That's right. The two biggest releases of the week are currently streaming in their entirety on the web. You can preview No Age's debut LP Nouns here on their MySpace page and Elvis Costello's new album Momofuku is now streaming here on the Lost Highway website. The new No Age is highly recommended and even if you didn't like Weirdo Rippers, I still suggest checking out Nouns, as it sounds quite a bit different from their earlier stuff. All you vinylheads don't have to wait for your copies of these albums either because they are both in stores today. The CD and digital versions are also available as of today.

By the way, I snagged that pic from Gorilla Vs Bear the other day. It looks like artist/skateboarder Ed Templeton did some artwork for the band, which I think is very cool. Templeton is also the owner of Toy Machine skateboards and he produced one of my favorite skate videos of all time, Toy Machine's Jump Off A Building, which you should track down and watch at your earliest convenience. Bam Margera is like 16 in that video.

Preview No Age - Nouns [MySpace]

Preview Elvis Costello - Momofuku [Lost Highway]

This was a Nike sponsored event. I wonder how the flow chart would look like. It would probably be a bunch of arrows (the arrows represent $) from all around the world going towards Oregon. Then, there would be $ arrows pointing from Oregon towards different marketing companies in major cities around the world. Finally, there would be a small arrow going from one of these local marketing reps towards the jrnl gallery/magazine. Ahhh... sweet smell of business (smells like The Man). Loves it.

Show Program: Part 1; Part 2 - The program has already been disclosed to the public. I think I can post this, but I'm not sure. Anyway, if you're interested, take a look. Each photographer was gracious enough to include a little commentary with their submission.

Being True, A Photography Exhibition Celebrating 22 years of American Youth @ the jrnl gallery

Tim Barber, Angela Boatwright, Kenneth Cappello, Poppy de Villeneuve, Cheryl Dunn, Naomi Harris, Alex Horner, Drew Jarrett, Alain Levitt, Jeaneen Lund, Ari Marcopoulos, Dan Murphy, Jason Nocito, Patrick Odell, Mike Piscitelli, David Ransom,Terry Richardson, Jamel Shabazz, Shadi, Jamel Shabazz, Brent Stewart, Ed Templeton, Tobin Yelland.

Curated by Emma Reeves and Aaron Rose.

Opening Reception at the journal Gallery on Thursday, March 27th 2008, 7-10PM

the journal Gallery
168 North 1st Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Lake Rivera Pool

lake Riviera pool Brick NJ 1987

photo Derek Rinaldi

It was summer of 1987 and skateboarding at the Jersey Shore was in full bloom. School had just let out and most of us had gotten our driver’s licenses and cars and the world was now ours. The week after school was out we planned what would go down in skateboard history as the Disco Tour. Armed with a truck that only got one station on the radio, 4 skaters and an inflatable Grimace from McDonald’s,…New Jersey to Boston and back.

Little did we know when we returned weeks later that, with the exception of a couple contests, that we wouldn’t need to leave home all summer.

The street skating sessions that were going down by the beach at night were becoming legendary, the Silverton ramp was attracting skaters from all over and then we discovered the Lake Riviera pool, only a few miles from the ramp.

Jim Murphy Silverton NJ

photo Derek Rinaldi

The exact reason why this Olympic size, public pool was drained and the park it was housed in abandoned was unknown to us. But we didn’t care then and you shouldn’t care now.

The pool set up was this. A large, squared shallow end: about 5 feet deep. The actual deep end of the pool was bowled out, 8 feet deep with a foot-wide ledge that wrapped around 3 sides of it. An unapproachable 4-foot vert wall brought the pool to the coping.

\

Derek Rinaldi Lake Riviera pool 1987

photo Jerry Daseking

Every day from about 11 am until dark kids would gather in the shallow end waiting there turn to roll in.

The names were endless, but our daily crew consisted of Jerry Daseking, Billy Quinn, Skip Chapman, Rich Pedicini and Scott Roskos as the lone freestyle biker back then.

Derek Rinaldi (sporting the AIR Jordans) Lake Riviera Pool NJ 1987

photo Jerry Daseking

We would skate there before and/or after work, after dinner….everyday. If we had to go away for whatever reason, it was the first place we went when we got home.

