sk8bits

For my experiment I chose the top 3 current longboard mags which I had laying around: Wheelbase, Concrete Wave, and Skate Slate.

I cut off the spines so they all turned into loose pages for easy sorting. I laid down each page of each magazine separately on my gross floor, took a picture, removed the pages with ads, then took another picture. These are the results sorted from least to most percentage of ads:

Now, I've been lucky enough to have been given these magazines at events. But there are people out there that pay from $4 to $8 per magazine as part of a subscription.

I won't violate their privacy by publishing the cost of their ads but anyone who has put one on any of these magazines will tell you it's definitely not cheap. With the amount of ads they put on these things I find it incredible that they are able to convince people to give them even more money when I'm sure they more than make up printing costs with just ads.

Actually, for the longest I thought I was the only longboarder in a 100 mile radius of Memphis. The skaters here must be night skating or something, because I STILL see people longboarding that I have never seen before. I stumbled across this facebook page called Down South Longboarding that was the Memphis longboarding page and where I met everybody. I was really lucky that i found the page though because the name has nothing to do with Memphis.

Haha I’m glad that you somehow found the Memphis longboarding page. Is that page still active as it was or has it, too, dropped in activity? Also, what do you think of the Southern Skate Scene in general?

The page is not very active, but its not actually bad. Everybody has everybody’s number and stuff. So when we want to do something we just call each other rather than use the page. The southern skate seen is rad though. We have some really amazing skaters in ATL, Savannah, Nashville, Birmingham, Arkansas, etc. People are doing a good job of putting events together and traveling to see each other and skate. I think its really sweet that you can go somewhere and odds are that somebody from another city is also hanging there and skating. We have a lot of skaters that are also traveling out to big events up North and on the West coast and repping the South really well.

That’s really sweet! Longboarding feels like a really big family. Was there anyone who inspired you when you first started and still inspire you now?

I would say just my friends in the scene. When I was starting I would always watch the “big name” skaters, but I realized that I know people doing the exact same things and going just as hard as anybody else. I love just keeping up with what everybody is doing. If Joe Dirt goes hard and does fat switch toes, I will try to go hard and do fat switch toes. It keeps you from getting bored, and since it’s your friends’, it’s fun to try to see how big you can go and stay motivated.

Sometimes defining scenes by locations are impossible. Where’s the line you draw when you consider places part of the Southern Skate Scene? I know sometimes Arkansas is considered part of the Mids No-Coast scene. Ahhh. I’m not quite sure what I would consider the southern skate scene. Thats why I just refer to different cities. I guess I would draw the line wherever people in that city don’t consider themselves Southern. I guess Arkansas would be midwest, but there’s West Memphis in Arkansas so I consider them bros.

One of the main reasons we really wanted to interview you is because not only do you skate incredibly well and stylish, but you also take really amazing pictures. How in the world did you start getting into photography and how long have you been doing it?

Thanks! Photography was actually kinda a accident. I have a photographer friend here in memphis and I always used his camera and mess with it. I also used to film these lame “clip of the day” videos and I used a horrible camera for it, so I asked for a DSLR so I could make better skate videos. I end up getting one for Christmas this year and I just started taking pictures with it. I’m a really big music junkie and memphis has a awesome local music scene. There’s this local photographer, Sam Leathers, that I saw with all of these concert shots of local music and I figured I’d give it a whirl. Long story short I took some really bad pictures first couple of shows, but as i got the hang of things I got a little better and now thats a lot of what I shoot. I also recently shot some skate photography at Thrasher Mag Skate Rock a few weeks ago and that was awesome. I’ve only been shooting for 5 months haha.

Whoa, Thrasher Mag Skate Rock? What is that? How did you find out about it?

I had no idea what was going down/what it was. But a local longboarder told me that it was happening at this DIY park Al Town here so I went. It turned out that Thrasher Mag was on a tour with some bands and pro skaters and just hitting up spots all over the place, and they stopped by in Memphis. It was amazing. Lots of amazing skaters, rad bands and general antics that surround the skateboarding scene. It was weird though. If my friend did not tell me about it i would have never had a clue it even happened. When i get to the park there’s 200+ people there and it was everybody. Even the theater homies were there. It must have been a lot of word of mouth.

That sounds soooo incredible! I guess the Tennessee skate scene, both longboarding and skateboarding, is really strong. Stoked to hear about that! For our last question, what’s your favorite video game? It sure is! We have some struggies, but we stay skating for sure. My favorite video game is Little Big Planet. Hands Down. That game changed my life (not really) I just really like it. Im a chill dude and its a chill game. Perfect.

