Trevor mentioned these little metal beasts in a previous post, but I wanted to take the time to give them their own mention as well. I picked up a set of RocknRon’s Stage 3 Ballistech Missiles to pair with my Rainskates Killer Bees and have found an unwieldy and powerful adversary for pool riding. Between the hard grippyness of the Rainskates and RocknRon’s praeter natural spin cycle on the Ballistech’s I’m getting twice the return on my pool carving with about a third of the effort.

RocknRon is apparently a NASA bearing engineer who runs a small, but active sex & death cult in the jungles of Malaysia and utilizes both the space age technology he has honed at NASA and dark secrets of the physical world he has been offered in drug induced visions after being worked into a sexual frenzy by one of his three pet pumas that he lives with in his thatch hut. After shaking a bogus murder rap thrown at him by local authorities in the early ’90s he swore himself to a life of the ascetic pursuit of precision and perversion by way of skateboarding and rocket science and only surfaces for a short time annually when a new bearing or sick fucking wheel has been completed and is ready for the public.

Seriously, this is wizardry at it’s darkest and most effective.

We met the nice guys from Destihl at the Beer Hoptacular in Chicago back in June. They were one of the lone stand outs at that event, both in their seeming genuine enjoyment of their hobby cum job and also in their beer – they offered the only sour at the event and, sour or not, it stood head and shoulders above everyone else’s phoned in contributions.

So you could imagine my excitement when I got news from their facebook page that Destihl is hosting an Oktoberfest at their brewpub in Normal, Illinois September 25th. They’re promising some suckling pig, fresh brewed Marzen, and a bavarian influenced menu. Willie and I have been threatening a bike trip down there since June and an early fall ride through middle Illinois’ shifting colors seems just what the doctor ordered.

Now I just gotta go get my freaking bike out of the shop.

I’ve spent a lovely night at home tonight, alone, dutifully exploring leisure in several formats.

My evening’s viewing schedule lead me to the very last feature in my instant que, Never Been Done. I didn’t really know what I was getting into with this documentary and I sure couldn’t remember ever adding it to my netflix que, but I was on a heavy roll of skateboard movies and Nic and Tristan Go Mega Dega didn’t look like it’d cut the mustard tonight. The synopsis for Never Been Done said it was about a pro skater, Jon Comer, who lost his leg when he was a kid and wound up pushing on to become a professional skater despite his disability.

I had just finished watching X-Games: The Movie, which, as far as gritty inspiration goes, was no slouch in it’s own right. Watching Danny Way break his foot slamming down on the coping only to return and finish the competition, dropping in to that monstrous 20+’ X-Games ramp and sticking a back flip followed by a mctwist, had me literally jumping out of my increasingly lazy seat and hollering at my tv like Elvis on a bennies bender.

The production value of Never Been Done had me paranoid for the first 30 minutes or so that this was going to turn into some kind of christian propaganda tract. I’m happy to report that there was no scripture passed. No scripture, just about 60 minutes of footage of a kid thick with heart who found a deep love for skateboarding.

The rub of Jon Comer, and Never Been Done, is that, while it is a story about overcoming adversity, the real story isn’t the disability, but the passion that Jon brings to his life. The impression is quite clear – he’s not a pro skater because of or in spite of his missing leg, it just happens that losing his leg was another topographical hiccup on Jon’s way to going pro. And that is what makes his story so compelling.

I’ll be the first to admit it, I’m a sucker for this kind of shit. If ‘carpe diem’ was a wet noodle and available for battery, I’d be convicted of being a fat, Italian mother at least twice a week. But, beyond my own obnoxious proclivities, this Jon Comer kid is worth your time. He’s different. He’s not like the others. You should watch him, feel alive, and then go outside and be alive yourself, dammit.

Oh and did I mention…

Here’s a review of the Deckcrafter’s Blood Diamond from our Senior Golden Years Correspondant, Trevor:

I’ve spent many, many years snowboarding and riding a 42inch longboard around town. When I decided to get back into pool/park skateboarding last year I didn’t know much about it at all anymore.

I started my newest venture down the proverbial skate path on a 8 1/2 inch Creature with 139 indy’s and 58mm OP’s, but I kept finding myself wanting more and more width and stance. I researched, and researched, finally widdling my choices down to a 9 5/8 inch Deckcrafter Blood Diamond. I picked the Blood Diamond because it’s get tons of concave, it’s nice and long (34 inches) and has 2 choices for wheel base (16 3/4 and 17 1/2), which I like because I ride with a real open stance, plus the extended wheel base is great for pool carving and taller folk such as myself.

