Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Welcome to Tasteland. I am your co-host, Francis Zehrer. And I'm Daisy Alioto. And Daisy, who did we speak to today? Today we talked to Cole Nowicki. 0:18 He's a writer, producer, and publisher based in Vancouver, and he runs the newsletter Simple Magic, publishes books through Fine Press, and is the author of two books himself, Write Down Plus Circle and Laser Quit Smoking Massage. 0:32 Just finished up an editorial collaboration with Cole and Simple Magic called Sensuous Skateboarding, which explored skateboarding through the five senses, and we culminated with a perfume collaboration with Parafat Perfumes called Nose Grab, which sold out yesterday in less than an hour. 0:52 And that was really awesome. It's the second perfume Dirt's done, and I'm really excited for somebody to add it to Fragrantica. [laughs] I've been refreshing to see what people say about it. Nobody's received it yet. 1:05 Um, some people have, but- Okay... no, people who bought yesterday have not received. Mm. Oh, okay, only the VIPs. Only the VIPs. Mm. We'll get you next time. Listener, are you among them? Let us know. [laughs] Pete is. 1:19 Hi, Pete. Hi, Pete. Pete Williams. Hi, Pete. [laughs] Shout out. Um, I wanna tell you about a movie that I saw, um, called Magic Farm. Mm-hmm. It's, uh- Oh, the Amalia Ullmann, right? Yeah, Amalia Ullmann. Mm. 1:33 Chloë Sevigny's in it. Uh, she wears a great outfit the whole time that I was, like, very inspired by. Classic. Uh, yeah, I mean, it is... 1:41 There are some interesting fashion moments in the film that sort of make it feel like an extended Miu Miu commercial. But- It's basically, the, the plot of the movie is basically, like, a, like a Vice style- Mm-hmm... 1:52 documentary crew goes- Mm-hmm... somewhere and things go wrong when they try to make the documentary, right? Things go wrong. I mean, it's a farce. It's very funny. They go to cover a certain story. 2:03 They end up having to get more involved in producing a story. It, it's sort of a crew in search of a story. Mm, mm-hmm. But throughout the film it becomes progressively obvious that there's- A lot like this podcast... 2:19 [laughs] there's a story that they're missing. [laughs] Um, and so it's, it's really about, like, yeah, a certain type of, like, media and entertainment in search of, like, a spectacle. Mm, mm-hmm. But it's also about 2:38 obliviousness, um, and, like, the obliviousness of privilege, and everyone becomes mired in their own interpersonal dramas, but they're in a part of the world that has much bigger issues. Yeah. Sounds good. 2:53 No, I want to see it. I watched, uh, Apocalypse Now this weekend, which I hadn't seen since I was, like, 15 or something. Um, it really, it, it, it really is all that. 3:04 It's kind of funny though too, uh, like, so much of the movie is Martin Sheen kind of, like, looking into the middle distance and then doing voiceovers, which I think there's a documentary about the making of it that I wanna watch. 3:16 Um, 'cause it's one of these things, like, you're watching it and, like, the production, like, how many extras they have on screen at times, it's, like, hundreds of people. 3:24 But then the reason it's so much of this, like, voiceover and, like, staring into the, into the middle distance is I think I read that they shot over a million feet of film for it. 3:33 So it's, like, really, uh, really one of those things that they, I mean, talk about spectacle, but that they produced in the edit. 3:40 Um, anyways, nothing too original to say about Apocalypse Now, but yeah, five star, five star f- five star flick. Well, speaking of original, uh, [laughs] let's get Cole in here. Let's get Cole in here. 3:54 Speaking of original, what was that, Daisy? Come on. It's better than half of your choices. Anyways, uh, let's go talk to him about what this perfume smells like. [upbeat music] Okay, so I read the, uh, the Dirt 4:13 x Cole x Simple Magic, um, newsletters, and one theme I noticed was the smell of piss in skating. [laughs] So- Yeah, Cole's responsible for the toilet... uh, there's a, why did you make a perfume that smells like piss? 4:27 We, our perfume doesn't smell like piss though. I know. It's sort of an unstated note. [laughs] Was that, like, was that, like, one of the scents that was left on, like, the smelling room floor? 4:37 No, no, we tested three testers, and none of them had piss as a note. There was one that had Big Gulp as a note, but I'll let, I'll let Cole speak to the piss. 4:45 Well, I feel like when we first started talking about teaming up, I wrote up a little pitch, and it did explicitly call out the smell of, the smell of piss under an overpass. Um, 4:58 'cause that, that's just a part of skateboarding. You're gonna be under there. People are gonna... You're gonna be peeing under there, so it's only natural that those aromas just become a part of your every day. 5:09 Uh, but no, Nose Grab does not, Nose Grab is the name of the scent, it does not smell like urine. It smells fantastic. There's notes of curbside violence, paraffin wax, uh, tobacco, uh, hot metal. 5:25 There's one more I'm forgetting. Upper lip sweat. Mm. Upper lip sweat, that's right. We, I mean, we sold it out in, like, has to have been less than an hour. Oh, wow. Yeah. 5:34 Uh, like, there were people that were trying to buy it, and they didn't get to buy it. Uh, and Cole and I were sitting on our bottles, so we were like, "Ha ha, losers." 5:42 [laughs] Did, did you guys, like, give, like, a release, a release time when it would come out so people could set, set their alarms? 5:47 Ally from Parafat has done a really great job of promoting it, so there was a countdown clock. 5:53 And Ally did, did such a great job of promoting that I have so many, like, scent influencers who are following me on Instagram now, which is-Very nice. 6:02 I don't know what they're gonna tune into after this besides, like, my occasional skateboarding clip at the park and links to my newsletter, which is all about skateboarding. [laughs] But I'm happy to have them there. 6:15 Yeah, I think that's a great way for a lot of fragrance heads to get skateboard pilled. And- [laughs]... I wanna ask you about the newsletter. 6:24 Um, we talk a lot about, like, people's earliest experiences with media on the podcast, and I'm curious, like, what skate media were you consuming growing up and how did you sort of metabolize that into, like, the look and the feel and the cadence of Simple Magic? 6:42 For me, my earliest forms of skate media were VHS tapes. Mm. So, uh, Shorty Skateboards Fulfill the Dream or, uh, Zero Skateboards Misled Youth. 6:53 Uh, read a lot of Transworld Skateboarding magazine, 'cause that's the only magazine we got up in my hometown in northern Alberta. 7:00 So just reading these, like, glossy 300-page magazines that were just essentially just full of ads. Uh, that was all the pages were were just ads and the occasional article. Um, but I used to read those front to back. 7:14 Used to memorize all the captions for every photo, and that's how I definitely got skateboard pilled, was just coming home after school, tearing out the photos, putting them on my wall, reading them off the wall. And 7:29 I think for me, the inspiration more for the newsletter is probably related closer to blogs that I enjoyed going to when I was a kid. Uh, does... Do you remember Fecal Face, the art blog? Don't remember that. 7:44 I can't say that I do, but that sounds- You probably shouldn't, you probably shouldn't Google it now. [laughs] I won't. But it was, [laughs] but it was, uh... 7:51 I believe it was a San Francisco-based art blog, and that's how I just, like, would get a look into the lives of different artists and art shows that I would never attend. 