The regulars were growing and guys that were going to the Silverton ramp were making there way over to the pool. One dream session was documented for Thrasher Magazine. Murph, Brad Constable, Bonnie Blouin, Jef Hartsel had rolled into town with boards, cameras and a mighty pen.

Brad Constable Silverton Ramp NJ

photo Derek Rinaldi

Though the heavies got the press that day, having our local spots seen worldwide in the pages of Thrasher was more than enough for us. It was the first time we realized that the skate spots of any town could take you around the world. Even if they were buried in the woods in New Jersey.

Steve Herring with Jeff Hartsel on deck Silverton NJ

...(checkout the old TomGroholski board)

photo Derek Rinaldi

Things were changing fast as the summer flew by. Kids were getting sponsored and the E.S.A. (Eastern Skateboard Association) was hosting contests that we’d all travel to.

With all the press and the crowds at the pool, it’s no wonder it was on borrowed time and sure enough one day after returning from a skate trip, I drove to the pool before I even went home to unpack only to find it completely filled in with dirt.

I remember staring at it as if it was a bad dream. It’s the first time I felt loss.

The pool was never removed and is still there, buried under all that grass and earth. The playground remains. If you sit on the swings long enough, you can hear the sounds of that summer. Grinds, cheers, laughter.

Tragic,? Maybe, but the skating that happened that summer and in that pool set the stage for friendships and skateboard careers that have lasted the test of time.

I’ll never forget it. I’ll always hear it.

Derek Rinaldi 2007

Nice one Derek!!

Look for more installments of Turnpike Diaries, life in state soon.

look at this gem of Shut riding DR we found:

Thrasher Magazine

click to inbiggen.

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Although I’m sure it says “photographer” on whatever passes for Michael Burnett’s resume, he’s been my favorite working skate magazine writer for several years now, evidenced mostly by his ability to make the nth Toy Machine road trip interesting and often hilarious. Which is even more impressive when you consider the fact that other magazines have given up entirely on pounding out any copy whatsoever to accompany Company X’s most recent batch of Barcelona photos. I’m not sure how much of the material he makes up (he was pretty candid about King of the Road rule-bending practices a couple years back) but stories like the one about the bizarro Russian hotel generally are more worth the time than Josh Harmony’s latest nosegrind.

For example, Burnett’s musings on foreign-born moms, from the intro of the Russia article:
Joseph's mom was from Nicaragua and wore absurdly low-cut flower-print blouses that elicited an equal amount of curiosity and shame among those of us who were unable to fight the urge to stare at her sagging, sun-damaged bosom. She seemed to have learned English primarily from her children, Joseph and his nine-year-old sister, and the deficiencies in this source were revealed by her ready use of the term "dooky," and more fantastically, whenever she'd lose her temper when we happened to be over at the house.

"See, Joseph!" she'd holler from the breakfast nook. "That's why I have to do for me! Like Oprah say! I can't always do for you guys all the time! You father no want to validate my feelings!"

Burnett has a new book coming out called The Outskirts of Awesome, which looks like it could maybe be a companion piece of the last Hold Steady record, and I’m assuming that it’s probably a somewhat more whimsical take on Ed Templeton-style Midwestern teensploitation stuff. I was intrigued to see he’s also got a couple short stories published, so I might have to thumb through one of these if it shows up in the skate shop, at least until Google wins their battle against the librarians to let people pirate books over the internet. In the meantime he also launched a website that’s got a load of photos, all his Thrasher covers and a link to the Burnout blog which I should maybe put on the sidebar thing over there. It has supremely entertaining shit such as the last sequence in this entry.

One more Burnett story, from KOTR 2006:
We'd decided that, even though Griffin had ollied a six-stair naked in Atlanta, we'd be better off trying to get a harder trick to win the Sherm's Revenge points. Ed has impossible spine variations on lock so he warmed up with some, while Billy quickly kickflip lipped the nearby 12-stair rail. When that was over it was almost dark, but the park was still pretty crowded and there were several children present, including an eight-year-old girl on rollerblades.

