I agree, you’re right with those guys and many others too but I dunno, In my opinion, and not even knowing him, he looks like he could have the potential to take it further. Has to be now though before it’s too late, as he will suffer the same fate as those others. It will take a year of hard work in the mix but, he could thrive.
Look at Barney Page. If he stayed in the UK he’d have never have progressed the same way, the fact that he went outside with people of higher levels he stepped up and become who he is now, which is a world class skater.
So fabric seemed to disappear and is now making a come back but I don’t actually know if they still sponsor anyone. If Bush has a pro board with them still why is he riding chocolate and not tagging fabric in instagram posts
Bushy left Fabric ages ago. So did Baines and my mate Will Sheerin. Not sure if Stern or anyone else is still on the team though and no clue what they are doing as a brand.
Chocolate shouldn’t put any more white skaters fully on (not that Bush is realistically in the running). It was sick when it was ethnically diverse and doing that again would vibe well currently. Promote people like Carl Aikens and don’t put anymore people like Raven on.
What did I just read
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As an alternative to all of this could we just sponsor skaters who look great on a skateboard
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The thing with Barney was that he got hooked up with Etnies Europe pretty quickly after getting on the UK side of things in2009 which enabled him to travel and make his way up and get on companies with a bigger travel budget like RVCA and Red Bull. He obviously had to hold up to his own end of the deal by doing the whole sponsored skater thing.
However, that all happened for him at the right age when he was about 18-19 - now compare that with James Bush, or any skilled skater in their mid-late 20s. Realistically, the window has closed on any ambitions to be pro as you’ve got to serve that apprenticeship for a few years with zero guarantee of making it as a successful pro. Give up all aspirations of education and overall self-improvement to move to Barcelona or LA or Melbourne and just skate - yep, that’s fun for a while, but to what end? What are you learning? What are you taking with you from this experience to apply and use further down the line? That’s fine for 6-12 months while you’re trying to sort your life out and work out what path to take, but hoping that slumming it for a meagre £400 per month via flow deals will help out on the path to “making it” doesn’t sound that attractive to many and I doubt Bush would be that interested -not that I know him, just making wild assumptions, heh.
At the time Munro was on that Milk outfit, which to be fair, was a bit lame, while Bush was making a name for himself at Fabric. I’d guess that Bush wasn’t so interested in sponsor-hopping at the time, whereas some flow deal for Primitive came along via Rock Solid and Munro went for it. I thought that was an unusual choice for all concerned at the time, but hell yes, good to see it worked out for him as a lot of skilled skaters can get forgotten about in the distributor flow deals.
/coffee
Agree, it’s silly to compare, people are individuals and take different routes but if Bush has got on Chocolate, he’d be silly not to push himself into a better position, I think he could but yeah, you have to weigh up whether the dream is actually worth it, as skating is a dead end, especially for someone who does not live in the epicentre of skate industry.
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Is he not white?! What is his ethnicity? I also meant heavy transition skaters, but they’re nearly all white anyway.
Ha! I thought I’d missed something obvious.
I always thought the name Chocolate was a reference to urban America’s multicultural-ness - America’s ‘Chocolate Cities’ as places like Harlem have been racially termed.
I also agree MJ wasn’t a great fit. Storm-era Hsu might have been good though!
The history of Chocolate does make me think about the racial dynamics of the industry though. With Chico leaving, none of the original team remains. I think it’s harder for a black skater to carve out a career and cement themselves as a ‘legend’ or gain a ‘legacy’ position at a company. Too many amazing black skaters fade away or are discarded when their behaviour is deemed too problematic - Salabanzi, Darrell Stanton, Marcus Preston etc. Whilst absolute piles like Jason Jesse are actively invited back into the industry by companies like Cons (until they turn out to be racist piles). A lot of it has to do with the systemic racism within the industry - there are very few balck-owned companies. Having a company like chocolate that seemed to be actively incorporating diversity was amazing, and it’s a shame that the company lost its way as it represented something bigger (to me at least) than just a normal skateboard company.
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First Choc line-up was entirely non-white so it was a reasonable thing to assume at the time, with no internet available to check.
Then again Girl was all dudes.
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Wasn’t he a slightly later addition?
Yeah Gino came next.
Was Mike Yorke not on them from the start?
I thought Chocolate was the Girl 2nd team or something? Seem to remember someone saying that
They basically started it because they went on tour and there was no room in the van for Chico (as he wasn’t on Girl). They literally had to leave him behind in the carpark with his bags and drive off. Everyone felt bummed that mates were getting left behind, so they started Chocolate.
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Yeah this is what I always thought. I always lumped them in together as basically the same company but as a sort of a-team/b-team thing.
But looking back at the quality of some of their team maybe that doesn’t make sense.
Surely as a statement of inclusivity calling it “chocolate” is just a bit too on the nose?
