bygone days

wasteland skateshop
                                                               
years in existence: 1994-1996ish?

where do i even begin with this infamous shop?  i guess i'll start with the very beginning for myself.

i used to walk by the empty storefront on my way to school everyday, i think it was an antique shop beforehand and a baseball card shop in it's early days.  i'm pretty sure i was in sixth grade when i started to see it transform into something different.  first, there was paper up on the windows which was a giveaway that something new was coming soon.  after a couple weeks or months i think the paper got ripped or came down and i saw something that i thought i would never see in our town...actual graffiti.  it was all over the inside walls but i still had no idea what was going to go in there.

around the same time the paper came down the front door started to get left open and you could see daily changes, at least i think that's how it happened... one random day, i was either coming back from school or it was the weekend, i walked by the shop and there was some dude hanging outside.  he came up to me and handed me a flyer and told me he was the owner of the shop.  he probably asked me if i skated and at the time i hadn't started yet, so i told him, "nope, not really."  i had just met marcus mera. (more on this dude later)

it probably took me about a year or so after wasteland opened to actually start skateboarding.  a bunch of my friends at the time had already started, so it only made sense that i get a board too.  i remember it being a huge deal, dropping $120 bones on a complete.  i mean, i was in fucking eighth grade at the time so who knows how long i had been hoarding that money.
i plunked down my clams and then came the decision of what deck, trucks and wheels to get.  i had no idea as far as the size of the board or what wheel size to get but luckily i had a friend with me.  i picked out a planet earth deck (a white board with leaves as a graphic), venture trucks and nicotine wheels (i think.)

back to the shop itself...
this place was like the most hated place in town by adults/the police/a typical f-town resident.  it probably didn't help that marcus was definitely coked out, smoked out and drunk the whole time he owned wasteland.  to all the skaters and probably any teenager at the time, it was one of the only cool shops in town, period.  it didn't matter that it was just a skateshop, the fact that something like it existed in our town was amazing.  i can't really remember too many problems with the shop early on, it was open pretty much everyday but whenever marcus felt like opening it up.

in the end, wasteland closed after about 2 years.  i think they got evicted or something, the shop just closed and never re-opened.  it was the summer of '96 and it left us back to square one, which was mail order catalogs and about a year later, pelican ski shop had a really shitty skate section.  granted, there were other skate shops that existed in the area, but this was 1996 and my mom sure as hell wasn't going to drive me to princeton to go buy a deck.  i'll never forget those days though, having a skate shop that you could walk to and hang at.  it was pretty cool for a 13 year old kid.

fun fact:
marcus did open up another skate shop, it was the extremely short-lived chocolate city in new brunswick.  i went there once when i was 15 or 16 with bri and john dunworth.  it was pretty sad to see some of the same wheels and stuff that were leftovers from wasteland.  in the end, that shop went bust as well.  i can only venture a guess it went down about the same way.

*special thanks to mr. maloney for the picture of the flyer*

more on this later..

x marks the spot.
sidenote: why does stryker's look like it's 50 feet back from the street?

american zero

facetown-treatboyz presents: thrill of it all


this one is in response to brian's post with two of my favorite jams as well, welcome to hell and photosynthesis, respectively. this one is definitely a major trip down memory lane. i bought the tape 13 years ago at the now defunct skateshop, Unreal, which was one of the best shops around when i still lived in jersey. this was most definitely the shop for all us f-town skaters. when this place opened up it was a total godsend, we seriously had a haggard-ass ski/snowboard shop that had the most pathetic skateboard section ever. that's right Pelican, i'm talking about you! mail-order catalogs were our only hope, for serious...anyway, i'm getting a little off track here. i think i'll dedicate the next few blogs to the good skateshops, past & present.


back to our classic jam/jem of a video. this was zero's first video and while it doesn't showcase the most amazing skating, for it's time we knew these guys on the team were fucking serious. it does showcase matt mumford's foray into all things "caveman", adrian lopez's kickflip into anything style-before it was really popular too, erik ellington as a young ragamuffin that liked to toss himself down some serious shit, and of course jamie thomas-still non-jesus at the time.


i was kind of shocked when i re-watched this video, i remember it being short but it's literally just under the twenty minute mark! there are short, quick sections for each person but there's impressive tricks in each one. most notably is the "leap of faith" that thomas tries at the end of the video. to this day it's still a fucking insane drop. i remember cutting out the sequence from my transworld magazine and posting that shit up on my wall the minute i saw it. what kid doesn't imagine being able to pull this shit off? it was and still is a completely ridiculous ollie/backside grab over a handrail down like 2 stories. aaron harrison has some steep ollies in this one as well. the slams off the trailer are enough to make you never want to try an ollie like that ever..


be on the lookout for the bum named "lynne." he's a dead ringer for "dog" the bounty hunter. who knows, maybe it was that fool!

"i astro-project.."

t.hawk

we're ringing in the new year with an oldie but a goodie. c.slater vs. asian mafia, what can be better than that?  this one goes out to my boys b.dunworth, b.solomos and b.maloney.

"hello, bolsa video?"

"nice threads, kelly."

and who can forget, officer lucero.

"i was in scarface, motherfucker..."

ps- retitled "a brothers justice, for t.v."

a storm's brewin

here's an example of an unclassy classic video part. i'd have to say my relationship with the shorty's/osiris team back in the day was nothing short of love/hate. you had to love that these guys had some serious skill but let's face it...everyone on the team was pretty much a poseur thug, peter smolik being one of the worst offenders.  i have to give it up to the guy though, his shit was always tight and he seemed like he knew how to have a good time.  

around the time this video came out it was fashionable to skate with some of the most butt-ugly shoes ever produced.  what shoe companies were the worst?  well, you guessed it, osiris was probably on the top of the list.  globe also had some ridiculously bad designs as well.

ouch...

huh?

let's not crucify these guys for having a haggard style...i can say that i owned a few pair of globe's myself (however, they were pretty fashionable and were nowhere near the D3 steez.)  so put on your favorite pair of track pants/mesh shorts and sit back and enjoy the flip-in/flip-out craze that was 1997.  


ps- be on the lookout for smolik's insane kickflip over the fence.
pss- be on the lookout for one of the worst rap songs ever...


(malone's added his 2 cents on this one.  let us not forget the terribleness that was converse cashing in on skateboarding and making some god-awful shoes.)

knights in white satin...

i know it's from another transworld video but this is just another classic. heath front/back lips everything in sight, does a tailslide down your parents banister and basically wrecks any ledge in his path.  i especially enjoi the 5-0 through the kink and the monster 50-50 on the chest high ledge.  oh, and who can forget the song? fuckin moody blues...(sidenote: this was the first karaoke song i ever sang.)

missing from this section is the insane lipslide heath attempts on a retardedly steep and tall rail.  it's in the credits of this vid and he goes for it until he eventually breaks his board.  you even get to see him punching himself in the head for giving up on it last-second.  

found it! peep 1:10, that's where the show begins.

oh christmas...

here's another classic jam from almost 10 years ago. marc johnson is one of my all-time favorite skaters. his style is so fluid and relaxed, it's just fun to watch him sesh. look out for the switch 360 flip down a little double-set, the varial-heelflip to backside nosegrind and every manual combo he throws downs.


ps- does the a-team still exist? i couldn't help but notice the shirt...