For some reason, between now and some sort of ill-advised session at cutting this out of a magazine ten years ago, I lost whatever archival steps I had taken at preserving this article. That is, until The Chrome Ball Incident came to the rescue and provided scans of it so Quartersnacks may share them with you. The Chrome Ball is basically like The Library of Congress when it comes to skateboarding, except probably better organized, since I’ve haven’t heard many flattering things about The Library of Congress’ organization skills.
This article originally appeared in the July 2000 issue of Transworld. All of the photography and words are by Tony Cox. Normally, I’d be making sarcastic comments about drugs and art school when dealing with an article that has the phrase “Sharing eternal moments learning that time doesn’t really exist” in the intro, but this thing is just such a far cry from anything that Transworld would do today that it’s hard not to admire the sort of direction they were occasionally known to go ten years ago. The whole thing is essentially a scrapbook-like layout with little rhyming captions scribbled underneath each photo, and minus the Corcoran 5050, none of the tricks are really the sort of things you expect a magazine like Transworld to run (then and now.) It is the closest they have probably come to channeling a full-on homie ‘zine. Occasional changes of pace like this, and those “A *insert city here* Minute” where they’d dedicate two pages to random cities in the U.S., are some of the fondest memories I have from the days when I actually still opened skateboarding magazines more than twice a year.
Thanks again to The Chrome Ball for a neverending effort in bringing things we never thought we’d see again back to surface. All of the photos are enlargeable.
That “Summer heat keeps us asleep” photo is just a distant memory right now. Anyone claiming “If if it was the summer, you’d be complaining about the heat” can go to hell. As can anyone who complains about heat. Winter hurts, summer can get uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt.
