Tag: Jerry Hsu

While the world seems so dark and unfair at the moment, Baker Skateboards is providing us with the very much needed aid to keep us from going insane. Kevin “Spanky” Long just dropped “Horses” – his new part and it is lovely, to say the least. Baker Boys are doing everything right, it seems.

After the success of the first movie and the leftover montage we now get “Boys Of Summer 2”. The film has the same humor, the same behind the scenes type of feel and big-name skating that the first one had.

Still, part 2 seems more serious, less of the cuff and more focussed, you win some you lose some, see for yourself.

Yesterday Magnus today Lotties, #trendwatch 2018 continuing the video after the credits have rolled.

Is this a homage to old Girl videos like Mouse and Yeah Right where the credits where a force to be reconned with?
Who knows, who cares, when we get new Reynolds, Hsu, Brady, Spanky, Allen and a “full part” by Dane Barker

Even in the sunny land of LA it occasionally happends that it is raining. So for the latest Crailtap Weakdays episode the crew had to take shelter at the Crail Park.

Featuring Jerry Hsu, Vincent Alvarez, Justin Eldridge, James Capps, Jon Sciano, Andrew Brophy, Braydon Szafranski, Rick Howard, Brandon Biebel and Chris Roberts.

With its ups and downs I’d say 2016 was all in all a solid year for Girl and Chocolate Skateboards. Some of the good moments of the past year are composed in this review edit.

Featuring Vincent Alvarez, Tyler Pacheco, Brandon Biebel, Simon Bannerot, James Capps, Jerry Hsu, Mike Carroll, Rick Howard, Rick McCrank, Justin Eldridge, Kenny Anderson, Andrew Brophy, Elijah Berle, Cory Kennedy, Chris Roberts, Jeron Wilson, Zach Saraceno, Griffin Gass and Johnny Jones.

Fly outs, lines, back-to-backs and good times. That’s what Girl and Chocolate Skateboards made of their day at Rosemead, California. To see Andrew Brophy in there as well is maybe not enough to claim that with Girl he might have found a new board sponsor after Cliché went out of business, but still interesting enough to start a rumor.

Featuring Tyler Pacheco, Vincent Alvarez, Simon Bannerot, James Capps, Andrew Brophy, Justin Eldridge, Rick Howart and Jerry Hsu.

As I was waiting in front of the HVW8 Gallery in Berlin to meet Jerry Hsu for the first time in my life, I again went over the notes I had written on a rumpled piece of paper. I knew I had to ask the right questions in order to get a deeper impression of who Jerry is and how his mind functions. It began to rain and I had to take cover inside of the gallery, where some of Jerry’s expressive photos had already been hung up on the white walls, while others still were packed in boxes. While looking around, I felt like the whole room was filled with love, while also charged with related but at the same time totally opposite feelings of sadness, and even hints of quiet pain. On one side of the gallery, an adorable naked girl was portrayed sitting in a tub, while on the other side, a man on a lonely street was captured throwing away a fresh bunch of flowers into a trash can while walking by. Somehow Jerry seems to have an eye for quiet and mundane scenes that, on a closer inspection, depict a much deeper theme than what might appear at first glance.

As it turned out, the photography already told me much about Jerry’s character. He is a friendly and calm type of person who was once described by Marc Johnson as “cool breeze”. What was struck me was the way in which he he answered my questions with focus, self-reflection, and consideration. I had initially planned to do an interview that would focus mostly on Jerry’s photography, but as soon as I touched upon the topic of skateboarding, the conversation was guided by Jerry’s excitement in this direction as well.

When we were done with the interview, Danny shot some portraits of Jerry with what seemed like an ancient Polaroid camera. Both photographers naturally started to do some kind of nerd-talk about all sorts of cameras, after which we embarked on a little walk through Berlin, following Jerry as he tried to shoot something with Danny’s Polaroid that we could use for this article. Unfortunately, the camera died after the first shot, but seeing how carefully Jerry scans his environment and searches for motives in order to capture an image was a one-of-a-kind experience.

Interview by Paul Röhrs
Photos by Danny Sommerfeld

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Having seen former exhibitions of yours, like “A Table For One,” in which you depict people eating alone, can you describe what your current exhibition, called “A Love Like Mine Is Hard To Find” is concerned with?

