The Thinkers from the Golden Gate Bridge

Once upon a time there was a brand nobody cared about and if one was asked about its team, it was with a certain bewilderment that he had to admit that he could not even name one dude. This brand was of course Think. Despite its presence on the Western skate scene for quite a long time, not much attention was paid to Think.

However, their [no so] recent additions to the team have generated much sexual arousement among the SF Department of La Lodge. First, the pony-tailed Floridian Brian Delatorre seems to have received a good piece of advice and has traded his filthy outfits for what seems to be the uniform of the winners these days: Dickies & Cons. Not to mention his bag of tricks which has become far more interesting since his delocalisation. Then, that Josh Mathews kid who is definitely an upcoming all-aroud ripper. Finally, to bend the rules, internet sensation Cody McEntire finally comes through with some footage without fedora hat nor miniramp circus moves. I have even overheard a conversation between two of our reporters in the toilets claiming that his footage was "kinda alright." Well, this is certainly very nice but I guess they weren't paying attention during that awful 3-6 shove it. So be it.

But what we were more concerned about is that this promo allows us to forsee that in the very near future Think will release a very exciting audiovisual production. The team seems to be more pumped up than never and the musical accompaniement lets us think that the full lenght video will be a treat as much for our eyes as for our ears.

A special mention should be addressed to "Dela" for his untouchable opening fs crook, which made more than one of our reporters whipe their greasy foreheads blurting out an admirative "Phew! That kid is no joke!"

Bay Area Exposure

La Lodge's Teaser Delegate is proud to share his recent discovery. Indeed, our Teaser Delegate is a man who has found a comfortable refuge in the recently digitalized versions of his favourite 90s videos. The predictability of every line soothes his poor mind tired by the unsightly innovations of today's teen idols (c.f. Adrien Bullard's latest addition to the self-justified maneuver labelled 3-6 flip in Pause #2). Therefore, the discovery of this piece of urban poetry featuring two prominent parties of Closure constituted an agreeable turn of events for this man imbued with nostalgia, who, for a short though priceless moment, went as far as considering lifting his stiff body from his quilted armchair to hit the streets with his skateboard. He finally opted for an umpteenth viewing of Eastern Exposure, but the least we can say is that it was a close call.

Frame by Frame part 4 - Léo Valls

Shall we observe the dozens of reporters at La Lodge, we would realize that one of the recurrent subjects that come up during the long hours of chitchatting in front of the coffee machine is Bordeaux's finest Léo Valls's part in Frame by Frame, edited by Romain Batard. And indeed, its quite a puzzling material.
To the surprise of the average skateboarder, Léo opens his part sporting a face mask. "What does this mean?" asks the upset everyman confortably numb by the resemblance of every skateboard video these days. Well, we first thought of an affiliation with the Canadian Satan-inspired Barrier Kult, for Léo is a man of many connections. However, the hip-hopesque nature of the musical accompaniment seems to indicate that no answer can be supplied by this lead.

Perhaps we should come back to the intrinsic definition of the face mask. Face mask= clandestiness. There it is. Such an opening signals Léo's shifting to undergound. Indeed, we, in France, live in a country where the cover of a magazine is a handrail stunt 9 times out of 10. People care more about the flying backfoot of the famous contest-winning Ronald Weasley look alike than about actual creative skateboarders. Street-skateboarding is very often reduced to fair-headed pre-pubescent skaters with rolled-up pants firing 3-6 shove-its in every line. Despite the regular claims of the artisitic potential of skateboarding in magazine editos, it seems that glory still lies in normality and if one wants to shine, the panel of his tricks must not step out of the boundaries of what is traditionnally accepted as 'steezy'.


How much room is one given for innovation? Not much. Where else than in the US is one supposed to look for inspiration? Nowhere. Well, be ready my friends, because Léo's skateboarding is largely Tightbooth-inspired and some of his maneuvers will probably never find their place in the French skate-landscape notwithsanting their originality. Therefore, to come back to our point, the problematic face mask announces the ideological stand that Léo takes against normative skateboarding. His skateboarding bears neither shaking junts nor combo-slides. In other words, there is nothing to satisfy the average skater's hunger for performance, hence Léo's noctambulism. If such unorthodox skateboarding is not recognized by the mainstream, why not playing according these lines and keeping the joke running by skating at night? Thus, when the everyman gets his well-deserved rest after the session, Léo fires lines in Bordeaux's most obscure back-alleys, and never these two worlds cross each other's way.

Amongst the several tons of mails we receive everyday, one particular question proves to be recurrent: "Do you guys happen to skate sometimes instead of disserting all day about agressive urban skateboarding?"
Well, let me tell you my friends, we do. Sometimes. I mean, when it's sunny and my setup is looking good. And when the spot is smooth and welcoming. This is why this excursion to the sandy hereabouts of Claouey was an unusual one for the reporters of La Lodge, being more used to the softness of our couch than the roughness of this 70s ungrateful skatepark.

Encore un peu de Claouey ! from Tim Reinson on Vimeo.

Post-modernism

It is now a fact that the second decade of this newborn century is characterized by a post-modern approach to skateboarding. The frontiers between time periods have been blurred through mastery of an ever-enlarging panel of tricks. Briand Anderson's boneless to fs smith is probably the most blatant example of the liminality that affects skateboarding these days.
Three time periods reunited in one trick. The boneless, key trick of the unforgiving era of fluorescent shorts, finds itself articulated with a fs smith, which at its heyday (1994? )could be performed more than 40 times in one session. Finally, the metallic context provided by the handrail is not remembering the hammer race of the early 00s that ruined the limbs of so many promising talents.
And still, should we find it surprising, on behalf of a man who dared riding for Toy Machine and Axion at the same time? It seems that BA is not one for rigid categories and we appreciate that very much in the office of La Lodge. This notion of porous bondaries might remind some of you of the debate about BA's blurred gender identity and sexual orientations. This is a debate we will not enter for we do not give a shit about it and are already "gay" for Brian.

On Englishness

Shall we take a look at the teaser of the soon to be widely acclaimed Blueprint visual production, we will hear Audrey Hepburn' lyrical voice singing: "All I want is a room somewhere/ Far away from the cold night air." If we transpose this original predicate to the year 2010 and the city of London, we can draw the satisfaying conclusion that the Blueprint team is composed of a bunch of dirty bums living in a cold-ass city. Danny Brady's elegant appearance and his healthy breakfast seem to confirm this thesis.
But what are we to do of the recent addition to the team, Arizonian manual acrobat Marty Murasky? Indeed, the conception of Englishness does not give much room for sun, cactuses and ditches in the middle of the desert. Will his professional debut be tarnished by a renunciation to his origins to the profit of the grayness of Old England?
We can see the complex problematic that Make Friend With the Colour Blue lays, for, despite a self-proclaimed British identity, the brand is slightly trying to take over the world. We will not attempt to solve the issue, for we good-heartedly leave it to Dan Magee. Nevertheless we shall bring him support by getting drunk with cheap beer while discovering his work.

Ryan Wilson - SKYLARKING

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0OVAMW02
http://www.theoriesofatlantis.com/site/store/skylarking/

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