skateboarding blogs - BlogFlock

Post on Brian Neverwas - Brian Neverwas

2025-04-23T17:10:28.000Z

Normal Wednesday.

Planning a party for my son.
Going to a doctor’s appointment.
Watching my dog try and fail to catch a squirrel.
Watching the first three episodes of Andor Season 2

Here is to still being able to do normal.

Bored? - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-04-18T03:27:10.000Z

Honestly, I’m kind of tired of what’s going on in freestyle skateboarding. I still love seeing my friends skate and skating with them when I can, but I’m kinda bored with it. Maybe it’s a result of having done it now for 49 years. I feel like I’ve put a lot into it, and while I have never expected to “get anything out of it,” there have been some disappointments. As it grows it feels like it is going the wrong way a lot of the time.

However, going out and riding my bank spots, curbs, and parking lots is never disappointing. I enjoy not worrying about preparing for contests. It is nice not feeling like I’m trying to prove myself. It feels good for skateboarding to be a nice part of my life and not an all-inclusive obsession.

I haven’t been skating much lately, and that doesn’t really bother me. I’ll skate when I want to skate. I’ll be as good as I’ve ever been.

Normal for Now - Brian Neverwas

2025-04-17T01:14:51.000Z

I think I have had a hard time writing lately because, you know, points at everything.

Because of this and how normal this madness feels I thought I would start a Wednesday post outlining the mundane points of the day. Normalcy is often the last thing challenged in times like these so consider it a barometer of how things are.

Today:

Drank coffee purchased prior to the tarrifs at $40 for 5 lbs of beans from a local roaster who gets her beans from her dad’s coffee plantation in Guatemala
Went to Home Depot and bought paint to rehab the kid’s old swingset into a backyard hang-out spot
Actually went into my office to take a look at the progress of our new building that may or may not be able to open due to our HUD Grants being cancelled.
Played table tennis and lost after being up by 6. Not my best game.
Walked my dog.

Meanwhile, things are so far from normal even as the boring parts of suburban life carry on.

Skateboarding - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-04-01T15:41:37.000Z

Having three pastimes that all require a lot of time as well as physical and mental energy is tough. Between gaming, aikido, and skateboarding, I have to admit that in the last year or two skateboarding has come out on bottom as far as time I’ve devoted to it.

Multiple factors contribute to this, but the demise of my freestyle practice spot has been a huge factor. Returning to regular aikido practice in January of 2024, after about three years of minimal practice due to the pandemic has taken most of my physical energy. It is significantly more strenuous than skateboarding is physically. With aikido practice three times per week, I find myself depleted of energy and in recovery mode on the other nights, on which reading science fiction or working on gaming stuff fits in nicely.

I had a hard aikido practice last night (Monday), and today I don’t know that I could find the energy to go skate. After work I’ll be ready to walk the dog and then chill.

Beyond these factors, as I get older my priorities are just shifting. Entering decade six of life, I’m aware that time is limited. In our house we have dealt with severe illnesses over the last few years, and while I do want to go skate, I’d rather spend the evening with my wife. I’m tired of rushing from one activity to another constantly.

It is kind of weird getting to a point in life in which I’m not just dying to get out and skate all the time. It feels especially strange because I am 100% able to skate. It’s not like some injury or illness has brought me to this.

I’m skating enough that with a couple of weeks of practice I can easily be back to a pretty good level of skating. I don’t get a lot worse from not skating, and I don’t get a lot better from skating all the time. Honestly, it feels good to enjoy skateboarding as part of my life now, rather than obsessing about it constantly.

Still, I want to skate right now.

Old Boards, GSD, and Sacto - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-03-07T17:57:03.000Z

My friend TheLoneSentry posted this to the NeverWas Discord today. It’s an image of the original GSD (before that meant Go Skate Day), Garry Scott Davis, a legendary skateboarder. GSD had, to my knowledge, the first pro “street” board. There are boards for the street before his. Hell, they are really all for the street. Before his model there were a number of boards like the Powell-Peralta Street Issue, etc. But his is the first board designed for the street with a pro’s name on it, as far as I’m aware. My friend Dale and I have always loved that it says “Banks/Curbs” on it.