8:01 I don't remember any of the artists' names, um, but I really enjoyed that experience. Patrick O'Dell's Epically Latered photo blog I used to tune into all the time. 8:11 Uh, wow, all these cool people in New York doing stuff while I'm here in [laughs] rural Alberta doing I don't know. Doing nothing. Not much. [laughs] Have you... 8:22 So the last piece in the series was something that you wrote called Boom and Echo about returning to a skate ramp from your childhood, um, one of the, uh, hot metal culprits of your sense memory. 8:39 And I- we included a GIF of you skating it, but if I hadn't seen that, if I just saw that in the wild, I would think this is some avant-garde sculpture art perhaps. And, you know, peeling paint on it. 8:53 And, um, I'm just curious, have you ever confronted the city of Alberta about their taste [laughs] in public skate infrastructure? It seems like maybe it needs an update. So two fronts. 9:07 The, the town of Lac La Biche, which is my hometown, they installed those ramps in maybe the year 2- no, '99 perhaps. So those, those have been around for a while, and they were not built by skateboarders. 9:22 They are hollow, so they just, as the name of the piece suggests, they boom and echo across the park. They're very loud. They installed them. 9:29 I remember they had to uninstall them to put, uh, noise-dampening material inside of them. 9:35 [laughs] Uh, some of the other obstacles in the park are just not skateable, like, uh, tabletops where, you know, you go from one ramp over a flat surface to another ramp. The angles are such that you can't do that. 9:47 They're so steep. Um, but recently the town of Lac La Biche built a new skate park, and my uncle works for the county there, and one day he butt-dialed me. 10:00 [laughs] And he's just like, "Hey, actually, like, do you wanna be on, like, the committee for the new skate park?" I live in Vancouver now, so I'm like a province away. Yeah. 10:08 Haven't, haven't lived in Lac La Biche for many years. So I got to be on this committee with the local town county about the building of the new skate park in Lac La Biche, so I got to suggest 10:19 obstacles to be in it, which was really nice, and the skate park design company who first offered, uh, plans for it, they were very receptive to all the suggestions. I filled... 10:29 I created like a six-page document and I was like, "Hey, we can't repeat the mistakes of the past. We gotta do something rad here." [laughs] That's amazing. Wait. So you did actually kind of confront them. 10:41 [laughs] Tell us, tell us about the, the company that puts this together. Is this, like, a company that just, like, their full-time work is building, like, municipal skate parks? Yeah. 10:51 The company who built the new skate park in Lac La Biche, they're a newer outfit, and they are based in the central Canada, so they service a lot of the prairie provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta. And 11:09 they seem like nice guys. Not terribly experienced, um, but you know, their hearts are in the right place. So yeah. Are they, are they more like, like skater types or more of, like, buttoned-up architect types? 11:24 What's the, what's the background here? The, uh, the guy who was interfacing with, from the company, with the, uh, town council admitted to us that he does not skateboard, which is maybe something that you shouldn't do. 11:37 Um, but they were, they were nice enough. They were nice enough. And, um, I think I'm gonna be back in my hometown in a couple of days and I'm gonna skate the park. I'm sure, I'm sure it'll be fine. It'll be fun. 11:51 Guy that doesn't skateboard but designs municipal skate parks feels like a Connor O'Malley character. [laughs] I feel like you should have to have broken a bone to, to get your license to do that. Yeah. 12:01 Cole, how many bones have you broken?Uh, I've broken a few, uh- [laughs]... my arm, my pinky. I've had to have my ACL reconstructed. Oh, geez. Uh, you know, the ankle is just, kinda just a balloon constantly. 12:14 That's fine. That's normal. Yeah. Now you have a balloon ankle still? Oh, yeah. Yeah. [laughs] It's just y- you roll it for a lifetime, and it just, uh, it gets tired of swelling up- Mm... 12:24 just in those moments, so it just stays swelled up to stay ready, you know? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Stay strapped. Um, one thing that we, I feel like, talk on this... 12:32 talk about on this podcast fairly often is this idea of the death of third spaces, and how that it, how it's a myth. Mm. Um, it occurred to me that the... 12:42 like, a skate park is a type of third space, as is, you know, the space underneath an overpass, um, or whatever, a parking lot. All these different types of skate third spaces. 12:53 I was curious if you could describe some of these, and, and their traits, and, like, what defines, let's say, a municipal skate park as a third space versus the, you know, abandoned area under, under an overpass. Yeah. 13:09 I mean, skateboarding spots very much can be considered a third space. Uh, I've written about this before. 13:15 Like, DIY skate parks, the ones that skateboarders build themselves, I think fit that bill, uh, most succinctly in that these are unused spaces, generally. 13:26 Um, you know, industrial sites that have gone into disuse that skateboarders take over, old tennis courts, whatever. Skateboarders bring in ramps. They build concrete obstacles there. They make the space their own. 13:38 They build a community around it. There's a tennis court, uh, just a few blocks away from me here in Vancouver. I'm... I live in East Vancouver, um, and it's just a spot we call The Courts. 13:49 A lot of cities just have these spots. It's just old tennis courts that people aren't using. Skateboarders take them over. 13:54 Actually, there were, uh, some bike polo, polo players that were there first, but we kinda took it from them. Sorry, guys. Um- I haven't heard about bike polo in a long time. 14:02 It, that reminds me of, like, a, like, the Portlandia intro. There's, like, uh, people playing bike polo. Anyways. It looks hard. I would be nervous trying it, to be honest. 14:12 [laughs] Yeah, you might- But, uh- [laughs] That's right. Uh, but skate spots as third spaces I think makes a lot of sense. 14:22 Skate parks, a lot of the time, are there to serve community needs, projected community needs, and what kids, uh, should hopefully be doing other than just sitting inside playing video games. 14:34 Um, not there's anything wrong with video games. I love 'em. Um, but skates- skate parks are generally directed to pull people away from skating in the streets, from those more natural third spaces. 14:49 And even skate spots, whether it's, like, a ledge outside of a courthouse or something, those become places where people generally hang out, maybe have a couple, uh, sneaky beer while they skate the ledge, and, you know, spend time. 15:02 That's where people meet up to then go on with the rest of their day. Uh, these are all pretty special locations in their own right, and they become that through the act of skateboarding, which I think is kinda special. 15:14 Maybe the essential quality of a third space is that anyone can pee there. [laughs] Oh, yeah. That there's a bathroom- And-... I think is definitely an essential quality of a third space, though- Yeah... 15:25 whether it's, whether it's a, a technical bathroom or just, you know, a tree you go behind. Right. If the Starbucks bathroom is locked, not a third space. Disqualified. Mm-hmm. That's true. 15:35 The, uh, the local cafe that I do a lot of my work in in the afternoons, they, uh, they're just... there are locals there, but just locals who just use the bathroom. Mm-hmm. And I think that's great. Mm. Right? 15:46 That's awesome. Um, okay, you published a piece about two months ago now, in early April, in Simplemagik called, uh, Falling or Failing: Making Sense of the Skateboarding Industry's Present and Making Way for Its Future. 