show you need six—six plus Tromatic Reflexxions by Von Südenfed. Why the bizarrely named seventh? Well, this project by The Fall’s muttering clairvoyant, Mark E. Smith, and German beat-makers Mouse On Mars is perhaps the finest example of how Smith’s talk-talk delivery is ideal for the dance floor. Through heavy doses of electro, dubstep and early-millennia club tracks, the collaboration becomes a warped, dance-ready hybrid, which is as cerebral as it is visceral. And thankfully, it’s also one that will likely leave few disappointed.

—brock thiessen

PISSED JEANS Hope for Men (sub pop)

This one was sorta hard for me to finally rub out. I put the disc in my computer and listened to it on repeat for about eight hours while I trapped myself in an internet-hell Googling pictures of the biker gang from the Road Warrior. Summoning Jesus Lizard and Prayers On Fire-era Birthday Party or maybe even the cream of AmRep’s crop circa ‘93, “Caught Licking Leather” is one of the heaviest (not in a bullet belt and leather jacket way, either) tunes I’ve heard in a while, making Hope For Men a true contender for album of the year.

—jake goodman

BONDE DO ROLE With Lasers (domino)

Bonde do Role, Brazilia’s latest and greatest purveyors of dirty dawg baile funk (that filthy, low-budget fusion of Miami bass, cheesy guitar samples, and yelling in Portuguese) have put out a brilliant album of short, sweet, sweaty tunes. This highenergy, sample-crazy trio re-appropriates everything good (without giving any credit, so there!) to achieve the higher purpose of getting nasty. They steal inspiration most identifiably from Bow Wow Wow’s tribal beats and orgasmic moans. A personal album favourite would have to be “Office Boy”, which has a killer jump-up-anddown one-word chorus (actually, most of these songs do), but it’s hard to pick bests when the thing comes at you as such a danceable whole. Since you can’t understand what exactly these kids are yelling about, it’s best to just embrace the fact that it’s dirty and leave the rest to your imagination. Get moving.

—julie colero

CLOROX GIRLS J’aime Les Filles

JUSTICE Ü double check this (vice/ed banger)

(obey)

Portland’s Clorox Girls have made the jump to BYO for their third release J’aime Les Filles, crafting 14 taut fuzzed-out jams.

Produced by Pat Kearns, of Exploding Hearts fame, the record combines fuzzy hook-laden guitar riffs with a wisecracking lyricism that pays tribute to teenage sexual angst. Regrettably, the album cover, unlike the playful and poppy songs on the album, is dreadful, dissuading the more aesthetically inclined punk listeners. Aside from glaring cover design issues, though, J’aime Les Filles furthers a sound that has come to typify West Coast power-pop groups like the Observers or Nice Boys, successfully merging the early roots of rock n’ roll with the late 70s California punk of groups like the Dickies and the Germs.

As the jewels in the crown of Ed Banger records and the supposed saviors of dance music, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Auge (aka Justice) built up a towering juggernaut of hype for their debut full-length with a series of singles that took the entire history of French disco and subjected to it enough overdriven distortion to blow out even the most stadium-sized speakers. Relentlessly indebted to Daft Punk (whose manager runs their label) and their 90s ilk, Justice’s music is louder, noisier, and (this is the important part) more sensational than any of their forebears. With Cross, you get all their singles, plus the pleasure of some more eclectic tracks like the Jackson 5-esque “D.A.N.C.E.”, a totally irresistible filter-disco confection that might be their pop-crossover hit. Totally thrilling from end-to-end, Cross is almost good enough to make me forgive Ed Banger for getting on the “nu-rave” bandwagon.

So this is A-Trak, five-time DMC champion (the first time at the tender age of 15) and Kanye West’s touring DJ, bringing his old-fashioned party-rocking skills to a mixtape for the streetwear propagandists at Obey. The concept – you might have caught on from the title – is to mash up crunked-out southern hits with dance music, mostly Euro electro and the kind of indie-dance that the kids call “blog house” now, though he throws in some curveballs: Gwen Stefani gets rammed into LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A. sings over Giorgio Moroder, and outlandish French rappers TTC drop in for a proper guest spot.

Being a consummate professional, A-Trak knows better than to let a set of mash-ups devolve into a parade of one-liners, and his mixing is deft enough that most of the tracks could stand alone as seamless originals (the collision of L’il Jon’s “Neva Eva” with the New Young Pony Club is particularly inspired). He saves the showy turntablism for the final track, where he turns “My Love” upside-down and bitchslaps it for a few minutes before the fadeout.

(byo)

—matt goody

—saelan twerdy

A-TRAK Dirty South Dance

—saelan twerdy

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[ o ] BOOGIE

PRIDE TIGER The Lucky Ones (emi)

CEPHALIC CARNAGE Xenosapien (relapse)

Maintaining Vancouver’s reputation as the world capital of skaterock, Pride Tiger is three dudes from metal titans Three Inches of Blood and Mike Payette from the legendary, now-defunct S.T.R.E.E.T.S. (Skating Totally Rules Everything Else Totally Sucks) who realized at some point that the next frontier for beer-drinking, bowl-smoking, bro-down jams is actually the old frontier.

Before there was thrash metal, there was no-bullshit, balls-to-the-wall boogie rock (think Deep Purple and Thin Lizzy), and Pride Tiger are reviving the genre with ultra-tight riffage and choruses catchy enough to get them signed to EMI and on the radio. Despite a conspicuous lack of songs about cars, this is rock n’ roll for making boys feel like men and the major label touch has only managed to scrape a little bit of scuzz off these skids, who will thankfully always be more at home in a basement than a stadium.

The fact that an album as good as Xenosapien is a bit disappointing points to how incredibly good Cephalic’s last album, Anomalies, really was. Grind, much like grindin’, isn’t easy, and much of it comes out sounding like speedy diarrhea: dull, endless, painful. With their last album, Cephalic managed to accomplish that most difficult of things in metal: a fluid combination of genres into a unique style.

Plodding early death metal seriousness collided with drummer John Merryman’s blastbeat-driven madness (what kind of stoners play such panicked, galloping music?) Xenosapien stays true to their sound, but it’s just not as fun or innovative as the last outing – it feels like these albums came out in the wrong order. Still, good grind is almost as hard to come by as it is to make, so I’ll forgive the slight step backwards. —nathan ripley

—saelan twerdy

NO AGE Weirdo Rippers

(fat cat)

VIDEOHIPPOS Unbeast the Leash (monitor records) Baltimore: a city immortalized in countless John Waters flicks but otherwise a mystery to many, especially when it comes to its rock n’roll output. But with notable exports like Beach House, Dan Deacon and now Videohippos, this might just change.

Through a playful mix of minor-key synths, heartsick guitars and heavy drum clicks, Videohippos turn Unbeast the Leash into a fuzz-laden album that’s as pop as it is bedlam. In less than 30 minutes, the duo packs in 12 tracks of rawk, melancholy and, above all, unconventionality, making an exceptional record worthy of being set on repeat. I heart NY? No, no. It’s I heart Baltimore. —brock thiessen

PANTHER Secret Lawns

(fryk beat)

No Age is a couple of L.A. guys that are reinventing West Coast art-punk without getting all pretentious about it. Deep into the L.A. skate/art/punk scene, guitarist Randy Randall and singing drummer Dean Spunt collaborate on visual art projects, curate art shows with people like Ashley Macomber and Devendra Banhart, and help run The Smell (it’s the place on the album cover), a venue where you can get breakfast and a haircut while watching local bands rock out. All this plus the fact that they’re pals with Vice means that they’d be the hypest thing going even if their music wasn’t good, but this album is one of the best things I’ve heard in ages: they play sloppy, catchy punk tunes shrouded in a lo-fi haze of soft surf guitar and trippy distortion, so short and sweet that you want to hear them again as soon as they’re over. It’s raw and cool, full of life and positivity without being cutesy, and rarest of all, it really sounds new.

