Simon Mundy, the Victorian President of the Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA), has written a blog entry on his desktop blog in response to Andrew Moffitt’s opinion piece in desktop magazine’s May issue, where he posed the question ‘To join or not to join AGDA’.
For various reasons, AGDA was why I started The Australian INfront in 1999. I’ve never paid to join AGDA, mainly because I’ve never been convinced of the value of joining (no offense intended).
In the late 90′s I worked at a few design companies that were members of AGDA (all you have to do to be a member is pay their yearly fee) and they admitted to me that being allowed to have an AGDA badge on your web site (along side your Microsoft Certified Partner badge!) made them ‘look good’. In fact one of the AGDA councilors in the debate writes the following on the value of being an AGDA member:
Kudos: Put “Member: Australian Graphic Design Association” in your email signature and on your website. It’s (perhaps not) surprising how many clients take note and take you more seriously. Use it like a qualification or like accountants use “CPA”. And the more of us that do it the more powerful it becomes.
That’s pretty hilarious as it confirms this idea of paying to be a member, just so you can say you’re a member, to somehow make your design company seem more legitimate.
I’ve been around public forums to know how they work. There might only be a handful of people fighting in a room, but the fact is that thousands more people are reading the debate, and they’re making up their minds about who’s side to be on. I’m feeling sorry for Simon Mundy, who initiated the debate to try and convince everyone that joining AGDA is well worth the $250. The responses made by AGDA representatives read very defensive, which is a shame as they’ve got a golden opportunity here to listen to what people really want (IE: digest the feedback, have an AGDA meeting and then reply post meeting).
I tried my best to stay out of the debate, but in the end I had to chime in (couldn’t help myself!).
Ray Barbee (they spelled his name wrong in the video!) in Public Domain (1988). We used to watch this video over and over. Each time we got to this segment of the video we’d be so pumped we’d all yell out “let’s skate!” and hit the streets. The first song in the clip rocks too.
I scored these NOS (new old stock) pink T-Bones on eBay They’re the exact same wheels I used to skate on way back in the day. On opening the door this morning, post man greeted me with “T-Bones!”. Turns out he used to be a skater too, and still does skate occasionally. He couldn’t see the logos on the wheels as the wheels were wrapped up in bubble wrap, he could just tell from their size, impressive!
Size comparison to a newer style wheel. They’re huge, and roll over small stones and cracks effortlessly, damn fast too.
Later that day the doorbell went off again, this time Mr Postman delivered a genuine NOS Ray Barbee complete. His video segment in the Public Domain video blew me away as a kid, at the time no other skateboard had a nose kick as big as this. I always wanted it, now it’s mine. I intend to skate this one rather than leave it up on the wall.
Top side is factory gripped from the 80’s.
90a’s a little hard for my liking as I like to do big slides. They’re 57mm “mini’s” but 57mm is a huge wheel today. T-Bones might make their way onto this board, maybe.
Day 1. Previous owner Paul had already bought an exhaust, stretch kit and lower seat frame.
Stripped plastic panels, frame brace with forward pegs, new exhaust. Painted. New seat frame. Low and flat handlebars, removed blinkers and put them on the sides of the battery box. New seat, fat rear wheel and tyre, painted mid section of frame, new front-end (brakes, wheel and shocks), JDM headlights.
Christina is sick with the flu, so is her sister, and last night we were meant to get together for a family dinner to celebrate my B’day but my sister is well preggers, and it’s not the best idea for her to be hanging out with sick people so we postponed the night.
I’ve not caught the flu off Christina, neither have her parents, so the Locks asked if I’d like to go for dinner at Excellent Chinese Seafood Restaurant, their local Chinese restaurant of choice.
Tony’s picky about what he eats, and this place makes strange and wonderful dishes that aren’t featured on the menu just for him. I assume Tony wanted to order all sorts of grand dishes for me but he asked me if there was anything I’d like to eat and I jumped at the opportunity to take charge of the order for the night.
I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, and was feeling good. I didn’t want fancy food. I’ve had it before and it’s probably all the chefs out the back ever cook, so I wanted to make it fun for the chefs as well.
I asked if it was alright if I ordered:
– Crispy skin lemon chicken
– Beef with black bean sauce
– Sweet and sour pork
– Pineapple fried rice
– Salt and pepper prawns
Rosemary and Tony thought I was joking but I wasn’t (haha!). Tony was too embarrassed to order the food (he’s got to show face right?!) so I ordered it (waiter’s reaction was gold).
The food came out and it was absolutely demolished. In fact the only dish that wasn’t finished was the one vegetable dish Rosemary ordered (I sure as hell wasn’t going to eat any veggies on my B’day).
Ultimately the flavors of these dishes are uniquely Chinese in my opinion. Nothing like Thai, Vietnamese, etc. Sure Chinese people have think this is “Australian Chinese” food, and it’s kinda like ordering a meat pie at a gourmet restaurant, but it was naughty fun and it really made my day :)
This morning I dropped in to Racecourse Motors to get the guys there to swap my front tyre for me. They’ve got a really nice and neat scooter shop across the road from the Randwick Racecourse which is pretty close to where I live.
I spotted this strange Zoomer like bike. The seating position with the pegs forward actually wouldn’t be too unlike my Zoomer.
Old wheel left, new right. The guy that greeted me was a champ. He swapped the tyre over in no time and it only cost me $20.
NCY rotor installed. Kinda ugly. A plain cross drilled completely round rotor would have been nicer.
Braided line is pretty long (a LOT nicer than having the crazy long drum brake cable before though) and I’m still not sure I’ve routed it the best way.
