Korea 2023
In September I met Saki in Korea to visit her family and see our friends. It was one of my favorite trips. It was great to see old friends, make a lot of new ones, explore, and eat tons of good food. I really miss being there. It’s hard to sum it up in words so here is a cell phone photo dump
Austin Limo Trip
The Limo trip in Austin could only be summed up in one way… “It was super sick, yeah for sure, honestly just insanely dope.” (I feel like that’s my usual response when someone asks me about the trip.) There were more spots than any other city I’ve seen, especially for starving eyes coming from NY, straining for a glimpse of unfamiliar terrain. Everyone in the squad was operating on maximum from day one, it was insane. Everyone just kept doing crazy shit, if someone wasn’t doing it then someone else was. We had two vans full of people occupying both, very different, sides of a duplex with a fire pit and grill in the backyard. We met homies Dylan and Bobby who really hooked it up with showing us around and directing us to all the shit we wanted to go to. Dylan stayed with us the whole time and was essentially the homie for the whole trip. Donnet pulled up on us and if you know him, you know how lucky we were to have him there. He skated every spot and took a lot of hard slams! Since we’re now on the topic of slams, Enzo almost got hit by a car and you can’t see it in my or Logan’s angle. Nelly was on the brink of the most ill bump to front board ever, when she wiffed an ollie and went straight spread eagle, full volume, right onto the out rail. After a few nights in the hospital she was back eating cookies in bed and falling asleep in a mountain of sugary crumbs. Besides that things went pretty smooth, heads were getting sick all around but no one was letting it get them down. Everyone was copping left and right, here and there, spots were getting checked off the list and shit was really popping. We would pull up and I’d be like “no way what?” and then I’d be like “oh, oh damn!” We never did go back to check the 16 stair though… At the end of the day we ate a lot of bbq or sometimes fast food burgers, other nights we cooked at home. Rest was important on this trip and partying was kept to a dull roar. After one morning of projectile vomiting and stumbling nauseously around the backyard, I couldn’t really risk getting drunk anymore. Also it was hard to buy enough beer since we were so many heads. Jackie was crackin voo doo rangers and sneakily drinking every other type of beer in sight. 50 beers really amounted to 3 or 4 beers each if you weren’t paying attention. I think this was overall good for the mission which was pretty much to skate all day everyday, except for one Monday we took off to a relaxing morning of paintball for Logan’s bday. By the end of the trip it felt like we were just getting warmed up, we easily needed another week or two to expand the quest. Trips are funny like that because there is never enough time to hit everything and everyone leaves fiending for more. Conversations of “ We gotta come back here for sure” float around in the air. For our sake I really hope we do.
3/7/23
Lately I’ve been thinking about how I haven’t updated this blog in a few months. I have been working on a lot of projects, but for about 4 months mainly working on a series of paintings to complete this idea I had for a couple years now. In between I’ve been filming with Max for his spitfire wheel part thats coming out next month, and just filming in general. I haven’t been shooting photos as much as usual partially because, well, it’s just not affordable. The thought of shooting a roll of film of someone trying a trick now finally feels insane to me. I’m finding the need to be more conservative with all my spending these days. Buying and processing film isn’t as sustainable financially as it used to be (but mostly the cost of the film), so I’m trying to be more deliberate and careful with the photos I do take. I went through some folders from the last few months and found some photos I liked and a lot of reminders of the general happenings. There were multiple different cameras used that I don’t normally, one I was testing and another was a disposable camera used randomly over a year or something.
whats up with bad luck?
Last weekend I was leaving on a trip to go back tot he west coast when I ran into the beginning of what I started to interpret as a string of bad luck. I don’t know if bad luck is real or not, because my circumstances could have been avoided had I played things out differently. But once the idea of bad luck starts creeping in to your mind, you can’t shake it. You start recalling every moment leading up to the present and identifying the small moments that were out of your control, that lead to your current demise. These moments start to outweigh the things you did have control over, they start to outweigh the things that were going right until all you can see is the ones that went wrong. Bad luck is the idea that bad things are happening to you over and over out of your control. It’s dependent on you noticing and acknowledging the luck, because without noticing it at first, it can’t develop. So after i miss my flight I started to wonder how did I get here? I was all packed, showered, and ready to wake up and go right to the airport, I was fully prepared and ready to go. Yeah I left a little late in a 5am sleepy daze but surely if any amount of these other blunders hadn’t occurred then I would have made my flight. If my uber driver hadn’t gone to the wrong terminal or the kiosks weren’t broken, surely I would have made it, I have made so many flights cutting it way closer than this. I don’t have time to go over all of my unfortunate events, but I will touch on a few. After some stressful back and forths with airline peeps, I decided to sit outside and smoke some weed that I luckily had with me. I had to wait 8 hours for my next flight so I figured at least I had this. After I find a good spot and cozy up, I remember that I smoked my last paper last night and I didn’t buy more because I decided I wouldn’t need any until I was in LA. Turns out I had an old pack of rogue papers in my camera bag that was touched, ever so sweetly, by some spilt coffee. Sweetly enough to stick all the papers together, which I ferociously picked away at like i was working on a relief sculpture, until I had two partial pieces of ripped something that somewhat resembled a rolling paper.