—saelan twerdy

Subtlety is not at all the strongpoint of Charles Salas-Humara’s Panther project.

His first music video, for “How Well Can You Swim?”, features a white dove flitting in slow motion across a darkened screen, which, if you’re at all up on the greatness of Prince, brings waves of nostalgia crashing in. If you’re a little bit younger and hipper, you might hear a similarity to that great early 00s album by Q and Not U, Power. Salas-Humara has a hightoned, soulful voice that gives the album a troubled buoyancy, and the disjointed sounds that frame his voice make the disc worth repeat listens. Whether the album has lasting merit is highly debatable, but it’s summertime, so who cares about that? What may last, however, is SalasHumara’s new-styled floor dancing, which you can check out on the CD’s accompanying vid or on YouTube. Fuckin’ Portlanders have got too much time on their hands, is all I can say to this new craze.

—julie colero

SPOON Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (merge) Austin, Texas, based Spoon’s sixth release is a tighter and brighter album compared to its predecessor Gimme Fiction. While the album’s ridiculous title suggests a youthful juvenility, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is an accomplished veteran record. While dark and brooding in parts (see the opening track “Don’t Make Me a Target”), the album in general harkens back to the band’s excellent Kill the Moonlight in terms of its minimalist pop leanings with songs like “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb.” Like Spoon’s previous releases, hand claps, horns, tight driving percussions and lead singer Britt Daniel’s soul-tinged vocals course through the album, making Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga another valuable addition to the Spoon catalogue.

—matt goody

YESTERDAYS NEW QUINTET Yesterday’s Universe (stones throw)

For the newest incarnation of Madlib’s Yesterdays New Quintet (YNQ) series, Otis Jackson Jr. has broken the group up (metaphorically speaking, anyway – YNQ was always just Madlib) and formed almost a dozen new “groups” to take its place.

Each persona has taken on a different offshoot of the nu-soul/street jazz/free jazz sound that YNQ has been steadily pumping out over the last six years.

Yesterday’s Universe turns on a dime, from exploratory space-jazz excursions to soulful jams complete with a fuzzed out, head-nodding bass line complemented by flute and piano leads. The album is varied in sound but flows together seamlessly and rivals, in production and imagination, his jaw-dropping remix album for Blue Note. Despite garnering most of his media attention and acclaim for his hip-hop productions, Yesterday’s Universe should bring Madlib the long-overdue ear and respect of the jazz community. —mark e. rich

SHELLAC Excellent Italian Greyhound (thrill jockey) Shellac return after a seven-year recording hiatus to deliver their sharpest record yet.

The band hasn’t softened over the years, as is instantly noticeable on the opening track, “The End Of Radio” in which Albini hollers out non-sequiturs over a steady bass-line for eight minutes in a throaty growl that should clear the room of any half-hearted fans. Immediately following this uncompromising track is “Steady As She Goes”, a straight-ahead rocker that would sit proudly beside any track off of their much-adored thirteen-year old debut.

Most of these songs have become live staples over the last few years and, in fact, the album sounds like a well-recorded live session due to Albini’s uncluttered approach to engineering and producing.

Turn it up loud, close your eyes, and you’re pretty much there.

—mark e. rich

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[ o ] MALFA-KOWALSKI

“miki” by Tim Barber Edition of 50.

Clients Include

Tim Barber Anne Collier Justine Cooper Jessica Craig-Martin David LaChapelle Carrie Levy Ryan McGinley Dash Snow

COLORMAGAZINE.CA/SHOP

to purchase the things you can’t find anywhere else.

Livia Radwanski, From the Displaced Series, 2006, Digital C-Print. cavalosintensos@yahoo.com

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premium fit and quality tee shirts available now, only in limited quantities.

.continued from p125

they’ve changed.

JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST

The Book of Lists’ Chris Frey documents the present while mining the shadows of rock JOHNN OLLSIN, 2005 / THOROUGH FARE, 2006 history. words bysaelan twerdy

FACES N’ SPACES: Supreme, NYC words byrhianon bader

S

ince skateboarding’s beginnings, there have been endless changes in the fashion, tricks, spots and hardgoods. It’s gone from really cool, to barely breathing, and back up again. Not surprisingly, with such a cyclic and precarious existence, there are very few companies in the skate industry that have managed to forge out a presence that is solid, distinct and lasting. Skateshops in particular tend to close down when business drops or the rent goes up or a West 49 opens up nearby. It’s a shame, but it’s also characteristic of the very transient nature of skateboarding.

Every so often though, there are exceptions. And these rare shops become emblematic of pivotal periods and places in skateboarding history. New York City’s Supreme skateshop is undoubtedly a living legend in this regard.

Since opening its doors in Manhattan in spring of 1994, Supreme has built a reputation not only for the minimalist, boutique style layout, but perhaps even more so for their own brand’s original items that are sold there. Though some of the Supreme stuff is available at other retailers, a lot of it is only available at the NY store or at the newer locations in Japan and L.A. that have since opened to meet demand.

Internationally renowned for its unique limited releases of men’s clothing and accessories as well as various sneaker design collaborations, the original store has managed to cater to finicky fashionistas, ignorant tourists, sneakerheads, music lovers and more – all while staying true to the NY skaters and their scene.

“My impression was that this place was a hub, not only for skaters, but for people from the neighborhood,” says current Supreme NY store manager Charles Lamb, talking about the shop’s early days. “There was always a crowd of people out front on any given day, and they would all have the Supreme logo somewhere, on a tee, on their board. If you saw them at a skate spot you would know right away who they were.”

Lamb, who grew up skating in and around New York, can remember hanging out at the shop afterhours as a kid, being sent on beer runs, and though he doesn’t specify, it’s implied that there was some serious partying going down. The shop has always been the place for people in the city who were in-theknow, and while many of these types have happened to be skaters, Supreme is just as representative of designers, artists and friends alike.

“There’s always been a sense of camaraderie involved with Supreme… In a time when it’s so easy to be negative, it’s good to have this community of people,” says Lamb, adding that the NY location’s history likely gives the shop a different atmosphere than the locations in Japan or L.A., and a certain intimidation factor in particular.

Many would probably agree. Supreme has a pretty fierce reputation for having elitist staff, with more than one message board complaint about being ignored or made fun of. When asked about it, Lamb is unapologetic. “The bottom line is, we get bombarded with dumb questions. Dumb questions get dumb answers,” he explains. “We have our store set up and people ask if ‘this is all you have?’. As if we’re hiding all the really cool stuff in the back, not trying to make money or something.”

The popularity of the Supreme line can cause problems too, with greedy resellers trying to get around purchase limits. He says the staff are professional about it, but sometimes it gets ugly, to the point of one employee having a Dunk thrown at him.