The deck is gorgeous out of the box, they use something called monococh finishing which, to my best guess, is a real shiny poly coating. It’s been incredibly easy to get used to with plenty of tail and nose rise which helps me with my biggest problem, being able to feel my foot placement. The width helped my confidence in dropping in and getting up and hugging those walls. I’ve been riding the Blood Diamond for 1 month now and I don’t think I could be any happier. I added 169 indy’s to it along with the insanely fast and smooth Rock n Rons Ballistic bearings, and 64mm 99a Speed Demon Shit Fires hitting the pavement.

This is my ideal skateboard.

I made the whole purchase from Denver Skate Shop online and have been very impressed with the costumer service and shipping (he even sent me a mess of stickers and two badass shop t-shirts). When I had a problem with one of my bearings from Rock n Ron, Paul at Denver Skate Shop replaced it right away.

I will definitely be supporting this shop whenever possible.

Here’s the original Dogtown article from Craig Stecyk, “Aspects of the Downhill Slide”, archived along with the entire collection of Dogtown articles here.

With more than a little influence from Hunter Thompson and Lester Bangs, Stecyk built the skateboarding mythology you still see thriving today.

“Downhill somewhere past 45, the fine line fluctuates. It’s at a different place and time for each rider, but after 45, it becomes increasingly apparent. An alI- compassing awareness of an impending bad situation. Something you pay no attention to, yet somehow can’t ignore. An entity you don’t want to look at, yet have the urge to see. Downhill, one inch to either side or one inch past this intangible line and it suddenly becomes a physical presence. By the time you see this line, it’s all over anyway; the only thing left to do is reassess your mistakes, get down and try to find it again. The really interesting thing about the line is that it keeps increasing. A year ago, it was at 40 for most; now it’s beyond 50. People keep pushing this line, oblivious to all else, maybe someday soon they will tie it into knots.”

With the Dogtown articles Stecyk was able to organize the chaos around him into addictive and hilarious narratives, filled with colorful characters and caustic anti-authoritarians who, with Stecyk’s words and images, dared the devil in all of us.

Pelican is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary of deliciously textured instrumental metal this year with a box set, limited to 500 in a wooden box containing their 4 LPs and 3 EPs on Viva Hate Records. They’ll also be playing a show at the Bottom Lounge on October 23rd. And, yes, 3 Floyd’s is releasing an as yet unspecified doppelbock to help mark this momentous occasion.

It’s times like these that make a fellow proud to be alive.

I wanted to tip my proverbial hat to the Seattle Snowboard Connection for being some real nice folks running a great shop. We were both knuckleheads and packed our pads in our checked bags for our return flight meaning, once we were stranded in Seattle, we needed to pick up new gear in order to skate while stuck. The nice people at Seattle Snowboard Connection gave us 10% off our gear out of sympathy for being in a bummer situation.

Arrived last night from Seattle after an AA fare sale kept us stuck in the northwest a few days longer than planned. I’ve uploaded some photos from the trip to the facebook account, but who knows, I might even post something more extensive about it here.

The trip was amazing, we hit 6 parks – Woodland, Ballard Bowl, Burien, Renton, Milton, & Marginal Way – in 5 days and even managed to unsuccessfully fish Puget Sound as well. For some reason the kings weren’t biting for anybody, I guess that means I’ll have to go back when they are.

Our trip home found us in Phoenix for the night staying, literally, at the scene of probably the most heinous accident that happened in that town that night. We tried and failed to hit the Desert West Skate Park before our flight in the morning, but fucked up and went to 67th Street instead of 67th Avenue. Huge bummer as that place looks sick.

All in all the trip was an amazing success. Skating for sometimes up to 8 hours a day for 5 days in a row has really bumped both mine and Trevor’s skills up to the next level. We got schooled on some carving techniques and found a couple great parks for practicing technical stuff, the best probably being the Burien skate park.

Going into the trip I was viewing it as a kind of shamanic vision quest, a dance with old Mescalito, where I knew I would be pushed to some scary places, but eventually come out the other side with some new, hard won knowledge gained. Sitting on the other side of our trip it’s safe to say my presumptions were right. I can’t wait to Dawn Patrol tomorrow.

I didn’t realize people did this. Check out these maniacs.