1) Star Wars hype is at an all time high since the whole Disney purchase and announcement of another trilogy
2) May the Fourth
3) Vans will pretty much do a collab with anyone?
Despite the 3rd point being true, a lot of their collabs are kind of disappointing, but people buy them anyway. I looked up what Spider-Man collabs they did and they had all kinds of graphics on them. Why not just have some slip-ons or Eras/Authentics with the OG Spider-Man print on them? Simple!
Metallica "Kill 'em All" Vans were cool, but why not "Ride The Lightning" Vans? All black with lightning bolts all over?
Makes me wonder why Vans hasn't approached Japanese "artist" Yayoi Kusama about doing a collab. All they have to do is make some polka-dot stuff and put her name on it and they'd be sold out within minutes, at least in Japan anyway. Not to mention if they did Dragon Ball or Evangelion...
In the case of Santa Cruz doing the Star Wars collab, they haven't been relevant for years, so why wouldn't they do it? Half their team is made up of guys that rode for them when they were big in the '80's! Kind of a shame since I remember the wood being pretty strong and poppy. Santa Cruz released a whole line of Simpsons boards so that kind of tells you where they're at.
On the topic of collabs, how do people feel about Lakai doing the Odd Future collab shoes? They seem to still be in the same position that they were around the time Fully Flared came out: too many pros, but not enough money to pay them all. Rick McCrank is sort of on and a lot of pros get shoes from Lakai but it seems like there are too many pros for the market to support giving them all pro shoes. What is a pro to do? Stay with a legit company on "bro flow" or without a pro shoe or go to a less stable/reputable company for the hope of a pro shoe and the money that is assumed to go with it?
While I feel a lot of older, more established pros should have shoes before a lot of these kids, it boils down to sales. The Half Cab is still around because it sells (and everyone tries to copy it). I see a lot of people talk about "(insert pro/am's name here) should have a board or pro shoe" but would they actually put their money where their mouth is when it comes down to it? Besides, pro shoes are usually one of two things: something safe that looks like pretty much every other shoe, or something weird that doesn't sell or get produced.
Pics of Jason Dill's pro shoe on the short-lived Vita company. Despite what the author of the blog thinks, they were terrible and had some proprietary insole with a heel cushion built in, so if you lost it or wore it out, you couldn't replace it!
Dill's first shoe on DVS was pretty terrible too. I bought a few pairs on ebay cheap since I thought they looked cool, but quilted leather and "feet you wear"-inspired outsoles?
Wasn't everyone all hyped about how the running toe was coming back? How are those sales of Brian Anderson and Brandon Westgate shoes doing?
Anyways, more skating!
Kind of sketched out that Jon Nguyen just took his shoes off and skated away barefoot since that looked like a place where you could definitely step on something that would mess up your feet. DVS should have stipulated that they show him putting on some new shoes at the end. Lastly, he had a banana in his pocket! What happened to the banana?
