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Words: Joel Patterson
Between the
years 1994 and 2000, I was an editor at TransWorld SKATEboarding.
During my tenure, the thing I became known for were my intros to the
magazine, then called “Gasbag,” which I wrote scores of. This 500-word
column allowed me to be a fringe player in what I consider
skateboarding’s golden years, when it was considered a blight by city
councils, a social albatross by the über-popular cliques at
school, and “not a career option” by my parents.
You won’t
remember me, because skateboarding has an extremely spotty long-term
memory, and this is, ultimately, one of its biggest strengths. It is
truly an arena for the young and hip, neither of which describes me
anymore. At 35, I’m washed up, and because I too spent my youth living
deck to deck, I’m of the opinion that I should be a relic.
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About five
years into my stint at TransWorld SKATE, the artist Thomas Campbell
(not known for his tact when driving home a point) once told me it was
time for me to quit. Though his pronouncement offended me, I had to
admit, his follow-up made sense. “Youth is what keeps that magazine
alive,” I’m paraphrasing here, but this was the gist of his rant, “and
you aren’t young enough anymore.”
But this isn’t about
me. It’s about a magazine that has been praised, hated, widely read,
vilified, lampooned, bought, sold, saved, and, at times, misunderstood
for a quarter of a century.
TransWorld
SKATEboarding has the biggest readership of any magazine in the world
of counter-culture lifestyle sports (I just made that category up, but
I’m talking about skate, snow, surf ... motocross is not
“counter-culture” ... sorry). Over the years, it’s made a lot of money
for its owners, who have ranged from private citizens to multi-national
media monoliths. But really, numbers are boring.
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The real reason
TransWorld SKATEboarding has had such a successful 25 years has nothing
to do with the bean counters, or the suits from New York, or the AOL
DVD poly-bag brainstorm ... it’s about people.
TransWorld is
one of those places that give people their big break. It doesn’t pay
well, but at the same time, it doesn’t care if you have an MFA from
Columbia. It demands you forfeit the best years of your life, and in
exchange it offers the chance to be published and read by hundreds of
thousands, and the bonus is that you get to become the answer to an
obscure trivia question one day:
Q: Can you name
the guy who wrote all those mushy TransWorld intros for all those years?
A: Joe Petersen?
But I’m far from
a valued alumnist of TWS. Consider if you will, some of the people who
cut their teeth in the company’s Oceanside, CA warehouse:
David Carson
Spike Jonze
J. Grant Brittain
Ted Newsome
Thomas Campbell
Ako and Atiba Jefferson
Neil Blender
Miki Vuckovich
Aaron Regan
Todd Swank
Dave Swift
Kevin Wilkins
Skin Phillips
There were many
others.
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Eric Koston / 1998 / Photo: Mike Blabac
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And I now understand
that when Thomas told me my era was done, it was a compliment. I had
given the magazine my youth, and now it was time to parlay that
experience into the next big thing, or whatever. But mostly it was time
to go. So I went. But I’m still a subscriber, and I revel in the glory
of its ever-forgetting majesty.
Ad vitam aeternam,
Joel Patterson
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