16:00 Can you give us a... uh, it's quite a long piece, but, um, a, a summary of what's going on in the skateboarding industry right now. [sighs] Well- [laughs]... nothing good. [laughs] Um, 16:15 so from all accounts, the skateboarding industry is not doing very well. Uh, there are layoffs. Companies are closing. There are 16:24 beloved legacy brands being scooped up by private equity, all that fun stuff, and this has been... it's not a new thing, but it's happening at what seems to be a pretty advanced clip. Uh- Post, post-COVID, is it? 16:38 Or- Yeah, and I think from the folks that I talked to for the piece, there's some systemic issues with, you know, maybe n- stagnant ideas not allowing the industry to really grow and flourish in new directions. 16:52 Um, like the industry being slow to support, uh, women and queer skateboarders, that kind of thing. But a part of it, too, is that there was a big boom of interest in skateboarding 17:04 during the pandemic, and then that boom sort of dissipated, and those skateboarders weren't, um, weren't kept on, weren't marketed to properly. 17:15 Um, that could be for any number of reasons, but a lot of the blame some people put on the industry not catering to these new potential users. Mm-hmm. Um, 17:27 and it's also a weird thing, because skateboarding, at least in the pop culture sense, at least visually, wherever it sh- like, skateboarding is as popular as it's ever been. It's an Olympic sport. 17:40 Uh, you know, you have skateboarders like Evan Mock or whoever who are, like, on Gossip Girl, or there are- Mm... skateboarders who are just doing fashion shows and stuff like that. 17:51 So skateboarding is in the public eye more than ever, but is, in terms of the industry and the professional athletes, they're not getting 18:00 remunerated or supported in the way you'd, you would expect, considering at least the visibleI guess the visibility of skateboarding and those skateboarders. Mm-hmm. Um, and that piece is trying to explore why that is. 18:16 It's kinda tough because no one in the industry really wants to tell you what's going on. No one is releasing financials. There 18:25 is only fini- available financial information for companies that are publicly traded, which is very few. 18:31 So that was Supreme briefly, so we got to see how, uh, poorly they were doing and why they've been sold off a handful of times in recent years. Um, Vans has not been doing well. 18:43 VF Corp, uh, they just had released quarterly figures a few weeks ago, not doing well. They laid, recently laid off hundreds of people. 18:52 Um, so it's not a great time, and I think a lot of this too is just, it's the macro stuff that's going on. Uh, the economy's not doing great. Uh, things are... You know, your, your guy is just 19:07 winging tariffs at anyone- [laughs]... who apparently- Not my guy. Not my guy. [laughs] Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So there, there's a... I think that's probably the biggest part of it too, is- Well, wait. 19:19 One thing too I not- sorry to interrupt. One thing I noticed in this too, you're talking about, um, direct to consumer and how, like, direct to consumer skate purchasing w- went up a lot in the pandemic, I think. 19:29 Uh, which, I mean, the skate shop is another essential skate- skateboarding third space, right? Mm-hmm. Um, is that... 19:36 Was there, like, a major spike in D2C that, like, then put out of business or, like, gutted business from a lot of these skate shops that are more crucial? 19:44 There is another skateboarding writer named Mike Munson Rider who did a piece for Quarter Snacks not too long ago where he... 19:53 It, it was an anonymous survey of skate shop owners, and that is, uh, a reason that some of them cite, you know, direct to consumer helps them, but they're also the bigger direct consumer, 20:06 uh, companies- If you just buy from Vans, for one. They buy from Vans. A lot of companies will just sell their stuff through Amazon, um, so that has become an issue. And, you know, skate shops are generally struggling. 20:20 Could be any number of reasons why. They're slow to evolve. Um, kids' interests are just changing. They're not meeting the moment. 20:28 You know, there are a lot of skate shops who are more than just skate shops now, whether they're a skate shop/coffee shop. My local here, Antisocial Skateboard Shop, like, they sell flowers. Mm. Um- Oh, wow. 20:40 And part of that is to help pay the bills. I think part of that is just to appeal to more people to get them in the shop. 20:45 You know, there's, uh, I forget which shop it was that was mentioned in the piece, but, you know, they have, like, a, a thrift store, secondhand store within the skate shop because, you know, a lot of the gear that some skateboarding companies produce, like clothing-wise, apparel, it's not, not great. 21:00 No one- Mm. [laughs] It's not what the kids wanna wear because the kids are looking at TikTok or whatever and seeing the, the, the fashion influencers. Wow, I sound 100 years old. 21:11 [laughs] Um, and that's what they wanna dress like, and a lot of those companies are just providing, like, graphic T-shirts in four colors, which is what I wear, so I'm not talking shit. [laughs] Yeah. 21:23 I mean, how many kids... It's, it's weird 'cause, like, I remember Tony Hawk, you know, PlayStation 2 game and playing it growing up. 21:34 Um, but there wasn't a sense at that point that it was, like, either/or, like, that you would either be playing a skateboard game or you would be out actually skateboarding. 21:44 I wonder what proportion of young people today who would otherwise be skateboarders and have an affinity for it are spending that time in spaces online, watching YouTube and gaming, uh, to the extent that that actually has, like, cut into- Mm... 22:02 outside time. 22:04 'Cause it, it's, like, when I was cu- growing up, it felt like it was just, like, you had your outside time, and then this was, like, a supplement to your interest in skateboarding, which was primarily physical. 22:16 But I wonder if it's flipped for some people. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's so much more to look at on our screens now. Uh, you know, for me, you get home from school. You'd... For some reason we got Fox Rochester. 22:29 You watch Judge Judy and then The Simpsons. Mm-hmm. And then you go out and skate. Um, you know, like, even my younger siblings spent many hours playing World of Warcraft, and that was just... 22:40 You know, online video games weren't a thing when I was coming up- Mm... because I would play a lot of PlayStation, but then you get tired of it and you go outside. 22:48 Um, so I know a lot of this is just me as a, someone in their mid-30s trying to diagnose what the kids are up to, but I think that probably is a big part of it, and there are just also a lot more things to be interested in because the, the mono, the monoculture doesn't really exist as it once did. 23:05 Um, so you can, you can find so much more to do with yourself, so many more different avenues or inspirations to, to pull from. Um, skateboarding now, people are really doing it in a different way. 23:20 When I started, it's like you had to just do the gnarliest tricks that you could. You have to jump down big handrails, big stairs. But now people are, you know, 23:28 wanting to put on cool outfits and film clips at cool spots, and I think that is awesome, and people are just taking skateboarding in a different way as well. 23:36 And I think I'm kind of going off base of what your question was. Well, wait. 23:39 The, real quick, this, this idea of, like, now people wanting to put on cool outfits and go film themselves wearing these cool outfits doing tricks, is that... 23:47 Uh, uh, the way you say that, it sounds like that's a newer development. Would you trace that to anything specific? Like, is that, like, a product of, like, a TikTok or an Instagram or something like that? 23:55 I couldn't tell you. Um, I don't know if it's the newest development. There have always been skateboarders who, at least on the professional side, who made their name by being marketable characters- Mm-hmm... 24:08 more than being the best skateboarder, which I think is one of the cool things about skateboarding. Um, 24:14 and now with-The advent of social media, that is just a lot easier to do to create your personality, to foster your brand online, whether that's through your aesthetics or your tricks or a mix of the, of both of them. 24:31 Mm-hmm. Um, to the point where, you know, there's a, a belief that the individual brand has now superseded, like, the, the, the skate brand. Hmm. 24:41 Which, you know, the skateboarder was once defined by what company they rode for. Like, are you a Zero skateboarder? Like, you wore, uh, tight jeans, and you jump down big rails. 