It is interesting to have a blog for many, many years.
I looked up to see where I had mentioned him in the past. Of course it’s tied to The Promise Ring and Q Lazzarus.
After not being able to skate for 15+ years, I’ve been cruising daily and going to the park religiously every weekend. Learning new tricks. That feeling landing one first try at the next session. Iykyk.
There are not many skaters I was interested in to see how they were doing in the 2000s and 2010s. I remember watching a video of Marc who was living in a house in the LA county woods, skating outside and chilling in nature. Like dude, you made it and I like it. You’re a skateboard living legend, still ripping and laying low, enjoying life. That’s goals.
Then in the mid 2010s I was so confused with his professional life and sponsors rumors. I started to dig a bit through the internet and understood that alcohol had been fucking him up. Then I watched his 9 Club interview and realized that alcohol had been fucking him up for a very, very long time. Eating shit on loading dock concrete for hours and 25 years probably didn’t help either.
I can’t believe that he is gone because I was, like many, secretly hoping to see him give us a beautiful video of him killing it with style and tech, as usual, on a skateboard. Yet I am not surprised at all.
There’s this interview with Anthony Pappalardo where Marc says this about technology:
It’s given us a lot of these tangible things. It’s removed a lot of work, it’s taken away a lot of work and a lot of self-reliance. It’s given us a lot of tangible things and it’s robbed us of these really really important intangible things. Totally stolen these things that you can’t see them or touch them but they are important.
It is 2026 and as I keep whining about it on here, technology has become mostly a disease. I am on a sidewalk, cruising, avoiding a crowd 100% made out of zombies head down their shiny rectangles. They can’t hear, headphones on, and if they look around, their minds is still in that fucking comment/photo/video they just consumed. Human energy around is gone. It’s redirected inside private companies silos and gamed and abused. Those intangible things that used to make a place full of people feel alive, are gone gone.
I mourn this shit like crazy. It is invisible shit. It exists and it is important.
Rest in Power, sir. And thank you so much for making us realize/dream that it is possible. And can look so damn good too.