Our friend Brandon let us know that tomorrow (February 28), he and his crew will be at the Gonzalez courthouse at 6:00 pm fighting for a skatepark in front of the parish council. If you can offer some support, a voice, or anything else, let Brandon know! Call him at 985.212.4342.
Props to the Gonza crew for taking action!
As many of you already know, our friend Shawn Feleming, owner of Aminal Skateboards, has a baby daughter who’s been having some major medical problems. To help offset some of the medical costs, there’s an auction going on at Ebay for a signed, mint condition Darrell Stanton pro model. If you have the means to lend a hand, and you’d like a sick collector’s item, check out the auction by clicking here.
If there’s any other support you’d like to offer, you can message Shawn directly over at Aminal Skateboard’s MySpace page located here.
The Fleming’s are a great family… and Portia’s a cute kid. All help is appreciated.
Ok, so he’s not really weird, but we have to differentiate him from the other trillion Randys we have in the Small Times’ crew (who all have descriptive prefixes of their own). Randy’s a sick skater, and he’s a year closer to becoming a geezer like some of the rest of us.
Anyway, cheers Grandpa!
…is a very good skateboarder that a few of us have been fans of for several years. Check him out:
Jayme rocks.
By the way: Jayme’s not sponsored by the shop or anything, he’s just down with the cause.
I just sent the following email to Grand Central Marketing:
to: info@grandcentralmarketing.com
from: Neal BoydMy name is Neal Boyd, I’m the webmaster and a “big brother” for skateboarders in the city of Hammond, Louisiana.
When it came to our attention that Hammond would be a part of the Andale Posse skate tour, we were able to stir up the masses… I had hundreds of kids and skate-vets ready to experience what might have been the biggest event in Hammond’s skate scene… for this Sunday.
One thing bummed me out though… on the official Andale Posse website, you had Hammond referred to as New Orleans. I called up Donovon Will and voiced my displeasure… he kept defending the use of “New Orleans” over our actual city’s name of “Hammond,” even though Hammond isn’t even in the greater New Orleans area. In fact, not only are we several cities and parishes away from NOLA, but you’d also have to cross the longest bridge in the state to get there from here.
You might as well refer to San Francisco as Los Angeles.
Anyway, with that said and done, I resigned myself to the fact that Hammond would be referred to as New Orleans, since in the marketing world, all of Louisiana = New Orleans… even though in the skateboard world (your target market), Hammond is known as the only city in the state with a three-quarter of a million dollar skatepark, and an cultural identity of its own.
…then last night I started getting emails. Those emails told me to go look at the Andale Posse website, so I did. There I saw that Louisiana had been removed completely, and Memphis had been put in its place. We received no warning, so I was left with a lot of damage control… hundreds of skateboarders were preparing to get out here for the event, so now I’m forced to send the message out at the last minute.
I fired off an angry email at Donovon, but I don’t think that’s enough. Not only am I doing everything in my power to reach the hundreds of skaters in the state to let them know that the event was cancelled, I’m calling for a boycott of any and all “Andale Posse” goods.
We felt we deserved recognition we weren’t getting… fine. But we deserved to know that we were taken off the tour.
Sincerely,
Neal Boyd
225.278.6656
The tour seems to have shifted away from Hammond and has been relocated to Memphis.
Not only are marketers idiots, but they’re rude too. I guess I’ll have to send a complaint to Donovan@grandcentralmarketing.com.
Sorry for the bad news, everybody.
We love the True Love Collective. You’ve seen their boards in the shop, expect to be skating with a few of the fellas from True Love very soon. They’re a true core brand… skater owned all the way.
As all of us know, it takes a lot of grassroots work to get a skatepark built. Check out the San Antonio Skatepark Association and give these guys props… if any of you reading this are in Texas, give these cats a hand and help the cause.
On a personal note, I just launched A World Without CEOs to take issue with the IASC (International Association of Skateboard Companies) for their demonization of skateshops that carry shop-decks, as well as their hatred for regionally branded board companies (sort of like Non Visual, Aminal, Chief, etc). The site is called A World Without CEOs, a spoof of A World Without Pros.
Josh Ew Uh alerted me about this last night… and because I like to do my best to give you all a candid look at what’s going on in the area, I want to give you a full rundown.
The tour coming up next Sunday is a promotion from Warner Brothers in an attempt to push the cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez. It goes without saying, the idea of a tour based on Speedy makes people tilt their heads and say… “huh?” But then again, when you have Danny Gonzalez, Patrick Melcher and the legendary Steve Caballero coming to town, it helps to ease situation a bit.
Anyway… last night, Josh informed me that the official tour website (located here) had our part of the tour labeled as New Orleans (see for yourself). As everyone in this state knows, we love New Orleans with all of our hearts… but we aren’t New Orleans. We’re not even considered part of the greater New Orleans area (something I tried to explain to one of the marketers last night, something that I believe fell on deaf ears). All of us here in Hammond have busted our collective asses in making sure that Hammond was known as Hammond… and I think every skater in the state understands that we have our own thing going on. As always, we invite everyone to take part in what we have going on, but the differences between our scenes and the scenes in other areas of the state are very clear.
Mr. Marketer was trying to tell me that they were making an attempt to cater to the “New Orleans market,” which simply doesn’t make any sense. That would be like having an event in Los Angeles, yet claiming an attempt to cater to a market in San Francisco (as far as cultural identity is concerned).
We have a very special relationship with New Orleans, we have all the respect in the world, and more friends, family, and roots there than I can count… so I don’t want this to come across as even remotely negative to my people over there, because it’s not. This is a matter of pride regarding who we are… we’re Tangipahoa Parish, dammit. We’re Hammond, Louisiana.
Last thing: I’ve been in regular contact with Steve Caballero about various concerns we’ve had with these marketing types, and he’s been 100% supportive of us… then again, he’s a skateboarder. I don’t want any negative criticisms here to appear like a critique on any of the pros that are coming… it’s not them, it’s the uninformed marketing people that work as desk jockeys all day that I have a problem with, and I’ll continue to have that problem with them until they give us the recognition we deserve.
If any of the marketers involved in the tour are reading this right now, it’s spelled H-A-M-M-O-N-D.
Grrrr.
