disposable: random essays on skateboard art

full circle: the element ray barbee tribute board

Last November I'd teased the forthcoming Ray Barbee "tribute" board from Element, but it would now appear to be officially out, about, and available for purchase. (Actually, I think it has been out for over a month or so now, but ol' Slow Hand Luke here just got around to posting the formal news.) What I didn't know back then though, is that they still planned on releasing two shapes for the board—one popsicle, the other early '90s-ish*—covering both "OG" color scheme bases in the process. Element even produced a sticker, too, for those of you predisposed to sticking and/or hoarding sticky things. I only know this because I received several packs of them in the mail, and I now routinely include one with every autographed copy of The Disposable Skateboard Bible—now in its second printing!—ordered directly from me (sorry, had to work that in somewhere).

Anyway, my special thanks go out to Todd Francis for the separation assist on the Ray Barbee graphic. There's nothing more humbling in the world than to know your skill set is obsolete, but I guess everyone will just have to pry those last remaining rolls of Rubylith from my cold, dead, arthritic hands one day.

----------------------------------------------

* I was just informed by Todd that it will be a couple more weeks before the old school shape is in stock at Element.

inglorious self-indulgence: mike mcgill, glenn danzig and ghosts of madison past

First, if anything, I should offer up a modest mea culpa of sorts. Not that I feel it's necessary, I'm just doing this to span time and decorate the Interweb with something other than pornographic imagery, but my original intent really was to be a bit more active with this Disposable extension (after all, I am currently paying for the online trailer park space). However, back in February, my car was broken into and some cocksucker of a thief made off with my MacBook Pro laptop and camera gear. Aside from the fact I was uninsured and had to swallow a roughly $9,000.00 loss, what really hurt was that I had neglected to back up my files in a long, long time and I'd woefully consolidated my entire archive of hi-res skateboard photos onto the laptop to organize. And while I still have scattered back-ups of much of what I shot for The Disposable Skateboard Bible, I'm fairly certain I lost most all of the excess/unused deck images from my shooting rounds for Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art, not to mention everything else that I'd been storing up to use here online, e.g. reproductions, one-offs, and prototypes. So it goes. Digital life lesson learned ... the hard way.

Anyway, it was a demoralizing episode and I'm only now coming back around. So the purpose of this highly self-indulgent post is mostly just to get my feet wet once again and shed some light on a little seen thing: my personal collection of boards.