Later on once the flight was finally airborne, the snack cart guy fully skipped me. I was eagerly waiting and attentive to get ahold of some shitty almonds or pop chips and a seltzer water, and the homie rolled the cart right past me. I thought maybe he’s just doing a few at a time or something and I didn’t want to be a pain. So i waited and when I looked back again he was halfway down the plane. I still had hope but I looked back again later to see them in the back securing the snack cart. Yes, I could have spoked up still, easily, at this point, but I was in awe. My string of bad lucks have lead me to this moment, with this dude skipping me with the snack cart. The thought of that distracted me from wanting the snacks anymore. After all what was I really missing out on? But then I thought more, what if the almonds were actually nasty and I couldn’t really tell so I ate them anyway which contributed to chronic health problems down the road? So what if this bad luck was actually good luck in disguise keeping me from making a horrible mistake.
Suddenly I find myself running down the side of one of those weird airport highway roads near LAX in slides. I’m wearing my camera bag, and dragging my suitcase. I’m sweating and I’m reminded of my decision to quit wearing deodorant a couple months ago. I was on a shuttle that was dropping me off to wait for another shuttle to the rental car office. The second shuttle was showing no signs of coming so I decided to take matters into my own hands and run there instead of waiting. I finally make it there only to find out I don’t have enough available credit on my entry level credit card to pay for my second rental. ( I missed my first rental because of missing my first flight.). And not only that but, If I hadn’t randomly decided to pay for some stuff that didn’t have any business being on credit, I would have been totally fine. So I press on with the idea that maybe I was headed for some horrible accident in that rental, and everything up until this moment, including somehow the almonds, has saved me from getting into that rental. More good luck in disguise. At this point I’m calling my og LA homie Kris Chau to see if she can take me in for the night, because luckily Jon Choi is heading to Ventura in the morning and can give me a ride. Luckily again, she’s home and is down for me to crash. I was sweaty, stinky, tired, weedless, rentalless, and still unaware that I wouldn’t take a shower for another couple days. But as I’m writing this now I realize all of this goodluck that was happening to me simultaneously to the bad luck.
The whole trip was great actually, epic and timeless in itself, but thats a story for another post. There was still some bad lucks tossed in there, random and unexacting. Like this one night we were on a hype, Max and Aaron has just gotten clips after a decent soul crush and we were off to feast and celebrate. I get to the food spot and realize I didn’t have my Yashica anywhere, I must have left it at the spot which is super unusual for me. I be forgetting a lot of things but never my cameras. So Aaron takes me back and I run over and sure enough, theres my camera in the dirt with a footprint on it. Upon further examination I realize its Adidas tread on there, my footprint! Damn! I violated my own cam, thats some bad luck right there. Anyways, I’ve gone on enough about this and I’m sure if you’ve made it this far into my senseless rambling that you don’t have much more in you. So I’ll leave it there and leave you with this one question, that I don’t want an answer to but maybe at least you can consider; whats up with luck?
Limo Trip in the Northwest
Squadron photo from Kris Burkhardt, also pictured in the photo.
Last month we took off on the first Limo trip. Packed into a large van, was a motley but arguably unshakable crew that was only going to grow as the trip continued. When I’m at home I feel like I’m always doing so many things at once and it gets difficult to manage my time, so the prospect of getting to focus on only doing on just filming for 10 days straight is really enticing to me. I was really looking forward to being on an adventure like this with such a dope crew of homies. I was standing outback of the van with Kris while we were loading up bags outside of Logans on the first day of the trip. Nelly walked up to Kris and chucked a basketball right at his stomach point blank. I was like, Woah! This is real skate trip type shit going down alreay! But damn I also don’t want Nelly to chuck a basketball at my stomach. So we loaded up and squeezed in the van, all nine of us with J Boy at the wheel, and headed out for our first leg of the trip which was a fatty leg. LA to Shasta. I think we stopped maybe 12 times on the way, I’m not sure I didn’t count but everytime we stop that means everyone gets out and hits the store. Its fun to hit the store because you can check all the selection of snacks and bevs. Mostly its heinous stuff that starts to become more appealing the more hours you’ve been on the road. The squad did not hold back at most of these stops. The snacks were plentiful and this is where the seed obsession began. Some might say it was a craze even that didn’t quite have the strength to reach the back of the van but took a stranglehold on the front seaters. I was lucky enough to be all the way back for the first leg of the trip and by the time I moved seats days later I had already become immune to the craze by watching my friends all become uncontrollable, sore-mouthed, seed fiends. Nelly would never recover from this state. I wonder if shes still eating seeds at this moment, I’m not sure. But amyways besides the seeds on the first day we’re talking serious candies, gummies of all kinds, chips, licorices, all types of shizz. We did make it to Shasta eventually and no the back windows of the van didn’t open so we didn’t really chief the whole drive which was something else. Me and Karim automatically stuck together so we could smoke maximum herbage with precise timings at all opportunities.
The next stop of the trip was Eugene. We stopped in Weed on the way for the novelty I think which was what it was. After arriving in town and skating the park for a bit, we got our first taste, a bitter taste, of skating spots in Eugene. It ranged from angry workers screaming at us to leave their parking lot, to security guards, to psychotic racist tweakers foaming at the mouth. We were really in the shit scoping this over the rail thing and the air was tense, tweakers were closing in from all directions and Karim was weaving through it all, fighting through the insanity. We ended the day with great successes all around and eventually made it out of Eugene the next morning headed for Portland.
