Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, And The Fantastic History Of Skateboarding - Softcover

Louison, Cole

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0762770260 ISBN 13: 9780762770267

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2011

Synopsis

The Impossible aims to get skateboarding right. Journalist Cole Louison gets inside the history, culture, and major personalities of skating.

About this title

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 geniuses 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, and methods are little understood.
The Impossible aims to get skateboarding right. Journalist Cole Louison gets inside the history, culture, and major personalities of skating. 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 1960s, when the first boards made their way to land in the form of off-season 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 intimately not only skateboarding, but also two very different, equally fascinating geniuses who have shaped the sport more than anyone else.

About the Author:

Cole Louison is a writer for GQ magazine and has contributed to Fader, McSweeney's, the New York Times, Buzzsaw and All Things Considered.  While at Ithaca College's Park School of Communications, Louison majored in journalism and reported for the Ithacan and the Ithacan Journal.  He also helped found one of the top alternative college publications: Buzzsaw Haircut.

 

Upon graduation, Louison moved to Martha’s Vineyard and began reporting for the Vineyard Gazette. While there, he became an island correspondent for WGBH Boston NPR and later moved to Cape Cod to work further for the station. After a year on the Cape, a Vermont art colony offered him a writing grant, moving him to Johnson, 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 2004. 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. For GQ he has covered a variety of subjects and interviewed Bill Clinton, Reggie Miller, Dave Navarro, Big Boi, Mohammad Ali, Ted Nugent, Don King, David Remnick, the world authority on Samuel Beckett, Jim Jarmusch, and Jean-Claude Killy. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Outside, and the Los Angeles Times.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0762770260
• ISBN 13: 9780762770267
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304