Tag: Chris Haslam

“How does it feel to be so well connected that you can go to any location in the world and be at home?”

Those were the opening words of our feature about Sara Parson-Texas and like we said in that feature Sara is still just “right around the corner”, surrounded by her friends and family.

So being that she is the family type, we started thinking and that culminated into one night at the infamous Black Lodge Bar where we asked Sara if she would like to be a member of a new family, our family and she did, she joined with a hug and a big smile!

So without further ado, we present to you the first column created by one of our favorite people Sara Parson Texas!

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For the people that don’t speak French:

A.M.V.H – Alfred de Musset

In this world, we must love many things
To know, in the end, what one loves best,
Candy, the Ocean, gambling, the azure of the skies,
Women, horses, laurels and roses.

We must trample barely bloomed flowers;
We must cry a lot, say a lot of farewells
Then the heart perceives that it has become old,
And the effect that goes away reveals to us the causes.

Of these fleeting possessions, only half tasted,
The best that remains is an old friend:
We quarrel, we avoid each other. Chance brings us back together.
We come close, we smile, the hand touches the hand,
And we remember that we used to walk together, That the soul is immortal, and yesterday is tomorrow.

Like the growth of Chris Haslam’s beard the Globe team is not about to slow down! Louie Barletta is always on point and his finger flip alone definitely makes it worth the time it takes to watch the Globe summer 16 team edit also starring Mark Appleyard, Ryan Decenzo, David Gonzalez, Chris Haslam and Paul Hart.

Canada, Oh Canada, why are you so special? And why RDS FSU (Red Dragon Fuck Shit Up) is a video for the ages…

For some reason Canada and Canadians for the longest of times never got the shine they deserved. I mean, obviously we are all very happy that Canada supplies us with their Canadian maple, so we can buy and skate fresh seven-plied pieces of wood.

At the same time, these days Canadians are often on the butt end of the joke. Now this joking about the great country above the USA is something that I as a European just might not fully understand. Sure, Canadian skaters are known for being into some things that were kind of special or weird, things like: a fondness of really long white T-shirts, fitted hats, super tech skating and stink-leg tre flips. But at the same time, Canada produced amazing skaters like Rick Howard, Mark Appleyard, Keegan Sauder, Wade Desarmo and only recently Bobby De Keyzer.

Canada also has a great history when it comes to making skateboard videos. The Dime MTL Crew has been putting out great material and before that, Green Apple made Supper’s Ready and Video X, which inspired Peter Sidlaukas to create the Bronze 56K videos. But still, I feel we often forget one of the greatest skate videos to ever come out of Canada: The Red Dragons 2002 release RDS FSU. So let’s talk about this classic, and why you should care about it as well.

Let’s start at the beginning. Some of you might be familiar with Red Dragon, a brand that has not changed its image or clothes one bit since it first came on the scene. Big red logo shirts, board shorts and a bro-tastic party atmosphere are still very much at the heart of the company’s products and image. You could argue that the Red Dragons might not move in-sync with the current time, but you could also argue that they are staying true to what they know and love.  

I first came into contact with this Canadian phenomenon through their first video, RDS FSU. Some of you might not have had the pleasure to watch this video – you can find it below – so I will provide you with a little taste. The video starts of with the typical epic slow motion intro, but instead of showing you the classic Zero-esque skateboard hero, we see a couple of rollerbladers getting ready to skate a very big double set. They are rolling up to the set and are about to try something gnarly, as the shot fades into showing the rollerblader trying a backside 180 air. The moment the blader slams his head into the concrete, the music instantly changes to Kernkraft 400’s “Zombie Nation” and the Red Dragon party starts.
 
To me, this is the perfect opener to a great skateboard video. First part belongs to Ryan Smith who is skating to Guns N’Roses, a great song. After Ryan’s part ends, the video moves into Moses Itkonen’s part. Moses is a scary-looking fellow who likes to fuck with anybody who’s trying to ruin a good skate session, but besides being quite the alpha male Moses is a very esteemed performer of the noseslide. If Quartersnacks had been around in 2002, Moses would have been a contender for their Noseslider of the Year award.

