The Future
May 14, 2006
Nieratko's "art" wall
I stopped by The Future magazine's open house/art show shindig in LA last night. Get ready...the mag is gonna be good.
Pro Tec Pool Party!
May 14, 2006
Yeah, I went. It was some of the most amazing skateboarding I've seen in quite a while. Why do I not have tons of footage and a million photos and a trick by trick report? 'Cuz I felt like paying attention for once in my life instead of being "paparazzi guy." I did manage to snag this photo of a police lineup in the stands. Not quite sure what the purpose was. Seemed like a fun, harmless and completely legal day of skateboarding to me. Here's a nice 'n crappy bird's-eye-view mini clip of Cab and Chris Miller ripping the qualifiers:
Tool's 10,000 Days: #1!
May 14, 2006
Maybe none of you care, but this matters to me, 'cuz Tool is the greatest band on the planet:
According to Neilsen SoundScan, Tool's new album 10,000 Days sold a whopping 564,000 copies in its first week here in the US, landing at #1 in the Billboard Top 200 and outselling Pearl Jam's new album (#2) by a little more than 2-to-1. 10,000 Days has also charted as the #1 album in many European countries, and in New Zealand.
Congrats on being #1...
Butt Humor & Search Engine Madness!
May 12, 2006
Wow! Who would have thought robbrink.com would come up seventh on a medical search engine site when the term rectal exam was typed in? Good thing I had a camera ready for this incident with Tim O'Connor and Kerry Getz's dog back at Tampa Pro in 2001. Even better that I know how to appropriately name my photos to maximize search engine hits, eh? Tim managed to be the first out of the top seven matches to not be referencing a human butt, however, he was still three spots...
etnies NYC Rooftop Mini Sesh!
May 8, 2006
If you think this one is long overdue, you should see how much Tampa Pro footage I have yet to edit and put up here. But, as I've said before, I 'm a writer not a video dude, so that's where my priorities lie. That being said, y'all can stop emailing me and leaving comments on how much my filming sucks. I know it does and I don't give a rat's ass. You should be out skating anyway, and because you are sitting in front of the computer instead, be thankful I'm giving your bored...
Plan B-BQ?
May 6, 2006
I was fairly excited when Plan B announced their little Saturday afternoon BBQ and signing at the etnies Skatepark of Lake Forest today. However, after waiting around for three hours, only Paul Rodriguez and PJ Ladd showed up and neither skated. Paul signed autographs for a lineup of kids and PJ kinda hung around...
WESC Coachella Party!
May 6, 2006
WE threw a Coachella Festival pool party at Frank Sinatra's old house. I even peed in his toilet. It was glorious. The place was wrecked, people were diving off the roof into the pool and it was a serious good time. Somewhat reminiscent of the infamous "Baby Ruth pool scene" in Caddyshack. At least someone in this "industry" still knows how to have fun!
New Jersey: 1997
May 5, 2006
Tim O'Connor. Switch krooked grind.
About a decade ago, back in Northern New Jersey, me and a bunch of my friends were skating our asses off, getting sponsored (which, of course, is nearly every skater's dream at one time or another) and having some pretty damn good times. In the mid-nineties, NYC, NJ and Philly blasted onto the radar of the skate industry and TransWorld decided to do a 27-page (yes, 27 freakin' pages!) article on the NJ scene for their November 1997 issue, alongside a Tim Brauch interview and Danny Way's first record-breaking high air and helicopter bomb drop. Not too shabby for 'ol Dirty Jerz huh?
I was scanning these photos for a friend and tripping down memory lane and thought it would be cool to post 'em up here. Of course, there's no photo of me. Although I had some sponsors and competed a bit, I was never quite as good as the rest of these dudes. I spent far too much time working overnights in a bagel shop and in college working on the writing degrees to bring my skating to the level these guys did. But it paid off because I ended up getting some of my first writing gigs for TransWorld a few years after this article came out. Maybe these guys aren't all pro skaters now, but they have come pretty far, each in their own way. I'm proud of 'em. So here's some of my long-time NJ friends:
Bucky Lasek Unedited
May 4, 2006
Bucky Lasek
By Rob Brink
April 2003
The short version ran in ESPN, the longer version ran on EXPN.com. Here's the unedited version...
Recently I saw some pictures of your knee and it was basically destroyed.
That big old gash? I wear two of those carbon fiber CTI knee braces. I was skating this sticky ramp and knee sliding out of a trick pulled on my kneepad, which is wrapped around my knee brace and the hinge of the knee brace jammed into the side of my knee and punctured my knee. It sucked.