This exhibition is sort of a mixture of both my old and new photography, as it is a mixture of my street photography and the kind of the more intimate, sentimental portraits that I do like of my wife, friends and other people. You know, I tried to give the whole thing a certain mood, which is a more sentimental one. I would say it is kind of like a diary, which depicts just my daily life. But furthermore, I wanted to give it a feeling. So it is kind of somber and also kind of a little bit humorous, too, which both I feel like are themes that are in my photos a lot and I just wanted to do a broad sort of exhibition about those things.

If you don’t mind, I would like to get more into detail with this. Tell me some more about the work process. What I am especially interested in is how you decide the moment when you feel like you are finished? You know, because in my imagination, it is really difficult to find a point at which to end a project like this.

Well, for this kind of project I did not shoot anything new specifically for it. So all the photos already existed and I looked at a large selection and tried to find a story in the photos. I kind of looked at the space and just tried to fill it up with just the right amount, you know, like not too much and not too little. So the process of this show is more like in the theme, finding the photos the work well together to send the message that I want to send. So that is how it works as far as like taking the photos, which of course is a totally different process.

So the message is a really personal one?

Yeah, it is like about my love or my obsession with my environment or all the things around me and I tried to interpret those things in a way that hopefully will make sense.

Would you say photography changed the way you perceive the world around you, or did you always have the same way of looking at things and now you just take photos of it/them?

Yeah, I think the photographs are just a manifestation of how I see the world. But let’s say photography has also made me more aware of my environment and it made me more thoughtful about the potential of small things. You know, I try to photograph this a lot, things that are small or settled but that have a life of their own.

What does a situation need in order for you to hit the shutter release on your camera? What inspires you?

I don’t really know! (Laughs) It is funny because I just really try to work on instinct. So a lot of it is just guesswork. Sometimes from a hundred photos that I take there is probably only one that is something I really like. I would say it is a combination of luck, anticipation and hope. I just sort of look around and I kind of know what I like. But sometimes it ends up shit or stupid. (Laughs) You never know what’s going to work so you just have to try a lot and figure it out later. So editing is very important, too, in all forms of art. Not everything you do is going to be good. So you also have to be able to choose what is good. You know what I mean?

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Since we always present a concept within every print issue, this one is going to be concerned with the different techniques of how to portray the character of a person. We thought about the idea that in photography, when someone shoots a picture of a scene or even another person, the photographer his or herself is also transmitting his or her own character across into the photo. Would you say this is right? Do you sometimes see your own character within a picture you have taken?

I hope so! (Laughs) Well, I think that that is sort of objective. You know, you always want to create a story or a feeling when you make work like this and usually as a photographer that’s you because it is about you and what you are putting into all this stuff. So one of the most important parts of making art is being able to, well, not inject but sprinkle yourself in. But be settled because you don’t want to be too heavy handed. You know, just sort of gently put yourself into the work. Yeah, that is definitely important to me. So, I have to really stare at stuff and really think about whether it might work for me or not.

Do you think someone has to be born with certain innate talents or character traits in order to be a good photographer, or is it something that can be achieved through practice?

I think a little bit has to do with what you are born with but most of it is just decisions you make in your life. You know, because for me I was more interested in art and stuff when I was very young, probably when I was in grade school. And then becoming a skateboarder you are exposed to so many different types of people, artists, photographers and, you know, just this whole world every skateboarder understands. I think it is mostly about the path you go on in life. I think everyone has a lot of potential but it just depends on their choices in life and in what direction they want to go. I mean for me I just really went for it, you know. I just really experimented and found out that this is something I really enjoyed. So it is less about genetics but more about temperament and personality. I know a lot of people that are great, have great eyes but they don’t want to put themselves out there like that, which is fine, too.

So you mean that the circumstances formed your profession as well as the people you met along the way?

Yeah, I mean you can meet one person in your life and that totally can change your whole perspective about anything, art or work or like whatever, you know.

So you met the right guys and made the right decisions in life?

Yeah, I think so! (Laughs)

Could you name some people that have influenced you in doing what you do today?

