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.

Another day of standing all day at work all day followed by more yard work. Whew I was tired. I quickly setup a new board before the session. This was mainly because I had one day to decide if I liked some new eS Square Two’s with the Fusion sole (Fuzz was gonna order Sole Tech the next day and I might have wanted more of these). So I setup a snappy new Abstract deck to go with the shoes. And wheels because it’s been awhile and I’m pacing to have the perfect setup in Boston in two weeks. Aka shoes should be perfectly broke in and then I’ll setup a new board (Yes I’m a total new board pansy now. I mean not to Janoski’s level or anything, but I do have a pile of boards in my room).

Enough gear talk. We started out with a game of SKATE in the alley next to The Med. My new stuff felt decent, but I was definitely off. Jake won. Then we cruised around a bit. Well, Jake pushed down the street. I bailed kickflips. Next was the rooftop of the white ledge parking garage. Jake tried some wallies out of a corner. I tried and landed a line of kickflip, manual, ollie a tiny gap (man that is one tech ass line). Then we cruised down the garage, hit the white ledge for about 2 seconds before security rolled by and we bolted to the Wells Fargo qp where we stayed awhile and it was fun. Jake did 5-0 fakie quick (maybe first t?), blunt to regs quick and a blunt front 270 or two as well. I was all over the place. Some tricks were first t like back smith, back nosegrind, hurricane, front 180 fakie 50 fakie, yeah. I tried a bunch of kickflip 50s and failed. Jake posted up by the window so I could try back smith to fakie and I eventually got one. Before leaving I ollied into front pivot on the qp and then out of nowhere did two front pivots to fakie. I was so blown away that they came easy. We hit the manny pad for a while. I did manual and nose manual and we were trying more but it started sprinkling and I wanted to do a quick run down the super fun brick area with the 3 stair, but I failed and then it started raining a bit harder. Doh. Then Jake and I went and grabbed two beers at Catacombs and I got home late. Ha. Fun night. Oh, and those Fusion soles are weird. I can’t say whether I like them or not yet, they are different then any other shoes out there though, that’s for sure.