Given the fact that I’m wearing Vans right now, and have done for most of my life, this post seems mandatory. I don’t know how often people think about the founders of any footwear brand, but given how influential Vans was and still is, I think this post is completely justified and respect should be given.

According to Steve Van Doren:
“He was a mechanic, a chemist, the brains behind the early shoe,” said his nephew, Steve Van Doren, one of several family members who still work for the company. “In his garage, he made all the molds for the very first soles,” including the trademark waffle design.

Read about the passing of Vans co-founder James Van Doren HERE.

Image via Artifact Bag Co.

Into Infinity is an art and music exhibition by Dublab and Creative Commons which combines audio loops and “visual circles.” Since 2008 the exhibitions have taken place in Japan, but earlier this year they released a digital exhibition and the result is excellent. Audio loops are randomly paired with 12″ vinyl-cover sized pieces of art, and the website is a basic affair with no flash to be seen. They also make good on their cc promise as you can not only download the music and art, but a full mirror of the site if you wish.

If you are really into this project and have eight minutes to spare, check out a comprehensive, rather bizarre mini-’documentary’ by Creative Commons Japan after the jump.

Continue reading Internet Infinity →

This is old and you may have seen something similar before, but damn this shit is too good not to watch 65342899675 times. If you haven’t, behold the wordsmith that is Mike Tyson!!!

So many amazing lines.

Poler’s “about” page pretty much says it all:

POLER CAMPING STUFF makes sleeping bags, tents, bags, and accessories that is simple, good looking, well designed gear for people that are travelers, couch surfers, regular surfers, skateboarders, snowboarders, bicyclists, parents, kids, car campers and anyone else looking for something that looks good, is a good value and is all about having fun on road trips and in the outdoors.

I recently came across the Poler site, and immediately liked what I saw. This is big considering I never go camping. I slept on rocks once at Lake Mead and would be psyched as shit to have the Nap Sack.

Anyway… this stuff looks cool, fun and the art direction is on point. I’ve never thought about owning a shirt from a camping brand until now.

Any of you BMX’ers who are partial to sleeping out in the woods on road trips (or on various couches) should eyeball this stuff.

Handmade Portraits: Liberty Vintage Motorcycles from Etsy on Vimeo.

Adam Craver is an old school dude with a motorcycle shop in Philadelphia. This is an inspiring video of him talking about his bikes, his independent shop, the appeal of vintage stuff, the fulfillment you get from working with your hands, and his concern that America is heading away from these things.

This guy oozes true non-contrived east-coast personality and emotion. Four minutes twenty seconds, well worth it.

Via MotorMavens, via Nardi.

Shot and edited by Andrew David Watson — check him out here.

Here is a trailer for what looks to be a full length documentary style movie about building motorcycles and riding them. Starring BMX OG Kim Boyle as well as Max Schaaf and Eddie Cleveland.

Edited by Davey and filmed by Michael Schmidt.

Tech Spec is my new favorite image blog… Like I said to Nuno this morning on iChat, it makes me want to buy a bunch of “gear”. Found via The Fox is Black.

What can be said that hasn’t been said already. It’s tragic that he died at such a young age and the first thought that went through my head when I heard about him passing away was… He can’t die yet, he still has so much to do!

To be alive and experience what Steve Jobs has done for the world first hand has been pretty amazing and it gives me chills to sit here and look at my desk, staring at all the products he has created that have enabled me to do what I do and help me create a life for my self that I love. Steve Jobs will be deeply missed and his effect on the world, not just with technology, but with his design sensibility and taste will last forever.

The internet is going to be filled with Steve Jobs related stories for the next while, but a few that I have really enjoyed so far have been a full documentary posted on Wanken, an interactive timeline from New York Times, and a video timeline from CNN.

I seriously contemplated about wether or not to post this on here for about 10 minutes, then said fuck it! Here you go, 22 minutes of Juggalo fandom. The only thing I know about Juggalos is that they’re normally clowned upon (seriously, no pun intended), so I was up for checking out this new documentary (especially since it’s by the same person who made this). All in all… this was well done, I enjoyed it and may or may not go to work with face paint on today. Whoop whoop!

From Sean Dunne’s Vimeo:
American Juggalo is a look at the often mocked and misunderstood subculture of Juggalos, hardcore Insane Clown Posse fans who meet once a year for four days at The Gathering of the Juggalos.