Yeah, just from being a skateboarder you naturally meet a lot of photographers and they taught me how to use cameras and they showed me other photographers and so on. I would say, for example, that people like Ed Tempelton were very influential just because he was a skater who also was very interested in and also made a lot of art and photography that then again was interesting to me. So he really inspired me to keep going and moreover to explore that part of my life. He also taught me that my life does not have to be just skateboarding and that I can do so much more with it.

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With exhibitions like this one, you kind of changed your status from being a professional skateboarder to being known as a photographer. How did this change of profession come about, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of being a photographer over being a skateboarder?

Well, I would actually say that I still see myself as a professional skateboarder more than a photographer actually. There definitely were times in my life where skateboarding has been less important, but as this particular time it is very important to me. I am filming for a new video and so I am very focused on it. Although, being a photographer is very important to me, too, skateboarding is definitely right now taking a priority. But I don’t really know how much longer that will last because, you know, I am just getting tired. I just can’t really skate on that level that much longer I think, although it would be nice. Becoming a photographer was also a dream of mine, and I am very lucky and fortunate today to even get the opportunity to dip my toes into the water. You know what I mean? I would not have considered myself to be a professional photographer, but rather say that I am just a guy who takes photos and is lucky enough to do stuff like this.

What are you currently filming for?

Oh, I am filming for a new Emerica video. It is kind of a smaller one and it will be done this fall. It’s me, Spanky, Andrew Reynolds, Brian Herman and Figgy. So that’s what I’ve been working on for a couple of years. It has been really awesome but at the same time really hard. It is funny, because for a long time I kind of wasn’t really interested in skateboarding anymore. I just kind of fell off and I think I needed to do that. You know? And when they asked me like if I want to be in this video I was like “yeah, let’s try it!” That actually kind of reinvigorated me. You know, it was so cool because I just felt like a kid again watching skate videos, trying to find spots and making lists of tricks. It was great, you know, like skating was new to me again. It was my rebirth! So I am really happy about this project because it gave me back something I had lost for a while.

Is it also motivating for you that it might be one of, or probably even the last, part?

That is hard to say, but this part has been really hard to do because I want to skate on a certain level but my body just can’t do what it used to do. So I would say that this might be kind of the last part that is on a certain level of skating. You know, I might film for more parts but I am not sure if I could do this again because this one has been pretty tough and I am still working pretty hard for it. But at the same time, I don’t know, let’s assume next year someone were to be like “Oh, we want you to film another video part.” I don’t know if I want to just be like “Sorry, I can’t do this no more because I can’t do what I did before.” However, I guess it would be kind of nice in any profession to stop when you are at your best. But at the same time it is hard to notice when you once you have reached this point.

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We would like to invite you to the launch of PLACE Issue 57 “A Portrait”
For this event, we want to take you with us and celebrate things “Berlin Style” at a Spätkauf.

Our new issue is focusing on the age-old art of portraying: people, moments, things and emotions. We challenged ourselves in new ways! Stop by and have a drink with us.

Head over to our Facebook event for more info and updates.

PLACE Issue 57 Features:

Dane Brady, Jerry Hsu, Kevin Rodrigues, Jun Song, Sarah Parson-Texas, and Giorgi Armani.

Highsnobiety just released a very interesting video on the recent Crailtap Exhibition, that went down in Los Angeles some weeks ago. Here’s more info and the video of course!

Crailtap, parent brand to Girl and Chocolate Skateboards among others, recently celebrated 20 years with a group photo exhibition entitled “Crail Camera Crew.” The brand’s first purely photographic show, CCC features work from regular collaborators including Jerry Hsu, Sam Smyth, Aaron Meza, Andy Mueller, Ben Colen and Eric Anthony. Chronicling the last 15 years of Crailtap, which includes brands Girl, Chocolate, Fourstar, Royal, Lakai and Crailtap, the online magazine, it’s hard to pin it down into one category, with the brand describing itself as more of an ethos than a regular company.

via Highsnobiety

Was motiviert mehr als ein Blockbuster in 4K mit Special Effekten und einem enormen Feuerwerk? Wahrscheinlich das komplette Gegenteil: Handycam, Die Homies und ein Spot der als solcher eigentlich gar nicht bezeichnet werden müsste. Aidan Mackey, Sean Pablo, Sage Elsesser, Jerry Hsu und Logan Lara sind vielleicht auch Gründe wieso man den Clip gesehen haben sollte.

