AWAKE: The Venture Trucks yearbook. Can you name all of the pro skaters that have at one point in their career skated Ventures or even endorsed them as one of their many pros? Lately I have been intrigued with the heritage behind this brand as I have been reminiscing about my early days of religiously skating the V3, and Featherlights or Superlights or whatever they were called. In fact, I have been skating a set of the 5.25 WIDE & HI’s again for the past couple of weeks (with Bones bushings) and I forgot how responsive and light they are. I’m certainly not trying to sign my name to these trucks, but any truck that is Made In The USA in the Ermico Foundry and has a pedigree chart like Venture deserves some attention. Can you imagine if they still has this team? Wowzers. Special thanks to the ad archives at Skately.

Let’s give it a whirl. Just add any and all Venture names (past and present) to the comments section here, and I will add it to the list below.

Jason Lee
John Cardiel
Danny Falla
Eli Reed
Keenan Milton
Mark Gonzales
JB Gilet
Brian Delatorre
Andrew Brophy
Bobby Puelo
Brandon Westgate
Mike Carroll
Corey Duffel
Stefan Janoski
Stevie Williams
Pat Duffy
Karma Tsocheff

Mr. Puleo’s site Victim Brand just posted an interesting Bobby Puleo interview conducted by Ricky Oyola. I like Ricky, and I think Puleo’s always had a really creative take on skating. Be forewarned there is a lot of lengthy grumbling in his responses, but you can draw your own conclusions from his interview. However, I will assertively raise a glass of Perrier to this statement, “A lot of people go and film their parts in far off places like China and Europe instead of trying to find their own shit in the places they actually live in or operate in. It seems like a lot of kids just simply don’t use their intellect or imaginations enough any more… There’s so many of the same types of dudes out there. These cookie cutter archetypes that look, dress and all skate the same..”

“Kids need to abandon these large, non skateboarder owned corporations and put their money back into skateboarder owned brands. That said, skateboarder owned brands need to start making better, more fashionable shit if they want to keep a stranglehold on an industry they built. They also need to start empowering their consumers to stay with them and educate them as to why it’s important to buy skateboarder owned shit.” Amen and read on.