What’s Next? 11.0

I’m a crusty old man, for sure, but I’m cool with it—the adventures I’ve experienced are worth every arthritic joint and flabby encumbrance acquired along the way. It’s super strange though to think back on how long I’ve been addicted to the same damn activity of skateboarding. Sometimes when I’m kicking back after a road trip, and I’m feeling all introspective and shizzle, I ponder on how the hell I still find something fresh in this whole plank riding thing. The answer I’m left with is always: Exploration and Adventure. Since the very first time I stepped on a skateboard it was for the sake of Exploration & Adventure—from that first day on deck I just wanted to explore my boring-ass suburban neighborhood. Already, at the age of 11, I truly felt that many around me were stuck, tired, and living miserably in a endless spin-cycle of lameness. I felt like I needed to find something better than that and a 9” wide, bright-yellow conical-wheeled, paint-splashed Valtera, single-kick skateboard was the first vehicle I found which provided the Exploration & Adventure I was in search of. When I received that first skateboard for Christmas back in 1984, along with a Walkman cassette player and an Al Green gospel-tape, my life changed forever. It was on!

28 years later and I’m still riding and exploring life via skateboarding—and happy to be doing so—only now, the boards and terrain I’m riding these days are even more divers and the destinations even more remote and far-off. I leave for Florida tomorrow night, and then on to Puerto Rico after that—the wild adventures continue—who knows what’s next?

During all of these past 28 years of riding skateboards I’ve had people tell me that I was “doing it wrong.” That I couldn’t do “this” or do “that”, and that I needed to “be more like everyone of else.” I’ve always said “to hell” with such people and their Hater-Aid bullshit!

Wheelbase Magazine was founded on a life-long love affair with skateboarding as well as a low-tolerance for bullshit & naysaying. As this magazine continues to spread it’s wings, flourish, and grow into new and exciting manifestations, these aforementioned founding-ideals will never be forgotten, sidetracked, or undermined—not on my watch!

As usual, I cannot predict what the future holds, but what I can do is make the promise to all of you readers & skaters out there—long, short, wide, wiggly, poppin’, slappin’, slidin’, mobbin’ and the like—that as long as I’m at the helm here at Wheelbase Magazine we will continue to be a vehicle for Exploration, Adventure, and the telling of the true & diverse Tales of Skateboarding—uncut, direct from skateboarder to skateboarder. This is our passion. This is what we do. Shredlove.

Big things are brewing—stay shreddy.