Welcome back to Vent City. Our tagline is something like “a place to talk about skateboarding and all its bullshit,” which pretty much covers what goes on in this episode.

First up, we are excited to announce that we have launched a Patreon for fans of the show to support the show and access some exclusive content (www.patreon.com/ventcity). This will help us work on the show more and take a few shifts off a month to focus on the production and editing. We’ll make some stickers too and get those to you if you sign up. We have two tiers: Rep Flow ($5/month) will get you extra Patreon-only content and some bragging rights; Pro Flow ($20/month) for the die-hards out there who are maybe too down for the show. Pro flow will get you a shoutout on every episode as well as access to the sweet extra content and hell, if we see you out in the real world, we’ll buy you a drink (coffee, beer, tea, soda, water or even a Red Bull)

As for the discussion in this episode: Kristin Ebeling, Ted Barrow, Kyle Beachy, Ted Schmitz and Ryan Lay talk Nike’s Gizmo and a bunch of other cool stuff. Kristin conducted and wrote the Gizmo interviews is this month’s Thrasher, so do yourself a favor and pick that up.

The feature of this episode is an interview Ryan Lay with some of the key players at Skate Pal (Charlie Davis, Aram Sabbah and Theo Krish), an NGO doing incredible work in the West Bank in Palestine. They talk their mission to support young people in Palestine through skateboarding by building skateparks and growing the skate scene in the region.

To learn more about or to support Skate Pal with their amazing work go to http://www.skatepal.co.uk Volunteer, donate, spread the word.

Following the interview, the panel discusses Ryan’s conversation and then casts a few things out of skateboarding in the Funeral Pyre segment. Kyle thinks we could do with less of the travel-based skateboarding that feels disconnected from the skaters’ deep relationship with the place or its history—Shanghai’s marble landscape comes to mind. Ryan is over long back smiths that are just like funky 5050s. Kristin invites people to find some more inclusive vocabulary to address non-male skaters by casting off the term “female skateboarding.” Ted Barrow thinks we could do better by not confusing the world of skateboarding with the act of skateboarding—hear him out! Ted Schmitz’s insecurities about his own output in skating make him throw Jacob Elliott Harris of Atlantic Drift onto the pyre—Harris is just too good at everything and is making people look bad.

This one is a doozie, coming in around three hours. Enjoy the discussion and let us know what you think of the show or if we fucked up in some way by sending us an email at [email protected]

Music in this episode was provided by the amazing Ilana Bryne (naivetrax.bandcamp.com & @ilana.bryne on Instragram)

Logo Design by Michael Worful (@worful)