Portland for a few days was sweet. We checked a lot of shit, and shit was going down a lot. We were staying at the hotel and that shit felt really baller. Whole squad up in a hotel. The coffee was so bad in the lobby I don’t think I’ve ever had worse coffee and I had it every morning. I was craving a top shelf bean experience but somehow we would stop for coffee at places like Dutch Bros. This was at Nelly’s command, after all we were living in Nelly’s world at the time. She was J-boy’s right hand person as the co-pilot and she held a high rank in the coffee decision making. The entire time eating seeds. One night I set an alarm in the middle of the night so I could wake up and switch my camera batteries on the charger. Hugo told me the next morning that he thought I set an alarm to wake up and go smoke weed outside. This was not true but made me wonder if Nelly was setting an alarm in the middle of the night to wake up and have a couple mouth fulls of seeds, to keep the bender going. Anyways. We had a great time in Portland, peeps were copping clips all around, we ate healthy once or twice and never had a single good coffee. We now had Nolan in the squad which was undeniable.
We made it to Seattle after that. At one point we ate burritos for days, sometimes multiple times a day. That was something. At this point we stayed in an Air bnb which was cool. We kicked it outfront at night, chilling, drinking coors light, and smoking seemingly endless weed. We had our first days that we could wear hoodies during the daytime, which was nice. By the end of the trip I felt like I could go on forever, which is usually how I feel at the end of any type of trip. Coming back home was hard I still feel like I’m left flailing from that trip trying to figure out what to do with my time.
So, I’m sitting here now in my studio being swallowed up by paintings that I’m running out of space for while still working on more paintings, and I’m typing this story so that I can share these photos with people, and that feels like I’m on the right track. I don’t know what to do next but I just got off the phone with Andrew and its about to rain. We’re going to surf in the morning for sure
I was filming on the trip but I shot a lot of photos in my down time. I feel like the photos can tell the stories better than me anyways so here are my favorites
3 Weeks in the West
I spent most of May on a three part trip. I flew into LA and immediately secured the rental in which I drove up to Ventura to link at Aaron’s for another Limosine premier. The rest of the week we would get up early and spend the first part of the day boxing up orders until it was time to go skate, or get some lunch beers at Sama. Diego was going hard everyday with some sick freak energy that I’ve only seen a few people posses. We went up to SB for a day to see Justin and Blix’s band play outside at UCSB.. which is a crazy area because as soon as you enter it looks like you’re in some iconic California movie scene. I think 90% of the town is blonde girls wearing bikini tops and short jean shorts. Needless to say we did not blend in.
On another day we went out to scenic hill bomb where you walk up this pretty chill hill and at the top you have time to skate flat before you really start to go down. It reminded us of Secret Flat back home but this one is definitely Scenic Flat. Great ground for tres actually. On a previous day we were skating the classic Ventura barrier spot and got to drinking beers as the sun went down. Diego introduced us to a new game where basically the objective is to step stomp a can with your eyes closed after taking some steps back and spinning around. This evolved into a new version where you do that on your board but then try to ollie it all with your eyes closed. I forgot about this until I saw the photos
On the last day, Aaron brought us all on a trip to Santa Rosa island, which unknowingly was the first National Park I would be visiting on this trip. We had to link early at the harbor and Diego was fresh off another long night. He tried to buy beers at the store on the way over but they said it was too early so he ended up with a Monster instead. On the boat while some of the crew battled sea sickness, Diego and I got some food of which the options were a microwavable McRib or Sausage egg and cheese. We saw a shark attack and also the biggest pod of dolphins swimming along side of us that I’ve ever seen. The island was like another planet covered in hills of golden grasses. We ate shrooms and hiked across to hang out on the beach and explore for the day.
While we were basking in this bliss, a boat that was fishing off the shore ended up getting accidentally beached. Next thing I know we are all pants-less and thigh deep trying to push this hunk back out to the ocean. It was an actual motley crew made up of Son seeming.in his mid 20s, a moms who was upset with her son who was the one that got them beached, and what appeared to be the moms boyfriend, he was actually mad chill. The son was tryna play it off like it was all gene and didn’t even accept our help at first. It wasn’t until he saw a park ranger coming towards us that he decided h needed us. The shrooms were really hitting in these moments, the ranger was a small nice guy. He did seem nervous and he had a gun strapped to his belt which made me nervous. Guns are made to kill things, and thats super un-chill. I think ultimately he was bummed that we were helping these dudes push their boat out, because he was worried one of us was gonna get hurt and then he would be the one with the situation on his hands.
This shit was actually just fully stuck in the sand and it didn’t seem like it was getting unstuck. Max asked the ranger if it was possible to push it out and the dude paused for a moment before saying… “ it is possible”. The ranger was standing there watching us as we waited for swells to come so we could push the boat a few feet each time until it finally came loose. After all the action calmed down, the ranger got his vehicle stuck on a hill right next to where we were chilling. At this point we were soaring on the shrooms and this guy bein around with his gun and shit was making me feel weird, so i knew everyone else must be feeling the same. We needed some activity to bring us back on the same page together. That activity arrived in the form of a rock game. One person throws a rock and everyone else tries to hit it with their own rock while it’s in the air. That shit was fun. We hiked back across the island to catch the ferry back to the harbor and the island mission was an epic success. Diego even got his Junior Ranger badge. Anyway, the Ventura section of the trip came to a close with many memories in the bank. Max and I headed back down to LA in the rental and picked up Saki from the airport.