And besides, if people think the Supreme guys are assholes, it’s likely because they don’t understand that it’s not a typical New York boutique. Lamb, who’s worked at the shop for two years, but was sponsored

by Supreme before that, says there’s never been an application form to fill if you want to work there. “You have to know people, the business, the attitude, the look. You have to be current, which is second nature to skaters native to NY.” The success of Supreme as a company and of the shop in particular is evident in its longevity. But with the current trend for limited edition anything and guest designer kicks, its no surprise that other shops are vying to get these fast-selling items and turn them for a quick buck. “You can’t make money off brevity,” says Lamb, who believes it’s just not just what’s on the shelves that make a shop, although high quality products don’t hurt either. His favourite items from the current Supreme line include the bike chain lock, the gold skate key, and the “timeless” summer buttondowns.

When it comes down to it, what makes Supreme the name it is today is hard to convey through words. But Lamb probably sums up the take-it-or-leave-it attitude best when he answers what the best part of his job is: “Telling people that they can’t get a discount, but they could count on getting dissed.”

SUPREMENEWYORK.COM

The Book of Lists are from Vancouver, but their sound seems to come from a place far removed from the fragile, mirrored condominiums and Pacific Northwest nature-enthusiasms that characterize the City of Glass. Their rock n’ roll is a fever dream of neon urban nightlife and continental sophistication that evokes various cult icons of moody British guitar-pop – The Jesus and Mary Chain, Felt, and Syd Barrett all come to mind, but the sound is ultimately timeless, condensing the selected history of rock music into perfect three-minute blasts that escape the grasp of any place or time.

Of course, few things are more deeply ingrained in the Vancouver experience than the dream of escape.

For Vancouverites perched in a jewel-like city on the edge of civilization, it’s difficult to overcome the sensation that the truly crucial, exciting events are busy happening somewhere far away. Book of Lists frontman Chris Frey has stared down this dilemma for years as one of the city’s most ubiquitous and enduring musicians. He played for nearly seven years in the seminal Radio Berlin, and was the lead guitarist for Destroyer during the recording of 2002’s This Night LP and tour. The Book of Lists was born in 2004, and is composed of bassist Laura Piasta, guitarist Trevor Larsen, and drummer Brady Cranfield, all of whom are also visual artists. Frey himself is an accomplished photographer, schooled at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design under the influence of Vancouver’s famous (and infamous) masters of photoconceptualism. Chris’ photographs might be the finest and most complete extant record of the underground rock scene in Vancouver over the last decade.

Color: When did you start taking photographs?

Chris Frey: I was really into it in high school and then I went to Emily Carr, years and years later. I originally went there to draw, I was super-passionate about drawing, and then I took a photography course in first year because you get to take all these electives and I immediately realized that this is what I should be doing. I guess that was in the mid-90s, like ‘97. I went a little crazy with it, shooting at least a roll of film every day for awhile, because when you have those facilities at your disposal... I just really wanted to take advantage of it.

Do you think of your photography as documentary work?

I have a bit of an informed approach because I studied photography and I’m aware of what photodocumentary means. I figure that what I do can be under the headline of photo-documentary. I hope so. A lot of things might appear pretty snapshot-y, but photography’s the kind of thing that gains importance ten years after, because it shows you where something was, and it makes it that much more apparent where things are ten years later and how

There’s always a lot of people coming and going from this city. Do you plan to stick around?

It seems like there’s so much incentive to get out of this town but unfortunately I’m kind of in love with it. I don’t know if I’ll be here forever, but it seems like right now, there’s a lot of people getting out of town. Everybody seems to want to go to Berlin right now. Just the other day I was thinking that it might be almost more interesting to stick around and see how it evolves. Because I have this impression that Vancouver will always be the place I end up coming back to. Even if I went away for a couple years, I’d probably come back here, but it might be interesting just to stick around and watch things change. In terms of photography, that might be an interesting bunch of images to collect.

What do you think ties together all the different music that’s influenced you?

The biggest criteria in music for me is that it have some kind of darkness. Honestly. Even if it’s totally sugar-coated pop songs – which I love – it has to have some element of darkness to hold my interest. Some kind of potential for tragedy. And it doesn’t matter what genre or what time period of music you’re looking at, there’s always the potential for that to exist.

The Book of Lists are interesting in the way that you reference a lot of cult bands – not just ones that are really influential, like My Bloody Valentine (who I definitely hear in your music), but sort of “lost” bands, like Felt.

I tend to be hyper-critical of my own music, and somehow, something that is completely unknown will always appeal to me more than the mainstay version of that thing. Songs that you haven’t heard a million times. Like, it’s really hard for me to listen to the Beatles at this point because it’s been shoved down the world’s throat for so long. I mean, they’re fucking genius, but I have to keep it fresh for myself.

What contemporary bands are you into?

Sunset Rubdown are a really good band, actually.

And it’s really rare that I’m into a contemporary band.

I don’t listen to them that often, honestly, but when I heard their music, I thought it was the closest thing to being original that I’d heard in a long time.

What are you excited about on the local scene right now?

Victoria, Victoria! are fucking genius, actually. I just spent the weekend at the Hive with them while they were recording and it sounds really, really amazing.

I’ve always loved that band, but hearing what a quality recording added to it, it’s beautiful. Those guys have fantastic pop sensibilities.

The Book of Lists’ self-titled debut was produced and recorded with Josh Wells of Black Mountain/Lightning .continuedtext

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SCOTT POMMIER page

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THREE BIKES IN MAX’S GARAGE Jason Jesse’s panhead “the black Tibetan,” Max’s vl shovel “buckets” and Max’s knucklehead “4q.” 2006 DETAIL OF MAX’S VL He said the bars are like a little hourglass, since the old bikes are like time machines.

Also, if you think these bars are in any way ugly, you’re wrong. 2006 MAX SCHAAF with a helmet he painted for a guy. 2007 MY BIKE about a month and a half away from completion.

Most of the fabrication was done at this point, everything was getting torn down so that the frame could be sent off to get straightened, de-raked and powder-coated.

2006 JASON JESSE likes to put people off balance. Swastikas seem to do the trick. 2006 / DETAIL of Jason Jesse’s rear fender on his panhead. He likes to hide little swastikas so that he can accuse other people of finding the hate.

2006

When I see skateboarders that I know, people from around town, they always ask “what have you been up to, you been shooting much?” These people know me as a ‘skate photographer’ and this is the kind of small talk that you make with a ‘skate photographer’. If I were a trial lawyer my friends and colleagues would ask me if I’d tried any murder cases in the last little bit, but the truth is, that I’ve been sorta blowing it. I haven’t been shooting the Muska’s comeback, or the Lakai tour or even a Split team in-store signing. The truth is I’ve barely been shooting any skateboarding at all.

I got a motorcycle a little bit ago, an old Harley chopper and I’ve sorta let everything else drop.

The photographs in this issue are part of a series that I’m hoping to put out in book form at some point. These particular photos feature Max Schaaf, who built my bike, and Jason Jesse. Max and Jason are, of course, both skateboarders, who still have models out as a matter of fact, but like me they spend more time in garages than in skateparks, and more time on two wheels than on four. Max and Jason have been huge influences on me and I’d like to thank Max in particular for building my bike and for giving me wise words (read: vicious verbal reprimands) along the way. Hopefully by the next issue I’ll have some skateboarding photos to put out. After all, how else am I going to fund the next project? —scott pommier 156

contributors.

