Skateboarding / Snowboarding

I wanna go fast.

It's all math. Sliding on frozen water, gravity will pull 1/8 of a ton downhill pretty quickly. Can't wait to shred this winter, taking last year off because of my foot hurt pretty badly....

2014 March Logo Madness – Champion

That’s it, that’s all. Fin. Once again, the battles were close with JSLV & Hydro74 at each other’s throats all day long. And it stayed that way. One would go ahead by a vote, then the other would tie it. Then they’d both get a vote....

Good Times

I've probably seen the full movie 1000x with being on daily rotation when my crew of friends and I moved up to Mammoth to clean the main lodge toilets at night / ride our snowboards during the day. It was a fun time in snowboarding,...

Absolutely Ridiculous

Ben Raybourn skates better in real life than most people do in video games. Wow. Thanks AWSM...

Long haul to Denver

Made the annual trek out to Denver for the SIA / Snowsports show. Always a good time seeing old friends, checking my work & hopefully getting my shred on. This year it was actually winter like & the snow was amazing for the demo days. Like powder days amazing. Good times. Check after the jump for more photos of the shenanigans…

Agenda was on the Agenda

Agenda Long Beach was on the agenda today. Drove up the 5 to check out the latest stuff, check my work at a few different booths, see friends & clients. Follow the jump if you’d like to see more.

Bluebird Wax Home Movies

Known Willie from Bluebird a long, long, long, long time. Rad dude. I'm surprised he could make something like this so fun to watch because he's always so serious, as many people who live in Jackson, WY usually are #sarcasm...

Vote Snowboarding!

Max Jenke is a former pro-shred & one of the founders of Endeavor Snowboards. In case you didn't know, Endeavor kills it on the design front. I've talked with him a few times & he's a really nice guy. He's up for a $100k grant...

World Industries Black Light Series

Valhalla's latest series for World Industries released recently. The Black Light series is done in full fluorescent inks with a glow in the dark ink over the top. The images above show the daytime graphic to the right and the "night time" graphic to the...

So, this is it

So, this is it, we've reached The Finals. Thousands of votes cast and we're down to two logos. Both are icons in the industry. 90s upstart, Volcom with the Volcom Stone vs 60s originator, Vans' and their "Off the Wall" Skateboard. Round 5 was another...

Did you hear about Koston?

This is good. Nice way to integrate humor into the spot by snowballing the standard "did you hear" type gossip that happens when someone like Eric Koston does what he does at a spot. Nice work....

Leica Skate Blog

Pretty cool skate photo blog over on ESPN featuring photos of numerous pros. Rick McCrank, Arto Saari, Ed Templeton, the list goes on...

Adidas F12

Valhalla-Adidas-Shirts2Been working a lot with one of the best companies on earth, Adidas. There’s a slew of our designs on their shirts recently. A few of my favorite designs ever are included in the F12 season, in stores now. Up top is a Grant Brittain collabs with his legendary photo of the Del Mar Skate Ranch worn by Lem Villemin. Another favorite of mine is the black tee above called “Hustle Daily” with the Hills to the Hood tag line I made up for Adidas, a bear crossing the H in hills and the broken bottle making the T in the. Fun stuff. Check more after the jump.

Willy Santos’ top five

The pride of Mira Mesa, Willy Santos spits of his top five - errr three favorite skate spots in SD thanks to The Hundreds for the quick clip...

He should…

Ayumo Hirano should brush up on his english, he's going to have a lot of interviews at the Olympics next year....

Grant Brittain slideshow @ UNIV

Grant is the original Skate Photographer and one of the nicest guys we've ever had the pleasure of knowing / working with. Going to do everything in our power to be here. Should be super rad. "Grant will be doing an old-time skateboarding slideshow from 7...

Plan B Retrospective.

Plan B is a huge reason skateboarding has got to the point it has today. It was my first graphic design job and I'm proud to have worked with them. Can't wait to see more of these....

ESPN on Larson

Old friend Tony Larson has an interview up on a little site you may have heard of called ESPN, check it out....

Drifting Decade by Daniel Blom

Daniel Blom's been at it, documenting the snowboarding lifestyle for the past ten years. We worked with him a few years back on our Ascape project for Armstrong Flooring. He's a great photographer (and nice guy), this book should definitely be worth checking out. Check it...

My knees hurt

After watching Jaws X Games real street video....

Love it.

So much can be said about this but to sum it up in one word, it's Amazing....

