God, so bummed I was quoted in that piece of shit article. Here's my response on my blog:
http://youwillsoon.blogspot.com/2008/10/attention-new-york-times-readers.htmlHello, I see you've linked to us from the New York Times article on Van Wastell. While I appreciate the shout out from the article, and the link on the website, I would like to say that the opinions expressed in Michael Brick's article in no way reflect the opinions of the fine staff here at YouWillSoon.
I definitely would not refer to anything in skateboarding with the following words:
"Touring the country with an incandescent crew of trundling acrobats, he set himself apart with deft athleticism, prodigious creativity and a devil-may-care public image."
"But he always got up, and when he did he flew over guardrails, across the berms of parking lots, high above staircases, up riverbed embankments and around abandoned construction sites, his board twirling manically beneath his feet. Down bent metal handrails, he glided with ease. He soared over crevices like Evel Knievel. Most astounding of all, he seemed to defy gravity on behalf of his board, which he kept aloft beneath his airborne toes until the moment when he chose to slap the wheels down with clean finality."
"The resulting video, Krooked Kronichles, was released in 2006... skaters gaped at Wastell’s steady, gymnastic artistry."
This is an painful example of what happens when someone who doesn't know a goddamned thing about skateboarding tries to convey our "culture" to an unknowing public. Come on Michael, give the general public a little credit that they may be a little smarter than you think and that you don't have to "extreme" your vocabulary to get them to understand. Also, allow us to maintain a little dignity here. We definitely are not "an incandescent crew of trundling acrobats".
While I was contacted by Micheal Brick and agreed to talk to him to give him my opinion from a fan's perspective (which never happened, I was simply quoted from this post), and if I had known the direction that the article was going to take, I would have asked him not to use my name at all.
I highly disagree not only with his descriptions of skateboarding as if someone were reviewing a ballet troop's performance, but also his choice to highlight the "unspoken aspect of [our] sport". Yes, people drink. Yes, sometimes bad things happen when people drink. However, let a dead man retain some of his good reputation. Do not publish an article that will get nation-wide and even world-wide attention that downplays a person's accomplishments in favour of exposing the sad details of their death. And don't act like this is something that is the result of the live-fast-die-young nature of skateboarding.
So yeah, that article is lame. And if anyone thinks that I had anything to do with the direction of it because I was quoted, please think otherwise. Fuck that guy.
Topic: Van Wastell article in NY Times (Read 3625 times)