SHAWNMORTENSEN.ORG

SHAWN MORTENSEN page CAMERA OF CHOICE: I sure like them view cameras, but I more often choose a Pentax 67 these days. I recently bought a Nikon f90x, so I could ‘shoot from the hip’. All my other cameras are too big to carry around all the time, so that’s become my pointand-shoot. I tried carrying around a Contax t3 for a while, but I just couldn’t get into it. I’m kinda stuck on looking through the lens.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHS AND WHY: There’s this photograph of a guy jumping an old motorcycle, an Indian chief, which is a big heavy bike with a leaf spring front end, not exactly a nimble machine. He’s just cresting this hill that looks to be part of this giant pit. You can see a few people around the rim of this pit, everyone is looking at his guy. His bike is at about a 60 degree angle from the ground, his back wheel is up a few inches, so his front wheel is way up there, and you know that heavy old Indian is going to bounce like a sonofagun when he sets it down. Now this photograph was shot in 1949, so there really weren’t any dirt bikes to be had, in all likelihood, this guy’s riding the one and only bike he owned, no front fender, smoothed out tread for riding on the street, fishtail pipes. The bike just looks so amazing, the kind of thing you’d only ever see either at a motorcycle museum or maybe at some vintage motorcycle event, where maybe if you were lucky you’d get to see some old guy start it up and ride it around in the parking lot.

This guy is running the thing up an incredibly steep hill, in the dirt no less, and then to top things off he’s jumping the thing into the air. Oh and to top things off, the guy on the bike, looks to be about 18, leather jacket, engineer boots and jeans with the tallest cuffs you’ve ever seen, and he looks like Crispin Glover as George McFly in Back To The Future. Fuck, he looks cool.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER(S) AND WHY: Daniel Harold Sturt. He sparked it off for me. He has the most amazing gift for reducing a scene into the simplest graphic elements. His photographs are a study in simplicity. Also, his style goes through interesting transitions, but his photographs always have his stamp (I meant that figuratively, but then realize that it was quite literal as well.) Sally Mann, because her photographs are beautiful and subtle and seem to capture such tender and fleeting moments, but they are in fact contrived. They are superbly crafted, and crafted in a very painstaking way. I believe art without tremendous effort during some part of the process usually falls flat. James Balog, His photographs remind me that an eclectic approach can still be

cohesive. He did a book called: Tree - a new vision of the American forest that just floors me. Simple ideas executed with elegance, that’s the goal.

A FEW BOOKS THAT HAVE BLOWN YOUR MIND: It’s been a year of mind blowers for me. If you read: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, it’ll change your whole perspective on shit.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Cameras will be using us to take pictures. Think about it.

DECRIBE A PERFECT DAY: Awaken to the sound of a meadow lark. Nude swim in fresh water, roll up sleeping bag, bungee it to springer, high five homies who are in the midst (but take a small break to engage high five) of doing the same. Kickstart rigid Harley with a single powerful kick, proceed at an increasingly brisk pace along a winding scenic road with no traffic, but frequent fuel stations, to a little-known breakfast spot with charm and character but also a healthy array of organic vegan breakfast foods, including, though not limited to, pancakes! Eat a delicious meal with friends while talking of fond memories and humourous happenings, from previous travels. Chat amiably with attractive waitress – with whom, as it turns out, I share the following interests: Douglas Adams books, Bill Hicks’ stand-up comedy, Ethiopian cuisine, mid-century furniture, bakunin-style anarchism and Scrabble – who can’t help but overhear the mirth and merriment and clever banter from out table, so she laments that she would love to travel as my friends and I do, but simply hasn’t the means. My friends and I then make our way to a nearby skatepark, where I learn, then dial, body jars, eventually smacking down a thunderous six-footer in the deep end of a sizable concrete bowl. Just as we get set to leave the waitress from the restaurant shows up on a push bike, breathless, perspiring, hair slightly disheveled. She tells me that though she’s by no means a compulsive gambler she played the lottery on her break, and won a substantial amount of money, and what she wants more than anything is to travel. So she asks if she might be able to ride along with us, so we improvise a seat on my fender and she rides along with my friends and as we wander around stopping only to pick wild berries and fill up on petrol. Later we buy some local organic lager from a small store and find a hidden spot for a campfire, where we reflect and bask in our feelings of camaraderie. Oh, and somewhere in there I did a wicked wheelie. And my hairline crept up a bit.

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This Practice is a conceptual art piece. The writing by both of the pictured artists inspired the project. First, let me give some context. In 1988, I traded my skateboard for a camera.

These artists have had my admiration since my teens. I never thought I’d live to see 40! The masks are of David Wojnarowicz & Arthur Rimbaud.

In 1978, a 24-year-old David Wojnarowicz stole a camera and began his first published work – an art photo essay; a series titled Rimbaud in New York. He was imagining the 19th Century poet and adventurer as if he were in 70s N.Y.C. I wanted to take on the tradition and imagine Rimbaud with Wojnarowicz traveling in Ethiopia today. Rimbaud lived his last years there and Wojnarowicz often thought about Africa.

Both men were amazing artists, writers, photographers, and adventurers. I traveled to Africa alone. I used the camera as a tool for interaction with Ethiopians. Both men will be forever young... Rimbaud, known as the first Modern Poet, inspired the Beats, Dylan, Patti Smith, and quit writing poems at age 20. Both men died in their mid-30s, so will be forever thought of as young. From here on - I’ll let them say it.

In 1988 Shawn Mortensen traded his skateboard for a camera - bringing the same attitude toward photography that he had as a skateboarder: “an ability to fall on [his] face.”

Shawn is a truly great artist. He retains a natural ability to not only be at the right place at the right time, but the right place before it is recognized as being so. He has always had the ability to appreciate like-minded individuals, in all fields of the arts, before they become widely accepted as being “cool”. A quick thumb-through his recently released book, Out of Mind, will prove this. Countless musicians (Wu-Tang, Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys,) artists, actors, scholars, and revolutionaries have been photographed by Shawn with immense humility and modesty. They are honest photographs that reveal as much about the subject as they do about photographer. Shawn’s work has been presented in association with Getty Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim and a newsstand worth of magazines. He also works as a director, having made videos for artists like Tricky, BUSH, Alice Temple, & others. In 2000 he created documentary shorts for MTV & the Fela Kuti

“Jose [left] was the man in charge, he is responsible for the graffiti and decoration of the shanty and is quite proud of what he made. Jose is a nice man, short in stature (kind of ironic for a king), but aside from some grass here and there he was the most put-together of the group, thus dictating his position. The others that hung around, like Andre, had other disabilities that left them homeless, drug addicted, and penniless in one of New York’s most rugged neighbourhoods.

Andre asked to never be photographed.”

TINYVICES.COM

CRUSTANDBUTTER.COM

ANGELABOATWRIGHT.COM

ANGELA BOATWRIGHT page Tribute CD Red Hot + Riot - to raise awareness about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa and the world.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Any camera that is available... preferably film.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: It’s an excuse for human interaction and a historical document of my “zeitgeist.”

