Showing posts with label brotherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brotherhood. Show all posts

Monday, September 17, 2012

Mind Over Matter: SUAS

Mind Over Matter: SUAS* is an ongoing column that aims to document skateboarders from all walks of life who are still riding their plank after 30+ years of age. My principal intent is to offer the viewer both an insight to why grown men/women choose to continue to ride despite being what many consider “too old” and to encourage the masses to get out and get theirs - whatever that might be.

*SUAS is an acronym commonly used in skateboard rhetoric, it simply means Shut Up And Skate! Click the image to view it super-sized. Enjoy.





The Brotherhood: When Sean and I first met we were on the up and up in the local Virginia Beach and Mid-Atlantic skate scene. Just a couple years into our teens and we both had already picked up a couple of sponsors. More often than not we were competing in contests up and down the East Coast, collecting our share of trophies along the way.

Throughout those early years, we always had an underlying competition against each other. Sometimes it was friendly but, I’m pretty sure we were hatin’ on each other. When we talk about that time in our lives we always get a chuckle about how things were back then. Regardless, Sean’s raw style always encouraged me to push myself and my skating. At every session we were always hyped to get down with the get down.

During our high school years, we were still riding hard and getting things done. However, we did spend many nights going out to parties and getting into a little trouble here and there. Summer days were filled with skating and the evenings were occupied with hooking up with the girls. We both had long hessian hair, I rocked a leather jacket and Sean always had some Eighties or early Nineties skate punk vibe going.

Today, some twenty or more years later, everything has changed, we’re both married, we leave trouble for the young bloods and we’ve traded our mop tops in for what little hair still sprouts out of our craniums.

But...we still get ours when the session is going. Homies for life.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Mind Over Matter: SUAS

Mind Over Matter: SUAS* is an ongoing column that aims to document skateboarders from all walks of life who are still riding their plank after 30+ years of age. My principal intent is to offer the viewer both an insight to why grown men/women choose to continue to ride despite being what many consider “too old” and to encourage the masses to get out and get theirs - whatever that might be.

*SUAS is an acronym commonly used in skateboard rhetoric, it simply means Shut Up And Skate! Click the image to view it super-sized. Enjoy.


 


The Brotherhood: I can't remember when I first met Ed. I think it might have been here, at the Dust Bowl, in the mid-Eighties. He pretty much ruled this spot and worked his style and speed lines around anyone who came to session it. Ed was/is an artist of sorts and at that time I had him paint the Dogtown logo on the back of my leather jacket. I was so stoked! I wore that jacket everywhere for years.

In the Nineties I lost touch with Ed. However, just before the millenium ended I took a photo class and ran into him again at the Visual Arts Center in Portsmouth, VA. He encouraged me to enter a portrait series I was working on at the time, into a local juried museum exhibition. I was hesitant but when Ed offered to frame the work for me I took him up on the offer. To my surprise the photo series was selected for the exhibition. The photographs also won best in black & white photography which in turn led to a feature write up about me in the local paper. Needless to say, Ed helped me along my way to becoming a working photographer. 

Today, after traveling much of the world as a photojournalist, I'm back in Virginia Beach skating a ditch with an old friend. Ironically, it's the same spot we rode some 25 plus years ago. Homies for life.