24:50 Are you a skateboarder who rides for Shorty, so you wear more baggy clothes and listen to hip hop and skate, uh, ledges, et cetera. 24:57 And now those barriers are more porous, so you see the influences of the individual kind of dictating the brand more than anything, the, the s- the actual, like, company brand, if that makes sense. Hmm. Definitely. 25:11 It does make sense. Well, so how are people finding you? Like, where does your Simple Magic audience come from, and where do, where do people discover you? Message boards. [laughs] There's one- Really? Wow. 25:22 Uh, there's one main message board left in skateboarding. Uh, it's for a magazine that used to be called SLAP, uh, if I remember the acronym correctly. It's Skateboarding Life Art Photography. Um, 25:37 and the message board, it's, like, the, the main vein running through skateboarding culture still. It's where news gets discussed, gossip, whatever. Um, I share the newsletter there every Friday. 25:50 Um, a lot of people have said they found it there. Uh, I also, I, I share it on social media. I'm not, like, the biggest poster online, but I share it there, and sometimes people find it there. 26:00 I do, I do, like, other writing stuff, and I always make sure to, like, cram that into my, into my byline. Hopefully, that helps. [laughs] Uh, you've started publishing other writers besides yourself. 26:10 I think you've been doing this for at least a year now, right? Um, can you tell us about some of the, some of the work you've published recently not from yourself? Yeah. That has been... 26:19 I was a little nervous to do it at first because I'd considered Simple Magic initially to just be, like, my personal blog. Um, but now I'm, I'm glad that we've started doing that because we've 26:31 published a lot of really interesting stuff. Uh, Christian Kerr, who is a writer based in New York, he's been doing this series. They actually have a new one that should be coming out tomorrow. 26:41 He breaks down different pieces of poetry, connecting it to skateboarding, and he's a really fantastic writer, and just being able to give him the space to really explore that and to have fun, um, has been really, uh, for me, really gratifying, and people have been really connecting with that work. 26:59 That is, his first piece is why, uh, Pete Williams, who connected us for doing this collaboration, that, that's, that's the piece that got this whole thing going. So that has been good. 27:11 Um, Natalie Porter, who is a skateboarding and historian and librarian up in northern British Columbia, she has a project called, uh, Women Skate History, and it just, like, archives, uh, women skateboarders throughout the years who just haven't gotten the coverage that they deserve. 27:29 She actually has a book coming out in September, and we published some work from her, and that has been really great because she's... 27:36 Again, it's just there are so many really interesting voices out there that just haven't had the opportunity to be published, whether that's because of, you know, historical gatekeeping or there just aren't really very many p- places to get published in skateboarding anymore. 27:50 Hmm. There's not a lot of magazines left. Um, so that has been great, but I'm, uh, kind of, I'm, I'm going off here. Hopefully, that answered the question. Yeah. No, that's great. Um, you've also published two books, 28:03 uh, yourself, and I'm curious, um, one is, one is about skateboarding, one is essays that deal with skateboarding, but can you talk a little bit about process of publishing those and finding an audience for them? Yeah. 28:18 The first book you mentioned is called Right Down + Circle, which is the button combination to do a 900 in the original PlayStation version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and that book is about the history and cultural impact of that game and 28:34 how that game really pulled, amongst other things, pulled skateboarding into the mainstream and helped it stay there. And 28:45 that was a book that, it's part of a series called, uh, Pop Classics from ECW Press, a press here in Canada. So it's like 33 1/3 but for, like, pop culture stuff. So I just pitched this idea to the publisher. 29:00 They were into it, and then I had, uh, a few months to send them a draft, and thankfully, I'd just been laid off at the time. [laughs] So it was great. Thank God. So I got to... Yeah. [laughs] Thank God I got fired. 29:13 [laughs] Has Tony Hawk read the book? Uh, I know he's, he's held it. He posted it on his Instagram story. Oh, okay. So he's, I s- I mailed him a copy, so he's taken a photo of it. Mm. 29:24 I don't know if he's read it, but he's at least taken a photo of it. Yeah. Well, we've all done that with a book at some point. [laughs] Yeah. If he, if he put it on his yearly read list and he didn't read it, Tony. 29:36 Shade. That's a re- that's a regular Barack Obama right there. Yeah. [laughs] Right. 29:42 Um, and then the other book is a collection of essays called Laser Quit Smoking Massage, and, uh, there's not too much skateboarding in that. 29:51 Um, it's a, essentially, like, a, a collection of my writing from about 2016 to 2022. Hmm. 29:59 A lot of the pieces are about the different ways and means that people find community in different centers, whether that is small towns, big cities, the internet. 30:10 Um, like, there's a piece there in the book about a fella named R Cannabis, who is, like, a local karaoke legend here in Vancouver, and the community that he's built around himself through doing karaoke, um- And cannabis?I don't, I don't know. 30:26 I don't know if he partakes. [laughs] But you know what the interesting thing is? So he's been around for a long time, and then once the proliferation of dispensaries came to the fore- Mm-hmm... 30:37 'cause, uh, weed has been legal in Canada since 2016, '15. Yeah. Thank you for that. Um, yep. And there are a bunch of Arcannabis, 'cause he spells Arcannabis like, uh, arcane and abyss pushed together. Oh my God. 30:52 And Arcannabis is our cannabis. [laughs] And, uh, there's a num- it's, it's a chain, so I feel like- Francis' brain just exploded. I know. But it's a chain. Okay. Yeah. 31:03 And I feel like they, uh, have ripped off our guy here, so that's a little upsetting. Mm. And- They owe him some royalties, for sure. They should. Oh, yeah. 31:10 Um, so pieces like that, uh, you know, there was- there's one in the book about this... I think, what is the piece called again? The Last Wholesome Corner of the Internet, where if you... 31:22 Have you ever tried to type in Gmail and accidentally went to gale.com? No. No, but I've d- I... One thing I do a lot is, uh, unfortunately is I, you know, I look at Twitter and I looked at LinkedIn a lot. 31:33 So one thing I've been doing a lot recently is I'll, like, be on Twitter, and I'll try to go to LinkedIn, and then I'll just, like, put instead of like, you know, highlighting the whole URL, I'll put an L-I at the end of it. 31:43 So I keep going to this guy's page, like Homely- [laughs]... or whatever, uh, on Twitter. Um, so yeah, I have not done that specific one, but- Francis just tweeting the word LinkedIn over and over. [laughs] Over. 31:56 This is help. This is not Google. Help me find a job. Ed Balls. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah. But if you go to... I believe this still works, but if you go to gale.com, they're... 32:08 It's essentially just, like, a splash page for a domain that this fellow had purchased as a gift for his wife in, like, the early 2000s, I think. 