Ill break the photos up into sections so it makes more sense, so here is the section of Ventura and Channel Islands adventure.
The next couple days I did tattoos at St. Marks tattoo. I used to guest a few times a year before covid but this was my first time since 2019. It felt really good to be back and the two days flew by trying to squeeze in tats all day. I got to see a bunch of return homies and meet new homies too. Everyone was fun to talk to and tattoo. I can’t believe it sometimes, actually, how cool my clients all end up being. I will definitely be back again tattooing this summer… maybe hitting SD, SB, and the bay if all goes to plan.
After both working those couple days, Saki and I finally left to road trip through Utah for the next week. We had no idea what we were about to get into at our coming destinations. Our first National park was the Valley of Fire state park, which was pretty cool but it was super hot and arguably just a snack version of the next places we were about to hike in. The next day we got into Zion National park where we posted for two days. We started early and hiked all day both days. The first day we ate steak after we finished and then drove up to this old town called Grafton where we were recommended to see the sunset. The views from up in that area were next level and it was a good getaway from the crowded Zion area. The next day we started early again and spent the day hiking the Narrows which is through the river in the bottom of the canyon. When you leave Zion going east you drive through Mt. Carmel highway which is another type of alien landscape that we had never seen before. We also drove this section at sunset time and it was straight up epic.
Our next stop was Bryce Canyon and damn, I had no idea there was anything that looked like this place! So basically we would spend a day at the park, then drive to the next hotel, sleep, wake up early and do it again. Even the drives were mind blowing the whole time. Photos cannot do anything we saw justice. Shit is just too big and when you are experiencing it, it’s just different. After Bryce we went to Moab where we hiked in Canyonlands National Park all day. ( insane) and then went into Arches for the sunset. And yo, damn! I will never forget driving into Arches at dusk and seeing the park open up into some straight alien landscape shit like you’ve never seen. I had been really wanting to check some stars because the parks in Utah are the darkest places in the country and it also happened to be a new moon during these days. We hung out in arches park and watched the sunset and the darkness slowly creep over us until all we could see was blackness and stars. We ended our trip driving to Denver the next day, and I was still not let down by the views driving across Colorado.
Being some of life’s greatest pleasures, coffee and food are always a concern while on the road in towns like these. Its hard to find a righteous bean anywhere let alone a decent one. I enjoy the adventure of shitty coffee on the road but it can get old. I always make whatever heinous bean the hotel room has to offer followed by whatever coffee is available in the lobby with the continental breakfast. We ate a lot of scrambled eggs and sausage links, I think pretty much everyday actually. The best eggs we had were at the Inca Inn in Moab.
I never realized how into hiking the national parks I would be. We didn’t have nearly enough time to explore everything we wanted. After this trip we realized that you need at least 2-3 days in each park. But Honestly I think 4-7 would be better. There is so much stuff to see out there, the earth is crazy! It feels peaceful when everyday the only thing on your mind is to walk and look at stuff and all you really need is for your legs to keep moving, some water, some snacks, and your bestfriend/partner doing it with you. By the end me and Saki were thinking, damn I kinda wish this was actually our life and we could just keep going. The quest continues
In the last 6 years that i’ve consistently shot photos on film I’ve experimented with a lot of different films and film speeds. Not knowing any better, I often used inappropriate film speeds for lighting situations I was in. I was able to learn slowly from the mistakes in the results and after years have come to an understanding of what films I like to use. Since I mostly am shooting stuff in motion in NYC I use a lot of slower films like 800 or 1600 to make up for the lack of natural light. I forget how different it is out west where most of the day you are in direct and full sunlight. I would have preferred to have some 100 or 200 speed film with me or even slide film, but I’ll know better for next time. Thats why the pictures are grainy and lots of full sun and harsh shadows. My favorite ones are ones taken closer to sunset.
Im also including a cellphone photo dump to be thorough.
I also had thoughts about the similarities NYC has to national parks. This massive larger than life landscape that has an endless amount of exploring to do. A landscape that constantly changes over time, crumbling and growing. When I saw people who lived in the national parks I always had some many questions about them and their lives. What are they doing here? I think the same thing goes for people in NYC too. As soon as we got off the plane we drove home watching a sunset from the bqe arguably more impressive than the ones we saw all week.
5/6/22
I’ve spent the last couple months posted up in my studio while the remaining cold weather fizzles out. I feel like I am slowly starting to see faces around that have been in absentia all winter. I have been tattooing a lot also, which has been fun. I have a bunch of large work in progress which means seeing a lot of the same clients over and over. I like the type of relationship that develops with return customers. Clients become friends and friends become close friends. The same thing happens with other peoples return customers, and before you know it, everyone knows each other and everyone is coming by the shop every week. It feels like there is an endless flow of peeps. And that stretches from the immediate neighborhood, to other boroughs, upstate, across the country, and from other countries. There is different levels of close homies from all over that we get to see in some way regularly. I don’t know if that makes sense but its cool.
Shout out to all the homies
In April I worked Scranton Tattoo Convention for the first time since 2019. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I was there.
