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So it’s not quite the Jolly Roger, but we’re working on it. What can you assholes say? Do you have a flag? Work on that, son.

Sadly, I also recently had to dispose of my long-time friends, the TNT 4s. They served me well on the great battlefields of the streets. Easily my favorite skate shoe in recent years. Pretty lightweight, and the suede ones I had were incredibly comfortable with great board feel — low on padding though, so if you’re a baby, I guess take that into consideration. Best of all, they were super durable, with some kind of thin space age rubber reinforcement underneath the ollie area. I hadn’t even worn through it before I went straight through the sole to the footbed. Shit was about to be touchin’ socks. Unfortunately, their successors, the Rowley Shambles, are not filling the old shoes’… uh… shoes.

A Geoff Rowley vs. Tony Trujillo smash up would be this years’ true Clash of the Titans… although, when it comes to transition, there is no contest.

Dude just released the Kraken all over Burnside’s shit.

The Kraken in Clash of the Titans (1981)

The shoe I based my drawing off of is my favorite Vans model of late — for skating, not just for looking like a really cool guy at the bar — the TNT 4. …Although they still would look pretty cool at a bar. They just wouldn’t smell too alluring, you might say. Well, mine don’t anyway.

Tony Trujillo - photo by Joe Hammeke

Like the man himself, the shoes can take quite a bit of punishment, and that adds up to big savings for you, the barely-employed man-child skate-rat.

Wow. Hyphens… so hot right now.

One type of skateboarding bowl:

Tony Trujillo, pivot grab - photo via life.com

Another kind entirely:

The definition of craftsmanship - photo via fuckyeahskateboarding.com

Seldom have I been more impressed. Although I gotta say, whoever packed that bowl has probably had more than enough to smoke already. Shit’s looking like the Leaning Tower of Retarded.

Also — apologies for the wealth of drug-related posts recently if you’re one of dedleg’s many puritanical readers. You must understand, we’re in the dead of winter here and I’m going through a bit of a phase… for the past three years or so.

A couple weeks ago, Chrome Ball posted up an interview with Jason Dill from 2003. Hard to believe that was 8 years ago now… but the video got me thinking about Dill, considering I was fairly obsessed with his approach to skating at that time. Really, his approach to everything is pretty fascinating anyway… one of skateboarding’s great eccentrics.

When Tony Trujillo skates he looks like a beautiful Indian on fire. He looks like he could skate with a tomahawk in his hand, and it would work. You wouldn’t really notice that it was there and he would just hack at the coping. He’s the best skater we have right now. I have tranny skills but he’s got like supernatural-phenomenon tranny skills. He embodies some of the greatest skateboarding we’ll ever witness. I like when things look sketchy with an edge of gracefulness. 

He’s also one of the few people I’ve ever seen who can almost pull off a rat tail without looking like a freckly 13 year old. The man’s truly talented.