1996. I'm on the page right now. 1996. Yeah. Yep. 32:21 And this page details the story of how he was trying to get a gift for his wife, and throughout the years, like, different corporate interests tried to take the page from him. 32:33 There's, like, a ti- a Brazilian tile company, I believe it was, that, uh, just tried to take it, I believe via a lawsuit. So there's a... 32:44 Just trying to find stories like that, um- Well, I'm gonna have a stern talk with my husband for not squatting a domain for me as an act of love and grand romantic gesture. 32:55 I'm picturing this guy with, like, a come and take it sticker, and it's just, like, gale.com. [laughs] I believe he, uh... I, I could be wrong here, but I believe he worked for NASA. Mm. 33:06 So he's like, he was ahead of the curve, this guy. Um, and unfortunately... So I wrote this piece for the outline, and I'd reached out to Gale's husband for the piece, and I never heard back. 33:18 I could only find a, a contact for him via his Reddit account. And i- I think it was maybe, like, a year later I checked that Reddit account, and he had responded. 33:27 So I never got to include his voice in the story unfortunately. Damn. That's a great... I can't believe I've never been to gale.com though. That's, like, one typo I've never made. Oh, yeah. I just had... 33:36 Like, a work colleague one day was just like, "Oh, shit, I, uh, I accidentally forgot how to spell Gmail." [laughs] "And now I'm here." Mm. And, uh, so sha- shout-out to them for the inspiration for that piece. 33:48 Um, you wrote a piece recently called Is Social Media Dead? I'm gonna read a couple quotes from it. 33:54 "What does it mean that the promise of social media for me has been reduced to the fleeting hope that I might catch a video of a dog doing something wacky without being subjected to some outrageously bigoted bullshit? 34:06 Is there any promise left? A recent study out of the United Kingdom found that 70% of 16 to 21-year-olds felt worse after using social media, and almost half would prefer a world without internet." 34:19 So is social media dead, and would you prefer a world without internet? I don't think social media is dead. I don't know if it'll ever go away. Uh, it is definitely, in my view, decaying. It is not, uh... 34:32 It doesn't feel great, or maybe I'm just aging into it and it doesn't feel good anymore. Um, but those kids don't seem to like it either. 34:40 I don't know where it goes from here, 'cause, you know, I detail in that piece, you know, sort of the, the sordid history and potential futures that a lot of the people who run these companies seem to, seem to want and are encouraging, uh, which is part of it. 34:57 Um, you know, even... I still lurk Twitter. 35:01 I still lurk Twitter, you know, and you see JD Vance doing a horny Jack Nicholson GIF under someone suggesting that men's wear a guy is here illegally and can be deported, and you're like, "That is just... 35:14 That's some sick stuff." Mm-hmm. Um, and one thing I should note to, just to, as a callback. So the initial video that I saw of a dog doing some wacky stuff, it's, it's talked about at the beginning of the piece. 35:29 What they said I shouldn't put in is that it's a video of a Pomeranian walking on its front paws and peeing at the same time in a figure eight. And I was like, "This, this is the promise of the internet." 35:41 But then as I scrolled under that, Grok was doing his white genocide thing. Oh, yeah. Um, so that, that was, that was honestly the impetus for the whole piece. 35:50 I was like, "I'm just trying to watch this video of this dog fucking pissing and tickling." [laughs] "And I can't even do that." We can't, we can't get away from the piss. [laughs] We have to call this episode Piss Land. 35:59 [laughs] Um, I feel, I feel very similarly, Cole. I'm grateful for the internet. It's given me a lot. Um, you know, it definitely feels like a utility at this point and not something special and magical. And 36:15 as a utility, I wouldn't even say it's functioning particularly well. Um, we had Mike Pepe on the podcast, and he's written really well about how platforms are not neutral. And 36:29 as a platformLike, grows, uh, there is some coercion that happens in needing to use it. Um, you know, there's certain things about technology that feel coercive. 36:43 Like, New York is switching over to the Omni system now and away from, like, the physical cards, and it definitely feels like the end of something, um, to require people to primarily use a smartphone to access the subway, which is not the explicit aim, but is the outcome of that. 37:03 And yeah, it's hard. I, I 37:07 think the internet has made us all really available, and a lot of people are trying to figure out how to be less available while still embodying that generosity and openness of the early internet. 37:20 But it's not getting any easier. Have you guys... Um, speaking of Mike Pepe, I found this book because he tweeted a, a review of it from The Guardian, and then I saw it in my local bookstore. 37:32 But, uh, Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico. Literally added it to my list. I can't remember if Mike is the one who tweeted about it or somebody else. I saw the cover- Mm-hmm... and I did, like... 37:43 I did a very superficial, like, ooh, what's that? I wanna read it. Yeah. And then I read the description. I was like, "Oh, I definitely have to read that." It's- And it takes place in Berlin, right, Francesco? 37:50 It takes place in Berlin, and it's like, like, reading it, it's such a, like... I mean, it, it's about a vaguely... I don't know what, how old they were, are when it ends, but, like, vaguely 30s. 38:00 By the time it ends, they're maybe 40. But this couple from this, like, unnamed Southern European country, and it kind of is about... It's all written in this very, like, easy language. 38:12 Like, I was reading it out loud, um, to Emma the other day, and it, it's like you can read it out so easily in such a calm voice. It's so kind of detached and cold. There's no dialogue, and it's just like... 38:22 It, it starts with this... I'm not gonna read. I'll read, like, a few sentences. But it starts with, like, a description of, like, the photos that they have on their, like, Airbnb or similar posting. 38:32 Um, "The reverse perspective shows the rest of the room. A low sofa, and Danish curved mahogany armchair upholstered in petrol blue textured cotton. A herringbone tweed blanket. 38:41 An exposed light bulb with a twiddly fi- filament hanging from a midnight blue fabric cable. 38:47 A black metal side table with past issues of Monocle and The New Yorker stacked beside a brass candle holder and a glass bowl filled with fruit. 38:54 Next, a roll-top wooden sideboard displaying spider plant cuttings and glass jars of water, an avocado seed just starting to sprout, and a vinyl record player. 39:02 Two floor-standing speakers connected to an amplifier on a low wall shelf. Above that, an LP collection with a few prized pieces facing outwards. 39:11 A limited edition In Rainbows, a first-edition Kraftwerk, a dracaena casting a shadow like a spindly hand, a Primavera Sound poster." So it's like, uh... And on and on. Yeah. 39:21 But there's all these, like, references of, like, oh, like, I have that one thing in my apartment. And maybe your apartment doesn't look exactly like this, but you have at least a few of these things. 39:29 And then they're, like, it, it, they're basically this, like, freelance, vaguely graphic design, vaguely, like, web design couple who lives in Berlin. And you know, they... 39:39 It describes, like, all their, their friends moving there and the Anglosphere and et cetera, et cetera. But I, I, I mean, to, to sum it up, it's like this, it... 39:47 The, the kind of sameness and, like, monocultural malaise of, of being a millennial and of growing up on the internet when, like, it meant something to, to find cool things and, like, that that could be part of your identity. 