Waiting for Lightning

Can't wait to see this. Worked with / for Danny for a while. Went out to Glamis one time with him because he wanted to build a huge gap & quarter pipe in the dunes to skate on. I thought it was the craziest thing...

Carlsbad goes down for the last time.

The world famous Carlsbad Gap was torn down Thursday, February 23, 2012 to make room for renovations on the campus of Carlsbad High School in Carlsbad, California. Anyone who remotely paid any attention to skateboarding the past 20 years knows of Carlsbad. It was a proving ground. Follow the jump for a retrospective history of the gap from a couple years back.

Man this looks fun.

brightcove.createExperiences();Travis basically made a "north shore" snowboard run. Thankfully they chose to do it in the only area in America with snow this season....

Jeremy Jones

Pretty cool article / Video on Jeremy Jones (free ride) on National Geographic's site. Check out the full article here....

So, you’re going to be in Taiwan

This is where you should go. Jim Phillips Art Show - The Dreamers 14th to 23th Oct, 2011. At Delta Skateboard Store in Taipei, Taiwan. Blood Sweat Vector...

These should be on my wall by now.

A few months back I got a call from the guys at Plan B, wanting a mini-series for the team based on my “Ice & Snow” Viking. 4 boards, one each for Ryan Sheckler, PJ Ladd, Torey Pudwill and Paul Rodriguez. Check after the jump for the story & larger / more detailed images with the glow in the dark hit exposed.

Carmageddon awaits

For anyone who hasn’t bolted out of the office yet, got a good one for your Friday with Steve Cabellero, Omar Hassan & Lizzie Armanto skating pools at night. I met Cab once, super nice guy. It’s no wonder why he’s so well respected & liked in the sport. Throw Miller in the mix & you pretty much have the Pool Dream Team. Interesting video. A bit more after the jump

Brittain’s Vault with Chris Miller

mobilerider.embedVideo(2438, 47143 ,'', 600, 330, 'osmf', {extras:'skin:skateboardmag,muteOn:,autoplay:0,autohide:1'});Worked with both Grant & Chris a few times in my career. They're both amazingly nice with unbelievable talent & knowledge stored up that they're not afraid to share. Two of the coolest guys out there in all reality....

Skateboard + Pool + Paint

Back to the hustle after the long weekend but we do have this pretty cool video we saw over on AWSM, D*Face made a spray paint rig for skateboards. Add that with some legendary pool skaters, a freshly painted pool & watch the fun ensue.

Go Skateboarding Day!

Not only is today the day that every store in Barcelona is closed (don't plan on buying stuff to bring home that day, we learned the hard way), it's also Go Skateboarding Day! Even if you only get out & push around for a couple...

Nike Chosen

Nike covers all the action sports bases with this unique night-shot trailer. I have to admit it's pretty cool that they're giving action sports athletes close to the same coverage as stick & ball athletes. ...

Making of the DC Commercials

Pretty interesting Behind the Scenes look @ the making of the DC commercials. Pretty sure Chris Cole is the next wave of video games, in that he's a living video game character. Thanks AWSM...

RIP Hubba Hideout

Hubba Hideout, a piece of SF's legendary skateboarding puzzle is done. Sure am glad the nefarious characters who congregate around in the area will be left alone now that there's not skaters to scare them off. Read about it Here. Sad to know that another...

JP, Jeremy, Simon & Crew get downnnnnn

ESPN's Real Snow videos are up. Up above is JP Walker's edit where he puts some good midwest mid-century architecture to good use (others do as well). Pretty cool clips. Jeremy Jones' work with his ridiculous spinnermajig binder is crazy and Simon Chamberlain's rail skills...

Chair 23, where are you?

Saw this over on Boardistan & couldn't not post it. 23's an amazing chair which serves Mammoth's lift-accessed steep terrain like the Wipeout / Dropout chutes & the Paranoids amonst others. This tube is there to protect you from the not-so-subtle winds that go hand...

How to make a skateboard: video

How to make a skateboard: video. Pretty interesting insight on how they do it. Don't know if this is how the 5yr olds make them in China but it's interesting none the less. We found it over on AWSM...

Stop action skateboardin’

Skateboardanimation from Tilman Singer Found it over on Quipsologies. While your there, check out #98 & the response #108...

