Dave and I filled in our brackets after the first round was done.

Dave’s is above, mine is below. (In case it’s not totally obvious since you know I would pick PJ to win it)

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 made my day

I never thought it would be Silas changing the rail game, but wow, this is a game changer to say the least.

Yeah ok, one more try to do every basic in one run at one of the most epic looking spots ever. Still my fav.

My picks for parts of the year and stuff. The online stuff is easy to post, but a real part on a DVD still counts the most to me. So part of the year goes to Cory Kennedy in Pretty Sweet. Video of the year is the 5Boro video.

Best online part – Mark Suciu – Cross Continental.

Best not-a-full-on-part part – Austyn Gillette – Quik.

Honorable mention – PJ Ladd – Cruising NYC

All in all a pretty good year for skateboarding in my opinion. Now if only people would stop supporting the mega corporations.

This video is awesome. Monico’s part as well (15 minutes in). ABQ has such a unique variety of terrain that never gets boring.

Sure it’s Gino, but really? Who in their right mind wants a skate shoe that looks like John McEnroe’s tennis shoe. Please, go away Nike. Don’t support this crap.

I obviously did not know this person before reading this, but thank you for making skateboarding better. RIP.

I’m even a TPuds fan and I can’t believe this would win Tampa Pro. Not a single tranny trick. I don’t mind that he’s just chilling and walking around instead of running, but man, that is not flowing. You gotta link your run for the most part. Getting up on the deck a couple times is ok, but between every two tricks? Not cool.