39:59 And now we're like, everyone has those same cool things. And when they describe that, like, you have a Moroccan rug, it's like, well, fuck, I have a Moroccan rug, and why do I think that's cool, and all these things. 40:10 Um, it's really... I, I haven't finished it yet. It's really, like... It's a, it's like a one-sitting read. Um, but I have, like, 20 pages left. Uh, but it's... 40:18 I don't know what it's teaching me yet, but, um, it's very... I, I recommend reading it because it's about this, like, malaise of, like, is social media dead? Is the internet... Are we at the end of the internet? 40:31 You know, end of culture kind of thing. Isn't it sort of about, like, the danger of happiness maxing too? What do you mean by happiness maxing? Like, try- going after things to be slightly better, like lifestyle creep. 40:47 Mm. 'Cause I've been thinking about happiness maxing a lot lately, and I think that, like, above a certain comfort threshold, which is a lot lower than most people think it is. 40:56 Like, in the past, I think it's been assessed as, like, $80,000 a year. Obviously, if you live in New York or something like that, you would have to adjust it. Mm-hmm. 41:04 But, like, up until I think a certain comfort level, people, people ruin their lives through addiction or things that, like, inhibit you from trying hard enough to get your necessities met. 41:19 But once you reach a basic level of necessity, the people who I know who've, like, ruined their lives, like really ruined their lives, did it by trying to be, like, marginally happier or getting, like, a little bit more or going after something that might be, like, slightly better than what they have now. 41:36 Mm. And I think that that's, like, what the bourgeois novel has always sort of been about. 41:42 But I think the reason why, like, a lot of these books are, like, enjoyable but ultimately, like, sound the same is 'cause they're, they're all sort of circulating around that one theme. Yeah. 41:55 I'm gonna read one more little bit, and then I promise I'll stop reading from it. He loves reading aloud on this podcast. I do. I know, right? 42:00 And he'll get, like, halfway through a passage and realize it's, like, longer than he thought. Way too long. Okay. He's committed. [laughs] Well, this one will be... Okay, I'll, I'll... You can... 42:06 Okay, uh, listener, you can go to 2X speed for about the next 30 [laughs] seconds. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, um, "The results of that love were all around them. 42:14 Delicious hot meals, their bills paid, a job and a home they liked, the details that comprised their life. 42:20 It was a life they had created for themselves, building difference upon difference until it encapsulated the real them with a freedom they would never have had back home. They were proud of it. 42:28 On the other side of the window, the city pulsed on, calling them with promises they were in no rush to put to the test. 42:34 Later on, they would fall asleep breathing in each other's smell, whispering little jokes, sweet nothings, plans for the next day."But really what they were saying was a prayer, a silent and strangely solemn prayer for things to remain exactly as they were. 42:47 It was always answered. 42:49 So I think I, I, I read that because, like, what you're talking about, about the happiness maxing, it's like it's kind of describing a point where, like, they feel they've reached the maxed happiness, right? 42:59 And it's like before kind of the fall, before their friends start, like, drifting away and moving back to the hometown and stuff, and like, I don't know. I think, I think this kind of happiness... 43:11 I, I hadn't heard anybody talk about the ha- the id- so this idea of happiness maxing before, but I feel like I'm, like, personally at, like, some kind of diminished returns there, where it's like I don't wa- I don't need to know about the latest restaurant that opened, and I don't need to make a reservation there. 43:27 And I can just, like, I, like, I need to focus on other things besides, like, knowing about X, Y, Z, which maybe this is just, like, 43:36 you know, turning 30 and, like, realizing I don't have to care about all these t- taste signifiers so much. I don't know. Or the cost of caring inc- caring increases. Mm. Which it does. Yeah. 43:50 And I think a lot of it, too, is just I don't have healthy social media habits. [laughs] I'm looking at my... 43:58 Like, I sit at a station and do my work, and I have two screens, and then I have a phone, and then I have an iPad. And there's just, there's just too much to look at. And, 44:12 you know, I, if I'm working from home, I do, I do a nap at lunch. I do a little nap, a little 15-minute- Mm... oof, feels great. 44:20 But I'm looking at, I'm looking at the tablet before that because I'm, I'm of a certain age to, to look at a tablet- [laughs]... before you go to sleep. I look at the tablet before I do my, do my night sleep. 44:30 And I'm just always looking at stuff. A lot of it helps me pull stuff to write about for the newsletter. Mm-hmm. Um, but I, I don't. I don't need to be looking. 44:38 I don't need to be seeing JD Vance posting Jack Nicholson GIF in a really horrific manner. I don't need to be seeing this stuff. 44:47 But I think it's become so ingrained and enmeshed in our lives that it feels kind of, to a degree, like you kinda have to. Mm. Um, at least for me. I mean, I, I deleted Facebook years ago. 44:58 I don't miss it, so I know, I know there are options. Same. Um, but yeah, a lot of it is, at least with the social media stuff, it's hard to, to disentangle oneself even as you, even as you see it [laughs] 45:10 falling apart around you. You know, uh, what's... They say, uh, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but they didn't account for Apple all day. Um- [laughs] That's just what the hell. [laughs] So true. That's so true. 45:23 And, um, but the thing is, like, Apple has kind of, like, reached a plateau. Like, nothing that they announced at WWDC was, like, that cool, and, like- Glass... liquid glass. Liquid glass UI, yeah. Like, who... 45:34 What even is that? Somebody was like... [laughs] I saw a tweet that was like, "If Steve Jobs saw this, he would, like, take you into back alley and beat you." [laughs] Mm-hmm. 45:43 You know, I think my husband and I both have this, a little bit of this, like, John Calvin thing of the image of, like, the spider on the string over the fire. And, like, Francis, you said, like, before the fall. 45:55 I feel like there's a certain level of, well, you know, des- suffering from desire. 46:01 Like, there's a certain level of saying, like, when things are going well for you and you were like, "You know what would be, like, really amazing? Like, if I had all of this plus this other thing"- Mm-hmm... 46:11 where you start to feel like the little spider over the- If I only had one more jacket. Yeah, if I only had one more jacket. If I only had a trip to Rome. Um, you know, if I only had, like, it, like, literally any... 46:27 Insert anything, a better car. Um, I lived in a different city. But then, you know, we both have this thing, but I feel like we take turns being the spider, [laughs] you know? 46:40 And then it's like nobody wants the other person to say, "You're being the spider right now." Mm. Let's move off the internet for a second. I would love to hear- Not possible. Okay. Well, actually, the... 46:51 You're, you're correct. We're on the internet. [laughs] G- Shut up. Shut up. [laughs] Cole just, like, leaves the call. All right. That's a weird way to end. [laughs] Okay. 46:58 Um, this question actually is not fully off the internet, though. But I was looking at your, your recent Skeets, 'cause you may still lurk Twitter, but you don't really post there. 47:05 You're, you're, you know, a relatively prolific Blue- Blue Sky user. Um, and you have been posting a lot recently about Vancouver's mayor, and that he is Bitcoin-obsessed. 