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHS: Irving Penn’s work in South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Any Eggleston… Susan Meiselas’ in Nicaragua.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS: William Eggleston, Alfred Steiglitz, Giles Peres, Robert Frank, Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, William Klein, Cecil Beaton, Daido Moriyama, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Ron Galella.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Eggleston’s Democratic Forest, Hans Silverman’s Ethiopia: People of the Omo Valley, Susan Meiselas’ NICARAGUA, Pennie Smith’s THE CLASH Before and After, Thomas Pynchon’s Against The Day, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons.

OTHER INFLUENCES: Studying history and watching it repeat. Reading the newspaper, looking through old photobooks, contemporary art, and REBELLION in its many forms!

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Film as an artistic medium - it will be seen as ‘painting with light’… once digital is all that is left to shoot.

UPCOMING SHOWS: London, September 2007 at dpmhi.

TIM BARBER page

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Tim is the photographer, curator and publisher who runs the online gallery “Tiny Vices”. There he showcases new and interesting photography and artwork from around the world.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Lately I’ve been really into using those disposable ones you get at the drug store.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: I guess it comes from a desire to try and make sense of things, and to tell stories.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHS: Ones that are mysterious, funny, beautiful, and/or timeless. My favorite kind of photo acts as a visual form of poetic writing, something that implies a narrative, but is un-specific and open to interpretation... I like a lot of

photographs.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Atlas by Gerhard Richter, The Americans by Robert Frank, Family Business by Mitch Epstein, Manual by Wolfgang Tillmans, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, Actual Air by David Berman, The Phantom Tollbooth

by Norton Juster, In Our Time (Magnum), The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, The Favorite Game

by Leonard Cohen, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl, The American Road Atlas and Travel Planner (National Geographic), Bucktoothed Magnifying Glass by Shayne Ehman.

OTHER INFLUENCES: Bevis and Butthead, Pump Up The Volume, Andrei Tarkovsky, LOST, Richard Prince, The Internet, Pizza, Ryan McGinley, Annie Hall, Johnny, Twin Peaks, The Empire State Building, Krups, Taxi Driver, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Altman, the Moon, Tom Friedman, Julia, baseball, music, nick-knacks, postcards, and Robin, Lois and Susan Barber.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: I don’t know.. 3D scratch and sniffs?

UPCOMING SHOWS: I’m brings the 7th installment of the tinyvices show to Proyectos Monclova Gallery in Mexico City in July. Then another one at White Flag Projects in Saint Louis, Missouri in September.. then more after that. Check in with the website for more info.

JON BOCKSEL page

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SECURITY MEASURES / WINTERTIME ABANDONMENT 2007 WHITE PICKET FENCE 2007 I first noticed the squat three years ago as an outpouring out of the back of a van on Myrtle Avenue in the Bed Stuy section of Brooklyn. A sign attached to a hole in the fence said “flat fix” – I figured it was some makeshift spot for these dudes to make a buck and fix people’s flat tires on the busy and dangerous avenue. The intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Marcy Avenue is not a place one wants to get a flat tire at any time of the day. The shanty sits directly across from the Marcy housing projects, thus making a perfect opportunity for Jose and his friends to capitalize off this abandoned lot. As the years progressed, the squat grew to have four walls, electricity, multiple rooms, and abandoned cars making up the shanty town.

I was first attracted to the shanty for its religious graffiti and recycled iconography glued, nailed, and scrawled to the exterior. The parallels created between living in poverty,

the American dream, and the right to own land are what magnetized me to this destination. The contrast of the Struggle and living in “God’s” beautiful world are what the camera captured as the dichotomy of poverty and prosperity.

In the winter of this year the squat was demolished by the city and left again as another abandoned junk lot in Bed Stuy.

It is still occupied with the squatters’ beds, tires, bibles, and scraps of cars. They have recently scattered throughout the neighbourhood to other lots to fix tires and sell cars.

Jon Bocksel is a young photographer from New York City. He was born there, though he moved around to various suburbs in the United States before landing back there at the age of 18. A self-proclaimed “searcher of reasons unknown”, Jon attaches his aesthetic to some kind of “hunter/gatherer” instinct, which he sees as a hardwiring that all human beings have, but most repress. His intentions are to document his search through photography, drawing and filmmaking. He skateboards, makes objects and stays busy trying to live his life in a way that keeps his brain constantly bubbling.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: OM1.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: Scrutiny of surroundings.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH(S) AND WHY: Right now I am real stoked on “O” because his photographs captured the early days of street skating and street culture. Anything in Tulsa (by Larry Clark) is pretty epic. FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER(S) AND WHY: Larry Clark and Phil Bergerson for their dissection of spectacular America.

A FEW BOOKS THAT HAVE BLOWN YOUR MIND: The Vanity of Duluoz, Lord of the Flies, Cannibals and Kings, and The Society of the Spectacle have left a mark or two.

OTHER INFLUENCES: Painting, music and rhythm in general, Cholo graffiti, ‘zines, printmaking, early Surrealist paintings, the Situationists, documentaries.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: With the current trend of the “digital picture frame” the whole concept of a photograph as a relic or document may, unfortunately, become extinct. So then I ask: What is the future of the world without a concept of the past?

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PORTRAITS AT WATER BROTHERS SKATE SHOP, Newport, Rhode Island 2006 All the kids that I’ve met in Rhode Island are insane heavy metal fans due in part to the fact that there’s apparently no generation gap there – meaning that all the 50-year-old rockers hang out with the twenty-five-year-old rockers, and also hang out with the fifteen-year-old skateboarders/future rockers. Local legends like Sid end up “raising” a lot of the kids there and immediately injecting them with Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden – which is a good thing, you know? There’s also a super sick local band in Newport (via Austin/NYC/ SF) called Demassek that seems to keep the younger kids on their toes. Following Demassek is Rhodekill comprised of 15 – 17-year-olds who are mind-blowingly shreddy, covering Children of Bodom songs note for note, which is no small task.

LIVE IN HELSINKI, Finland 2006 I photographed a series of live shots in Helsinki, Finland, during pretty much a dream job opportunity. The heavy metal magazine Revolver asked me to fly to Finland and document Children of Bodom for a few days in their hometown. I remember leaving New York during maybe 65 degree weather and landing in Helsinki in full blown snow. Children of Bodom played two different live shows during the time that I was there and the crowd went nuts both times. Most of the crowd was filled with younger kids, teenagers and kids in their early twenties going totally insane. I couldn’t stop shooting one kid in particular and after awhile his friend became incredibly annoyed and started fucking with me in Finnish. I replied in straight, super fast English – all the kids in Helsinki understand English more or less but the kid looked pretty surprised. I guess he didn’t expect it. These kids were and probably still are incredibly passionate about metal which rules, basically. Children of Bodom sold out both nights in a row.

Angela loves heavy metal and hates digital photography. In addition to that she is one of the one of the greatest photographers I know.

Before I found my way around New York City I found Angela and convinced her to let me be her assistant for the summer. I was still in college and nearly every magazine I opened had an amazing photograph of hers in it. Her style was undeniable and her passion for the medium was paramount. She is constantly inspired by music and if two jobs landed in her lap at the same time, one being a shoot for a high-end magazine or big corporate client and the other being a photo shoot with one of her prized .contributors

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PATRICKODELL.COM

ARTCOUP.COM

BOOGIE page metal bands, I’ll put money on which one she’ll be more stoked on at the bar later that night.