Anyway, when @TheLoneSentry posted this today I was struck by how great this ad is. First of course is GSD’s stylish body position. I’m assuming he did a boneless up into this position on the hood of this car. The image conveys so much – movement, style, attitude. So cool!

I also love how they cut out the background and sky and replaced it with the Tracker star logo. These days you could do that in about 5 seconds on the computer, but back then I think designs like this took more skill and creativity. The photo looks like it was likely taken at the Sacto Streetstyle contest in either 1985 or 1986. If I had time I’d look in the Thrasher archives and figure it out. I don’t, so the mystery will persist…

@theLoneSentry mentioned how much better old boards looked. Yeah, they did look better. For the most part skating looked better because of it. Sure, modern boards are more functional in some ways, but is that “better”? I’m not sure.

I have ridden the old GSD model, and while I have a lot of love for it, it is one of the worst boards I’ve ever ridden. I mean horrible. Still, I’d love to ride one right now, which makes no sense but we humans are not entirely logical beings.

Allen - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-03-05T18:03:29.092Z

If you skate the way I do, the Edge skatepark in Allen, Texas, is still the best park in the DFW area.

By “the way I do” I mean – well – all the kinds of things you see me doing on this blog. The flow area is gigantic, with various flat banks and round wall. There’s a big flat area at one end. The last few times I’ve been there has not been much of a crowd, which is really nice. I need to start going up there once a week on a weekday night to get some rolling in.

On The Past Participle - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-03-05T16:32:04.600Z

About 10 years ago I met @TheLoneSentry. Trying to remember. I met him online first, then finally in-person at Stupidfest in Austin. Pretty sure that’s how it went.

His name is Chris.

Anyway, through NeverWas Skateboarding I met Chris and lot of other smart, cool, inspiring skaters. You can explore the NeverWas site to figure out what it is.

Shortly after I met him Chris started an instagram account called The Past Participle. For reasons that will become obvious the account became very popular very quickly. It’s become so popular that even Tony Hawk and Thrasher became aware of it.

This morning Chris posted this link to a private NeverWas Discord server for the rest of us to see - a video about The Past Participle. Apparently this video was supposed to “go live” or “drop” or whatever on Thrasher’s website, but for some reason it never has. As has been said, it is kind of appropriate that this video, about a photo project about the “nobodies” of skateboarding, was not published. Honestly, it kinda makes it better.

The video is an interview with Chris about that project. I’ll not explain it. Just watch the video, and you’ll understand The Past Participle and the rest of this post.

I’m just going to go through the video and make some comments…

the best photos of Tony Hawk are the ones where he is just skating some spot, like a curb or a bank, just like the ones on The Past Participle, and I love that Tony loves the account. He’s the real deal.
Chris thinks of it as a collectively run project - it is not about him - which is why people instinctively love it
Chris talks about the contrast between the skate mags and and an actual skater’s reality. I love having smart friends.
Chris and some other guys and I talk a lot about the problems of social media and ownership of content, but this is really social media at its highest and best use, because he doesn’t own the content, it is the community. It couldn’t have happened any other way.
The shots of entire little skate crews – weirdly I never had this. When these kids were doing their thing I was already 22 years old. I was in college. I had pretty much two friends I skated with, and they were good times. Really good. But when I was that age of most of these crews I was pretty much the only serious skater at my schools. When the boom hit in 84 or 85, these kinds of guys were like my little brothers. Still are.
The stuff about photos of people who have committed suicide or OD’ed or whatever - heavy. So heavy. And it particularly heavy that their friends chose to honor them by submitting a skate pic. It speaks to how important skating was in their lives.
As a skater from the generation before most of these guys, my parents were “tolerators”.
“These photos remind me of the best time I had in my life”. Gut-wrenching. Speaks for itself.
I’m glad they got some footage of Chris skating in there. He still rips, and he is the real-fucking-deal. He’ll shovel snow off the ramps at his little skatepark, skate in a freezing ice-box parking garage, whatever.
Comments about skateboarding needed a place for the outsiders. Honestly, that should be the main place, and when all the bullshit dies away it will remain.

