the predatory bird

Tag: Skateboarding

Stalefish 101 with Fernando

Big fish.
I love working with the best humans who ever rolled on the surface of the earth. For me Columbian-born Swede, Fernando Bramsmark, easily falls into that category.
Not too long ago we put together this little video piece all about the grab we know today as the stalefish. We were in Barcelona and while we were there we sent a message to Lance Mountain asking him why this perfectly good-looking grab got named after something so unpleasant. Here’s what he sent back: “Summer camp, Sweden, 1985, Tony [Hawk] did them. Lunch was served in aluminum containers. Once a week we would have this bad fish. Tony and I were calling it stalefish with [many] bones and we’d go eat at McDonald’s. A British guy asked Tony if the trick he did was a Stalefish with [Many] Bones. It stuck. Tony did backside ones too. Gonz, I think, got the first photo two years later that popularized it. And he did the classic fold-down knee.” So there you have it, despite how utterly insane, doomed and incomprehensible the world might currently appear to be, we can take comfort in the fact that both Fernando and the stalefish have Swedish roots in common.

Stale fish preferred

Post Script:

I updated a text glitch above, from ‘no’ to ‘many’. If you need more stalefish intel then take a breath and enter Mackenzie Eisenhour’s stalefish wormhole.

November 25, 2016
Abandoned: Nuclear Tsunami

Here are some photographs from a few weeks back working on Rick’s Viceland show Abandoned. If you’ve seen it, hope you liked it. That cooling tower is damn big.

October 5, 2016
A Dreamcatcher in New Zealand

Andy just sent me the dreamcatcher teeshirt from the New Zealand trip, that one time when I smashed my collar bone into painful fragments. Remember? It was around 2005 and the trip was with P-Stone, O’Meally, Mumford, Shane Cross, Duffy, Chet, Strubing & Mendizibal. Mumford had recently quit Zero and was attempting to make some waves with his Legacy brand under the Dwindle umbrella. Hence Duffy, Strubing and Shane.

Staring into the empty eye-sockets of that longhorn skull the dreamcatcher prompted me to search through an old hard drive.

Photos emerged featuring P-Stone rocking hair like he’d lost a bet.

Still smiling, still stoked.

Mendizibal blazed the pipe at New Lynn. This park is rad. Legend has it the plans were sent from the states in inches and the local contractors read them as centimeters. Full Spinal Tap Stonehenge shit. Amazing. If you watch Riding the Long White Cloud you can hear me say the same thing in real voice words.

Rhyss let us crash at his house and showed us around Auckland. He looks a bit shifty here but he’s a good lad, Rhyss. Hope you’re doing well, mate.

At the time of the trip Andy Henry was working as a post-grad in some neuroscience department of NYU. He joined in on the trip just because. Smart dude old Andy. Intelligent. Erudite.

If Andy hadn’t come on the trip then nobody would have put Petrol in the Diesel tank. This made him feel less smart. It made him question the value of all that time reading dumb science books.

Siphon skills remedied that. Andy drained that tank into a pair of 10-Gallon containers while Pat smoked cigs within spitting range.

At this other old bowl thing I can’t remember the name of Chet screeched through a few of his classic signature backside bluntslides while O’Meally lurked in the bushes.

The trusty Mountain Co-op hammock strung up behind Rhyss’s place.

Rowdy Roddy Piper?

Justin erupted from the volcano like a hot blast of lava fire.

What’s your secret, Justin?

It’s simple.

What’s your secret, Chet?

Other stuff happened and then I got broke off. Tried a dumb trick on an 8 foot high concrete vert ramp. In Riding the Long White Cloud Rick does multiple Miller Flips on the same ramp. When we realized my collar bone was shattered Duffy assured me it would be fine. “I’ve broken my collar bone like 20 times or something” he said. Very reassuring. Thanks for that, Pat. In due course the fragments fused and the pain subsided.

February 15, 2015
Raybourn’s Portland

Popped a few photos of Texas raised, Portland based, Birdhouse pro destroyer of all things skateable Ben Raybourn recently while he filmed for little day in the life documentary. Hopefully they bring a small glimmer of joy to your day.

What up? Portland, brah. So artsy. Mad beats. Now featuring… Chromeball. Onward to Burnside.
Some rap video shit.

Heavy metal parking lot.
Eggplant for lunch. Hayashi in full effect.

Back at the crib scoping the scene with the bird’s eye view. Free runners look on in disbelief. This local training center could make a good TtDiPWYB post, maybe, if there is such a thing as a good TtDiPWYB post.Not dangerous at all.

Perfectly safe.
Damn leaf.
Fully cropped the ground out of this.

Quicker down than up.
The owls are not what they seem.

And finally, what the internet was made for.

February 1, 2015
If You Want to Sing Out – The End of a Pro Skate Career and Its Inevitable Product.

I’ve always likened the end of a pro skate career to the description of vampire death given by Cory Feldman’s character in The Lost Boys, Edgar Frog, “Some yell and scream, some go quietly, some explode, some implode, but all will try to take you with them.”

Sometimes a vampire will implode and similarly sometimes an old pro skater, who never got involved with a marketing agent, who’s sponsors have revised their strategy, or gone out of business, might panic and decide it’s high time they capitalized on the haunting beauty they can surely craft out of their innate musical talent. Talent they’ve been roughly developing in Waffle House parking lots for the last ten years. And so we did.

We recorded 3 melodic stories that spilled from the soul and the resulting sound, that poured almost automatically through fingertips and larynx, is manly, rustic and inspiring. The accompanying bespoke lyric cards have been exquisitely illustrated by Melbourne based Salvador Gnarly. They are little things of beauty.

