Notes of a Greasy Young Man: LBDR
For those of you that don’t know, LBDR stands for Laguna Beach Danger Riders. The meaning of LBDR is adapted from a crew of old-school downhill guys from the 80’s who used to rage the same hills we do now. Currently, the crew is made up of homies from Laguna, Northern California, and Brazil. The list of Danger Riders is as follows: Evren Ozan, Arthur Wexell, Bryn Jones, Roger Jones, Marcus Hickox, Nathan Bryant, Riley Crone, Fernando Yuppie, Jesse Breiman, Byron Essert and myself. A pretty extensive list, but we manage to keep it feeling like family. Newcomers don’t get added to this list very often, but when they do it’s not like some weird gang initiation (although most members do have “LBDR” tats). When the time is right to add a new member we take a vote and that new member is added. Simple.
LBDR is all about crew-life, our style of skating, and the homies—the name has less to do with the city of Laguna itself. Without a doubt though, Laguna is—in all our minds—the best place to skate in the world. But as I said, LBDR is more than just a geographic location, and that’s why I don’t stutter when telling fans-in-denial that LBDR is my shit, even though my physical house is in the Bay Area. Maybe if I sold yey like Pablo Escobar I could afford a pad there, but until then, I’ll barge the roads my tax-dollars didn’t pay for.
Moving on from the past, let’s look at the present and future of LBDR. Hopefully, some of you reading this have seen the videos we’ve been putting out on the YouTube channel “LAGUNA DANGER”. I’ve been in plenty of well-thought-out skate videos before, but have never been given the opportunity to take full creative control. Most members of LBDR have company sponsors that plan and control most of the videos they’re in. That’s precisely the reason why we’re so fired-up to produce videos through LAGUNA DANGER—because now, we are the directors, producers, and the skaters—total creative control. With this freedom comes the ability to make the videos that reflect our day-to-day lives. I think this is rad! As always though, there are those who aren’t as stoked. Whether it’s parents of Laguna groms, some kids who never got laid in high school, or the Piggies, there is definitely a good amount of hate targeted towards our videos. Most complaints are people crying about LBDR “ . . . not being good role models”, “ . . . trying to look gangster with that rap music”, “ . . . not being safe with their skating”, or “ . . . trying to look badass by smoking that devil’s lettuce”, but here’s the truth of it: Not one of us signed up to be role models. We are just skaters making videos that make us happy and showcase our lives. If you’re butt-hurt about what’s in our videos, turn ‘em off. That being said, if you dig what we’re all about, then stay tuned to more media and videos from LBDR—raw style!
Currently, we have two different limited edition LBDR t-shirt designs in print, and the crew has been rocking ‘em steady for a while now. We are tweaking the existing designs and coming up with two new ones. In due time the shirts will be available to the public through skate shops in very limited numbers, making each run unique and rare. We aren’t tryna get rich selling t-shirts; all we wanna do is get fools hyped on LBDR and maybe make a couple bucks to buy a new lens, so we can keep making videos. Anyway, I’m starting to feel like I’ve been talking too much, so I’ll just finish up with some quotes from the LBDR fam:
“LBDR is one big family that likes to skate, protect the hills they hold dearest, drink forties, smoke dro, mac bitches, and live dangerously of course!”
(Bryn Jones)
“The best part of LBDR is all the tight homies in all different locations who all have unique styles and something important to add to the group’s complexion. But at the end of the day LBDR is young skaters who spend their dayz skating down fabulous slopes of asphalt sippin’ Old English, bashing on grommets. Basically, just enjoying life! Haha! Might wanna spell-check that.”
(Arthur Wexell)
-Liam Morgan
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GENERAL DISCLIAMER: The statements, comments, and opinions expressed by Liam Morgan through Notes of a Greasy Young Man are those of “Mr. Greasy” himself, who is solely responsible for them, and they do not necessarily represent the views of Wheelbase LLC. Questions or comments regarding any information listed in this particular column can be addressed by contacting aliens, or channeling the spirit of Isaac Hayes.
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- Notes Of A Greasy Young Man: West Coast Assault
- Notes of a Greasy Young Man: Getting Rolled in Laguna
- Notes Of A Greasy Young Man: Minding Media
- Notes Of A Greasy Young Man: High Schoolin’
- Notes of a Greasy Young Man: Road Trippin’ To Giant’s Head
Category: Columns, Notes Of A Greasy Young Man
Man, this is definitively the way every skater should make videos. Not thinking about sponsors, or shit like that. Just the love of skating, smoking grass and living fast.
Greetings from argentina greasy boy!
Hell yeah dude! Thanks for hitting us up. Stay shredding in Argentina!
Man, this note really stoked me. Now I know that at least some people think the same way I do. Keep doing this, boy, you are in the good path. See ya!
colo your exactly right skateboarding is too have fun meet new people and chill all day long with your homies and trying to force sponsor yourself bye making videos and sending them to companies should be despised in the skateboarding community the only way someone should be picked up is bye getting your name around the block and meeting tons of people doing what you love.
They’re all stuck in a system, respect to LBDR