Current Update and photos drifting LA
The last month has been winter for sure, I’ve been posted in the studio starting to feel the days blending together. In January I shipped out almost every painting I had available in my studio, which ended up being 22 paintings, to L21 Gallery in Mallorca. One of the Paintings is hanging in a group show show that opened a couple weeks ago called “Looking Through the Window Wearing Only Socks”. So having a lot of free space in the studio was nice for a bit but its starting to fill up again quickly. I finished tattooing my brothers back, finally ( there are a couple photos I had Colby take on my camera). The end of January Saki and I went to LA for 10 days, she was working for a bit and I was wandering on my own linking homies and doing things. We stayed with our west coast counter parts Beej and Chau as usual. We ate a lot of food, surfed, chilled, made coffee, bought coffee, hung out, walked, drove, all that. We got to go up to Ojai for a Lunar New Year party and then to SB the next day. We linked more homies and surfed a bit more which was mad fun. But yeah since then I’ve been posted a lot in the studio or at the shop. Heres a bunch of photos from the past couple months all the way back to having a trash can fire on Max’s Bday. There are some portraits, some skating, one photo of Beej surfing looking like slender man, and some other stuff. I accidentally bought a few rolls of ISO 8 film from lomography… so here are some of the viewable results from those rolls. I definitely would not recommend this particular film if you want to keep in good relationship with your film lab.
Do Dummies Dream of Electric Bricks?
Over the Summer Max’s bike had finally become reasonably unridable, even for a connoisseur of immanent danger such as Max Palmer himself. He wanted to use this as an opportunity to do something with the bike, like possibly ghost ride it off a bridge or cliff or something. We spent time talking about potential locations that this could take place which turned into talking about making a dummy to ride the bike off the alleged obstacle. Of course my initial intention was doing this to take a photo but it eventually turned into filming a whole skit of the dummy and his adventure on the bike. Max fashioned the dummy in his likeness, starting with the head. It was a funny process to watch unfold. First there was just a head painted like his head on the counter in his studio. It even had actual facial hair glued on for realistic effect, the max brought in a ziploc bag. Eventually the body took form and the dummy Max was always leaning around somewhere in the studio. Max drew up a whole story board and scouted locations for the skit. Before sending the dummy to his sure demise, we took him to flushing philly step to do a back tail. I wanted to shoot a fake sequence of Max back tailing the ledge.. where Max was the one popping in and out but the dummy was on the ledge doing the tailslide. It was really funny to take the photos and see everything come together afterward. You can read the rest of the story from Max and an interview with everyone involved in the article on the Skate Jawn website:
Do Dummies Dream of Electric Bricks?
This was what we ended up using as the first Limosine ad in skatejawn. At the time, nobody knew what Limosine was and also nobody knew what the fuck was going on in the photo. I guess most people just thought at a glance it was Max or Max wearing a mask or something. Also as of right now RIP this spot.
End of 2021 update
I don’t like the consider the start of a new year the same as the end of the previous year. A lot of things happened and things are continuing to happen. I don’t see it as a fresh start or and end to anything. The older I get, the more time feels like a snowball rolling and growing bigger picking up things along the way, bad things and good things all all leading to this moment where I am right now. As usual, I look to recent rolls of photos to recall the past couple months and remember that things did happen. Most of these photos are from a trip Max and I took to Ventura to help out with the long anticipated debut of Limosine. We spent a week sleeping in the “warehouse”, packing boxes, reading invoices, eating chinese-scottish oat, drinking single serve beans, and skating Mike Anderson’s skatepark. When we started to feel down, the Dark Elixir brought us back up and the world always kept spinning. I’m really hyped to see Limosine finally come out as a real brand, and I’m proud of all these dudes for making it happen. Thanks to Jon and Maria for schlepping us to and from the airport, Big A for letting us crash, Gabe for being a legend, Mike for being the man, Nicole for being the shit, Diego for always being 100% Diego, and straight up just thanks to everyone who kicked it with us, got buzzed with us, and mad peace! Heres a photo dump from that trip, with a few stragglers from NYC and the HIT premier.
One of many
I shot this photo of Max a couple years ago by now… I think, but I’ve never shared it before. This could be controversial, but he never did land it. The thing is that, believe it or not, we procrastinated going back and all the sudden to our surprise the sidewalk was repaired. The birth of the new sidewalk was the death of the bump that made this spot. He would have definitely done this had we gone back. He mostly got a lot closer than this clip… but that is the only footage I had saved. Believe it or not this keeps happening to spots that are in the process of being soul crushed upon, making the never ending quest for clips even more urgent. But anyways, now that there is full transparency, I hope you can get over that and enjoy this photo for what it is
HIT
It’s weird to remember a time before we started working on this video even though it was only about a year ago. Well, Coots had been working on it longer than that, but it was about a year ago that he asked me and max to get some clips for the homies section of his vid. Somehow this snowballed into a years worth of filming, making friends, exploring, going on trips, skating, photos, clips, new experiences, laughs, pain, lots of sweating, seeing max nearly die from exhaustion weekly, weed smoking, haning out… It was mad fun. Mad love for everyone in this video, but especially Coots, You really did something special making this video
End of summer update / Caleb’s pro party
As much as it hurts to admit, I think it’s safe to say summer is has come to an end. It is after all, November4th. This marks not an end of any activities but instead the addition of mass gear to accommodate for harsh weather whilst the same activities persist. At least the last few weeks have been perfect outside. You couldn’t really ask for better fall weather I think. Got to skate a lot and chill. The filming for Coots video came to a close this week and is to be premiered on Nov 13th. Caleb turned pro, so heres a bunch of photos from that party and surrounding times. Among the usual beving, self tasering, J boy, and general good times… there is a photo of Diego chinese nollie flipping the houston steps completely hammered.