Now let’s fast-forward to Rob Sluggo Boyce’s part: Sluggo is a muscular gymnast, snowboarder, break dancer, and vert skater who’s intro consists of a phone call from the filmer announcing that they edited his part to the Backstreet Boys. Boyce’s answer is short: “If you edit my part to the fucking Backstreet Boys, you are fucking dead!” During this phone call they show images of a shirtless Sluggo flexing topless. Then the music fades in: Backstreet’s back alright! This is one of the greatest parts by a vert skater, on top of that, it is possibly the best part in the video. The first time I saw his section I had to rewind my VHS tape multiple times to finally come to the conclusion that he did a backflip to fakie on vert!
 
Whilst Red Dragon is a clothing brand, the Red Dragons started out as a crew, the evolution from crew to brand often brings about a change in the vibe a brand has, RDS FSU however shows this crew type of feeling that many skaters know and love. Before Skatemafia had us throwing up gang signs, we had skaters like Colin McKay throwing up the Red Dragon horns. When I recently met former Red Dragon team member Chris Haslam, he told me a remarkable story: Chris was visiting a gallery opening where he met a deaf person, the guy ended up showing Chris some sign language, as it turns out the hand sign for skateboarding looks almost exactly like the Red Dragon hand sign.

Now, of course we can’t be sure what the origins of this are, but I choose to believe that the influence of the Red Dragons made it all the way into the sign language.

As one major takeaway from reading this article, the sign for skateboarding is quite easy to learn:

1. Fold both hands into the Red Dragon horns position; basically a “peace” sign with crooked fingers.

2. Lower your arms till you are at stomach height.

3. Imagine your hands now symbolizing both the trucks on a skateboard.

And the second takeaway of this article, is check out RDS FSU. The video also shows some of the skaters’ struggles and Canadian pride, whilst at the same time making fun of themselves. I’m not going to summarize the whole video for you because that would defeat the purpose of you actually checking it out.. Go see it, RDS FSU is truly a video for the ages!

A little rumor, when I recently met up with Red Dragon Ryan Decenzo he told me about his wish to make a new RDS FSU video so we might see another Canadian classic soon!

by Roland Hoogwater
Photo: Danny Sommerfeld

This summer the GLOBE skate team blazed through five European countries and multiple cities for their EU Trippin Tour. Seems like Mark Appleyard, David Gonzalez, Rodney Mullen, Louie Barletta, Ryan Decenzo, Chris Haslam, Paul Hart, Anton Myhrvold, Fries Taillieu, Charles Collet, and Phillip Schuster had a good time – check out their video recap below:

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Originally the plan was just to do a Top 10 of all Chris’ NBDs but we ended up talking for a long time afterwards. The topics we touched on are skateboard history, paying homage to unsung heroes and Cheese & Crackers 2. Enjoy!

Chris, we were just talking about the NBDs and I noticed that you often refer to other people’s skating.
Yeah well for instance when we are talking about flat ground I feel like I really can’t take any credit at all, most of my flip tricks come from me watching old videos like “The deal is dead” (1992) which features skaters like Julio De La Cruz who where really pushing the limits of what could be done on flat ground.

All those casper under flip type of tricks… I saw him pressure flip into it and I just tweaked it to where I would do the same trick but with a kickflip instead of a pressure flip. A lot of my tricks are not really NBDs – it’s often more about pushing the trick obstacle wise, I found a lot of tricks in old videos and magazines that had been forgotten about. I wanted to bring those tricks back and make them relevant again in today’s skating, at the same time I am not one to take credit for that I definitely want people to know where I got the inspiration for my skating from.

Kids often give me credit for inventing a trick even though I saw that trick in a video from the nineties. Often people have no idea of what kind of crazy tricks have been done. Nowadays a lot of kids are into beanplants, slappies and no-complys, but do they know Ray Barbee?

Maybe they saw his tricks in the Vans video and googled his name, but I don’t think a lot kids have watched a full Ray Barbee part.
Dude Ray Barbee! There really are a lot of kids out there that don’t know skate history. I really wish more kids would watch old Powell-Peralta videos. To a lot of guys those are like the videos and for kids now a nineties setup with a big board and 42 inch wheels is another world. And let’s not forget people where skating on bricks at EMB with those small things. For me, dudes like Brian Lotti and Ocean Howell make it hard for me to claim a trick because they did so much. If it happens for somebody like Matt Bennett (Bennett Grind) or Donny Barley (Barley Grind) they are lucky because they did tricks that people thought sucked and where able to make them cool and because of that it became their signature move. I remember when Backside Overcrooks where called Gersh Grinds because Gershon Mosely would always do them… I recently found out that before Gershon did them, the trick had somebody else’s name so that stuff changes as well.

