With Fallen Footwear going under the shoe debate has become a hot topic again. I get bummed out on some of the stuff people say that isn’t correct. So for whatever reason I decided to document my current stance on the whole corporate vs skater owned shoe argument.

For years I took a ‘skater owned brands only’ stance. This changed when New Balance Numeric came around and gave PJ Ladd a shoe. Why? Because I’m a huge PJ Ladd fan and because the shoe seemed perfect (note – it is perfect). Lets start by listing a few facts about all skate shoe brands.
1) All skate shoes are made in China by non-skaters. From Vox to Nike, no skaters are manufacturing the shoes.
2) All skate shoe brands have a skate team.
3) All skate shoe brands have skaters involved in running the team and helping with shoe designs.

With that said what makes skater owned brands different from corporate companies? I think there are two main differences which can be broken up as a pro and con. The pro is that the bigger brands have access to better technology which in many cases make better shoes. This isn’t always the case, just a general consensus. The con is that a non-skater bigwig executive type could pull the plug at any point. It’s my believe that a skater owned brand would hold onto their company longer then a major corporation trying to make numbers. Obviously there is a point where even skater owned brands shut down. Both the pro and con are huge though.

Another aspect of the skate shoe world that often gets overlooked is the environmental aspect. I live in Boulder, CO. I am kind of a hippy. So this is probably a bigger deal to me then others, but I want my shoes to last as long as possible. Both for financial reasons and to minimize my waste.

I guess overall to me the biggest thing is that you buy your shoes at your local skateshop. Whatever brand you chose as long as the local shop benefits I’m down. I personally do not like Nike though. Nike continues to steal riders and make way too much of a point of being everywhere. I want variety in skateboarding. I do not think badly of any other company. I am a little upset that the skater owned brands didn’t immediately improve their quality once bigger companies started moving in, but I think there has been more effort for quality lately.

Thanks for listening. Have fun. Go skate.

A couple random notes:
Supposedly the process of vulcanizing a shoe is incredibly bad for the environment. Why isn’t this a big deal?
New Balance isn’t actually a corporation, but a privately owned company. I didn’t know that until this week.

This part is excellent.

Right after work on a nice day I went to the “dawg park” to meet Dave and Rob for some flatground. As I pulled up I saw a little kid on a bike trailing Rob around the slab. Pretty funny. His name was Levi. He was having fun on his bike. He left after a little while though. Rob was once again the first one landing real tricks. Kickflips, no complies, manual to ollie over a rock, back 180s, no comply shoves. Dave seemed to go right from warming up to trying switch front 360s. I felt like I had gotten warmed up and was trying tricks beyond kickflip, but just not landing them. I landed one heelflip and felt stoked. I should not be that stoked to just land a heelflip. We played a game of SKATE. It started by all 3 of us bailing our first trick “go to” trick. Awesome. I forget what Rob went out on, but he was the first to go. At that point I had SKA and Dave only had S. I struggled to land a couple flippers to get him closer then he got me with the pop shove body varial. What a crazy trick. After Rob and Dave left I told myself I would do 10 treflips. At 0-20 I lost it and focused my deserving board. Good riddance to the big setup.

(setup 8.38 null control room, venture wides, venom 88a bushings, bones stf 51mm v2, es accel slim black/white)