Issue 6

As I just posted to our facebook page, I'm very pleased with the content of this issue. I'm pretty happy with my layout. I'm very disappointed in my editing. I missed so many things, and even seemed to create misspellings and problems where there were none. My apologies to anyone I accidentally screwed up. I hope you will enjoy the issue despite the flaws.

Netbook view

Here is the view of Luchaskate Magazine on a netbook. Embrace technology!

Fickle Ad

Memphis Skate Rock

Barrier Kult interview

Check out luchaskate on your netbook, notebook, or tablet here

Posting this picture...

...because I like it.

Don't forget:  Barrier Kult Interview in the upcoming issue #5.

skull skates on urban rush

Ok. Watch this.  Then write an essay for the book, Common Criminals.
 Email it to me:  luchamag@yahoo.com

been a while

Here is the deal. I haven't been blogging because I've been too busy skating and working on Common Criminals the book (anthology) we have coming out just around the corner.

Write for the damn thing.

Hit up West Point, MS last weekend.

This is an old picture of me at West Point.  I've grown my beard back (thank God), and I've retired the worn out Outlaw El Bandito deck.  I'm now rocking the fickle punk point 8.5  Believe it or not...I googled West Point MS skatepark and this was the first image that popped up.  Stoked.

This week I've been really into curb/street skating. No comply tricks and slappys and kickflips etc etc etc...

The Parking Block Diaries: Deloreans, Driveway Destruction And Vicious Acts O...

Digging this blog, click the link and visit The Parking Block Diaries:

The Parking Block Diaries: Deloreans, Driveway Destruction And Vicious Acts O...: Courtesy Skateandannoy.com 1985 was the year Back To The Futur e came out, the year I got my first wide-bodied department store knock-of...

On the Injured List/New Issue Almost Ready

Well, I fell on my ass last week, and still can't skate.  I tried this morning, but as soon as I tried to pump transition it brought me to my knees.  Oh well, I guess I'll spend the day getting the next issue a little bit closer to publication.  It will be out next week, and it is looking good.

Here is a little something from my favorite skate movie.  Yep, showing my age:

Read Issue 2 Here

Here it is folks:

Issue 2 of Luchaskate Magazine.  Read it.  Download it.  Print it.  Embed it on your blog or website.  Email it. Share it and like it on facebook.  Spread the stoke!

Open publication - publishing - More d.i.y.

One correction in this issue: Dustin Dattilio rides for Shipwreck Skates NOT Shipyard Skates. Sorry, bro!

Outlaw El Bandito

I stopped by my house on the way to pick up the kiddo from his mom's place yesterday and found a box with this in it sitting on my porch.

Outlaw Skateboards El Bandito

Outlaw Skateboards was the first company to show support for a fledgling Luchaskate Magazine.  The first issue wasn't even out yet (it was just my blog) when Outlaws said they were down for the cause.  Now?  Now they've come out with their new deck, El Bandito.  The sizes vary from just over 8 through 8.8 and the larger sizes have a 15 inch wheelbase.

You can check them out at http://outlaw-skateboards.com/, but be forewarned (yeah, I been listening to Pentagram again tonight) the site will be down for maintenance until October 10th while Mike goes to Europe and prepares to come back and take wage war with corporate skateboarding.

Until then?  You're gonna see a lot of Lucha and El Bandito.

Dog Tacos: Stoked again

Hitting the local park for a daytime session is usually two things:  1.  Hotter than hell.  2.  Inspirational

One is self explanatory.  This IS Memphis, after all.  The second is also probably, to some degree, self explanatory, but I need to expand on it a little further.

You meet the raddest people during a daytime sesh.  Travelers coming to check out your park.  I met Lew from Fickle this way, and, now, I've met Terry McChesney, lifer skateboarder and author of the book, Dog Tacos.  I saw his Dog Taco shirt, and said, "I've heard of Dog Tacos.  Do you know Alberto?"  By God, we have a friend in common.  Conversation happens.  Stoked!  I got a copy of it from him, and I plan on sitting down to read it tonight.  Look for a review in the next issue of Luchaskate.  Brian Brannon of JFA wrote one of the blurbs so you know this gotta be rad.

Terry with his novel

Thanks for the stuff!

How many books have t-shirts?  Rad.

Outlaw Pray for Death Pt. 2

I did a blog post a while back...the day I got my Outlaw Pray for death deck.  I finally got a decent pic riding it today (instead of those pixelated video stills).  Fun times.