Wenn Girl und Chocolate gemeinsam auf Tour gehen, kann eigentlich nichts schiefgehen – mit Sean Malto, Stevie Perez, Rick Howard, Vincent Alvarez, Elijah Berle, Chris Roberts, Justin Eldridge, Brandon Biebel, Jerry Hsu, Raven Tershy und Johnny Jones sitzen immerhin einige Skateboard- Hochkaräter in den Tourvans. Dieses Mal ging es von Los Angeles über die Route 101 nach San Francisco und auch wenn in diesem Clip hauptsächlich die Demos gezeigt werden, ist er durchaus sehenswert. Wieso? Weil die Jungs einfach Spaß haben und es genau darum geht.

1 – Trying to imagine a motorcycle trip through one of the most exotic countries in the world, one would usually think of palm trees, lots of sun, friends, plenty of speed and a warm breeze brushing back one’s hair. None of which existed on a day towards the end of January 2012 when Michael Mackrodt, Jerry Hsu, Javier Mendizabel, Keegan Sauder, Joey Pepper and Jonathan Mehring left the capital city of Hanoi, embarking on a two-week trip that saw them travel more than 2,000 kilometers.

A very slight drizzle turned into heavy rain that lasted for hours, making everything wet and leading to misery when our bodies and hands were freezing from the cold wind. Not to mention getting lost, Jerry slamming, not finding food because it was Vietnamese New Year’s Day – it goes without saying that this day was a pretty miserable one. But waking up the next morning and putting back on my wet pants and shoes was probably even worse.

2 – When a couple of things go wrong in no more than 24 hours, it usually makes for a pretty shitty day. So when three non-related people tried to hurt us and hunt us down within said time span, it was worse than anything I could have imagined: This random day began in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, with a taxi driver wanting to beat us all up if we didn’t give him five dollars each.

Having managed to escape the situation, an older woman at the train station viciously started throwing rocks at us. And to top things off, a drunk Mongolian climbed up to the third floor of our hostel and broke the balcony windows, trying to steal things in our room, but when film maker Anthony Claravall turned on the lights, he jumped from one balcony to the next and took off. Welcome to Mongolia!

To be honest though, I was accompanied by nine Chinese dudes (Converse team), who are not really welcomed by the natives, which is hardly surprising: after all, they built that Great Wall to keep the Mongolians out…

3 – On most long-distance trains in China you can find cabins labeled as “sleeping class”, “sitting class”, and – a popular alternative for anyone trying to save some bucks, at least if you don’t mind standing on two feet – “standing class”. On a Trans-Siberian trip from Moscow to Hong Kong, we found ourselves almost towards the end in Beijing with only a couple days left until our next destination, Xi’an.

We were all pretty shocked when we heard that we were supposed to stand on that train for 13 hours. On the actual night of our departure, half the crew bailed out and took a plane or stayed longer in Beijing, but Laurence Keefe, Kirill Korobkov, Daniel Hochman and myself took it upon ourselves to see how shitty one would feel after this experience.

I can’t really describe it, but after 13 hours of standing with a couple hours of painful kneeling between the aisles (which was almost worse than standing), both Daniel and I caught the flu, babies shat all over the ground and my body felt like the biggest pile of shit ever. “Never again will I stand again,” or some such thing I told myself after that.

4 – You know it’s not your day when you are in survival mode thinking, “If I collapse right here, right now, I might just perish amongst a million Hindus and no one will ever know.” In early 2013, the world had its biggest gathering of human beings along the Ganges in India for the ‘Kumbh Mela’, which is held every 12 years.

During an eight-week period more than 130 million people pilgrimaged to bathe in the Ganges, amongst them Mark Suicu, Sebo Walker, Nestor Judkins, Sean Malto, Jon Mehring and myself. Of course once again half the crew caught the flu and were out under the most stressful circumstances, with loudspeakers blaring 24-hour prayers at maximum volume and a flooding tin shack falling apart.