It’s hard to watch this not consider the “best times” of my life especially with regard to skateboarding, especially since I feel like my “best times” were not the same as most of those on the account or in the video.

Skating with my friends Mike, Chris, and Harry while in college
Skating with my friend Dale back then and today
Skating in front of the gym during my last summer in college, and my future wife (I had no idea!) would come sit on the steps and watch and talk to me. It was quiet on campus that summer.
Skating spots in Austin with Jack, Jim, and Bosco
The first England to Germany road trip with the English lads to go to the Paderborn Freestyle Contest at age 50
The Stelmo session the night before the first StupidFest with Brian, Chris, Jason, Lew, and whoever else was there

The list could go on. What pleases me is that it’s still growing. Just keep skating and the good times continue.

Post on b.loftin2 skateboarding - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-03-02T17:49:03.359Z

New setup.

Post on b.loftin2 skateboarding - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-02-28T03:22:41.790Z

A trick I came up with in college. Back before any did tricks off the nose.

Post on Chris Battle - Chris Battle

2025-02-24T16:32:38.677Z

I’m back to Micro-Land.

Post on b.loftin2 skateboarding - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-02-20T03:37:41.722Z

Watching a documentary on PBS called “Plunderer”, about a nazi art plunderer. Fucking scumbags.

Spot Death Part 6: Rurah Elementary - Brian Neverwas

2025-02-20T01:42:35.825Z

Sometimes, skateboarding spots aren't for everyone. We are a peculiar bunch. Some will never leave the confines of a skatepark. Others won't be caught dead in one. Where I grew up, the idea of not wanting to skate a spot was so foreign because spots were so hard to find, keep, and maintain. Many were here today and gone tomorrow. Some were instant kickouts. Still, even with those difficulties, some spots just soft of languished. One such spot was John Rurah Elementary in Greektown, just east of where I lived.

Rurah was "my" spot. It was where I would go when I wanted to skate alone. If I had my crew with me, it took a lot of cajoling and begging to get them to go with me. They, by and large, hated it. It was rough. It was far. It was uphill. Those things aside, I adored it. It was as close to a California-style schoolyard as one could get in Baltimore outside of Riverside Elementary that was far and offered only a quick session before Johnny Law would make an appearance.

Rurah had three skateable areas. The first was the front playground with a flatbar for boardslides and grinds if I was feeling confident. The second area were two sets of stairs. One was a four set, the other was a five set with a railing. I never had railings on lock but I did land a few at that spot. The last spot was my favorite. The main schoolyard had a U-shaped bank with two hips and two bowled corners. Had the asphalt been smoother, it would have beed the most popular spot in town for sure. Instead, it was sandpaper rough and rode a little uphill. You had to push to get at it..

Exhibit A, the flatbar and the main schoolyard:

I would go to this spot weekly for years and, especially in my underground years from about 1995 - 2006, it was like home to me. I even rented an apartment a block away from the school for a few months before I bought my house just so I could skate there more.

The spot died in the winter of 2008. They ripped out the banks to place temporary trailers for extra cllassroom space as the neighborhood became more desirable. By 2015, the area was unrecognizable and covered in grass. Today, it is under the new school building as shown below.

If there was a spot long lost that I would like to get one last session at, it would have been this spot. I wish more people would have enjoyed it like I did. Then again, part of the joy of it was that it was mine. I don't regret my time there. I just regret that that time has passed.

