What’s Going on at Birdhouse?
When I say Birdhouse a few things may come to mind.
First and foremost obviously we think of Tony Hawk, it’s founder and skateboarding icon.
You may think of the old-school boards and shapes synonymous with 90’s skateboarding.
What I think of is their controversial King of The Road appearances where they featured on VICE and won 3 years running.
From 2013-2015 Birdhouse took part in (and won) King Of The Road, a unique competition hosted by Thrasher in which teams compete in a scavenger hunt to tick off challenges across the country.
In 2014, VICE started to televise the competitions, bringing them to a much more mainstream audience.
Birdhouse’s team for all 3 years consisted of Aaron ‘Jaws’ Homoki, Clive Dixon, Clint Walker, Ben Raybourn and Mike Davis.
From the 5 skaters who took part in KOTR;
Jaws remains at Birdhouse and continues to skate at a high level.
Clive Dixon left Birdhouse in the last few years citing ‘he was the only one skating at Birdhouse’. He moved to Nyjah’s company Disorder, which shows you exactly how dire things are.
Clint Walker became one of the most controversial figures in skateboarding, alienating himself from the rest of skateboarding with his erratic and aggressive behaviour on KOTR.
Ben Raybourn left skateboarding shortly after the KOTR series. There was a lot of speculation as to why. The most popular was that he was suffering from drug addiction and was getting clean in rehab.
Mike Davis was arrested shortly after the KOTR series for possession of heroin and coke. He was removed from the Birdhouse team and a year later he was found dead in his home from a suspected overdose.
A lot of speculation about the culture at Birdhouse was thrown around after the events of KOTR. It was a competition, however no other team seemed as competitive or just downright intense about the situation.
They quickly became the villains of the series and the social media backlash in the aftermath was brutal.
The majority of this hate was directed at Clint, however the whole team suffered.
Many believed the negative fallout of KOTR directly attributed to the downfall of the Birdhouse riders.
Birdhouse hasn’t released a major project since 2017’s Saturdays, a commercial, yet entertaining full-length featuring most of the KOTR crew and Birdhouse regulars (David Loy & Lizzie Armanto).
But since that project…… nothing.
We’ve seen some solo projects but for the most part Birdhouse has been silent.
They are still flogging their product on the website and no announcements have been made regarding either ending the brand or coming out with another video.
This has led me and lots of others to ask…
What’s going on at Birdhouse?
Topic: What happened to Birdhouse at KOTR? (Read 7420 times)