Naked skating, when done with a quick dropping of the pants followed by a spectacular maneuver, is one thing. Naked skating, where the man takes 15 minutes to land his trick, meanwhile standing around nude in front of a bunch of teenage girls who happened to wander by a few minutes into it, is quite another. Ed definitely took it for the team on this one, and I can't help but think the experience may have been humbling for an artist so quick to display the peckers of his peers.

PS: I gave Ed Templeton a copy of Fetal III and I don't know if he ever watched it but Ed if you ever find this comment me and let me know. That would mean a lot. haha when I handed it took him, he read the title and made a really weird face. I think I might have totally creeped him out but whatev. 

Ho comprato questo libro in modo quasi compulsivo, in parte perchè la passione per lo skateboard non si è mai davvero sopita in me e in parte perchè finora non sono mai stato deluso da questa piccola casa editrice, la ISBN, che di recente ha fatto uscire numerosi titoli molto interessanti, tutti caratterizzati dalla copertina completamente bianca con sopra semplicemente, appunto, un codice a barre e la costa del libro colorata in rosso o giallo o blu a seconda della collana. (Come unica nota negativa devo dire che i libri di questa casa editrice costano però un po troppo, si aggirano tutti tra i 13,5 e i 19, e per libri non HardCover secondo me è decisamente tanto!)

Ma veniamo a Skaters... Il libro parla di Skateboarding, ovviamente, ma non solo. E' un insieme di racconti, storie, pensieri, disegni e fotografie di persone e personaggi (Ed Templeton, Mark Gonzales, Michael Burnett, Scot Bourne ecc ecc accomunati dalla passione per questo sport che è insieme attività rivoluzionaria e strumento di marketing parte della società dello spettacolo.

Alcuni capitoli non toccano nemmeno l'argomento skate, sono brani estratti da romanzi, brevi racconti ed altro ancora a dimostrazione dello spirito creativo e anticonvenzionale di questi "adulti" che praticano ancora quello che da molti è considerato un passatempo per adolescenti.
Anche nei racconti che hanno a che vedere con lo skate comunque, la tavola non è mai protagonista, non ci si sofferma sullla cronistoria e sull'evoluzione dello sport nè si esaltano tecnicismi ed evoluzioni dei suoi atleti. Semplicemente la tavola è parte integrante di una storia, non la protagonista ma nemmeno un dettaglio trascurabile. E' un elemento determinante e caratteristico che accompagna o scandisce il susseguirsi di eventi e fa parte della storia umana dell'autore.

All'inizio sono rimasto un po deluso dal fatto che il libro non fosse tutto incentrato sullo skateboarding ma allo stesso tempo pagina dopo pagina ne sono rimasto affascianato, molti brani prendevano spunto da storie autobiografiche di viaggi o situazioni il cui perno era lo skateboard, altri sono riflessioni sulla condizione umana e psichica di questi eterni adolescenti, altri ancora saggi pseudo filosofici sul ruolo rivoluzionario antagonistico e antisportivo di questa espressione artistica che coinvolge e combina mente corpo e spirito in un unica forma volta a creare il movimento, la quale, purtroppo con il tempo e con il marketing ha perso quasi tutta la sua spiritualità.

Di certo avendo un passato da skater io ho potuto apprezzare più in profondità molte parti del libro, rivivendo momenti entusiasmanti, frustrazioni e incomprensioni adolescenziali con leggerezza e con nostalgia ma questo non significa che un "estraneo" non possa trovare interessante e divertente questo libro e di sicuro capire qualcosa di più su questo "sport estremo", vissuto dai suoi adepti in modo, in grado di deformare per sempre la propria modalità di percezione e di fruizione degli spazi alla costante ricerca di nuovi spot skateabili o della continua reinterpretazione dell'arredo urbano, fino persino a rendere perfettamente normale fingere che le dita siano gambe per fare fingerboard sui bordi dei tavoli!
Non solo uno sport quindi ma una passione da vivere con spiritualità e disciplina.

Sarcasm! Honesty! Stephen Malkmus references! I'm in.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Brendan's other projects are forces to be reckoned with. Homeboy doesn't mess around.

Check out Brendan at barrbarr.com.