What's worse - coming up from nothing and creating and maintaining a successful company doing something you love? Or spreading rumors about those who do on the internet?
no proof = RUMOR
again... NO PROOF = RUMOR
How many skater-owned companies last for five minutes? I have the answer - tons of them. JT's companies are growing and growing. That does not happen by accident. I could see people hating if JT and Co. had no skills. But those guys are sick as fuck! And they can run a business. That's more than most of us can say for ourselves. So he pushes his riders. Big deal. Some of YOU could use some pushing. Then maybe you'd have something to show besides a bunch of message board talky-talk.
Bullshit. You don't get that good at something by hating it. That's ridiculous.
If you don't dig their vibe, fine. There are plenty of other companies. But don't knock a guy for being successful. It reeks of highschool girl jealousy, not skateboarding.
This man talks sense. In the meantime, kids are more stoked on massive corporations like Nike SB or Vans Syndicate, but yet still continue to slate a successful skater owned and operated company and the skater in question, all due to internet whispers. I'm not into the hair-metal flair, painted pants, the old Zero editing, overused fisheye angles or much to do with Zero at the moment, but you've got to give JT credit for building his company up to what it is now, from sleeping rough in his car in SF in the early 90s. Not forgetting that he's 34 or 35 now and still skating hard when many contemporaries have slipped down and out of skating altogether.
As for the telling Ryan Smith to kgrind that rail - you can take any similar statement out of context and it sounds lame. As LRGeek said, it's extra motivation to try something challenging like that. We all give and get it in different amounts from the guys we skate with. If there were any beef over that particular incident, then do you honestly think that Smith would still be involved with Zero/Mystery over 4 years later?
As somebody else said here before, "haters will continue to hate and will get nothing done themselves".