It’s funny you mentioned Gershon because I just recently re-watched his part in Transworld’s “The Reason” and I remember first watching it and being like whatever, but when I re-watched his part and saw how powerful he skates…
I can remember watching his parts in those old Blind videos, so when I first went to L.A. I went to a couple of the spots he skated, they were insane! And Gershon got almost no credit for skating those spots without any wax, he never used any wax! He would go to the crustiest ledge and go super fast and crooked grind the ledge for like 5 centimeter and roll away, such a sick skater!

I remember going out to Prague and Gershon was there, we were partying and he drank absinthe the entire night. I fell asleep around 4 o’clock and when I woke up and went to the park and he was already there sweating, no sleep, still drunk and ripping so hard. I remember i thought: Dude, what are you doing – it’s 7 o’clock in the morning.

The only thing people remember is the sweat.
He’s had that for years! (laughs)

I wanted to ask you about the Red Dragons, you had a couple of tricks in RDS FSU 2002. Looking back, i must admit, that it is a great skate video.
Yeah, that was a package deal through centre distibution which was owned by Rob (Sluggo) Boyce and Colin Mckay. I was getting flowed DC and World Industries through them and they also did the distribution for Red Dragon apparel, so I had the whole package. But I was never really part of that scene. I was often filming by myself and sending the footage over to them, I do remember getting the medallion… I think I had a couple of photos with that thing on, but I don’t remember wearing that thing that often.

After RDS/FSU 2002 Red Dragon asked me to be in their next video Skateboard Party, so the plan was to rent a party boat and they wanted me to ask my sponsors for about 2000 dollars to rent it. I told them I don’t drink, I don’t smoke weed or do drugs but they still wanted the money… I said sorry dudes but this is not my scene anymore, so I quit all my sponsors and came over to Dwindle. From that point things started to happen for me rather quickly, they turned me AM after about 6 month and pro after about 3 years which was pretty quick for back then.

I went Pro just after my Round 3 part, which was kind of funny… I had changed so much from my Deca days that kids didn’t recognize me and thought of me as a newcomer, so I got a fresh start. And because the Almost video was presented as Rodney VS Daewon Round 3 it was promoted so well. After that video people started to pay a lot more attention to my skating. So in a strange way, me finding my style really benefited me as a professional skater.

After your Almost Round 3 part you and Daewon made “Cheese and Crackers”, which became pretty popular… I remember they organized a premiere at my local skatepark and after the video people where literally running upstairs to skate the miniramp.
Well, Daewon and me where skating together a lot back then. So we would skate this ramp a lot, but weren’t really thinking about making anything. I remember the Plan B miniramp section in “Questionable” being one of the last sections in a video. We watched that one a lot. Then Volcom came out with that miniramp part in “Chichagof” and it had such a good vibe with the ramp in the woods. So because me and Daewon are really into technical skating, we would analyze the part according to the level of the tricks.

So it sparked the idea to make a miniramp video but because we would make it the look and feel would end up so different. So we went to discuss our idea with Almost and they said cool! But halfway in they all of a sudden put out a big ad promoting the video with our names on it fuck! Now the video had to be good it because if it sucked it had ours names on it. That was the moment we stepped it up, I was really into building and skating the weird stuff which for some reason was just laying around in that warehouse. I was building so much stuff, some things would take me four hours to build and when it was finished I couldn’t even skate it.

So we where filming and I remember leaving for a trip and when I came back I saw all the crazy tech stuff Daewon was doing. I wasn’t about to let Daewon school me so, I came up with all these weird technical tricks like blunt triple flip.

A funny side note is that the video was supposed to be called Peanut butter & Jelly, we shot the intro with Reda making a sandwich and he would spill milk over the table and it would spell out Peanut butter & Jelly. But right after we shot that a snowboard brand organized a rail contest that was named the peanut butter & rail jam and we were so bummed, that we had to changed the name.

In your Epicly Later’d you talked about wanting to do another Cheese & Crackers type video… Is that something you are working on?
Well, Almost wanted to do a sequel but Daewon and me didn’t want to do another one because it wouldn’t have that spontaneous fun feeling to it. Some things can’t be forced but if something would present itself I feel it could happen.