Most recently Angela created her own company to work for called Killer of Giants which allows her to showcase her work that falls outside of her career as a freelance photographer. This includes art shows she curates and produces as well as other projects that she creatively directs. She is also in a touring show with Patrick O’Dell called “200 troubled teenagers” that will most likely be in your city soon.

PATRICK O’DELL page

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JIM GRECO 2004 / STEVIE WILLIAMS 1998 SPANKY AND TINO 2006 ANDREW REYNOLDS 2002

I first met Patrick the summer I convinced Angela Boatwright that she needed an assistant and that I needed to be it. I believe it was around 2003 in New York City. I remember being impressed by Patrick’s passion for skateboarding culture and his modesty towards his role in photography. In 1996 Patrick settled into Senior Photographer position at Thrasher magazine, eventually moving to New York around 1999, continuing to shoot for Thrasher, as well as branch out to magazines such as Nylon, Self-Service, and Vice. It was around the time that I met Patrick that he started the Epicly Later’d photo blog loosely based around our friend Amy Kellner’s site. Having a wide array of important friends in the skateboarding industry including Kevin “Spanky” Long, Dustin Dollin, Andrew Reynolds, Eric Ellington and Jerry Hsu – in addition to New York personalities such as Leo Fitzpatrick, Chloe Sevigny, Ben Cho and Chan Marshall – his site picked up a lot of momentum quickly and he was eventually hired as Photo Editor for Vice Magazine. Recently Epicly Later’d has evolved into its own internet TV show on Vice sponsored VBSTV.com where he dives into the lives of many of the skaters he documented on his site.

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I was first exposed to Boogie’s work when I started shooting for Mass Appeal magazine around the time Alife was serving as art director. His haunting images of life inside and around New York City’s low-income housing projects were so heavy and in your face with images of drugs and violence. They seemed like images only an insider could capture. His work became even more intense when I found out he was not only a white dude, but a foreigner. Born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1969, Boogie immigrated to the U.S. in 1998 with a degree in Electronics and Microprocessors after receiving a green card through the lottery. The ability to truly gain the trust of your subject and capture intimate moments seems effortless for Boogie.

He documents various cultures from gypsies in the Balkans, gangs in NYC’s projects, and skinheads in Eastern Europe as if he is one of them. The trust that his subjects give him as he reveals darker sides of themselves is undeniable. A dark vibe always seems to run through his work whether he is shooting heroin addicts or passengers on the subway.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Nikon F3 REASON FOR SHOOTING: What a question... I shoot because I have to do it or I would die.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS: Daido Moriyama and Paolo Pellegrin.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Buenos Aires by Daido Moriyama.

UPCOMING SHOWS: Probably something in September in my NY gallery, Higher Pictures.

J. GRANT BRITTAIN page

NUMBERS Parris, California / ZOE

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Grant Brittain picked up a camera at the ripe old age of 25 and started shooting his friends skateboarding at the Del Mar Skate Ranch. The “Ranch” was a skatepark in a small beach town north of San Diego, California, that he managed in the early 1980s, and it was there that he honed his photographic skills. After blowing massive amounts of film, he took every photo class Palomar Junior College had to offer.

And with that, he felt he finally learned how to

manipulate his 35mm camera.

While at college, an influential instructor introduced Brittain to the vast world of photography, and set him on his creative path.

In 1983, Grant was asked to contribute skate photos to the premiere issue of TransWorld SKATEboarding (TWS) magazine and became its founding Photo Editor and Senior Photographer.

Over the years Brittain’s personal workabstracts, portraits, landscapes and travel images seem to draw from the opposite energy of his action images. His “off hours” are consumed by a search for calmer and more serene subjects. Still lakes at night and solitary desert forms are among the subjects of his diverse personal work. Some of his portraits of well-known athletes even manage to divulge a more reflective side of their personalities.

Grant Brittain’s body of work reflects his deep involvement in an emerging youth culture, as well as his escape from it. Grant and a group of the skateboarding elite talent have left TWS and started The Skateboard Mag, check it at: theskateboardmag.com and at shops and newsstands.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Hasselblad 503cw, Canon 1dMark2, Leica M6 and a bunch of other oddball cameras.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: Started shooting skating as a hobby in 1979 when I worked at and skated Del Mar Skate Ranch and it’s the only thing I never gave up on and I love making photos.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH(S) AND WHY: My own photos? Anything historical or dramatic, I like the 80s skate shots that I took, they take me back to some fun times. I was just shooting for the moment. Who would have thought that people would still want to look at them now? Anything of my friends back then and now.

Some of the photos where things didn’t work out, flashes misfiring, bad exposures, etc, happy accidents that surprised me.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHER(S) AND WHY: Skate Photogs: The pioneers – Cassimus, Goodrich, Friedman, Terrebone, Bolster, Fineman. My peers in the early, mid and late 80s: Mofo, Bryce Kanights, Neil Blender, Lance Mountain, Swank, Miki Vuckovich,

Tobin Yelland, Luke Ogden, Ortiz, Spike Jonze. I get to see some of the best photos everyday by Swift, Atiba, Humphries, Dan Sturt, Acosta, Price, Conway, Landi, Uyeda, etc. They all give me inspiration Non Skate: Ralph Gibson, Walker Evans, Henri Cartier Bresson, Avedon, Irving Penn, David Bailey, The Bauhaus photographers, Michael Kenna, Keith Carter, Edward and Brett Weston, Eugene Atget, Man Ray, Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Minor White, Aaron Siskin, Harry Calahan, so many!

A FEW BOOKS THAT HAVE BLOWN YOUR MIND: Photography Books: I am presently reading Edward Weston’s Day Books, Volumes 1 and 2, pretty enlightening and a must for any artist or photographer.

The Americans by Robert Frank. Any books by the above aforementioned names. An Inconvenient Truth

by Al Gore, Slaughterhouse Five and anything else by Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving, T.C. Boyle, Catcher in the Rye, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1984, A Brave New World, Hunter S. Thompson, A Space Odyssey 2001 by Arthur C, Clarke, Off the Wall by Calvin Tomkins, The Razor’s Edge, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche.

OTHER INFLUENCES: Painting, music, surfing, films, skateboarding, nature, my creative family and friends.

FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Live life, give time and knowledge to the up-and-comers, spend more time with my family, surf, take photos, do workshops, drink tea, red wine and ale, save gas, recycle, turn off light switch, read more, save money for my kid’s college, go camping and hiking, do some photo books, learn more about photography, do other magazine projects, learn patience, kindness and compassion.

DECRIBE A PERFECT DAY: Wake up early, drink tea, read a book, listen to music in my backyard, stretch, hang out with family, dig hole and plant a plant, go surfing, take a photo, eat something healthy, hang with friends and drink red wine at sunset, sleep. Pretty simple.

UPCOMING SHOWS: Kinda burnt on the one-man shows, too much stress. I like the group show where I only have to come up with one to four photos and

YACHT ON A YACHT

portland throws a party. words bydalas verdugo

“There’s only one spot left?”

ALAINLEVITT.COM

RIDINDIRTYFACE.COM

I can relax and have a beer and some snacks with friends.

ALAIN LEVITT

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MARK GONZALES, Wall Ride 2007 / UNTITLED 2006

Alain may not remember this, but I have photos of him throwing punches outside Max Fish in New York City. Aside from that rare document of aggression, Alain might be one of the nicest guys in New York. When I first met him I was greeted with a big smile and a Contax G2 around his neck. I have never seen him without either since. Alain is a photographer in the purest form. Always with a camera in hand, shooting something. His photographs represent life, the way it should be.

