You guys act like he sold Zero to McDonald's or something. Money talks. Nike and Adidas buttfucked all the core shoe companies by offering the best skateboarders a shit load of cash and higher quality footwear, meanwhile ISUCK gets an offer to distribute for a corporate company while maintaining the exact same ownership and direction of the companies he helped build, and he's the guy that gets labeled a sell-out? I say good for him. He's taking advantage of the corporation more than they're taking advantage of him. New Balance has a lot more to lose than Black Box.
In no way do I support the corporate takeover of skateboarding, but I think it's been obvious that skateboarding's economic integrity has been somewhat fucked for a long time before Jenkem decided to point it out to you Janoski wearing hypocrites.
Yes I read that Jenkem article. A lot of it was based off a slippery slope. It states that "If corporate skating begins to dominate there will be little room left for the skating that Louie Barletta, Chris "Mango" Milic, or Jeff Stevens do, there will only be room for the (amazing, but) standardized and predictable skating of Greg Lutzka, Ryan Sheckler, and Nyjah Houston." That right there is complete bullshit and to put Jeff Stevens in the same category as Louie Barletta is blasphemy. There has never been a market for wacky skating without a certain level of talent in the first place. Tim and Eric aren't getting paid to put out their Roger videos, they're doing it because skateboarding is fun as fuck and no amount of cash on the planet will ever change that. With Louie Barletta you could take away the dork tricks and still have one amazingly talented dude. Just because Starbucks exists doesn't mean there aren't better "barista owned" smaller coffee shops whose Latte's haven't been tarnished by the quiff of a corporate mermaid's pussy.
Topic: new balance enters skate shoe arena (Read 136538 times)