Gull Population as Yardstick for Viral Nature of Humanity is an ode to Aberdeen, Scotland, where Mum lives and old friends live and where the old man, old friends and little sister lived. It is a celebration.

Dragons and Things tells the story of a young boy who finds himself in a battle that he must win or relinquish his childhood. And the rest.

Worf Sails his Boat imagines the lovable serenity-challenged Klingon Chief of Security as a young boy in Belarus. The story explores the reasons why security officers are often such assholes. It’s not their fault. It’s not anyone’s fault.

All proceeds from sales of the Vava Records X Predatory Bird Sound in Print project will of course help fund the currently fetal Predatory Bird rap album and/or the next run of comics.

July 13, 2014
The PB Comic gets Physical!
In light of recent activity in Vatican City we feel the world has never been more perfectly primed for the release of our first edition print run of THE PREDATORY BIRD COMIC.

Here’s a list of fun background info regarding the comic:
- Set in the aftermath of a family death the tale takes our kid on his inevitable, abject, journey through the grieving process.
- Luckily the world he inhabits contains a constant array of encouraging beacons to guide him through the dark times; these are all the vibrant characters and details that create and symbolize our culture of the wooden toy.
- The collaboration with Jon Horner was initially sparked by a shared disquiet regarding the Frankensteinian biomechanoid feline nightmare that is Orville the Cat Helicopter.
- The gulls are our reminder to be realistic. No matter how nice we’d like life to be, life is, as the great orator Nasty Nas has explicitly stated, a bitch.
- If you’re trying to come up with a big word to describe the PB comic and you hit upon “phantasmagorical” then give yourself a round of applause because seriously, that is a fantastic word.
- The good folks at Thrasher Magazine were kind enough to print the story over the course of a year or so.
- This edition of the Comic is for sale here and also here.
- In the unlikely event of any profit being generated exactly half will be sent to Jon.
January 27, 2014
A Bunch of Amateurs

Fate recently returned me to the Skatepark of Tampa. On this occasion I would be attending the 2013 Tampa Am contest.
The night before the trip I became filled with a desire to capture some of the action so I stood in the front room with my camera and tossed a wild thing up towards the ceiling. If the built in flash on the little Lumix could freeze the motion of this fierce stuffed beast then photographing a back nose blunt in a dimly lit Florida warehouse would be child’s play, or at least an approximation thereof.

Nailed it!

Upon arriving at the Skatepark of Tampa I found Kevin Wilkins of The Skateboard Mag reflecting on the absurd injustice of it all.

And Colin Kennedy, Nike SB Europe’s dream manager, remaining stoic.

It didn’t take too long to track down a back nose blunt. Aha! See! The onboard flash can do it! On closer inspection you’ll find that if your ISO is maxed out it gives it that sand-sculpture look. Perfect for Instagram.
Then Jon lent me an external flash unit.
I sought out fresh meat. One of the most gifted technical street skaters of our time.
Kickflip light test looks okay.
Back lip skewered by a pillar? It’ll do.

I decided to head outside into the gentle late afternoon Tampa light and mingle. Much nicer.
Dare I say gorgeous?
I found Big News being discussed.

Revelers.
Chillers.

True professionals,

Wu afficionados.

T-Funk

And even more dream management.

Brief, beautiful, sordid moments of clarity and oblivion swirled all around me like some strange visual poem.

A Floridian poem.

Full of strange characters and tall Englishmen.
Tyshawn remained in a New York state of mind.
And as the dice battle raged round the back…

…things took a turn for the worse round the front.

More and more bills got thrown into the mix…

As carnage ensued.

Dice were rolled.

Eggs were hurled.

Dice. Rolling.

Eggs. Flying.

Fortunes were won and lost.

As a few brave souls charged for the finish line.

And to the victors go the spoils.
Skateboarding is safe and well.

December 17, 2013
The Comic Part 5: Death is a bummer.

Probably the darkest strip in the 12. Thrasher featured it in their January 2013 issue opposite Pedro Barros in a G-Shock ad – do people still wear watches?
I suppose Pedro Barros must and that dude is straight-up gnarly. Remember that article Rhino shot where him and Grant Taylor went to Portugal?

So anyway, Part 5 of the comic. The darkest point. The kid is on the way to his old man’s funeral and it’s raining. Death, like rain to a skater, is a bummer. But, there’s always a bright side, right? So, can we learn to laugh about death? Maybe not laugh, that sounds callous and callous is not the laughter I’m talking about. But what am I talking about? I’m talking about the inspiration for an entire genre of Metal.

When friends and family die it’s definitely painful. If it’s not then something is wrong. Loss leaves a gaping hole. It’s disemboweling. Laughter is probably not the healthiest immediate response. But from a distance, I mean with the perspective that time passed provides, we can see death and loss as the brief insignificant things they are and we can get on with enjoying all that we still have.
Okay, blah blah, cliche, cliche, yeah I’ve had losses. We all have; or are going to. What I’m getting to is that this comic grew out of a shitty grieving process that seemed to utterly dissolve any interest I still had in playing the pro-skater game.

I’m fairly certain that the process of writing the comic helped me come through one of life’s tunnels. For that I am eternally grateful to Thrasher, especially Michael Burnett, who was kind enough to champion the thing and encourage the process despite its rambling, stumbling through the dark, story progression.
And obviously, always, to the brilliant Jon Horner.
And of course to the gulls who have no idea about any of this. They’re just hungry, looking for food and in the process they sound like they’re laughing; and sometimes, depending on the circumstances, the direction of the wind and whatnot, they sound very, very callous.

October 16, 2013