Nobyl’s Resurrection via Newman’s Inspiration
Nobyl’s Resurrection via Newman’s Inspiration.
Often described as, “ The man that every man wants to be and the man every woman wants” throughout his career, Paul Newman was one bad motherfucker and a true American patriot.
Minutes, it seemed, after word of his passing on September 26, 2008 at the age of 83, articles appeared in abundance about the man, referencing anything from his admirable onscreen career to his various beyond the screen charity donations that totaled millions.
But, within these numerous articles there was a paragraph that struck a chord with me and said it all, short and sweet:
“The Newman hero acknowledged society as a rigged game, but the world was rigged, not the man. They had a loneliness of the survivor, of the man building his own ethics system out of the few things he could trust, independent of polite society.”
This was exactly the sort ethical and independent virtue that turned me on to skateboarding 20 years ago. I felt I could finally be for certain- I was not the only odd man out. The only thing that really was odd: no one outside skateboarding understood what a sub culture was, let alone what the skating subculture could possibly be, or could even become…
But I could parallel quite a few things between Nobyl and the Newman hero: the resurrection of Nobyl to the time of Luke’s release from the box, which in turn lead to the escape that gave life to the prison camp; the endless slogan, “skateboarding is not a crime” to the Newman hero’s constant struggle with authority; Nobyl’s existence solely relying on the purpose of exposing the talents of the SouthEast in skateboarding, art and film to Newman’s role as an organic food icon, that has provided numerous charities with over 220 million dollars, simultaneously inspiring the organic movement to new forefronts….the comparisons are endless, but the bottom line, officially, is this: the goal of Nobyl Skateboards, like the idea of Newman’s hero, is to provide a view beyond the laws of the status quo, the laws built for spending time on losing time, in a life that, according to this law, ends in only one way- 6feet down, into the box.