Wild Rose
Wild Rose Tattoo… Recently I found out that Wan, Gong, and Otta had to close the doors of WIld Rose tattoo shop in Seoul. I started thinking I wanted to make a post and tell some stories of my experiences there. This place means a lot to me and I don’t know how exactly to explain it in writing. I’ll have to start from the beginning of the story.
Around 8 years ago, when I was only a couple years into tattooing, I was eager to start traveling. Before I tattooed I spent most of my time playing in bands and going on tour, I was obsessed with being on the road but found it frustrating to coordinate with other people in order to do so. When I got into tattooing I started learning about dudes who were traveling all over the world doing tattoos. I realized that could be my way out, my way into adventures without having to rely on other band mates etc. I remember Chad Koeplinger saying in an interview how wherever someone asked him to come visit, he would just go. I thought that I would also live by this value. My favorite tattooers early on were all in Barcelona, which before I tattooed felt like a far away exotic place that I would never have the opportunity to visit. So once I felt like my tattoos were good enough to travel ( they weren’t by the way) I decided I would try and go to Barcelona first. This is relevant because it was on this trip that I first met Wan. The Barcelona convention was huge. Conventions aren’t like this anymore, I swear every morning there was a giant crowd of crazed tattoo fans and massive line to even get inside the building. I was in awe and it was the first time I saw dudes around tattooing like rockstars… Chad Koeplinger, Wan, Javier Rodriguez, tons of people. I was fanning out at the time, I was nobody barely able to keep my hand steady while holding my liner. I could go on for a while about this trip alone, but I the most important thing that happened was meeting Wan for about 2 minutes. We had corresponded online so he knew me slightly, All he pretty much said was, “Hey man nice to meet you, you should come work in Korea sometime!” So after I got home I thought about it, I thought what the fuck? Korea? I don’t even know if I had ever even thought about Korea in my entire life up until this point. I wanted to go, so I hit up Wan and asked him if the offer was serious. He said yes I was really invited, so I booked a flight. Thinking back I don’t even know why I was invited in the first place, maybe just my willingness to go. Having zero idea of what I was getting into, I packed my bags and went to the airport.
I remember being pretty nervous when I arrived, I hardly knew Wan, knew nothing about Korea, didn’t know where I was going to stay, I didn’t even know how many tattoos I had to do since Wan booked all my appointments for me. I’m soft spoken and not super outgoing. I wouldn’t say I’m anti-social, but I’ve never been the life of the party… more of the fly on the wall mostly. Around that time Wan was sort of a legend within tattooing, he was traveling a lot, doing tattoos like no one else was doing, partying, and everyone seemed to have a blast with him. He seemed really cool to me and I was worried I wouldn’t be as fun of a person to hang out with.
(Wan is the type of dude who can make friends with anyone/everyone around, then get those people to make friends with each other, and then get everyone to have a good time together. And then when he wakes up the next day, he won’t remember anyone or anything. He would say “ wake up with a fresh start everyday” which is part of his genius.)
He picked me up from the airport and drove into Seoul, got food, showed me around to the shop and introduced me to a bunch of the other guys. He also checked me into a cheap hotel that normally rents rooms by the hour or night for people to have sex after dates and shit like that. You could always hear people getting it on walking through the hall to the room. It was only a few minutes walk from the shop and the fridge was stocked with beverages that I wasn’t used to seeing, like corn water.
I was exhausted from the travel but I decided staying in the room and resting was not the right move, so I met up with Wan in the evening to see what we would get into. He picked me up on his red vespa and he was wearing a helmet with a sticker on the back that said “TRUST ME” instead of trust jesus or something. We went around to a few places and met friends, and eventually we got food and were wandering around now with a bigger squad of homies. There were people playing music on the street and I remember dancing around, joking, meeting friends, and having a good time. Everything was so new and different for me and I was still riding the initial wave of what I guess could be described as mild culture shock. At some point Wan, myself, and Otta were all riding on the back of his vespa on the way to a club. I can’t remember but we must have been in Itaewon or something. The club was a tiny basement room packed full of people with a dj up on a stage. Definitely not the type of place I had ever found myself in before. So I’m dancing and stuff and everyone is pretty hammered, the guys keep taking my arms and wrapping them around girls forcing me to dance with them. I don’t remember people responding poorly to me but I was uncomfortable being concerned with invading personal space. It felt so awkward to me but I was kinda just like fuck it and went along. Keep in mind I’m a white american, I have green eyes, 6 feet tall, and covered in tattoos in Korea where tattooing is illegal. I think I stood out a bit. I remember ending up outside smoking cigarettes with a girl who could barely stand up and didn’t really speak english. She was trying to get me to go somewhere with her and the other guys were kinda like laughing and saying go, go! I didn’t have cellphone service, I had no Idea where I was or where I was staying so I decided it was a bad idea. I found Wan and Otta and we started to walk down the street, Wan said “ We need a taxi man, I’m too drunk to drive the scooter.” I felt relieved not having to get back on that thing that night. Then, after walking maybe two blocks, Wan sees his scooter and changed his mind “ I’m no longer drunk lets drive the scooter”… I’m holding on for dear life as we take off, these dudes scream and laugh, blow through red lights, drive on the sidewalk, and weave through traffic. I was thinking to myself, well this is how I’m going down, on the back of a vespa with two homies in Korea. We made it back to the hotel and after dropping me off, Wan and Otta went to the shop to keep partying (this was standard practice at the time). I walked over the next morning to find them both passed out on massage beds.
