Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding Pdf
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FREE IMPOSSIBLE: RODNEY MULLEN, RYAN SHECKLER, AND THE FANTASTIC HISTORY OF SKATEBOARDING PDF Cole Louison | 304 pages | 19 Jul 2011 | ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD | 9780762770267 | English | Old Saybrook, United States Mission: Impossible | GQ The Impossible aims to get skateboarding right. Journalist Cole Louison gets inside the history, culture, and Ryan Sheckler personalities of skating. Read more Read less. Word Wise: Enabled Language: English. Shop now. Customers who bought this item also bought. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Previous page. Tony Impossible: Rodney Mullen Professional Skateboarder. Tony Hawk. Kindle Edition. Next page. Review "David Foster Wallace on a skateboard. I was hooked from the start. This book blew it wide open for me. Until now, only obsessive freaks had any idea how interesting this sport is. And even obsessive freaks should stick around for the tale Louison has so lucidly spun. The Impossible is a universal story, told in imminently readable fashion by a tremendously talented writer. It honors the beauty, danger, and complexity of the sport, and lays bare its physical and psychological demands, and greatness. The Impossible and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding some of the finest writing on skating I've seen. I read it in one sitting. He also helped found one of the top alternative college publications: Buzzsaw Haircut. After a year on the Cape, a Vermont art colony offered him a writing grant, moving him to Ryan Sheckler, Vermont. The one-month residency turned into a job offer, and Louison spent a year in Vermont before selling his truck and moving to New York City in fall Once there he became an editor at McSweeney's Quarterly Journal, joined the New Yorker softball team, and temped for Vogue, Esquire, and Vanity Fair before coming to GQ, where he works today while continuing to write on a freelance basis. From the Back Cover Skateboarding: the background, technicality, culture, rebellion, marketing, conflict, and future of the global sport as seen through two of its most influential and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding Since it all began half a century ago, skateboarding has come to mystify some and to mesmerize many, including its tens of millions of adherents throughout America and the world. And yet, as ubiquitous as it is today, its origins, manners, Ryan Sheckler methods are little understood. He does solargely by recounting the careers of the sport's Yoda--Rodney Mullen, who, in his mid-forties, remains the greatest skateboarder in the world, the godfather of all modern skateboarding tricks--and its Luke Skywalker--Ryan Sheckler, who became its youngest pro athlete and a celebrity at thirteen. The story begins in the s, when the first boards made their way to land in the form of Ryan Sheckler surfing in southern California. It then follows the sport's spikes, plateaus, and drops--including its billion-dollar apparel industry and its connection with art, fashion, and music. In The Impossible, we come to know and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding not only skateboarding, but also two very different, equally fascinating geniuses who have shaped the sport more than anyone else. Read more. Customer reviews. How are ratings calculated? Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness. Review Impossible: Rodney Mullen product Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Top reviews Most recent Top reviews. Top Ryan Sheckler from And the Fantastic History of Skateboarding. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Verified Purchase. Didn't and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding understand how the skate culture was seeded and how tough these crew really are. Enjoyed this book and could not put it down. See all reviews. Top reviews from other countries. Mark Pack. A good history of skateboarding which centres on Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen and Ryan Sheckler, written in quite an informal, chatty style. Watch out though - readers more knowledgeable than me about the topic can find a fair number of factual errors. Report abuse. Fab thanks. There's some good history here, but this book has a lot of big problems. Things and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding 1. It's riddled with errors. Some examples: -"Santa Cruz airman Jeff Phillips Trust me, Stacy Peralta's socks know more about skateboarding than this author. The author states a lot of opinions as facts. Example: on page one, he declares Rodney Mullen "the greatest skateboarder in the world. Even in his competitive prime, one could make an argument that