Thanks to Chris Haslam and the friendly people at Globe for making this interview happen.

Words & Photos: Roland Hoogwater

The day we got an invitation to go on tour for a day with Globe we started thinking: what should we do with this and how? The thing is we see a lot of tours pass through both this city, and possibly your city. Most of us have read a lot of tour articles, and if you are reading this you probably did too. I could write a tour article for you guys and talk about that Rodney Mullen is a nice guy and as popular as ever or that Chris Haslam shut down the demo we had in the Titus bowl, but instead of doing that I chose to do something else.

I thought it would be interesting to hang out with the people that are skating the tour, documenting the tour and running the tour. So when i got a message from Josh (one of the guys behind the scene’s at globe) to meet up with them at the plus hotel at Warschauer platz I said ill be there! Globe rented some taxi vans for the afternoon, we ended up not needing any vans to get to the spot (we just skated the Dog Shit DYI just around to corner from the hotel) but all tour stories take place in a van and so did this tour for about 5 minutes, adding to that all good tours have a soundtrack and we had Paul Hart playing tunes on his fanny pack boombox. DJ Hart played a very short but eclectic mix of tunes ranging from E40’s Choices to Montell Jordan’s This is how we do it! But we always came back to Toto’s Africa which was definitely the song of the day as Paul later stated: I can’t believe last night’s bartender got mad at me for playing this tune!”

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So to be honest I had never been on an actual skate tour before, looking back I was pretty nervous I smoked about 12 cigarets and I normally don’t even have a pack on me.
I just started working as the intern at PLACE and I did not know what to expect so I decided to it would be interesting to try something other then just a tour article, I went out kept my ears open and collected some quote’s from the people on the tour.

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“Internet sucks in this country” – Chris, the Globe TM

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“Is it Kunst?” – Mike O’Meally to Daniel Pannemann

“So Fucking Beautiful” – Chris Haslam about O’Meally’s FS Rock

schuster-water

Louie-fall

“I’m just drawn to this fucking dirt dude!” – Louie Barletta about skating at the Dog shit

“God, I’m about to cry!” – Louie Barletta skating at the Dog Shit Spot

“Fuck Chuck! Where is Chuck right now?” – Louie Barletta still skating at the Dog Shit Spot

“We need some Chuck right now!” – The filmer shooting one back at Louie

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“When you are sitting on it that long it feels like you’re getting lunch…” – Mark Appleyard to Louie Barletta

Sock-charles

“O’meally is getting an Instagram clip today!” – The filmer getting all excited

Gonzales

“Damn, I cut my ass cheek so bad in the shower this morning!” – Paul Hart.

“Damn, tour life got no patterns at all, no sleeping patterns, no eating patterns, no toilet patterns, just shitty patterns!” – Ryan Decenzo.

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Last week I had the chance to meet Chris Haslam who is currently on a Globe tour through Europe. I sat down with Chris after the session had ended and asked him to name his top ten tricks that he invented. He replied by saying that one can never be sure that a trick hasn’t been done before, so instead he gave me ten tricks he didn’t see anybody do before he did them.

1.
First one that comes to mind is the one foot Frontboard shove-it out. I did this trick in my Almost Round 3 part. I saw Chris Cole do the one foot Frontboard on a flatbar and I thought it looked cool, so I went to the skatepark and learned the trick on the flatbar first. So then I wanted to bring the trick to a bigger obstacle, I went to a handrail and I just added the shove-it to the trick.

2/3/4
The next couple of tricks that come to my mind are the Frontboard hardflip out, Frontboard 360 Flip out and Frontboard Nollie BS Flip out, the first two where in my Almost Round 3 part and the last one was in my Globe United by Faith part, all filmed on the same rail.

5.
Crooked to Backlip Flip out, I made that trick for my DECA part. I don’t know if kids will recognize it’s me but it is.

6.
Number six would be the SW Heelflip wheelie facing backwards. I did the trick and tried to shoot a sequence of this. I was trying for hours but I couldn’t make the trick again. Fun fact: Danny Gonzales actually told me not to do this trick because he was working on the same thing…

7.
Bigspinflip Frontboard on a handrail – this was just before Bastien Salabanzi came up and started doing this trick on the sickest shit. I can’t be sure I was the first though because I was in Canada and the internet hadn’t morphed into what it is now. Shot for a Tensor ad that could not be recovered from the internets archives.