Photo by Lindsey Rowland

The Day Finally Came

I was hoping there would be a pour at Al Town before the first issue of Lucha came out, but it wasn't to be.  It always seemed there was something holding back fresh 'crete from happening.  Well, it finally came time today.  I wasn't able to help (had the five year old in tow and pouring 'crete wasn't the place to be with one that young), so I dropped off some refreshments (after spending the morning at the Children's Museum with my kiddo) to the crew and said hello.

Overview Shot

So...what the hell is Luchaskate?

A friend asked me about Lucha:  Who is he?  What is the idea behind Luchaskate?  WTF?

Here is where Luchaskate came from (excerpts and revisions from my email to her):

Last year, when the Memphis skatepark was being built, I made a joke that I would dress up like a luchador (masked Mexican pro wrestler) for the grand opening. I thought it would be pretty funny, and my friends would get a good laugh out of it. BUT, I was looking at masks when I realized I couldn't wear one because I have to wear glasses.

Fast forward a month or two.  I wanted to start a blog about skateboarding, but I didn't know what to call it.  Everything I thought of seemed contrived and lame like I was trying too hard to be cool.  I'm not cool.  However, I did keep thinking about the Luchador joke...in the end I called the blog, "The Four Eyed Luchador." For a while nobody read it. If I had 50 hits in a week I was happy.

BUT, suddenly I started getting readers! Hundreds of page views each week (nowadays that is everyday).

After a while I realized that "The Four eyed luchador" was too long so I shortened it to luchaskate.com.

Because the blog was now established, when I decided to start a 'zine I named it after the blog.  And, in the end I did get a couple wrestling masks and occasionally I put one on if I'm skating somewhere I'm very familiar with for a picture or two (that's all I can handle without glasses).

There ya go, the story of Lucha.

Kris and Lindsey killing time at the Yard Sale with new sharpie luchatats

 

Outlaw Skateboards "Pray for Death"

So, I got home from work today to find this in a box on my porch:

 I was officially stoked.  9" wide deck from Outlaw Skateboards ready to be set up and ridden.  Those of you that know me know that I've been working my way down from 43" longboards to more standard pool size decks.  My last deck was a 15.5" wheelbase handcut board that sat at 10.5 inches wide.  9" was my next step, and man, I'm glad I did it.  I ran over to cheapskates, picked up some 56mm Miller SPF formula wheels and griptape to set this guy up.

I'm in heaven here, folks.  This is so much lighter than what I was riding.  I was pulling the old layback airs like it was nothing.  I'm not bragging on me, I'm bragging on this set up:  Outlaw "Pray for death" with Thunder trucks (8.5" wide) and Bones SPF wheels.

Kris Gurley, one of my favorite people to skate with, met me at Tobey for a session and he was kind enough to hold a video camera for me for a second so I could get some still images to take from it.  The video camera doesn't produce good stills AT ALL but we got a couple things:

I love wallies

My favorite move on the jersey.  Kris calls this a Lucha wall ride

Damn, I thought I was gonna hit coping.

Mike L. Appreciation Day

Rad day celebrating the ambassador of stoke in Memphis, TN, Mike Lasiter.  Tobey Park, a little lunch and off to skate the MLK Monument in downtown Memphis.

Mike Lasiter and Pat Rakestraw taking a break at Tobey Park

Monument ride

The Common Criminal

Sometime during my high school career I realized the dream of being a professional skateboarder wasn’t going to come to fruition. I would never grace the cover of Thrasher magazine doing a layback rollout, and there would never be a skateboard branded with my name and the graphic of my choosing. In fact, I was unsure if it was me or skateboarding, but our relationship was changing.

I, of course, had discovered girls. For the most part the girls didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of sweaty skaters as they practiced rock and rolls on the half pipe. My Saturday evenings were now spent riding in a car rather than on a skateboard as my best friend Steve and I would discuss our relationships (or the lack thereof). I hadn’t quit skating, but it suddenly took second place in my life.

I wasn’t the only one changing. The early 1990s were a time when skateboarding was changing as well. The skaters I’d admired were suddenly gone from the magazines, and the skaters replacing them were so radically different from what I was used to. It seemed like skateboarding was no longer my own. Companies began releasing much smaller skateboards. The average ten inch wide deck shrank to eight inches or less. The wheels were shrinking from 60 millimeters or more down into the 45 to 50 millimeter range. Skulls were disappearing from graphics as the newer boards were either covered with cartoon characters or were inexpensive blanks devoid of any graphic.

