I have a complicated love/hate relationship with Canada. As a child,I went on a family vacation to Ontario and Niagara Falls. At the time, I was a total comic book geek. I fell in love with the country after visiting a wax museum,witnessing real-life flying squirrels, and sitting in a replica of theBatmobile from the series starring Adam West. Fast forward 15 years and I'm beingstopped by Canadian Customs on my way to the Slam City Jam skate contest inVancouver because, allegedly, my driver's license and all of the bills in mywallet had traces of an illegal substance on them. That was the first bump in the road in my relationship with Canada.
The nail in the coffin came in 2004 when thelate, great skater Harold Hunter and I were detained at the border for hoursdue to previous DUIs and felonies. After a lot of smooth talking, lying, andinstructing Harold not to say a word, I was able to buy us work visas for theweekend. As the customs officer rang me up for $400 I asked him, "What is ityou think is so great about this place that you're trying to keep everyone from seeingit?"
"It's not what's so great here," he replied. "But what is not so greatabout your country that we're trying to keep out." Touch.
But Canadian authorities aren't the only annoying Canucks. For as long as long as skateboarding has been documented,Canadian skaters have been trying to fit in with their American counterparts while inadvertently pollutingthe skateboard world with vanilla, suburban pseudo-gangsters in ghetto gowns. Some (i.e. other Canadians) believe the Great White North has produced some of thegreats. And while I must admit that people like Rick McCrank, Mark Appleyard, Paul Machnau, andColin McKay are acceptable to throw around in a game of W. A. T. A. R. (Why Aren'tThey Americans, Right?), the truth is there is only one Canadian skateboarderin all of history who has been truly accepted by American skateboarders as oneof our own: Rick Howard.
Howard,the quiet co-founder of Girl Skateboards and Lakai Footwear, came to America topursue skateboarding at the tail end of the 80s when skating wasrelatively small and unaccepted by the mainstream. Peace, love, and solidarity wasthe code amongst skaters of the neon spandex era, but as we entered the vibin' 90s and thugged out urban street skating became the norm, Howard, theconsummate passive Canadian, feared being ostracized for his Vancouver roots. Hequickly devised a three-point plan to hide his Canadian identity.
First,like Raekwon, Rick "got with a sick ass clique and went all out" by ditchinghis former sponsor, Blockhead, for the very American brand Plan B. Plus, he wiselybefriended Thrasher Skater of theYear 1994 Mike Carroll, in hopes that Carroll's street cred would mask any smellof Vancouver.
Next, Howardstopped dressing in his Canadian Mounted Police uniform, as was tradition forskaters from the North at that time, and instead adopted a hipper, more urban camouflagelike track pants, bucket hats, and the moon boot skate shoes that were popularat the time.
Lastly,when it was time to release his break out video part in Plan B's now-classic Questionable (1992), rather than skatingwith a soundtrack by Bryan Adams or Neil Young, Howard opted for the Englishrock band Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Howard's career ruse has been so remarkablethat the City of Vancouver has designated August 29 Rick Howard Appreciation Day to honor the only Canadian to break throughskateboarding's glass ceiling.
Watch: 'Gone: How Mental Illness Derailed the Promising Career of a Young Skater':
Sadly, inthe 25 years since Howard went pro, no other Canadian skater has picked up thetorch or shown any promise of making it in America. I wish this were the partof the story where I said, "until now!" and segued into the tale of the nextgreat American skater from Canada. But that'd be a goddamn lie and it's notgonna happen. There isonly one Rick Howard and as he creeps up on his 50th birthday, we're seeingless and less of him. So instead of offering you the next Rick Howard, I presentto you the Dime Crew: the self-aware brainchild of Phil Lavoie (Montreal),Vince Tsang (Quebec), and Real Skateboard am Antoine Asselin. Justas French-speaking Quebec is the anti-Canada, the Dime dudesall born in thesame year Howard turned pro for Blockhead in 1991are sort of like the anti-Howardsin their lack of interest in making it in the States. Rather than try and breakthrough the glass ceiling, they instead spit-shined it to better see their ownsmiling Canadian faces in the reflection.