8.
I guess I have to explain a little bit about where the idea came from, I still watch a lot of old videos. They get me hyped to try new stuff – one of my favorite skaters is Julio De La Cruz and in this old New Deal video he basically displays all of his crazy flat ground combos. So for my Transworld Pro Spotlight I took his ideas of caspers and created my own version, the Varialflip back foot casper which was my ender for this particular part.

9.
I guess the next one would be the BS Boardslide FS Flip out I did on the L.A. High rail. I guess a lot of my NBD’s have to do with flipping out of a Boardslide related trick (laughs).

10.
I obviously saw the darkslide before on other obstacles like ledges and rails, and I even saw the stall on a quarterpipe before, but I had seen never anybody do a darkslide on tranny so I was pretty stoked that I did one for my Almost 5 incher part:

by Roland Hoogwater

Globe sends its team to Europe’s major cities this July for the #GLOBEEUTRIPPIN‬ Tour. Mark Appleyard, David Gonzalez, Rodney Mullen, Louie Barletta, Ryan Decenzo, Chris Haslam, Paul Hart, Anton Myhrvold, Philipp Schuster, Fries Taillieu and Charles Collet will join the trip – finest skateboarding guaranteed. Check out the Facebook Event for more information and the trailer as well:

Globe-EU-trippin-tour

#GLOBEEUTRIPPIN‬

Du willst den Pros ganz nah sein? Ganz einfach: Fahr zum nächsten großen Contest, wander nach Kalifornien aus oder stalk einfach bei Instagram – ist günstiger und überall möglich. Wir sind unseren Instagram Stream mal durchgegangen und haben 10 Skater rausgepickt, denen man unbedingt folgen sollte. Hier sind unsere Favoriten fein säuberlich aufgelistet – da sollen für jeden etwas dabei sein!


1. Arto Saari / @artofoto
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #newbalance #sunset #motorcycles


2. Jereme Rogers / @jeremerogers
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #girls #party #cars


3. Lucas Puig / @lucaspuig
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #dog #clips #guccit


4. Ryan Lay / @ryan_lay
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #skateboarding #huf #tbt


5. Brandon Biebel / @bbiebel
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #golf #basketball #muscles


6. Chris Haslam / @waywardnephew
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #hair #random #dogs


7. Pontus Alv / @polarskateco
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #wallrides #emoticons #art


8. Jerry Hsu / @internetfamous
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #travel #glasses #nazigold


9. Chad Muska / @themuska
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #graffiti #selfies #art


10. Josh Kalis / @dgkalis
Das bekommt ihr zu sehen: #cash #diamonds #rings

Folgt PLACE auf Instagram!

Ja, da wird doch glatt der Hund in der Pfanne verrückt. Die Kläffer sind los und das auch noch zum Wochenende. Ein paar von den Streunern konnten wir für euch einfangen, und in kleine, verzehrfreundliche Häppchen verpacken. Süß-sauer Soße inklusive!

Den Anfang macht Herm-Dawg und ein Clip, welcher die neuen Shake-Junt Bolts beim Kickflip über ein Motorrad zeigt.

Es gibt extra-Footage und 2nd Angles aus dem neuen Bones Video New Ground.

Daniel Shimizu und Alex Schmidt haben sich auf einen Tee getroffen und der im Clip vorhandene Style, der Protagonisten, ist dann wohl der Sahneersatz, für den dazugehörigen Kuchen.

Shawn Hale ist Amateur auf Independent und hat diesen schönen Part für Strange Notes.

Dog ist nicht das neue Girl und Chocolate Video, sondern ein Video von einem Fan, der ganz viel Zeit hat und aus all der Bonusfootage, der vergangenen Jahre, ein Video zusammen geschnitten hat. Mit Erik Koston, Sean Malto, Brian Anderson, Marc Johnson und deinen anderen Lieblingsskaterboys.
Das Wochenende ist damit eröffnet.

Das neue Video “New Ground” von Bones Wheels ist seit heute online, doch die GEMA macht uns mal wieder einen Strich durch die Rechnung, um dieses in der Tube in Full Length zu schauen. Macht aber nichts, hier haben wir für euch den Download-Link, in knusprig und HD mit Höllen-Line Up.