What's My Best Trick? - The Twilight Sessions: Skateboarding (and Life) Over 50

2025-02-20T00:12:35.562Z

Today the 50mph winds finally died down. Temps were in the mid to upper 20s. The sun was out. This meant it felt surprisingly *warm* outside. I skated the (shoveled out) ramp for about two hours. It was the longest session I've had on this ramp (or any "bigger" ramp...4' or taller) in quite sometime. About 90 min, I started to notice my lower back and left knee were getting sore...from all the run-outs when bailing tricks (can't knee slide out of everything). I wanted to keep skating, but I've been down this rode before, and it leads to pulled muscles, injury, etc. Better to end it before things get worse (and assure that I'll be able to skate tomorrow). As I was packing up all my stuff, I had a little epiphany. My best trick of the day? Knowing when to stop.

Somewhere in the middle of 360 boardslide.

Post on b.loftin2 skateboarding - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-02-19T22:57:29.048Z

It’s kind of astonishing how many businesses are still on Twitter. Seriously? Twitter? Good grief.

Returning to the Source: A "Polarizing" Experiment in Existential Archeology - The Twilight Sessions: Skateboarding (and Life) Over 50

2025-02-17T17:17:36.589Z

My friend Pete has been posting a ton of “Polarizer” clips recently on Instagram. For those who may not know, “Polarizer” is a term coined by Neil Blender and Steve Claar for what are essentially modern takes on 1960s skateboard designs. Apparently, Blender started making them, and when Claar saw it he said, “…call that a polarizer because people are either going to like it or hate it.” Hence, the name was born.

Like anything with skateboards, there are lots of different variants. I won’t go into all the nuances, but here is a decent primer.

Well, just this week I got my first “Polarizer.” Why? Well, fun, mostly. Pete’s clips (mentioned above) have been quite inspiring. Also, the two photos I mentioned in my previous post just really grabbed on some deep existential level. When I see something that looks like fun, I instantly think, “I want in on that!” At this stage of life, I think I am more “ready” to understand, embrace, grapple, and appreciate the purity of what once was, before it became the skateboarding we know today. My first skateboard in the early to mid 1980s was not too different from a 1960s board, or a modern Polarizer. To that end, I consider this a Polarizing project into experimental existential archeology. This is a photo of my very first skateboard (not my actual board, but same model).

My Polarizer set-up is a pretty straight-forward one from The HeatedWheel (Blender’s company). To what extent will I be “polarized” by this thing? Remains to be seen. Boston is a virtual Hoth landscape at the moment (with a “large” storm predicted later this week, too). So, it might be a bit before I really get to tap into this project. Here is my Polarizer.

More from the Buda Bank - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-02-09T02:53:04.854Z

Dale and I do actually do tricks other than Rock n Rolls, but his are so nice I always like the pics. However, Dale hates these messy, blurry shots. I actually love them. We shot these with an iPhone with a wide-angle attachment, thus the lens flares. I dig ‘em.

Post on b.loftin2 skateboarding - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-02-09T02:53:04.842Z

Backside 180 slide to fakie 720 spin at the good old Glenville ditch.

Post on b.loftin2 skateboarding - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-02-09T02:32:52.556Z

My friend Simon took this shot at the first Paderborn Freestyle contest I went to in 2015. He, Tony Gale, and a bunch of other Brits and I drove to Germany for the contest. I was certainly one of greatest experience of my life in skateboarding. I love those guys.

Shitty Old Camera - b.loftin2 skateboarding

2025-02-07T18:42:33.828Z

My friend Dale and I have, for quite a few years, fiddled around with a skateboarding media project called “the Small Arts.” It’s about skating the way we do it. Skateboarding at the human scale. Curbs, ditches, banked walls, flat, etc. It’s not about handrails, giant gaps, and other such aggro stuff. It’s also about paying attention to the small details of skateboarding. Awareness of the nuances of style.

Anyway, a few years ago we were out skating this odd little spot. It’s a bank that is only really much of a bank at one end, with a curb along the top. As with most such spots, it’s behind a building in a light-industrial area. As skateboarders of advanced-middle-age/early-senior-citizenship, we still drive around looking for stuff like this.