For thepast decade the trio have been embracing their Canadian roots. Dime began firstby sporadically posting skate clips to their site back in 2005, but it wasn'tuntil 2010 with the release of The Dime StoreVideo that the skateboard world began to take notice of their understated 90ship-hop/skate aesthetic. Dime's brand of skating was undeniable: it was smoothand stylish without a hint of the "Hey! Look at me!" showmanshipaka middlechild skate syndromethat is typically associated with Brazilian and Canadianskaters. Their videos are injected with boom-bap hip-hop, feature low-fi camera filters juxtaposed with zero-fucks-given iPhone clips, and slick shredding interrupted by moments of weird shit they see in their city.
I wascertain I would carry my animosity for Canada forever, but over the past yearthe Dime crew has been slowly changing my tune with numerous, humorous webedits culminating with the recent Dime x Vans Glory Challenge in August. In anage when most contests take themselves far too seriously, the DGC was theantithesis of that. It was invite-only, there were no contest jocks allowedexcept Ryan Decenzo, the obstacles were absurd (there was a fucking guillotine),the challenges preposterous, and the judging rigged. In the nearly threedecades I've been skating, only the shitshow known as Jim's Ramp Jam has rivaled this event.
After thecontest I immediately reached out to Vans Canada's marketing coordinator, BobLaSalle, and asked if I could be a part of the planning for the 2016 DGC. They were down to fly me up for the day to pitch my weird skate ideas tied toScientology, spaceships, and Uranus. I landed in Montreal the morning ofOctober 12, Canadian Thanksgiving, as Neil Young's Heart of Gold blared through the airport. The week leading up to myarrival, including my flight, was nerve-racking. I feared that customs wouldrefuse me entrance yet again. Surprisingly, I waltzed right through withoutissue; I didn't even need to show the letter from my lawyer stating that 14years had passed since any indiscretions.
I wishedthe customs officer a happy Thanksgiving and he gave me a cross, veryun-Canadian look. It was a look I'd receive every time I wished someone a happy Thanksgivingduring my stay. LaSalle quickly explained, "We don't celebrate thanksgiving inMontreal. The rest of Canada does but we celebrate French holidays here. SaintJean Baptiste Day is more our thing."
So insteadof OD'ing on turkey and pumpkin pie, we did what any skaters do when an entire metropolitan area is shut down for a fake holiday: we skated and filmed frommorning until night. I was in utter disbelief the entire day. I found myselfgiving thanks for how normal and un-Canadian the Dime guys are. It made methink of that column in the tabloids that tries to prove celebrities are just like us. But rather than force a connection, like, "Look! Britney Spears has aface! You have a face too!" these guys skated very much like the rest of theworld: they didn't beam the camera, they all wore the correct size t-shirts, noone tried to one-up anyone. I didn't see one street grab all day! If it weren'tfor all the French speaking, one could have easily pegged them as Philly orChicago kids.
Our ThanksgivingDay cellphone edit only hints at how good and deep this crew is. (And sadlyall of the karaoke footage from the sports bar we took over for Thanksgivingdinner was too graphic for YouTube's standards.) But between brainstorming anddrawing up obstacles for next year's Dime Glory Challenge under the influenceof an alcoholic energy drink called Octane, they showed me some rough edits ofthe new Dime video coming this winter and I am certain it will convince anydoubters that these are like no other Canadians we've ever seen. They may haveeven convinced me to give our friends up north another shotor, at leastMontreal. Dare I say that the Dime Crew is possibly even better than RickHoward? I mean age 50 Rick. Not prime Rick. No way. Not even close. But they'restill good. Just not that good. No one will ever top Rick.
Check out Dime's website here.
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