Are you letting your shoe fetish cloud your judgment though?
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Just to flog a dead horse, if P-rod had never existed, would skateboarding be any different? Barely
That’s probably true!
Nah not there!
Well, potentially we wouldn’t have stagnated on stair counting and big flips at generic Californian schools, which dominated videos for ten odd years from the early 2000’s.
He was the frontman for Nike as they broke into the skate industry and you could argue there’s an alternate timeline where they had less of a stranglehold on skate shoe monopoly for so long.
Along with sheckler he ushered in an era of agent managed skateboarders, taking on commercial advertising deals, which outside of Tony hawk, was pretty rare.
for better or worse, Paul Rodriguez was a very big figure for teens in the early to mid 2000’s.
Maybe I’m not understanding but I think the main split is some are questioning whether he was influential, and others whether he was innovative.
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He’d sit well in a late afternoon main stage slot alongside Travis, or Texas
He hasn’t quite got the emotional connect of someone like Paul Heaton
More like The Lightning Seeds, maybe Maroon 5
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Him specifically? You could say he was a symptom not a cause
I mean just look at videos of time and see how many dressed just like him, doing the same tricks at the same spots.
He was technically the best, had the landmark sponsors and was plastered on billboards in California, even was on the state of california tv adverts.
He may have been super boring but he was at the fore of that whole movement. Surely, he influenced those below, if not him, who were they influenced by?
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Good one. Texas sold a shit load of cds, but are they musically important?
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I might be totally wrong on this but I feel like at the time there was a clamour to crown the ‘next Koston’ and was sort of picked to be that?
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I think what’s more telling (and hilarious) is that nobody has mentioned Koston in their important lists so far.
Bun Koston
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I was thinking have Guy and Koston both kooked their legacy too? As they never come up anymore.
Did Janoski have a bigger impact with Nike? Was one of P-Rod’s shoes ever bigger? What P-Rod video parts are people claiming as amongst the greats? Is P-Rod more influential for what he’s done off a skateboard than on one these days? Shoes, company owner, being in the social media spotlight, podcasts, ect? What is his legacy? Contests?
Is he sort of a Shane O’Neill type, an amazing skater but robot like that leaves some people feeling unhyped at his skating.
Seems like it
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Nah I dunno. Koston yeah right and previous will always be amazing. It’s like they are two separate people. Smiths n Morrisey type thing.
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Yeah agreed but that fact that a load of 35+ geeks haven’t mentioned him must be significant to some extent
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I would have probably done if I was forced to make a list. But i’d put people like Alex Moul, Brian Lotti and Armando Barajas in as well, while have not kooked, they might make people question my opinions.
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No all three of those should be in there. Lotti is kind the link between Jason Lee and what came after for me so hugely important.
Alex for obvious reasons and Barajas was the other Salman (who should also be mentioned) who isn’t credited for his nollie innovation.
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Fuck Chat GPT and all who sail in her.
(Not you Les)
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Agree, Salman was chilled but significant and hugely photogenic. Loved every single photo I saw of him. Always seeing the lofty underside of his board. Never had that much footage though.
We need to end Ai, it’s spreading lies. The word Fact will be defunkt in 5 years time.
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