47:16 Uh, and I don't know anything about this, so I would love a little bit of, uh, local, um, Vancouver politics insight. Yeah. Our mayor is a fellow named Ken Sim. He, during his campaign the second time around, he 47:32 lost a very close election a few years back and then won in a rematch, uh, two years ago now. And he, throughout, has campaigned on, you know, bringing swagger back to the city. 47:47 [laughs] That's, that's like a- Hell yeah... that's a qu- that's an unfortunate quote. Um- Who was the crack guy, Rob Ford? That's Toronto. That, he... Yeah, that was Toronto. Yeah. But, like, your guy'll never be him. 48:00 You know what I mean? Like- Mm. It's Ford had swag. Mm. Ford had... Yeah. That's why I'm saying Ford had swag. Like, you can't. Yeah. He, uh, yeah, he was a more compelling person, for sure. 48:11 [laughs] Compelling is a euphemism. More compelling character for people who don't live in Canada to look at and- Yeah... on the internet and like that. Well, and that's the thing. 48:18 Everyone just calls him Crack Mayor, but he has a name. Yeah. He has a name. Yeah. And it was Rob. Um- [laughs] I did get his name right. [laughs] Mm. Uh, hi- his brother is the premier of Ontario. Doug, right? Yeah. 48:32 Mm-hmm. Doug Rob and Doug. Um, just a couple boys from Etobicoke. [laughs] Um, and Ken Sim, yep, bringing swagger back to the city. 48:43 One of the things that always comes to mind when I think about him is I think it was-Perhaps after his first year in office, he was profiled by a local magazine, and the opening scene is the journalist waiting for him in his office, and Ken Sim is like, "I, I need to, I need to change out of my workout clothes," and he just, like drops trou in front of, in front of the, the reporter. 49:05 And that's, that's swag. Uh, but he is also, like a big proponent of Bitcoin. He, uh, he has investments, I believe, in companies and also in Bitcoin itself. 49:15 He wants to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the city of Vancouver. Mm. Uh, he was recently at a conference for Bitcoin in El Salvador- Mm... 49:28 during a, uh, while there was a, an election cycle for, uh, city council seats here in Vancouver. Um, he is... I'm, I'm personally not a fan. He... 49:44 It almost sounds, like cl- trite and cliche to say, but he's, like just in the pocket of developers. Like, do you know who Chip Wilson is? Mm-mm. Wait. He is- Oh, yeah, no... 49:52 he's the founder of- I was thinking of Chip Gaines. [laughs] He's, he's the founder of, uh, Lululemon. Oh, yeah. Mm. And he is, like a- Big legging. Yeah, he is essentially just, like a, a right, right-wing crank now. 50:07 Um, and that guy helped fund his election through, like, you know, different PACs. I think we call them something different here. Mm. 50:17 Um, but essentially has funded Ken Sim's campaign, and then almost every piece of legislation or whatever, uh, bylaw, whatever, is influenced by the moneyed interests. And the Bitcoin stuff, it's... 50:33 I just find it personally pretty upsetting that our mayor- No, it sounds-... is going off to conferences. [laughs] Well, sounds like our president... you guys have bigger, bigger problems. 50:40 He sounds like your Gavin Newsom, to be honest. He... Well, I th- I don't think that's an unfair comparison. It's a guy who is more concerned about image than actually managing the community. Mm-hmm. Um, and it is, uh 50:55 ... And it's, it's fun to point out stuff, like how when they announced that The Rolling Stones were coming to Vancouver, that they projected The Rolling Stones logo up on City Hall. 51:06 Like, that stuff is fun to talk about 'cause it's so stupid. Mm-hmm. Right, like how cute is it? But ultimately... Yeah. Oh, yeah. 51:13 It's like, "Hey, we're, The Rolling Stones are coming to the city," and he's, like trying to chalk it up as a win for himself. Yeah. Well, after that, let's do Beatlemania. [laughs] Let's do Beatlemania. Yeah. 51:24 Ring- Ringo Starr is coming to Earls. Mm-hmm. Um, do you know Earls, local restaurant chain? No. Mm, good stuff. I wish. And it's just a lot of... 51:35 And may- maybe that's even a function of just how the internet has warped people, where it's more presentation than substance, or the presentation is just masking the, a lot of the nothing that this guy does. 51:48 He advocates for Bitcoin, but then doesn't attend... I think he's missed, like 33% of all council meetings. Mm-hmm. Like, bro's not even doing his job. No. 51:58 Um, but anyway, so that's why I'm skeeting about him a lot, and I was, uh- Maybe he's your Eric Adams... trying not to get... Well, that's, that's the thing. A lot of people do compare him to Eric Adams. Yeah. 52:07 But he, he doesn't, he doesn't have the one-liners. Yeah. He's not, he's not as poetic. He's not gonna tell you that your haters are just waiters- Oh, that's exactly what I was thinking... on the table. 52:18 No, then he's swagless. All the time, one-liners. It's all about the one-liners. Yeah. Yeah. He's not gonna, he's not gonna tell you about how he had this shorty in Queens. 52:27 [laughs] He's not gonna- I think it was Rockaway, actually. Well, that's in Queens. Sorry. Well, apologies. He has shorties everywhere. You're right, it is, it is Queens. Like, that's... It's so powerful, that stuff 52:36 crosses borders- Mm-hmm... and continents. Like, I'm, I'm on the other side of North America, and that got to me, 'cause it's unfortunately quite beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. 52:47 Um, I want to talk about some of your bets on the future of skateboarding from your, the, the piece you wrote at the beginning of the year. 52:54 Uh, I've, I, I selected four and, you know, we're about halfway through the year, month short of halfway. Mm. So I wanted to ask, uh, the status of these bets. So number one, uh, you gave yourself plus 300 odds. 53:07 A new product gimmick is introduced to the skateboarding world, and for a brief confusing moment, everyone is stoked. Where are we on that? That's a good question, 'cause that, I wrote that one. Thank you. You wrote it. 53:19 [laughs] Thank you. Thank you. [laughs] Who asked the question? And me. [laughs] Anyways. That happened last year, so I was riding high. There's a new, uh, formula for a wheel that came out- Mm... 53:33 that was both soft and slides. Mm. Usually the wheel has to be hard to slide well. Um, so people were really excited about Dragon Formula wheels. Um, you have to say it like that. [laughs] Um- With some slides. This... 53:49 Yeah. Oh, yeah, soft slides. Um, but this year, that's a good question. Has there been- Maybe they'll make the skateboards out of that metal that they just found that passively harvests water from the air. 54:01 I haven't heard of it. Oh. Just like anti-rust. No, you should read Clone. [laughs] Touche. No, not anti, not anti-rust. It might not even be a metal. It's a material is how it was described. Mm. And it will, 54:15 uh, yeah, it, it passively harvests water from the air. So there's, like a potential for, I don't know, water to be managed by, like maybe extreme condensation is kind of how I took it. Mm. 54:28 But yeah, maybe they could make a skateboard out of that. If you made the trucks out of that, perhaps that helps them grind- Yeah... better. There we go. Yeah. 54:36 Uh, but I don't think there's been a product that is breaking through in that way just quite yet. So I'm, I might be fixing to lose my imaginary dollars on that one. Darn. Okay. So we have another bet. 54:46 Uh, you gave yourself plus 200 on this one. 54:50 A skateboarder breaks new ground by being the first to receive-A signature model shoelace Well, after I wrote that, people wrote in to tell me that some people have had signature model shoelaces- Oh... 55:03 but they were shoelace belts, which is different. Yeah. Oh, that's, uh- Yeah... that's so... Okay. Shoelace b- that's too woke for me. You have to- [laughs] You have to take the lace from your shoe. 55:13 That is just all together too woke. Well, this is the thing. You buy it. It doesn't come with a shoe. It's just a shoelace, and I believe it was a Canadian skater, Mickey Papa, who had the signature model shoelace belt. 55:24 If I'm wrong, apologies, Papa. But I don't think anyone has had a signature model shoelace just yet, but I can feel it. It's coming. 