Maloof! or Mall? Oof!

So this years Maloof Money Cup finished yesterday, and as my amazing title (I normally do the Sun headlines) suggests there are a lot of mixed feelings about this sort of thing, the corporate world entering ours, and some people think they are just using the image of skateboarding to sell products, Chris Cole probably wouldn't agree! He earnt $100,000 in a few hours this weekend!

The problem with corporate, TV friendly contests, is that they are gonna happen, regardless of what anyone says or does! It is just something we have to put up with! So surely it is better if the courses are designed by skaters, a skatepark gets left up afterwards for people to use, and the prize money actually makes it worth trying some amazing stuff, rather than feeling like a performing monkey that people are making money out of?

Maloof was sponsored by Volcom and Vans, both legit skate companies, and the best skaters in the world got invites, not some random contest pros you've never heard of, just the street skaters you love from videos. We were discussing drinks sponsors for a while today, its a wierd one, kids like Chaz Ortiz, who isn't even pro for Zoo York yet, reportedly gets over $100,000 a year from Gatorade, thats more than a chunk of pros get from their board sponsor! But while it is a corporate sponsor, we all drink drinks! If you can get paid to do it, and it doesn't take money away from any other side of skateboarding then whats the problem? Some people would argue that it is worse being on a corporate shoe or board sponsor, because thats money that could have gone to a skater owned company? Whatever your opinion on this there is no denying that the skateboarding at Maloof was ridiculous!

Anyway its raining and "World Of Warcraft" is only so much fun, so set youself a few hours aside and watch this:
Ams section one:

Ams section 2

Ams section 3:

Pro finals section 1:

Pro finals section 2:

Pro finals section 3:

Chris Cole interview:


On a closer to home tip I went with Josh and Cam from the Reskue squad last night to try and get some footage for the Reskue vid, Cam slays it, and has now been through 50 tapes of footage and we are gonna start editing his section together, Joshys is also coming on too, and even I got a few tricks last night! Hopefully they are gonna be hyped after Maloof, I know Darren is and wants to get his gnar on, he'd boneless of roofs every day if bloody Faithless didn't get in the way! But thats a different story....