I think my first appointment was at 1:00. So Wan and I walked somewhere to get coffee, which he doesn’t drink. I remember thinking how do you party this hard and not drink coffee? Anyway, it was probly 12:50 and I was stressing about having an appointment in 10 minutes and not being at the shop with a drawing ready. Normally I was always stressing about drawings and spending all morning doing them before my clients arrived. Wan didn’t work this way, he was basically like chill out man we have 10 minutes ! I’ve learned that when chilling, 10 minutes is a ton of minutes depending on how many minutes you compare it to and how much you choose to enjoy it. So since that day, I have worked the way Wan showed me to work;
The client comes in, you talk and figure out what they want, where they want it, and how big. Then you chill and smoke a cigarette, then you draw. If you’re hungry then you order lunch and see if the client wants to eat too. Then you smoke more and do the tattoo. Then maybe instead of lunch if it’s the end of the day, you invite them for dinner with the squad and continue to hang out. More friends are made and more good times are had.
On this trip Wan pretty much handled every interaction for me, since most clients didn’t speak any english. This made it super easy for me because I could tell he would talk them into better designs and placements for me, and also he would charge them for me.. Somehow I was super busy tattooing everyday and I was having the time of my life.
Wild Rose was also a clubhouse and meeting place for the entire squad. As far as I can tell, these first trips were at the peak of when this squad was the largest and most active. Every evening people would start turning up at the shop. Once everyone was done tattooing, we would all go for dinner together somewhere, and end up partying the whole night together. Everyone was so cool and happy to spend time with me. I made friends on this trip that are still my friends today. I decided I was going to say yes to everything that came up, like try this food, try these cigarettes, drink this, play this game, gamble on this, watch these movies, drive the scooter, get on the back of the scooter, dance, hangout naked at the bath house... I got shown around so many places, tried new foods, saw new shit, and met so many cool people.
The next destination on my trip was a convention in Belgium and my heart was breaking to leave Korea. I had a few more destinations in Europe and the UK on my trip before I went home and I didn’t want to not show up… But if i could go back now I would tell myself to bail the Belgium shit and stay in Korea… although that ended up being another ill experience. But anyways, the last night before I was supposed to leave we went out for a huge dinner with everyone that I had met on the trip. It was mad fun, everyone made me feel loved and welcome. They said for me not to go and my heart was really breaking to leave the next morning at 10am. After getting back to my hotel in the middle of the night, I called the airline and changed my flight so i had another two days. I woke up to the hotel phone ringing around 8am. Confused, I picked it up and on the other end it was Wan. He had kept partying in the shop and woke up, packed my whole tattoo case, and dragged it over to the hotel for me to make sure I got to the airport. I went outside to explain that I had changed my flight and didn’t have to leave yet. He was still drunk. We sat on the curb and smoked a cig together.
Since that trip I’ve been back to Wild Rose a bunch of times. Wan and I have travelled a lot together over the years and even though he lives across the world, we are close friends. We have actually had a lot of inzane experiences together since then, in some pretty far out places. I’ll have to save those stories for another time. Unfortunately during those early years of my career when I travelled the most, I wasn’t documenting things the way I do now. When I started tattooing it completely consumed my life. Everything else fell away and I put all my effort into doing tattoos. This also meant that I stopped shooting photos, skating, playing music, and other things. I have been on some next level adventures over the years with not much to show for it besides the fading memories and stories that I’ve told over and over, that no one really ever listens to or understands. I think thats partially why I shoot photos of everything now, I don’t want to look back on the past and regret not documenting it. Everything is always changing and moving on.
I can still remember the smell of Wild Rose and the feeling I had my first day tattooing there. I pretty much remember everything about it. I wish I could convey how important that place was to me and how the experiences surrounding it changed my life, career, and ultimately lead me to being the person I am today. I wanted to write this down today, because I just found out recently that Wild Rose had to close. Tattooing is still illegal in Korea so I guess complications can arise. It broke my heart to hear that news and I don’t want to lose the stories and memories that I have from those years.