We went to The Gathering of the Juggalos and let the Juggalos speak their minds.

Click below for the doc.

Continue reading American Juggalo →

This is a great little video series for people like me who were educated in the U.S. public school system and sometimes feel like you didn’t learn anything in school (especially how to spell!! haha…). Each video is about 1min long and funny as shit. Keep reading to see the rest! (via doobybrain)

Continue reading The History Of English →

click to enlarge

To say that Apple / Steve Jobs has changed our world and the way we live (for better or worse) would be an understatement. You don’t get to where they are without some out of the box thinking and some erratic behavior.

Check out the 10 Commandments of Steve Jobs.

via – the daily beast

Here’s Brian Kachinsky and Brian Tunney with Deebo at X-Games this weekend.

Courtesy of @bkachinsky and @espn_BMX

Chris Hill-Scott, along with Alex Boyd, Adam Butterworth, Ross Dummet, Ben Hastings, Luke Peeters, Ryan Picton, Dario Serra, Brad Wakefield and Mike Westlake road tripped through the states from May 19th–June 5th of this year, which took them from San Fran to Texas.

Chris shot a bunch of cool pics along the way. Click HERE to check them all out.

Devour has turned into one of my favorite places to waste time… If you haven’t checked it out, it’s basically just a random collection of dope/funny/crazy videos. For some reason, it took me about five times of visiting the site to actually click on this video, but this Slo-mo MotoGP video is CRAZY. The video was put together by Red Bull and it features MotoGP champion Casey Stoner. All you need to do is look at the screen shot above and think 1000 frames per second. Watch Now.

Continue reading Slo-mo MotoGP →

courtesy of the dagger zone

I always tend to be interested in what riders get into outside of BMX (Yes, it is possible to be passionate about more than one thing). KC Badger is a good example of that. If you follow KC on Twitter (or know him personally), than you already know how into fishing he is. I’ve read enough tweets about it that it piqued my interest enough to throw some questions his way. The outcome is pretty personal and gives you a good perspective on where he is coming from.

Click below to check it out. Thanks to The Dagger Zone for the pics.

Continue reading Q&A: KC Badger is Fly (fishing) →

The Talks is an impressive website I stumbled across over the holiday weekend focusing on interviews with some very influential figures in culture. From Mike Tyson to Valentino, there is some serious content on this site, not to mention great photos mixed with a simple and clean website… With all of those elements, it’s hard to go wrong.

“The Talks is a weekly updated online interview magazine. Over the past decade its founders Johannes Bonke and Sven Schumann have met with cultural figures of all kinds. New talks take place while traveling throughout the year. This is the essence of it.”

Check out The Talks here.

Fast Company posted a cool article entitled “What Tumblr’s Success Means For The Future Of Blogs, Twitter”.  Tumblr is gaining steam, and it will be interesting to see where it goes or how other platforms are affected by it. If you missed my Tumblr post from a few days ago, check it out HERE.

I stated in my post that “Tumblr is easy, free and kinda sits in between an actual site and Twitter“, and the FC article states “With its emphasis on short, pithy posts, and habitual use as a photo-publishing and social-sharing site, Tumblr posts are more closely related to Twitter feeds than professional, hefty, WordPress sites“.

2 very similar takes on it. What this basically means is that I’m as smart as the Editorial staff at Fast Company, if not smarter because my assessment came first. Yeah, I said it!!!! Take that, POW!!

One in 8 Million is a great feature on the New York Times site where they feature 54 ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Presented in a refreshing audio slideshow format and shot all in black and white, this series is a great way to kick off your day. Check it out here.

My old friend Mike Dytri is one of those “never not working” types that gets you pumped to go accomplish things, and on top of that I love the irony of him being such a “design guy” that you’d never know that, just for fun, he’s also a MMA killing machine.

I met Mike back in early 2000 when he was doing all of the creative for MOSH, which was a cool time because he was exposing all of us BMX kids to some fun stuff… introducing us to the staff at Big Brother, having our ads shot by fashion and skate photographers, and hooking us up with free custom-made, shrink-wrapped graphic tee shirts from his line Subfreakie.

Most recently, with his brand Ludwig Van, he’s collaborated with Vans to make an interesting run of shoes that have gone over quite well.