Since this festival is on only every 12 years, we had no choice but to wake up at four in the morning to witness the finale of all the sadhus and gurus bathing. My head was spinning and we had to walk some three or four hours to get to the river and back; during the walk back I felt so weak I was contemplating just passing out amongst millions of people, but the desire to keep on living was stronger. Not planning to go see the biggest gathering of humans ever again.

5 – I have had a couple bus rides in Indonesia and Sri Lanka where I told myself I would never ever enter a vehicle again, but when traveling from the Iranian/Azerbaijani border to Baku in a Mercedes-Benz alongside Michael Mackrodt, I didn’t think anything could go wrong in this equation. Well, I was wrong.

This might not have been the worst day, but probably the most intense and annoying transit. Our Azerbaijani driver of course didn’t speak English and then he picked up this random lady, which was already a bit annoying since we had paid for the entire car. To make things even worse, she asked the driver to stop by her house so she could pick up her baby. After a good 30 minutes she showed up again with a ten-year-old boy who wore ridiculously thick glasses and a suit. At this point Michael and I were pretty pissed off, but we were also glad to finally hit the road.

Minutes later we realized that we were in for an intense ride, seeing how the driver turned the Azerbaijani coastal roads along the Caspian Sea into a Formula 1 racing track, with speeds up to 160 kilometers per hour at times. I was stuck in the back with the lady and the boy, while she was telling the driver stories in Azerbaijani, non-stop for over two hours. By non-stop I really mean non-stop, there was no silence.

Even when a car in front of us hit a cow and we saw this huge creature sliding down the street on its back, she still kept on talking. I was wishing she could just somehow shut up… and since she obviously had photosensitive epilepsy, a few minutes later she had a seizure: There was foam coming out of her mouth, and so the driver immediately stopped and gave her some Fanta.

It was scary, I didn’t wish for her to die, all I wanted was some quiet for a minute. She was shook up for a while, but of course soon she started talking again. So that cow sliding on its back, that lady with a seizure, that insane driving – I mean I don’t see Michael Mackrodt scared too often, but we both felt quite relieved when we arrived in Baku in one piece.

Dieser Beitrag von Patrik Wallner findet sich in unserer Jubiläumsausgabe, die du hier bestellen kannst.

Patrick O’Dells Epicly Later’d Serie über Chocolate Skateboards geht in die dritte Runde. Diese Episode befasst sich mit dem Skater’s favourite Skater Kenny Anderson und seinem Werdegang. Seine Mentor Brian Lotti erzählt ein paar Anekdoten und Skateboardschwergewichte wie Mark Johnson und Jerry Hsu singen ihr Loblied auf den Styler aus Las Vegas. Gegen Ende des Clips wandert der Spot dann auf die beiden Grafiker Evan Hecox und Andy Jenkins, die Chocolate eine visuelle Identität geschaffen haben, die ihresgleichen sucht. Film ab:

Wenn Andrew Reynolds, Leo Romero, Spanky und co. in Mexico City sind, kommen die Changos aus ihrem Domicilio gestürmt um mit den nordamerikanischen Skateboard Pros Cerveza zu trinken und La China zu rauchen. Parallel dazu liefern die Jungs aus den U.S.A Martillos ab, als ob es keinen Manana geben würde. Die Kollegen vom Jenkem Mag haben einen ausführlichen Bericht über die chaotischen Zustände – HIER entlang. Vamos a la playa!

Marc Johnson ist nicht nur einer der stylischsten Skater dieses Planeten, er ist auch noch außerordentlich kreativ. So werden alte Boards nicht von ihm weggeworfen, sondern als Basis für Kunstobjekte verwendet – kreatives Upcycling quasi. Das alte Holz wird geschliffen, angemalt oder auf zig andere Weisen veredelt und das sieht gut aus. So gut, dass Jeremy Carnahan ein paar Exemplare abfotografiert hat, die sich jetzt als Boardgrafiken bei Chocolate wiederfinden. Die Pro Models von Kenny Anderson, Chris Roberts, Jerry Hsu und eben Marc Johnson himself sind ab sofort online und im gutsortierten Handel erhältlich und wirklich wirklich schön anzusehen – fast zu schade um sie zu fahren.