Other side. Glossy black wheel suits the rear wheel now and this new alloy wheel with tyre weighs the same as an original steel wheel without tyre.
Super happy with it!
I’ve installed everything. Just need to buy some brake fluid. I’ve had issues with spacing the front wheel. The kit came with everything I needed, except the speedo housing and the wheel doesn’t sit flush against the stopper on the fork (to stop it rotating) as I had to use a spacer on that side to centre the wheel. It’s not rotating at all though, so it works fine, but it’s definitely not designed to work this way.
Couldn’t help myself, started ripping into the Zoomer right away. I grabbed a trusty milk crate, put a sheet over it and lifted the bike up onto it. Bit tricky to do on your own, but the Zoomer’s light enough. Taking everything off is a little annoying but I’ve done it enough times now to do it pretty quick.
Right at about this time Christina yelled out from upstairs “LUNCH TIME!”. Usually I’d be shitty as I was in the zone working on the Zoomer, hands covered in grease, but hey Christina made me a B’day pie! Pie’s are one of my fave foods of all time. I love a good pie, this one had my name on it too! Mmm mmm, it was delicious!
Tummy satisfied, head buzzing on a nice glass of red I got back to work. New front brake caliper to replace the OEM drum brakes. I hate it that it’s annodised red. Thought about stripping it down to bare metal, but I’ve decided to leave it as is for now.
I bought an axle puller for giggles. Didn’t fit on the OEM forks but with a little dremel work they fit on these new ultra-low forks perfectly.
Front brake master cylinder and throttle (grip not installed yet).
As far as I can go for now. Notice how much bigger the new brake lever is, so ugly! Waiting for a starter switch (I can kick start though) and tomorrow I’ll get the tyre fitted to the new disc brake front wheel.
Skateboarding culture and graphics (especially graphics from the 80’s) are things that I still love and respect to this day.
My first memory of skateboarding: I was in art class and a mate of mine David Birtles was looking through a skateboard magazine (Thrasher). I remember only one page form that magazine. It was an advertisement for a skate shop and the entire page was covered in all the different boards they sold. The board graphics that stood out on the page, and burnt an impression in my memory were the Vision Psycho Stick (which I now have on my wall) and also the Gator board.
80’s Vert Demo at the Opera House. Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, they were my idols. Skating was everything and yeah I was into Poison (the band) too haha.
Skateboarding exploded when the US pro skateboarders toured Australia in the late 80’s. There were quite a lot of skaters around before they came, but after they came everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
Lance Mountain Future Primitive deck.
I had to have a board. I had no money and I begged my Dad to buy me one, which he did eventually. I got my first board from Surf Dive and Ski on George street in the city. There was a guy that worked there, Thrash was his name (he was rad). I picked out a Powell Peralta Lance Mountain future primitive board. It was a complete. I bought some rails and a tailbone, nose bone too and I totally killed the board using my Dad’s power drill getting the stuff on. I remember crying because I screwed up the board with the drill.
I got bitten by the bug pretty bad thanks to a group of skaters at school. Every single day I’d get home and skate in my backyard until the sun went down. It was all about learning how to ollie back then, then from there it was all about how high could you ollie (I ended up being able to ollie over 6 boards).
I soon realised that the board I had was way too big for me so I went out and bought a new “mini” deck.
Check the stupid board shape, which got destroyed in flip trick attempts. So cool though in retrospect.
Some other decks I’ve owned:
Note the melting Salvador Dali like clocks (I was into Dali’s work much later).
Chris Miller G&S.
Dad bought me this back from one of his many Hong Kong trips. On the phone he said it was a black board. I was so hoping it was going to be Tony Hawk’s last deck for Powell. A limited edition all black board with a Tony Hawk logo on it. When I got this ugly thing my heart sank (haha).
I continued to skate every day after school and in the city on the weekends. We watched Animal Chin, a legendary skate video which changed the way we skated. The Bones Brigade in the video were looking for Animal Chin, it’s a “journey is the destination” kinda message and we took that on big time. IE: Constantly skating through the city and the suburbs “chin searching” – looking for cool skate spots.
At some point the Australian public got sick to death of skateboarders. They tried to shut us down and riding a skateboard became illegal. Kids were having their boards confiscated by police. A lot of skate parks were built in an attempt to get kids to stop skating on the streets but street skating was way more fun than skating ramps (in my opinion). Despite the loud “skateboarding is not a crime” stickers we wore with pride police continued to confiscate boards and skaters (myself) disappeared.
I tried my hand at vert (ramp) skating. I got OK at it, but it just never felt the same as “Chin searching”. I gave up. I got back into skating a little bit during university, with a mate who also gave up for similar reasons in high school and during the early years of work I hooked up with Ash Bolland from Umeric who was into skating but I’ve never truly gotten back into it.
I’ve bought a couple of the new school paddle pop style boards. I’m not into them. Too thin and I hate the tiny wheels (I’ve always had massive T-Bone wheels on my boards).
My workhorses. The old Hosoi Hammerhead with T-bone wheels, Bones swiss bearings (first set I bought from my first skateboard purchase ever, still going strong!) and tracker trucks.
Over the years I’ve always bought boards though, as art. I’ve got them up on my lounge room wall (the stairs going up into the house).
I’ve heard that there are a few old school skaters, who are also creatives by day, and they’re starting a crew and hitting the parks. I want in on this action so I’ll be building up a couple of boards soon. Can’t wait :)
Christina gave me this for my B’day today. Nostalgic goodness. Timely. I’ve just spent a few hundred dollars on new old stock skateboard gear on eBay as a B’day pressie to myself.
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