JEFF KUTTER page

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SALVADOR LUCAS BARBIER / ALEX AND REBECCA 2006

After years of skateboarding as a kid he took up shooting skate photos of his friends using his dad’s old cameras. Realizing that skateboard photography was difficult, expensive and that he wasn’t very good at it, his last straw in that short-lived career was being kicked out of the darkroom at his high school for stealing a shitty camera. So he bought a video camera and started filming skateboarding instead.

Throughout the years he vested most of his time in filming skateboarding, and along the way picked up a new hobby by way of necessity: cutting knobs off ledges and handrails. This became an integral part of the skateboard filming process since everything in L.A. started to become skate-proofed. Some of the first knobs he ever saw cut were up in S.F. where the problem was just as bad, if not worse. Some of the OG heads for knob cutting are Lance Dawes and Gabe Morford, who are coincidently some of his favourite photographers. Kutter lives and works in Los Angeles to this day where he still films, skateboards, cuts rails, and shoots photos. His latest video work can be seen on the Supreme website, the Epicly Later’d Show on VBS, or the Baker 3 video. His photos can’t be seen anywhere except for here.

CAMERA OF CHOICE: Point-and-shoots.

REASON FOR SHOOTING: Memento.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHS: John Cardiel in front of

the Slayer banner by Tobin Yelland.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS: Tobin Yelland, Greg Hunt, Manute, Gabe Morford, Ryan McGinley, Lance Mountain, Jerry Hsu, Patrick O’Dell, Angela Boatright, Tim Barber, Larry Clark, Boogie, Jacob Holdt, Estevan Orial, Daido Moriyama, Justin Ponce... shit, I don’t know. I like a lot of people’s photos.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Women by Charles Bukowski.

OTHER INFLUENCES: Sean Sheffy, Rob Abeyta Jr. FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Future Primitive.

THE POLAROID KIDD page Shootin’ For 2012

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JOHNSTON FAMILY VACATION / SALVAGE YARD PREGNANT MARSUPIAL / TOP SECRET CAMPFIRE PHOTO RIDIN SUICIDE ON THE FLORIDA EASTCOAST RAILWAY / CITIZENS FOR A POODLE-FREE MONTANA DIRTSICLE \\ Minneapolis, Minnesota / PIGGYBACK

Panic sets in as thirty people eye each other nervously. We’re all on a dock on the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, waiting to board the Crystal Dolphin, a hired yacht for the record release party of I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real., the newest album by YACHT, a.k.a.

Jona Bechtolt. This is “YACHT on a Yacht,” and Aaron “Flint” Jamison is trying to figure out how his headcount was off by so much.

A confusing exchange with a crew member suddenly reveals that in reality there are about 200 spots left on the yacht, and Flint responds to this news by telling all of us to “fucking bring it!” And so, we march down the gangplank to our waiting vessel and one of the raddest release parties Portland has ever seen.

It’s a magic time for Jona “YACHT” Bechtolt.

Like most artists in the Northwest’s ultra-friendly K Records/Marriage records scene (an axis that encompasses Portland, Olympia, and Anacortes), Bechtolt is no stranger to collaboration and multimedia. In 2004, he teamed up with visual artist Khaela Maricich (a.k.a. The Blow), making her solo project into a duo with his stuttering, chart-rapinspired laptop beats. I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real. is YACHT’s third album, but it may as well be his debut: his earlier releases were clever but fairly standard laptop abstractions, but I Believe In You sees him taking the next step up from his productions for The Blow, belting out motivational anthems over acoustic guitars and jeep-rattling minimalist drum breaks. His catchy, quirky electro jams and indieTimbaland persona caught the ear of James Murphy and, after tonight’s “YACHT on a Yacht” party, he’s off on tour, opening for LCD Soundsystem.

Everyone is in good spirits as we get ready to shove off. Many people have nautically-themed outfits, and there is a healthy mix of insiders, outsiders, young and old. This is Portland, where having your dad at your record release party is cool. The sunlight is twinkling on the water, and the whole thing truly feels magical.

Bechtolt has been slightly obsessed with magic lately, going so far as to join the Society of American Magicians. I ask him if he views today’s cruise as an example of practical magic.

“Totally,” he replies from behind a big grin. “I feel like this event specifically is the kind of magic where it feels like it can’t happen; the kind of magic where maybe you don’t understand it yet. Maybe we don’t have the tools to interpret the magic that’s happening.”

The crowd fills the room as opening act Bobby Birdman starts his set and a solid groove is established, when all of a sudden a girl next to me remarks, “Does it smell like a dentist’s office in here to you?” What she’s smelling is the subwoofer that has just blown out. Birdman handles the crisis with aplomb, switching to a capella versions of his songs

and relying on the audience to provide the beats.

Eventually the speakers cool down and the YACHT set starts. From the very first note, the crowd is loving it, bouncing and writhing in the small cabin. Everyone is incredibly psyched to be here and the energy fills the room. Bechtolt is riding the vibe and soon he is also literally crowd-surfing, pressed up against the low ceiling and fulfilling his grunge fantasies.

The YACHT set is only three songs, but no one feels disappointed. That’s because the party is still going, moving to the warehouse venue known as Disjecta, located right next to the Burnside skate park.

The main event occurs when YACHT takes the stage again. He’s pumped from his earlier performance (and maybe some of that champagne) and soon he’s crowd-surfing again. The people at Disjecta are loving it, but they’re about to love it even more, because now Bechtolt is joined on stage by a full band, including pretty much everyone who played previously.

This is when the grunge influence really makes itself known. The band rips through several distortion-tinged versions of the new YACHT songs, and the crowd moshes. At one point Bechtolt reminds everyone to be careful, because even though he wants to be a hard rocker, he’s a super nice guy at heart. The set ends with Bechtolt diving into the drum set. A pictureperfect homage to Nirvana’s “Lithium” video.

After a day of sailing, drinking, dancing, singing and more, everyone is spent. Bechtolt retires to a card table to sign copies of the new CD. The spell he has cast is complete.

Just before this issue went to print, Jona Bechtolt announced that he’s leaving The Blow to pursue YACHT full time. Check out his blog (with his DJ mixes and links to his Flickr, art projects, and films).

TEAMYACHT.COM

“I feel like this event specifically is the kind of magic where it feels like it can’t happen; the kind of magic where maybe you don’t understand it yet. Maybe we don’t have the tools to interpret the magic .continuedfrompage92

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INFO & FREE STICKERS > DESTRUCTOTRUCKS.COM

[ o ] FAUCHER

“I fucking smoked speed the night before so I was up all night.”

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peterramondetta.

with peter ramondetta

words bymatthew meadows

1. Color: So to begin, maybe you can explain to me the tattoo of a moustache on the inside of your finger.

PR: Um, I don’t know. I got a friend back in the city that does tattoos. I just showed up and he did it for free. I saw this guy Oliver; he is a Deluxe sales rep in San Diego… I thought it was cool and I was super psyched on it so I got one. I just kind of went with it.

2. I heard from a couple of people that Circa has gotten a bit of a rep at trade shows for being hard partiers. Has there ever been a moment when you woke up wondering, “what the hell happened last night?”

