News

8/31/04 - Bastien Salabanzi Turns Down No Love T-Shirt Politely

Upon arrival of my last destination of the day, I saw Bastien Salabanzi skating five feet from my car. After a few seconds of pure shock, I thought to myself, 'Wouldn't it be rad if Bastien rocked a No Love Shirt once in a while?'. So I grabbed a large No Love shirt out of my trunk and I approached him cautiously. Then I said, "Hey, can I give you a shirt?". I figured if you give the world's greatest skateboarder something, it should comes as a shock to him, since people are probably always ASKING him for something (whether it be an autograph or a free board). I thought this would be a slight change of pace for the guy. He politely replied "no - give it to that guy". The "other guy" was the Flip Skateboards filmer and video editor and he gladly accepted the shirt. He dug the design and I quickly gave him a run down on the whole no love story (made for our Penn State customers and other Philly locals). The Flip filmer is super cool. As for Bastien, I think the reason why he turned down the shirt is well because he has signed an agreement with Quicksilver (who must pay him handsomely) where he shouldn't be wearing other skate related clothing - a sign of breeching the contract. Or he thought I was some freak and he is tired of people approaching him and tries any means necessary to deflect the oncoming fan towards someone else in his entourage. Hey, fair enough - being a celebrity is a tough life. All that glitter is not gold.

-Vince Jizim

8/31/04 - A Weird Day at Jiz

Besides the whole incident with Bastien and the Flip filmer we got a really funny yet strange phone call this morning. Some guy trying to promote some other X-Games wannabe convention left a message on our machine looking for Eric Koston, Rick McCrank, Rick Howard and pretty much the entire Girl Skateboard team. He left a phone number to where he could be reached. So naturally I called him back and told him I was Eric Koston and that before signing anything or even considering doing business with the guy, I needed $5000 in advance. Well we will see how that goes...

This brings me to another point. Lately everyone and their mother thinks that our address is the home of either Tom Penny, Geoff Rowley, Tony Hawk or Frank Gerwer. We get all these letters from kids asking questions about skateboarding, I guess for school reports or God knows what. You can't understand what they are asking for - but they want something from these pros. They must think that if they use the school assignment approach they are going to get something for free. But they all think that all the pro skaters live at Jiz Skateboards. Well kids that is not the case. They live in many different locations around the globe. We don't keep all the pro skaters stuffed is some locker in the basement of Jiz. All things skateboarding don't just come from Jiz. There are many different manufacturers and distributors of skateboard related products - And the pro's don't live there either. They have homes too! Anyway, we photocopied our resident homeless homeboy (Homeless Joe) nut's and mailed it to a class in Indiana.

8/05/04 - Matt Bulbitz Boardslides El Toro 20

As soon as I start to compare him to Scheckler he goes crazy. If you don't know what El Toro is, it's the mother of all rails. It's a 20 stair round handrail. Now other stuff has been done on it before, but as far as I know there are not many other rails that compete with El Toro. If you do El Toro you are pretty much in the books. I get a phone call one day and Matt calmly says, "I boardslid El Toro". My response: "THAT'S FUCKING AWESOME". I stood there in shock for a moment and I told Matt, "I'll call you back". I hung up the phone and just stood there dazed for about ten minutes. Then I called him back and got all the details.

Matt got it second try while getting kicked out.

The irony here is, I have been telling the younger skaters to get over the big stuff. Big stuff has been done before, plus you don't want to get broke. I have seen many skaters never fully recover from eating it on something big. I want to teach creativity and style. We don't need to go big anymore. Well all those ideas have been washed down the drain. Chris Hernandez and Matt are skating together more than ever and their motto is: Bigger is better. Damn.

7/14/04 - Adam Bateham Fund

We are not sure how long this fund has been around but it is still on the DoubleOC website. We will quote what they have said about Adam here:

"THIS IS NOT A SCAM. THIS IS A REAL LIFE SITUATION AND WE ARE TRYING TO HELP ADAM OUT AS MUCH AS WE CAN.

A Word About Adam Bateham:

Adam Bateham is one of our flow riders. He just had a severe tragedy happen in his life and he needs your help.

Some of you may have seen Adam Bateham skate... He's the kid with no legs who ripped at the Skate Park Of Tampa am event this year. Anyway, his adopted mother (his only family) went in for some minor surgery, got a serious staff infection ...and died last week. He can't even afford to bury her, and he is about to get kicked out of his apartment because he can't afford to pay rent. Adam needs as much help as possible! He was adopted at birth because his real parents couldn't deal with the birth defects... his adopted mother was the one who gave him that 'glass is half full' positive attitude. He's everything a skater should be, independent, open-minded, loyal and fun... and now he's all alone, he has no other family.

Anyone who would like to help out with a 'gift' to help with the funeral please donate whatever you can.

If you would just like to send him a kind word, his email address is:

Dayspring23

or give him a call: (714) 572-8313

He's only 17, in a wheelchair, and stuck with this tragedy ...so anything you can do would be great."

click here to help!

7/1/04 - El Skate Shop Team rider Dallas Rockvam joins Element and I-Path.

Dallas is insanely good. He came out from Iowa with his friend Chris Trieber (Chris rides for Jiz Skateboards) sometime last year. He quickly got picked up by Element Skateboards and I-Path shoes. Dallas is extremely modest and just a nice guy. It's so wonderful to meet great skaters that don't have that cocky attitude where they think they are so good and so bad ass. Anyway, not only is he super cool, he is a resilient mofo. I guess he was going to back tail a 12 and got racked pretty bad. He messed up his knee, and refused to go to the doctor (simply because he has no insurance - another reason never to vote republican) and insisted to shake it off. I saw him hobbling around for the next few weeks, and sure enough he was back skating again. Watch for him in the mags, like Slap and Thrasher.

7/1/04 - Matt Bulbitz, the next Sheckler?

Ok we will not put that much pressure on him. In fact we are trying to ween these kids off "bigger is better". But Matt keeps sending in footy of bigger and better stuff. He is boardsliding 15 stairs, inward heelflipping off large objects, and basically skating his ass off. I think with this dedication to skateboarding, Matt is going to rise up pretty quickly. Did we mention he is only 12 or 13 years old?

6/25/04 - Fahrenheit 9/11 a must see.

We are very upset with the release of Fahrenheit 9/11. The reason why was we were going to make a very similar video. But that damn Michael Moore beat us to the punch. Everyone wants to bash this film. Bottom line this film is fucking punk rock. This is the most punk rock film since Decline of the Western Civilization. We at Jiz know their was something fishy as soon as Bush took office. Everyday since then we have been cataloging simple retardedness of his administration. Well this film does a great job explaining the atrocities of the Bush Administration. It's all based on factual evidence (we at Jiz can account for this) and it is playing at your local movie theater. This is a very important movie that all Americans must see.

6/25/04 - New products at elskateshop.com

There are always new products at elskateshop.com!. Let's see..we got it a bunch of hella cheap skate shoes for $30 and under! Check it out.

6/20/04 - What happened to Terminator X?

I don't know. I went to the Public Enemy website and it's all about Chuck D. I heard he released a solo album in 1994 but that is the last thing I heard. Please let us know...we are all worried about him.

What's with the new looking website at jiz?

We are just trying to make a smarter and more informative website. The mosaic on the front page represent jiz skateboards history from the past 7 years. Please email us your repsonses.