blade or die

Beh…heh…fuh…

The human Glide Cam that is known as Vinny Minton comes through with yet another fucking banger that makes you want to jump out of your cubicle and throw the blades on right away with a one-day edit from Long Beach. If anything, it should leave you speechless for a bit, mumbling incoherently at the depth at which your world just got rocked.

There’s a NorCal/SoCal union. There’s a whole bunch of JSF-ery going on in there. There’s a near-death incident.

God bless blading. God bless Vinny Minton.

Congrats to, John Bolino:

The people have voted

Dedicated:

Kevin Dowling

Kevin Dowling is one busy mother fucker. Married man. Father. Working fool. Half of Footage Tape. Even one of those reasons why I hear a lot of people don’t have time to blade. Mr. Dowling, however, doesn’t make excuses.

Might I suggest lovely San Francisco?

I don’t give a fuck who you are: That’s a bad ass achievement if I’ve ever heard one. One full year. Skating everyday. Balancing life.

Congrats, Kevin, from all the BladeOrDie family.

‘You’re a bad kid':

A blading friend of mine, Kelly Koesis, posted the video below to The Book this week with the words, “I LOVE LOVE LOVE security guards…they RUUUULEEEE!”

Watch it and then be prepared for some gibberish.

This year, I can’t say I’ve been the biggest fan of anyone with a badge. While I don’t like to stereotype, it seems these chest-puffing power-abusers — police and security guards — seem to be at an all-time high of discontent with their lives that they feel necessary to throw down on civilians. You know, the ones that if they fought back would be facing a felony charge. Nothing better than a fair fight. To be fair, I have dealt with some really cool people in uniforms. They give a decent, “Time to go, guys,” and we’re all off. Just like that. No film-worthy encounters.

But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point, because there should be one, is the person in the video isn’t a blader. It’s a skateboarder. Still, we’ve all been in this scenario. We’ve all been victim to some kind of harassment for doing what we love. Yes, it’s private property and all that, but those are roles we play in society. We destroy property. They protect it. It’s a never-ending struggle.

Still, knowing that many of us risk beat-downs, tickets and arrests to follow our passions, why is there such animosity between all of us? Because our wheels aren’t in the same pattern? Because one has wood and another has plastic? Because one’s attached to the feet and one is free? Am I missing something in our glaring similarities that couldn’t keep us closer together, even if it’s just our constant risk of our freedom to do something that makes us feel free? Because if we did that, couldn’t we unite and get more parks built together, etc.?

Just wondering. If someone has those answers, I’d love to hear them.

But enough about us and boaders. Let’s move onto cyclists.

Does blading make us gay?

God, you must be sick of hearing that. I’m fucking sick about writing about it, but since it’s blading related, here it is, via Gawker:

Guess where the fuck this is going...

Scrolling down… dum diddily dum….

Bah-zing!

If you still haven’t grasped it, yet another source is telling you what’s up: You blade = you’re gay. Got it yet?

See this…

Thanks for the image, AMall

That is apparently gay. For Christ’s sake there’s one man over another man. Ignore the fact that the trick is buck as fuck.

Now let’s check in with cycling, which Gawker told us is not gay at all…

Whoops. Caught them at a bad time. We’ll check back later so they can show us how cycling is not gay.

(Quick side note: I wonder if gays take offense to being associated with rollerblading? Just wondering.)

Again, I'm confused: rollerblading was the most popular sport in the 1990s, but even then it was still gay? Or is it gay because that's the cool thing to say now? Anyone? Some clarity, please?

Or we can continue on not worrying about others’ opinions, mainly feeling sorry for their ignorance and fear that what we do could make them less that the ultra-chic, fad-chasing consumerist robots they already are. I like that idea. I’ll be going that route.

Yet another thing I don’t get:

Since The Book apparently is the most important thing in the world, there’s something else that’s been stabbing into my cerebral cortex like an icepick. I don’t know when it started or who is responsible for it, but since when is it okay to tag 10,000 people in a photo who obviously aren’t in there. Now I understand if you have a great photo of the Earth you picked up with your access to some bitching satellite cam you bought on eBay and you tag every single person in the world, that makes sense because, technically, they are in it.

I think it first started with these annoying things:

Okay, so Aggressive Mall is probably the one that’s “agressive.” That makes sense. But, let’s ignore the obvious raping of the English language and look at one thing: nerds read. Since you’re reading this, you’re a nerd. We knew that.

Moving on…

This must have been one Bitter Cold Showdown-esque sesh. Fish, Aragon, Shima. However, I really can’t see them in there. Must be my fading eyesight.

Let’s see what else is going on…

Looks like shake anyway

The fuck? Yeah, I get it. You smoke weed. You want everyone to know. Even Bakerized Skate Shop fits in there if you appreciate the bad pun. Broskow is clean all the way through, yet he’s tagged. So are Fish, Shima, AMall and others.

Yes, I know The Book is fostering an overwhelming amount of look-at-me, almost nihilistic sense of worth in all of us, but shit, son, there’s only so much that needs to happen.

If you need attention that bad, get a dog. If you have one and need even more attention, get some peanut butter.

Blade or Die,

— Brian Krans