[To Ryan Rise] Fucking Australia when I was throwing shit into your room..

Ryan Rise: Oh yeah! So this guy, he drank a whole bottle of Jack, it was like a fifth of Jack and he basically started destroying my room. We had steel tables and chairs and shit. He started throwing them everywhere so I had to kick him out. So next thing you know he is rolling down the street and we are all going downtown and he starts punching out all the windows and setting off the alarms in the whole alley of stores.

Yeah, he is insane!

Peter: It was like an outdoor mall. I don’t really remember it. But everyone was telling me “you were punching all the windows and alarm after alarm was going off!”.

3. What is one team that you could never imagine yourself on?

Probably Zero just ‘cause, I don’t know... I think it is all the stories I hear. I just think it would be really stressful, and that is what I hear. It is pretty gnarly you know. It takes the fun out of it. It becomes like a job, then, you know?

4. How did you get your nickname ‘The Pirate’?

Well, if I drink a lot of whiskey – if I have one or two shots I am alright – but yeah, if I have more than that, like if I chug the bottle, I don’t even know.

5. Do you have any bad whiskey experiences?

I was at a strip club once in Hollywood. I was getting a whiskey shot and a beer. I would shoot the whiskey then chug the whole beer behind it. Then order another, shoot the whiskey chug the beer. I did that for like ten minutes then I don’t remember anything. I woke up the next morning in some random hotel. Not the one I was staying at just some random hotel. My clothes were folded in the chair. So someone brought me there. Like, I did not have any money either.

Someone brought me there, paid for the room, took my clothes off and folded them and I still to this day have no idea what happened. But the next day I go back to the hotel I was staying at and everyone was like, “Yeah, you were passing out at the strip club so they kicked you out.” So no one left with me. They all just stayed at the club. They were like, “You walked out of the strip club, that was the last we saw of you.”

I have no idea what happened, I left the strip club and someone got me a room. I have no idea, hopefully nothing sketchy went down, I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything on You tube so… I guess I am alright [laughts].

6. Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it seems like you could get in a lot of trouble, is that true?

Ryan Rise: The time you were in your butt huggers running around naked?

Peter: [Laughs)] Naw, Naw. Probably the worst ever was when I had jury duty. I fucking smoked speed the night before so I was up all night. I smelt like weed. We were smoking weed all in the house. I just smelt like shit. I showed up at like eight in the morning to do jury duty. Everyone was freaking out. I just sat down and I didn’t even realize. Every one was freaking out like, “ What’s that smell?” I just sat there kind of panicking.

Then at lunch break I went to my car. I got the Axe spray and just sprayed Axe all over my self.

Ryan Rise: Then he had a chick attack him in the elevator.

Peter: Naw, I just went back and smelt like weed and Axe. It just sucked.

7. You’ve been called the “Skater’s skater”. Your style is not overly fresh or hesh. What do you think

of the different trends in skate fashion these days, whether it be overly hesh or gangster?

I mean, I am not into it but whatever you are into. If you feel good wearing it go for it. I guess I am just basic in my ways. It’s just shirt, jeans and then skate or whatever. But I guess some people feel the flair speaks louder than the skating. I don’t know.

8. If you could take one guy out, not necessarily in a fight but maybe a game of SKATE or something, who would it be?

Probably Patrick Melcher. I really, really fucking hate that guy.

Really why is that?

It’s just every time I have been around him he has been a fucking asshole. Like when I first got on Real, before I got an ad or anything, no one knew me or whatever.

I met him at a bar in Chicago and he was just being an asshole the whole time. Ever since I have just been like “fuck that dude’” you know?

9. Yeah, I can understand. What’s it like seeing him around?

Yeah, sometimes. Well, I definitely don’t lose any sleep over it. Every time I see that guy... you know what? Fuck that guy. I don’t know. Well, you know the whole story is I played him in a game of pool and I broke my wrist on the trip. I had that pink cast you saw in Seeing Double.

So we go to this bar and I see Melcher there and he is like, “Let’s play pool.” The first thing he says to me is “I hope I don’t lose to a cripple.” I thought he was joking around, I gave him the benefit of the doubt but I realize [now] that he was dead serious. So I play him and I lose or whatever. But when he is on the eight ball he looks at me in the eye and says, “This is when you lose.” He makes it, throws his stick on the table and walks away.

I was just like, “Dude, this guy is a fucking kook.” It was on a Deluxe trip and later on we ended up in Detroit, and Melcher was there too at the same hotel we were at and Nate Jones was there. And I told Nate about the story earlier and Melcher was there so Nate was like, “I will play you a game,” and

[ o ] POMMIER

W

hen we first heard that the C1rca team was coming to town the wheels were immediately put in motion for articles and interviews. I had heard that Peter Ramondetta would be on tour with the rest of the team, and seemed like he would the perfect candidate for a Tattered Ten. Upon meeting Peter for the first time I was a little set back. Although his video persona is that of a gnarly, partying skate machine, the words reserved, mild mannered and polite seemed to better describe his personality. After a brief conversation we decided to do the interview the following night at Sheldon Meleshinski’s house where a tour kickoff party was to take place. As I stepped in the door I found him playing a coin drinking game with Alien. I watched closely realizing the game did not seem to end with a winner or loser, just two very drunk individuals. This interview is the product of that fated game and many whiskey shots at the bar that followed.

beat him. So then [Jones] said “Okay, I’ll play you for ten bucks” and [Melcher] was like “I don’t gamble,” but he got him into it. So then he played him for the ten bucks, beat him and then was like “Alright, let’s play again.” Patrick was all like, “Naw I don’t want to gamble anymore.” So then Nate said alright this one is for your pride, and then he beat him for his pride.

Whatever, Melcher got super bummed. There was like a hot tub, or Jacuzzi inside the hotel and me and Nate were in the Jacuzzi and Melcher was walking by with his friends and he was talking some shit, so Nate is like, “I am right here, whatever, come over here and say that.”

So Melcher comes over and Nate grabs him, pulls him into the hot tub and, like, dunks him down. He held him down ‘till he says, “Just say you give up.” He made him say he gave up in front of all his friends. I guess that is the biggest insult to that guy ‘cause he is super proud.

That was my second Deluxe trip.

10. Deluxe trips sound pretty heavy too. What is the gnarliest thing that has happened on tour for you,?

I almost got the shit kicked out of me. It was actually on the same tour, by some big black dude. We got a bunch of fireworks on that trip so I had bottle rockets and shit. So we go on our way to a demo and we stop at Starbucks to light a bottle rocket and throw it out the window. It shot off randomly and went right by this big black dude’s head and I guess he just got fired and dumped by his girlfriend, he was having the worst luck so he was in a terrible mood. He comes over and drags me out of the van. Like, I was just standing there waiting for him to start pounding on my head. Mic-E [Reyes] comes out with a knife and tries to go behind him to shank him or whatever… he kind of distracts him a little bit. [The guy] is like, “Man, I got a fucking gun in my car, I am gonna go grab it.” People in Starbucks, I guess, saw the whole thing so they went and called the cops. The cops showed up and drew their guns on that guy. They end up arresting him and they go to his car and I guess he had a gun and a big bag of weed or something so you know they arrested him for that. It was fucked up. I was seriously just standing there thinking I am going to get knocked out right now, this is it. .tatteredten

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