55:31 There, I, I, um, I'm pretty sure, like, The Row has done a shoelace belt that costs a lot of money, like, specifically. I'm looking it up. I don't know. Okay, maybe this isn't a lace, but there is a... 55:44 No, this is just a, a, a thin wrap belt from The Row that costs $2,150. Um- [laughs] Sounds about right. Anyways, okay, so moving on. The next bet, skateboarding's big trend for 2025, Christianity. 55:58 You gave yourself minus 120 odds on this. Nailed it. I've nailed it. Wait, so far, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. So God is big. He's big this year. She's big. 56:10 Um, there are a lot of top professionals who are wearing just, like, a lot of Jesus-inspired swag. They have, you know, Bible verses shouted out on their T-shirts during contests or whatever. 56:26 Um, there is also a, 56:30 a local guy who is going to contests, like, there's a big contest called Tampa Pro in Tampa, Florida, and there's a guy who goes there, and he's essentially trying to be, like, a, a pastor or minister for professional skateboarders. 56:46 Mm-hmm. And you know, he's leading sermons and prayer sessions, and, uh, I guess is maybe more of, like, a spiritual advisor to a lot of these guys. Um, I still don't know too much about what's going on inside there. 56:59 I... That's something I've been keeping an eye on. It's giving me... The way you're talking about this is making me think of, like, how I have heard of, like, Hillsong and Justin Bieber spoken about. 57:08 Yes, and Ryan Sheckler, who we all know, who we all, I'm sure, have fond feelings for, he belongs to a church that, uh, is very active in promoting him. Mm. And he, in turn, promotes the church. 57:24 He says it helped save his life. I don't, I don't doubt it. Uh, more power to him. But Christianity is... 57:30 it's pretty big this year, and I think it's, it's a, it's a big year for whatever version of Christianity exists now. Like, I, I'm gonna take us on a weird tour here. 57:42 I, I'm a big fan of combat sports and mixed martial arts, and unfortunately, I walk, I watched the recent UFC card over the weekend, and every fighter who won thanked God so profusely- Mm... 57:53 and then also shook Donald Trump's hand because he was in the audience. Mm. And that's... I feel like that's, that's the convergence. It's, like, the, uh, the evangelicals have, like, they've done it. Mm. 58:06 This is kind of like, like, I watch a lot of soccer, and I feel like a lot of soccer players are quite religious, so, and when they score, you know, do, point, pointing up, up to the sky there. Um- Mm-hmm... 58:17 yeah, I don't know. I feel like professional sports people are disproportionately religious compared to the general population. 58:26 I mean, you'd think it would keep you more humble if your gifts were bestowed upon you- Mm... and not just yours through hard work, you know? 58:33 Um, but I do think it's amazing that you just beat the shit out of someone in the octagon, and then you're like, "Thank you, God. That was so dope how you allowed me to just maim this person." Mm-hmm. 58:44 When there were two spatters of blood on the mat, that's where, that's where you- I hear you... guided my hand. 58:50 [laughs] Um, okay, last bet, the last bet you made that I want to ask about, uh, you gave yourself minus 500 odds on this. New skateboarding media ventures flourish. We're getting there. Mm. We're getting there. 59:02 There are a number of new blogs that have popped up. Uh, there is one run by Na- my friend Faron Golden called Skate Bylines. 59:09 It takes a more traditional journalistic approach, um, and also is, like, really essentially, like, collating a lot of work that exists on the internet now and bringing it and, like, linking out to it. Mm. 59:19 Sort of like what Clone does, and that's appreciated. There are some new magazines out in Europe, uh, one called Bubble that has been, uh, putting out a lot of really interesting articles. So there is stuff happening. 59:32 It's just that you're either doing it for the love or a shoe brand is footing the bill. Mm. And there's really no in between, which is m- the state of media in general, really. What... 59:46 Is there, are there any particularly, like, in terms of, uh, shoe brands footing the bill, are there any particularly good, um, state-sponsored projects, as it were, in skateboarding media right now? 59:56 'Cause in the way that we were talking earlier too about how the, you know, the skate brand as, as, like, kind of the, the container is a little dead, and it's about the individual. Um, yeah. 1:00:09 Do, are, is, are there any particularly good shoe brand sponsored media right now? Most media is sponsored by companies. Uh, like, skateboarding magazines started out as a way for- Way to sell shoes... 1:00:23 companies to advertise product. Um, and it's never really changed. Doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot of good skateboarding magazines or good skateboarding media. 1:00:33 But if it wasn't for those brands, a lot of them directly funding different projects, whether it's tour videos, whether it's whatever, uh, a lot of skateboarding media just wouldn't exist, which is, I don't know, it's conflicting because that, that generally means that there's, like, no real skateboarding journalism- Mm-hmm... 1:00:54 because there'sNo way to separate the, uh, the financial backer from- The foot from the shoe... the subject. Mm-hmm. So essentially everything is sponsored- Yeah. I, I-... by like Vans- I see. I see... 1:01:06 Vans or Nike or Converse or... And, you know, I'm saying this as a negative thing. There are negative aspects to it, but if it wasn't for those companies promoting their products, we wouldn't have cool videos to watch. 1:01:18 I like watching videos. I write about them in my newsletter. Um, but, uh, we don't, we don't have, uh, we don't have big financial backers over at Simple Magic. Best video- That's all I'm saying... 1:01:29 wait, best video this year. Yeah. If, if a, if a listener was to leave this and watch one skate video, where would you, what would you suggest they watch? Best skate video so far this year. That's a good one. 1:01:44 There is a lot of content that comes out, and I'm not a big fan of the word content when it comes to skateboarding videos because I, there's so much work that goes into it. Mm-hmm. And blood, sweat, and tears. Um, 1:01:57 best video so far. If I remember my timelines correctly... Oh, yeah. No, this came out. Uh, there was a recent video by Hardbody Skateboards. Do you know that brand, New York-based? Mm-hmm. 1:02:09 They put out a video featuring two of their riders who I believe are both from Argentina. Mm. I can't remember the name of it, but if you just look up Hardbody Skateboarding. 1:02:18 Um, feature- one of the skaters in it is Ezzy Martinez. That was a really fantastic video. The new, a new Baker Skateboards video came out yesterday which has a lot- Are you talking about, is it Never Enough 3? 1:02:29 There's also- I think-... Victor's Voyage. I'm just looking up at YouTube. I think it's Never Enough 3. Okay, sick. Yeah. That's a really good one. 1:02:38 Um, but that's also sort of the issue, is that there's like so much content that it's hard to, to keep track of it, and that's what I try to do in the newsletter, but clearly it just, it's, it doesn't stay in there. 1:02:51 But you can go to simplemagic.ca and check it out yourself. That's a perfect place to end it. Go to simplemagic.ca. Cole, thank you for coming on. Thank you, Cole. Thank you both for having me. All right. 1:03:00 This is Skatesland. Listeners, we'll see you next week. [outro music]