AWSM Jim Phillips interview

Saw Remind’s product over on AWSM & checked out an interview they have on their site, Remind Insoles. We got the chance to work with Jim a few years back on the Ascape project we did & he was the coolest guy to work with. Funny that one of the things he’s most proud of about his career is inspiring kids to become artists & designers… It’s safe to say that he’s a major inspiration & one of the reasons I’m doing what I do. I can think of a slew of things that would be worse than hanging out with Jim Phillips for the weekend, these guys did it & filmed it for us to check out. There’s 4 parts in the series, the rest are after the jump.

Stay Gold

Emerica's new video just dropped and the word on the street is it's jaw dropping. Seeing as how the premiere was a few weeks ago & the movie released on DVD / iTunes on Sept 1 - we should have a full review but, well,...

The land of fist bumps & high fives


The bi-annual brofest known as ASR is going down in SD right now and, as hard as we tried, we were sucked into it once again. This year wasn’t especially any different than any other years, still lots of dudes rolling around trying their hardest to be seen by anyone willing to look. More after the jump with a slew of pictures to keep you abreast of the art that seemed to be the theme this year.

A thumbprint to skate? Really?

Saw this article while perusing the interweb yesterday. Apparently a skatepark not too far from Valhalla HQ in Poway, CA recently implimented a thumbprint scanning entry system for people wishing to skate the Poway Skate Park. Really? A thumbprint to skate? Wow. Child predators lurk...

Whole lotta awesome at Northstar

Burton-Academy-Teaser
A while back we rolled up to Tahoe to meet with the guys at the Burton Snowboard Academy at Northstar about a couple projects. While we were there we got a full tour of the place and to say it’s amazing would be an understatement.

Ode to the Carlsbad Skatepark

Carlsbad Skatepark
How do you explain the significance of Carlsbad Skatepark? How about Carlsbad Raceway? To have them both at essentially the same location is amazing, something like having the Tate Modern next to Fenway Park only better. Looking back, it was as close to Valhalla as I could get in my teenage years. Throw in some snowboarding (in reality, all I’m doing while riding snowboards is acting like I can skate good) and BMX (which if you think about it is an offshoot of motocross anyways) and you’d have every sport I ever cared about all in one spot. There’s a lot more fun (photos, videos) and a lot less dribble (me rambling) after the jump

an interview with Andy Jenkins


Came across this gem a couple days ago over on BMXSociety. I worked with Andy a couple years back on the Ascape project, he did a couple rugs for us and was super cool to work with. We have some similar interests in bmx, mx and of course skateboarding / art / design. It was cool having him in on that project and interesting to read about how he got where he is today in the interview. Check it out here (the interview link is after the intro paragraph). After the jump I’ve put up some highlights

Welcome to Costco, I love you.


Idiocracy couldn’t have said it any better. In case you haven’t noticed, this blog is generally about design, skateboarding and snowboarding with a few random tidbits of nonsense thrown in. Well, this covers at least two of those subjects. I came across this in a recent email blast from Megalo Mart, Price Club, Costco – heli time in Alaska.

We Recommend – New Skateboard Graphics

New Skateboard Graphics is the book of the month for March 2010. I know what you're thinking, another skate graphic book? Well, yes. To see why check out our mini-review here....

Valhalla goes worldwide


Tonight Omatic’s own Louie Vito danced his way into onto the Olympic stage landing himself a solid 5th place. Check after the jump to see the story of how this relates to our blog…

Neon Asphalt


Road trips mean new adventures whether it be seeing new & cool things, eating new & cool foods or acquiring new & cool stories. One of my favorite parts about road trips, especially road trips through random area are the incredible roadside signage. This year’s SIA show was in Denver, so naturally that called for a road trip and all it’s glorious signs of yesterday.

We Recommend – Vans: Off the Wall

We're starting off December with guns blazing. Behind the scenes, there's a load of stuff going on which will all become evident soon. For now though, our book of the month series continues! This time around, it's Vans: Off the Wall. One of the cooler...

Twenty years of Danny Way

DWay1
I grew up not too far from Danny, he lived only a couple towns over. My group of friends I skated with had heard of a group in Vista who all skated super good. Looking at the list of people he grew up skating with, it’s no wonder that we heard of them 20 miles away (which is a pretty long distance in an 11 year old’s world). Little did I know that in a couple years, that group would revolutionize skateboarding as the world knew it.

October. Mammoth. Snowboarding?

openingTeaser
We don’t know how they did it, but we’re pretty sure that Bear Mountain somehow remotely opened at Mammoth today. Every “head” that would normally be found on a February Saturday afternoon at Bear was up at Mammoth for it’s opening today, the mountain’s second earliest opening ever.