Seventeen-year-old Corey Duffel of Walnut Creek, California is the closest thing the skateboarding world has to baseball's John Rocker: a young punk on the verge of stardom whose mouth gets him into trouble. But there's no such thing as bad publicity in skating. Even if you drop out of school, use the "N" word in a magazine article, and lose all your sponsors, you still can get back in the game if you (and your mom) deliver the appropriate mea culpas. And even if you do a spectacular face-plant during a photo shoot that leaves you with broken bones and causes your scrotum to swell up to the size of a coconut, the kids will forgive you if you come back in style. East Bay Express staff writer Justin Berton looks at the peculiar marketing mechanics of a sport that's now bigger than baseball among American teens.
Bowing to reader pressure, Cincinnati CityBeat has resumed printing movie times for two art movie houses after a nearly yearlong standoff with the owner. City Beat's film critic, Steve Ramos, is still banned at the theaters, and the owner, Gary Goldman, still won't allow CityBeat racks in the lobby. Ramos made Goldman mad last June by revealing that Goldman had ordered three XXX seconds of film snipped out of the movie, The Center of the World. "We will not, however, apologize for br eaking the unauthorized editing story last year, nor will we apologize for criticizing Goldman's handling of the situation," Co-Publisher and Editor John Fox writes.
Syndicated columnist Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess, has some advice for SUV owners: ditch that roadhog and get a life. From her home base in Venice, Calif., she began placing small printed cards on the windsheids of SUVs that read: "Road-hogging, gas-guzzling, air-fouling vulgarian! Clearly you have an extremely small penis or you wouldn't drive such a monstrosity. " Since she wrote up the campaign in New Times Los Angeles, along with the responses she's been getting to a telephone number printed on the card, the movement has spread. She's been written up as far away as Britain.
For one year, Qwest has refused to pay the city of Portland, and other Oregon cities a "franchise fee' in return for the right to string its telephone poles across city streets. Yet Qwest sees nothing wrong with collecting this franchise fee from consumers, a fee that amounts to $6 million a year in Portland. Last month a U.S. magistrate ruled that Qwest owes the city the money, but the phone company still won't pay. As a result, this week Willamette Week is encouraging Oregonians to engage in civil disobedience and deduct the portion of their Qwest bill that represents the franchise fee. The paper even includes a handy form letter that readers can cut out.N
