If that last chapter has you confused, join the club. The truth is that it's been over seven years since I sold Concrete Wave Magazine, and I am still processing what happened.
In the 2011 edition of the mag, I wrote "statistically, only 10% of magazines make it to a 10th year." Little did I know that within 7 years, everything I built would be gone. The old expression "if I had only known then what I know now" comes to mind. The truth is, you can never go back, and I can't undo history. But before I write anymore, I want to first apologize to any reader of my magazine who felt a little discombobulated or upset when I pulled the plug back in 2018. I know it was a pretty quick retreat, and it left many people puzzled. Since that time, I've kept a low profile.
The truth is that I never went public as to why I sold the magazine.
But before I get to the nitty-gritty, I need to talk about another project that started to mushroom in 2011. Besides publishing Concrete Wave Magazine, I also created Longboarding for Peace. LFP was a movement of peace, balance and justice. We were not a charity or non-profit - it was a purely movement forward.
The project started with getting Palestinians and Israelis to skate together. In 2012, working with the Peres Center for Peace and several key advertisers, we shipped $10,000 worth of product to their door.
CW and LFP spent a month in the Middle East bringing people together through the joy of skateboarding. After this, we did things like gun buy-backs. This was based on an idea from Neil Carver. Working with police departments in Southern California, we would provide a complete skateboard for every gun that was traded in.
LFP also got involved in encouraging blood donation. We shone a spotlight on the wrongfully convicted and, through an extraordinary set of circumstances, wound up getting a skatepark built on a remote First Nations island.
If you want to get a sense of what pure stoke can achieve, have a peek here: https://concretewaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/carvingforpeace_optimized01.pdf
In the 5 ½ years, LFP wound up in over 25 countries, and we gave away over $300,000 worth of skateboards. A huge thanks to all the brands that supported LFP and all the people who became part of the movement. We made a difference in a very different way.
I think now is as good a time as any to confess that LFP took over my life. It felt so right to be bringing such good to the world. I admit that LFP was probably a bit too jarring for some. The ideas of search/spark/stoke resonated with many readers, but I am mindful that it probably turned quite a number off. Some of our advertisers found it interesting, but social media was becoming a significant factor, and I could barely get the website to function.
So LFP became a major focus of my life, and I lost sight of my goals. The mantra of the magazine had always been "one rider at a time, one reader at a time and one subscriber at a time." But frankly, I didn't care really if you subscribed or not - my interest was purely "do you subscribe to the idea of riding a skateboard for life?" If so, you were part of Concrete Wave.
The magazine hit its biggest page count in 2013 with our annual buyer's guide. It was 148 pages, and I was utterly stunned. What had started as a quasi-fanzine at 16 pages was now a massive publication.
I want you to imagine the feeling of your hobby becoming an actual job. Think about what it would feel like to be taken to the proverbial candy store and allowed to not only go behind the scenes but eventually have yourself morph into some type of skateboarding Willy Wonka. I am not saying I was Wonka, but there were times when my imagination became reality, and it was truly a magical experience.
I was helping to both document and foment change within skateboarding. It was not an easy path trying to convince fellow skaters that variety was an essential element within skateboarding. Gandi’s words rang in my ears daily… "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win."
It was a struggle convincing many people in the skateboarding industry that longboarding was a viable genre. Eventually, money won people over (especially those reticent skate shops), and those people who ignored the sea of change did so at their own risk. A vast number of former detractors suddenly became enthusiastic copiers and supporters!
For me, it was all about spreading the joy and stoke of skateboarding. I must have given over one million copies of the magazine over the 16 years it was around. And just for the record, Tom and I gave away over 300,000 copies of International Longboarder Magazine.
So what happened? Back in the mid-2000s, the web had started to impact print. But it was the power of Google, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and, above all, Facebook that shredded print advertising budgets.
Why use a third party like a magazine when you can create your own media and directly capture and cultivate customers? There were many reasons why CW was the right medium initially, as longboarding (and variety) was a new idea within skateboarding. But, as Gandhi would point out, "you won." The fact is that skate shops no longer need to be educated on the value of carrying different types of skateboards. And thanks to YouTube, potential customers could experience the joy of riding soft wheels without reading a single word.
So, let's take a peek at what life was like for me in 2017. The longboard parts of the skate industry had gone through a classic slow build, then boom and then bust cycle. Ad budgets were pared back, and CW Magazine found its revenue decimated. Truthfully, it was hard for many magazine publishers to weather the digital storm. Ad rates in a magazine are significantly higher per thousand than on the web. I tried to pivot, desperately trying to figure out a way forward, but nothing seemed to gel.
It all became very frustrating, and my wife and children wondered why I was so upset all the time. I felt stuck and slowly but surely developed a horrendous case of writer's block. I remember sitting at my keyboard, wondering what to write about next. It was a puzzle. I created two publications in 2018. Both were 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 – literally half the size of the original magazine. For the January 2018 issue, we had the magazine at three events: Shred Expo and ISPO in Germany and Agenda in Long Beach.
The response was interesting – people could see that the magazine was changing, but it wasn't enough to make a difference, and most advertisers still stayed away. I came up with an April issue that featured a very glossy cover and some pretty cool material inside – but the magic seemed to have vanished.
It was in April when I decided that I needed a complete change of direction. My last memory is giving away copies at the annual Roarrockit swap meet and then heading out.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do next, but I knew one thing, and that was the magazine was going to spiral down further if I didn't let go of it.
So, I decided to sell the magazine to a fellow skater. He is a very talented designer, and he partnered up with another skater. Together, they embarked on a mission to try to make Concrete Wave Magazine 2.0 work.
Unfortunately, it didn't really work out, and my sense is that they found the experience quite frustrating.
In May of 2018, I started volunteering at my wife's school. About two months later, I found work at a funeral home as a funeral director's assistant. Ironically enough, it was this job that helped me wipe out my writer's block. I teamed up with an Australian skater named Nathan Ho, and we co-wrote "The Endless Wave – skateboarding, death and spirituality. You can download it for free here.
After I completed the book, I started to think, "Maybe I still have a bit of gas in the tank?" It felt like my mind and my sense of creativity had become unfrozen. But it took time.
I kept skating, but I was off social media. In the spring of 2022, I wound up going down the rabbit hole of surfskate videos on YouTube. Although I met Neil Carver in 1998 and was a massive fan of the carving system that he created, I never really explored the C7 truck. I ordered a board on a whim and was immediately hooked. Skateboarding had me hooked again via the power of surf skate trucks.
After I sold Concrete Wave, I didn't think I'd ever write again. Luckily, skateboarding was the catalyst I found to kickstart my creative engine. And the truth is, after co-writing “The Endless Wave”, I didn't have anything left to say.
Then came the opportunity to write this manifesto, which, as you will soon see, changed everything - again!