My tricks were even becoming obsolete. One of my favorite things to do on a skateboard was to ride up to a parking curb, and slap my back truck into a grind as my back hand planted onto the ground much like a spoke on which the wheel of my body would turn. I always felt it had style. It flowed. Now, I saw all the younger skaters kickflipping and heelflipping around parking lots. Smooth took second place to technical skating.

For me this was all freestyle, something I respected for the difficulty, but nothing I’d ever wanted to do. My favorite skaters like Duane Peters, Tony Alva and Jay Adams wouldn’t be out there, in the middle of a flat ground parking lot, trying to switch 180 heelflip.

In 1992 I had just finished my freshman year of college, and it hadn’t gone well. Going through all of the compulsory classes made college feel like high school all over again. I had never been a whiz at math, and biology was never a subject that could hold my attention. I wanted classes with artistry involved. I wanted my English class to feel like it was more than just an extension of the English classes I’d taken over the previous decade. College didn’t feel like a place I belonged. Couple this with the changing of skateboarding and I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t just unsure of my future. It was at the point that I could see no future at all. I wanted to drop out of college, hide away in a cavernous, windowless room and only come out at night to feed.

When all of my hope was gone, my skateboard once again became my dearest friend. It didn’t matter if skateboarding was changing, I still had my skateboarding, and I spent the entire summer skating. We had a few makeshift ramps behind an unused building, and every minute of sunlight was spent rolling on four wheels.

The skateboarding scene had grown. The group of four or five skaters I had grown up with had all moved away to college, but dozens of kids had taken up skating after they had left. There was now even a group of young skaters lobbying our city for a skatepark. They held our town’s first contest that summer.

I remember the contest not only because it brought out skaters from all over our area that I didn’t know existed, but because the crowd chanted the words, “Old school,” as I took my final run. I had shaved my hair back down to the stubs just as it had been in the ninth grade. I was wearing a six year old Minor Threat t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. My jeans were decidedly tight compared to the baggy jeans with the boxers poking out that other skaters wore in the nineties. And while the other skaters were kickflipping around the course I was laying down bert reverts, layback rollouts and some kind of strange backside switch grab indy air thing that I was fond of doing at the time. At the end of the day I was proud of my third place finish, but I knew that my style of skating had truly passed. I was a dinosaur in this new crowd.

Branding

I allowed the fluorescent and day-glo colors of the eighties, for the most part, pass me by. The closest I came were a couple loud pairs of chucks (Chuck Taylor shoes). One pair was a turquoise-like blue while the other was purple, bordering on lavender. I would wear one blue and one purple shoe, an act one of my grandfathers couldn’t comprehend.

By now I was used to being an outcast at school, but acceptance within the family had always been a given. I was aware that they didn’t necessarily like the way I dressed, but I always felt that, at the end of it all, they knew the me that was hiding underneath this new style.

Suddenly, after some questioning that felt like an interrogation, I knew I was becoming separated from them as well. Teenage angst coupled with the fact that I didn’t see many of my relatives very often left us, quite often, speechless with one another.

I felt like I was expressing myself through my clothing. I was dressing how I felt.

The greatest oxymoron of punk rock was that you had to, in some respect, wear the punk rock uniform. The same could be said of skateboarding. Even the five guys that made up our local scene found ourselves identifying with certain companies and ‘branding’ ourselves to match them.

Generally, it started with the type of board you rode (or wanted to ride). Each brand had its standard type of graphic to identify with. All of them had their fair share of skulls and colorful monsters, but each company had a certain, individual flair.

Powell Peralta graphics tended to be punk yet professional with a child-like innocence. How is that possible? The graphics on a skull and sword deck was something my mother would like despite the skull and sword. On the other hand, Dogtown skateboards, with their connection to punk/metal crossover band Suicidal Tendancies, looked mean, almost demonic. Their possessed to skate deck was a mother’s nightmare.

Then there was Skull Skates. Skull decks were always black and white. They didn’t even contain grayscale. It was as if they were made by stencils and spray paint. I immediately identified with Skull skates. This was the epitome of punk rock and skateboarding combined.

Marketing. Every style niche in skateboarding comes down to marketing. At one point in the eighties every board had essentially the same shape. The standard deck had a short, rounded nose that rolled into a ten inch wide main space. Every deck had approximately seven inches of tail. Sure, there were different levels of concave and every company used wood from a different source, but overall the differences in decks were very minimal except for the graphics and, of course, the pros that the graphics symbolized. Of course, the common skater didn’t have to be aligned with one single company, but generally the companies one chose were within the same spectrum. At the end of the day we are all consumer victims of marketing.