So peace Wild Rose, I look forward to seeing what comes next
also thanks to Wan for all the archival photos from those trips
Baltimore
Last week a small crew of us set out to Baltimore on a trip for Carhartt WIP. It was Max, Drew, Mecca, and Enzo with Coots shooting the photos and myself filming. I’ve gotten to travel a lot of different ways and for a lot of different reasons. I’ve found that being on a skate trip is one of the best ways to really see a city, because the objective is actually to explore. We were staying in a hotel downtown near the harbor, we woke up early to drive around Baltimore (one day in DC) and skate spots. When the sun went down we parked the van back at the hotel to venture out on foot for food, beer, and whatever other debauchery we could get into. For me this is an easy schedule to be on… wake up and drink a heinous hotel bean, log footage, link in the van, get a top notch bean, skate spots all day, get dinner, drink beer, pass out, repeat the next day. I think as these types of trips go, 4 days is not quite enough. Usually by day 2 everyone is at least sore if not hurt, and if you’re Max then day 2 is just a continuation of everyday life; being sore, hurt, and still skating. Once you start spending time at spots, days can go by really fast. One quick clip can turn into a day long soul crusher at any moment, or a neighbor might turn on their garden hose, unknowingly ruining a couple hours of figuring out how to skate a spot. After 4 days I feel like there is so much more to do. We always say “yeah we gonna come back here and check these spots again” … but thats been said pretty much every time I’ve left any place ever and time keeps moving forward. I hope we do get to go back to someday, because there is a lot of unfinished business to attend to. For now here is a photo recap:
Surfing the Ranch
For a few months Andrew and I had been talking about taking our homie Justin up on his offer to come out to Santa Barbara and surf the Hollister Ranch. In our minds, SB had nice waves everyday and the Ranch had even better waves that no one else would be surfing. And also sharks. We were actually nervous imagining what it would possibly be like surfing there. So we finally booked tickets out not really having any idea what to expect. I had a layover in Phoenix on my way and decided to drink a bunch of whiskey and eat a brackish veggie burger with a mountain of fries. By the time I got to SB it was late and I was feeling heinous, my head was rocking and all I could imagine was this fucking veggie burger and grease mound of fries in my stomach. There was a bunch of homies to pick me up which I was super grateful for, and Andrew was already with them. We met Justin back at the ultimate chill zone where he was posted up chilling while recovering from breaking both his legs. Anyways, in the morning we woke up early and headed immeeds to LP to grab a bean. We had a couple beans and we linked Travis. We did a lot of chilling, met lots of friends, we got shown around to all the spots, we even got boards. Travis even gave us his truck, so we pretty much had SB on lock for a couple days. We also learned that when there are no waves in SB, there are literally no waves. After a couple days it was time to head to the ranch, when we got there, our squad linked another homie Kyle, who turns out, is a lord. Kyle had a built out sprinter van that was able to shuttle us all to and from the surf spots. We were awe struck when we got to the ranch and pretty much stayed in that state of struckness for the duration of our stay. That night we surfed into the sunset and I’ve never been part of such a beautiful scene. The ocean was flowing chrome waves that were reflecting the sherbert colored sky lit by the sinking sun.. I wish we never had to stop surfing. After that we had a few more sessions including another sunset session. Kyle was always LBing the van mad chill and every time playing the reggae playlist. We made food using vegetables from Trav’s garden and also made juice from the lemon, orange, and lime trees. At night, the sky was so clear that you could see the milky way and soo many stars. I swear it was so bright my phone was able to take a photo. When we went back to SB, Loydacris needed to use the ultimate chill for the night so me and Drew slept on Justins boat in the SB harbor. We spent the next days doing the classic SB activities, grabbing fresh bean, stopping at lazeries for some sparkos and snacks, cruising the mesa, meeting homies, eating pizza, and all sorts of stuff honestly.
I realize I’ve just rambled on not making much of any sense about this trip… but I hope this makes sense to some people. Thanks to everyone that hung out with us and helped us out. Shouts to Blix, CJ, Laydacris, Trav, Justin, Kyle, Parker, Lew, 88, Soft Spaceman/woman, Little Pidge, Hamms, Lazeries, and the J-Quan.
We got back to NY during the hurricane swell and we were super eager to finally get some waves. I got to the beach one morning before the sun came up and watched it rise over an ocean that was seriously pumping D’s. Deez lefts super fast into the og explodery. The photos of the big waves are from Rockaway when we got back to town, the rest of the photos are from the west coast.
Boston/Providence
In the wee days of August Coots wrangled us up for a 5 day east coast colonial mission. Coots, Hendy, Max, Nik, and myself took off in a rental van headed for the finest red brick ground that the east coast has to offer. Over the last year we all started filming with Coots for his video, at first it was just to get a couple homie clips and now it’s turned into a project we have all worked pretty hard on. I thought I would shoot a lot of photos and also film on the trip but I ended up mostly skating. We were moving super slick the whole time, spot after spot, clips after clips. Max almost skated himself to death one day in the heat, which isn’t super uncommon… but this day he almost faded for real. He was totally flush with blue lips and fingers after going dome to dome with a devastator in disguise for nearly 4 hours. Somehow the projected hurricane rains missed us and we skated everyday, there were too many spots for us to get to in only a few days, it was overwhelming even. We spent the nights with cold beers, combing through old Coakley and Ladd footage to get hyped on spots. We were able to get pins for most of them, or find them ourselves. (props to all MA homies who helped us out). One night Hendy drank 7 Guini and woke up with an icepack on his face. We lurked the cutties, explored the ben franklin, and everyday was highly productive. When I’m home there are a million things goin on in my head, its a constant jumble of skating, surfing, shooting photos, editing photos, filming, painting, drawing, tattooing, buying records, linking homies, biking, carrying heavy bags, finding time to sleep… To get to leave the city and focus on one thing feels really good. Everything else drops away and I can focus and relax. Since covid this was the first time I got to do anything like this. It felt fuckin cool I don’t even know what else to say about it. Like we all working on something together, not because of money or anything but just because thats how we want to spend our time. I think when the video comes out it’s going to melt minds… I know its going to because i’ve seen the shits as they’ve happened, not to mention all on vx.
Oh yeah we also discovered the Subway really hits. Don’t write it off ! Eat Fresh!!
For now here’s a photo recap of the trip:
Labeesh Labeesh
