Curatorialist

I not only remember my first pair, I remember what else I was wearing when I got them. Blue O.P. shorts and a white O.P. shirt with a sunset scene on it. It’s easy to remember because I didn’t own any other clothes. The “Era” wasn’t just a cool shoe to have, it was the only shoe to have. It was designed by skaters for skaters. It was somewhere around 1980 and I was somewhere around 12 years old. I was spending as much time as I could at the Del Mar Skate Ranch, buying G&S stickers, eating Abba Zabas, drooling over Independent Trucks and playing the newly-released Pac-Man. It was MAYHEM at the Del Mar Skate Ranch – kids were everywhere. Skateboarding and video games were blowing up. For those of us that used to go to Oasis to skate, we couldn’t freaking believe ourselves. I grew up right on 24th St., so I could walk to the park by hopping over the slew and the train tracks, pass by the abandoned building with the broken windows and never even cross a street. The skate park was basically my backyard.

Continue reading ‘New book on Vans Shoes. Recalling an Era.’

First of all, I bet on Orlando – straight up, with no spread. It was a calculated wager, actually, as I wasn’t betting for money, but for an opportunity. The opportunity to be amazingly right. You only get a few chances to be amazingly right and $5 is a small price to pay, in that regard. $50 would have been too much. For that much, I’d have actually had to have thought that Orlando would win.

On the other hand, I predicted that Adam Lambert would win American Idol. And he did not. As it turns out, music is different than sports – in fact, it might be its polar opposite. Pop music, which is what this contest was about, is about popularity, after all. And Adam just wasn’t as popular. And the best singer didn’t win the singing contest.

What LeBron and Lambert did have in common though was the expectation that they would win. Strong expectation. Which sometimes is why you lose. Continue reading ‘LeBron and Lambert. The Power of Act 3.’