I have this old camera. It’s a Canon SD1100 IS. It was my wife’s, but she replaced it and it was passed down to me, haha. I’m always happy with such a pass-down acquisition, because taking things like cameras out skateboarding is pretty rough on them. As you can see, this 2008 camera is pretty beat to shit. But it still works!

So here are a couple of shots. They were originally color, of course, but I used Pixelmator to do some “art” on them.

First is Dale, doing a Rock ‘n’ Roll. He has such great style. I played with the contrast and whatnot to bring out the gnarliness of the spot.

And next is me, also doing a Rock ‘n’ Roll. Honestly the run up to the bank is pretty chunked-out, and the surface of the bank is really shitty. We love spots like this, but you don’t just flow up to them smoothly. Again, I played with contract to show how rough the spot is, and I played with the coloration too.

I have a real attachment to this old camera. It is “only” 8 megapixels." Video is only 640 x 480 pixels. hahahaha. No hi-def here! Does it really matter? I don’t think so.

I’m thinking about a new skateboarding photo project called “Shitty Old Camera” in which I use only this little monster to take images and video.

A Quieter Way to Think - Brian Neverwas

2025-02-07T16:52:36.795Z

(With apologies to the US being on fire at the moment, this is not a political post)

One thing I have noticed since leaving the big media platforms is just how little I miss the overstimulation. I have reached a stasis point in my online consumption that is healthy and meaningful for the first time in ages. My feeds are now very curated and feel much l did back in the early 2000s when I spent a lot of my time in local Blog circles. For instance, no matter how much I tried on Instagram to see nothing but skateboarding, the algorithm insisted that I was a fourteen-year old who wanted to see nothing but bikini models and those influencers who have facial hair that looks like bank robber Lego minifigures. For every skateboarding post, there would be six “content creators” (oh, how I hate that term) telling me that I had to eat an all meat diet and get rich trying.

Pixelfed simply shows me pictures that my friends post and nothing more unless I explicitly look for it. That’s it. No more, no less.

I can say the same for Mastodon. I run my own instance and added a relay to it not to get more content but to have a better chance at seeing GOOD content. If I want, I just switch to the Live Feed function and, guess what? Nothing but the people I follow. No weird misogynists. No rap dudes rubbing their hands together. No AI generated porn bots. Just some old guys who skateboard, a few science fiction writers, bloggers I have followed for 25 years, and the occasional weird comic.

I still have a pretty active presence on Reddit but I heavily curate my feed. I don’t sort by “new”. I avoid the front page. I sub to architecture, mid-century design, skateboarding, Fediverse, and a few local subreddits for where I live, have lived, or want to live. That’s it.

As far as the old Facebook group? Well, you can read about that in past posts. I can leave the feeling of where we are now to my simplicity guru, Lord Bob, who said recently in a thread about how the transition is going:

"I have to say that after the last few weeks of having our group here on *PLATFORM*, I think the number of conversations, the variety, and activity level has improved dramatically. Having the different channels is nice. It's not quite as threaded as one of the old message forums was, but at least you can find conversations you're looking for more easily."

The possibilities of a curated web experience free of what the Tech Bros decide you can see takes us back to a simple space where the web is actually useful again. Sure, there is a certain degree of doomscrolling on places like BlueSky and rightfully so considering gestures at everything, but that is within your control as well. Here is what has worked for me:

Follow people that matter, not things. Skip following businesses, influencers, content-driven places.
Looks for experts. Look for helpers/mutual aid.
Use Federated software or host your own instances.
Circle wagons with your friends. You are your best communities. Vet outsiders. Protect your spaces.
Opt out of as much stuff as you can. Unsubscribe. Scrub your real name from as many places as possible.
Curate your online world in bigger public communities like Reddit. Sub to stuff that interests you and skip the noise.
Take a lot of time offline to re-engage with your interests. Read, write, create more than you consume.

The momentum is shifting. What we do online can carry into the real world and an educated, free from propaganda and consumerism population is ungovernable. Be that.