Danny Way, Christian Hosoi, Tony Hawk were objectively better overall and far, far more daring. Did he invent lots of tricks? Yes, going 1. A teenaged Pat Duffy was doing s down huge double kinked rails while Rodney was still driveway dancing on a freestyle deck. Mullen is a tech god, and certainly a legendary innovator, but tech is only one facet of skateboarding. Many others were the complete package. This book is essentially an unauthorized biography of Rodney Mullen passed off as a general history of skateboarding. The hero worship and his general bias gets nauseating. It's not particularly well written, but I could have gotten past that if it were more factually accurate. The author clearly isn't a skater but pretends to Ryan Sheckler, which is the worst sin one can commit. To use a historically accurate skateboarding term, he's a poser and it's painful. Things I did with my friends at the same age. Only a few pages later, on Page 36, the author describes young Rodney Mullen breaking his front teeth. In that paragraph he refers to Rodney as Rod, Rodney and even Ryan. RIP Mom I have children in high school that could edit this book better than was done prior and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding publication. Not sure how that step got missed. It almost reminds me of the funny and decidedly unpolished truck reviews on YouTube. Too bad the unprofessional truck reviews are funny, short and free. Not Ryan Sheckler good buy. What's more to say. I have skated for over 20 years, Rodney Mullen is a hero of mine so I was looking for a book that was somewhat indepth and factual. I think this Impossible: Rodney Mullen the best skateboarding book I have read. I thought I knew a lot about Rodney but I this Ryan Sheckler taught me a few things I didn't know. I'll read this book again someday, too good to read just once. One person found this helpful. Back to top. Get to Know Us. Word Wise: Enabled. Language: English. GQ researcher Cole Louison gave himself an impossible assignment: to write the complete history of a sport without it reading like a dusty encyclopedia or self-promotional wiki page. Plus explain what Ryan Sheckler "ollie" is. Calling The Impossible a history of skateboarding somehow reduces it. But the tale of their relationships to and influence upon one another and the general simpatico between the masters of this universe stitches together a much more evolved brand of history. The complex narrative is made perceptible through the most disciplined prose possible. The Impossible proves many things: Skateboarding—like writing—is difficult and important. Doing either one well matters. And Louison has stuck his. Out today; for the rest of the book, go to Amazon. Ojai, California. A little before midnight. A big bald moon shines down through hulking conifer trees made lush by the mountain air and the California sun. One hundred miles northeast of Los Angeles, in his home in the valley of the Topatopa Mountains, Rodney Mullen is watching a rerun of the X-Games finals broadcast earlier in the day. He can also do this with a little step, and then be standing facing you while he and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding forward like Dracula, with one sneaker centered on the board and the other a millimeter off the ground. He does this now, moving along the perimeter of the course toward his starting point. In person, Sheckler looks like a pro athlete and a supermodel. He has a chiseled, tanned body, gold-green eyes, soft hair you want to touch, and a face that glistens into the air around him. His left, more intact, more tattooed arm is bent to his waist, and his right, more deformed arm is hanging by his side. His backwards hat is saturated down the brim and his face is shining. Ryan Allen Sheckler. Young Ryan. An indisputably accomplished athlete in terms of contests and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding medals and sponsorship. A child prodigy, reality MTV star, guest on Kimmel and Leno, a producer, businessman, and here, now, a decade-long veteran of professional competing-for-money contests and the most divisive figure in skateboarding, whose historic roster Ryan joined when he was thirteen. Jay Ryan Sheckler. Cab and Tommy. Natas and Gonz. Ron Allen. Ronnie and Koston. Daewon Song. P-Rod and P. Melch and Richie. Nyjah Huston and Dennis Busenitz. Chris Haslam. Antwuan Ryan Sheckler. Josiah Gatlyn. Chris Cole. Lizard King. When the light turns he pushes once Ryan Sheckler the platform and then bends and kicks out his right leg and lunges forward, eyes on the red wad rail ahead. Small, Ryan Sheckler, and "made to skate," according to his mentor, Sheckler stays bent as he turns his shoulders 90 degrees and puts his back foot on the board and bends into a Z shape as he lowly roars toward the stairs.