That’s a really cute game! Any shoutouts/websites/instragram/twitter/etc? Oh yes! This might be long but here i go. Shout out to Dalton Downing, the Finney Bros, houston & drew,  and the rest of the 901 crew. I love all my skate homies from nashville (MBMS 4 lyf) , ATL, savannah, Bham and everywhere. I can’t wait for this summer to skate with everybody. Stay safe. Always skate with Steezus. Thanks to my sponsors Proper Gnar Clothing and Mg boards. For helping/inspiring me with my photography Sam Leather, Nate Packard, Jordan Finney,Tom Kochtitzky, and Alex Mendez You can look at their work at these sites http://samleathers.22slides.com/ http://natepackard.tumblr.com/ http://robertjordanfinney.tumblr.com/ https://www.facebook.com/NashvilleSkateMedia?group_id=0 http://www.sk8b.it/ My own photography is at http://franklinwallacephotography.tumblr.com/ https://www.facebook.com/FranklinWallacePhotography follow me on twitter its just FranklinWallace haha and shout out to my parents for buying my first longboard and supporting me.

Oh yea, one more question. What does the future of longboarding look like for you? (Goals, travels, events, anything)

I hope to continue my skating for as long as possible! Hopefully I’ll be able to go to bigger events as I get older, but for now I’m happy just hanging out and skating with whoever is down.

Thank you so much for the lovely interview! It has been a pleasure getting to know you a bit better and your thoughts about what you’ve done so far. Hope you have a great skate season! No problem! That you for interviewing me!

Interview by: Possala Wang

I’m Franklin LeVon (yeah capital V cuz I’m for real) Wallace. I reside in Memphis Tennessee and is now a Senior in Highschool. I’ve been Longboarding for a little more than 3 years, but I have always been on some type of skateboard since I’ve been little. I also brush my teeth with colgate.

Haha because colgate is the best toothpaste?

Sure is. Keeps my teeth phresh.

Nice, a phresh smile gets the ladies. You said you’ve been on some kind of skateboard since you were little. Did you get into anything like street or park back then?

I am actually more into street/park skating now than ever before. Since the learning curve for skateboarding is so big and i was a casual skater for a long time I didn’t really try to go to any parks too much. But in memphis all the skaters live everywhere so we don’t session too much, so when we aren’t longboarding I’m usually at a DIY park or a mini ramp skating. Longboarding has actually helped my skateboarding a ton.

That’s pretty awesome that your progression in longboarding is actually helping you with other styles of skating too. Do you have a mini ramp in your backyard or something?

I wish I did! Thankfully I live 15 minutes away from East Memphis/downtown, which is where everything happens. There is one actual skatepark, one DIY park, and a mini ramp at a community center. There are a few people with private ramps and stuff like that, but I have yet to stumble across them.

How’s the skate scene in Memphis? You say that everyone is kinda spread out and don’t session enough together; is there a reason for this?

It has seen better days. Back when longboarding was really happening weekly there was a pretty solid group of guys that would always session, but as everybody got older people started getting bogged down with school and work and other responsibilities things settled down. One thing is that we don’t have too many spots, and the ones we have are really scattered around. So its not a “pick up your board and go” type of deal. We have to plan ahead pretty well to find a time that everybody is free to meet up. There are still shredders in memphis. When we skate we skate hard. We actually found a crazy spot about 45 minutes away from where I live that we are planning to skate more often. Also the memphis longboarding scene wasn’t that big to begin with, but we work with what we have.

Yeow, sounds like problems I have in Georgia too. We have some nice hills in some spots but you definitely have to drive there. Anyways, how did you get into longboarding? You keep mentioning ‘back when longboarding..’ I’m sure you don’t like how the scene has changed since then. Is there anything you plan on doing to change that?

I actually saw that one main Original Skateboards pintail video that they had where they were ripping around and touching the grass and carving like crazy. I thought it was the coolest thing I have ever seen, so I asked for a Original pintail 43 for Christmas and Santa got me one.

But as far as the scene goes I just keep skating and annoying people to come skate, even if it’s at a park or something. One guy has a Jati Jin and another has a comet shred 38, so it’s more of hybrid set up and you can tell from our skate style that we’re longboarders. Everybody is doing 360s and checks everywhere haha. Its really just a matter of waiting and trying to schedule even farther back so that I can give people enough time to plan to come and to allow for the most people to come. People are still willing to skate; it’s just a matter of schedules. In the summer, though, everything kicks back up. I’m going to try to keep things going into the school year this time.