Read a quick interview with Mike at Breaks of 10.

So…. where to start with Tyler, The Creator.

Without boring you with wordy fluff, I’m just gonna cut straight to the point and say that nothing has piqued my interest in Hip-Hop land in recent years as much as this dude (and his OFWGKTA crew to a lesser extent). While we are constantly bombarded with cocaine rap and other general cliche rap stuff, Tyler and Odd Future rolled up outta left field.

I first started noticing the OFWGKTA (odd future wolf gang kill them all) acronym late last year, but only started really investigating earlier this year after continuing to notice a bunch of press. At first it was intimidating because the whole Odd Future thing was kind of like Wu-Tang, with a bunch of members and you didn’t know what was what or who was who. Nevertheless, it’s all pretty simple to figure out. As far as I’m concerned though, Tyler is the dude. THIS GUIDE will teach you everything you need to know.

To me, Tyler is part mysterious, part punk rock, part unfiltered teenager that has the wild lyrics and the energy to back it up. I guess all that combined is what ultimately drew me in. Originality!!!! If you think about early Eminem, than you have somewhat of an idea about what Tyler’s stuff is like. Don’t get me wrong though, Tyler’s stuff is waaaay harder. A warning, you should probably go into his music knowing that it’s tongue-in-cheek and if you are easily offended AT ALL, you should probably just listen to your Taylor Swift album instead.

GOBLIN, Tyler’s 2nd album (or first real one depending on how you look at it) falls just short of being a super-duper home run for me, but I’m still crazy about it. There’s just a few slow songs that I could personally do without, but the album is fuckin’ sick. There’s a Doctor/Psychologist theme throughout GOBLIN (similar to Tyler’s first album BASTARD) that ties it all together, and I suspect you will get something new from this album each time you listen to it. It’s not simple or status quo. I suggest downloading BASTARD first before getting into GOBLIN too. Get your Google on.

I know Tyler and O.F. are still relatively small, but I feel like they’ve gained popularity super quick. Like I mentioned before, there’s countless articles on them, they are on covers, performed on Jimmy Fallon and are on the radar of every “cool guy” out there. The music is not pop or easy to digest, which just adds to my confusion about it all. Either way, I’m stoked. Either these dudes are the greatest manufactured act of all time, or just what people need right now. I’m going with the latter.

I’m curious to hear peoples opinions on all this, let me know in the comments.

“We may still use computers to create information, but we’ll use the tablet to interact with information.”

Continue reading Tablet Newspaper from 1994 →

via google images

When it comes to Hip-Hop sites/blogs, Nahright is the only one I check. It’s got pretty much everything I’d need to know about (sans ofwgkta) in one place and it’s easy to view.

Go HERE for an interview with Eskay from Nahright regarding Hip-Hop marketing. It’s a pretty good read.

Not sure where this is (guessing Thailand or Cambodia), but check out this quick and totally insane video of a train going through a street/traintrack? market. Definitely one of those places that would be rad to see with your own eyes if you ever got the chance!

via @ryanallan

This article in the NY Times blew me away (found via You Might Find Yourself — read the the abbreviated version there).

The author Jay Caspian Kang follows 21-year-old millionaire and online poker champion Daniel Cates around for a few days, watches him win and lose millions, and generally takes in the kid’s outlook on the whole deal. Unlike most poker superstars who win big dough at big tournaments with the help of big luck, Daniel Cates made his million by “grinding”, which is described as “the process of pressing a skill advantage over an extended period of time”.

Daniel spends his life in front of the computer, which has resulted in killer poker skills, but also kind of detachment from real life that allows him to say things like “You can do anything with $10 million. Like, you can buy a house and still have around $5 million left over.” He admittedly struggles with human interaction, and does not think it a bit strange to be a millionaire sharing a condo with roommates and eating most meals at The Cheesecake Factory.

Here he gives a look into the mentality:

“Most of us young kids who play at nosebleed stakes don’t really have any clear idea about the actual value of the money we win or lose,” Cates says. “Most of us see the money more as a points system. And because we’re all competitive, we want to have the highest score. But really, we don’t know what making $400,000 or losing $800,000 means, because we don’t have families or whatever. This blind spot gives us the freedom to always make the right move, regardless of the amount at stake, because our judgment isn’t clouded by any possible ramifications.”