BLOCK: THE VENICE ORIGINAL
Julian Stranger courtesy of Block aka Cesario Montano the mayor of Venice and OG legend. Block sends his skate pics to his bro’s all the time. There sick,historic and get me juiced whenever I see a new batch of em. Block also owns Venice Originals skate shop in Venice and is one of the shot callers when it comes to the 2nd wave of Venice boys. Block is also the funniest dude ever but also pretty gangster. Block is Venice the way I am New York and that’s a beautiful thing
Hosoi killing it
Joey Tran getting busy
The OG homie Scott Oster…Dude had style for miles
One more from Scott who I still see every time I go to LA..he’s a dope DJ!
Danny Way at Cholos bowl in Hawaii….Danny once rode for Hosoi…..dude has had a long career
OG David Hacket pool riding legend
New comer and ripper Bennet Harata…..
OG Tim Jackson
Hosoi full pipe
Eric Dresson ripping ish…..
Pat Ngoho shredding…dude has nice style…
Young Tuma aka Eric Britton one of the last of the 2nd wave of Venice boys and a master of style
Block is my OG homie for ever and whenever I hit LA I make sure to go out to Venice and check in with the OG. Venice is the best thing about LA if you ask me….It’s there Lower East Side if you will. All NYers dig Venice cause it has that thing….Grime,sun and dysfunction just like us NYers like it!
Peace to Block you rock killer!
Enjoy
D R
CHIEF INSPECTOR: WALLY BADAROU
This was my joint way back in the Donnie Simpson video soul days…..
RANDOM INSPIRATIONS
NEW AQUISITIONS
That is Swoon
That would be Josh Keyes up top and Giovanni Reda photo’s of 2 of my favorite peoples The Late Andy Kessler and Steve Olson
My dear friend and one of the greatest skaters in the history of NYC Jeremy Henderson did this. He gave me it about a year ago so I finally framed it and hung it. People have no idea Jeremy influenced so many people to pursue art including one Marc Gonzales. Jeremy is the dude!
This is Judith Supine and he rocks dead up…..I have a few of his pieces this is a print he gave me also about a year ago….I finally framed it I think it’s going in my studio or some shit.
New art always gets me psyched when it’s all framed and ready to be hung is one of the best feelings in the world! Got a Todd James and a Jesse Hazelip coming soon cant wait to hang those!
Enjoy
Dante Ross
BOOGIE RETURNS
Been meaning to post these for a few. Haven’t been super motivated on the blog tip working too hard of late got a lot going on from a new EVR radio show, to a gang of consulting stuff and a lil TV pilot I’m working on….More to come …..For know enjoy my man Boogie’s work he is the most amazing photographer I know.
We were doing a book for a unnamed Streetwhere company but they dropped the ball the books half done were gonna finish it regardless and see what happens. Should be done in the next 6 months or so and then maybe we’ll share it with the world. Hey publishers whats up?
Enjoy
D Ross
THE STREETS OF NEW YORK WILLIAMSBURG EDITION
Spent a day location scouting for a project in WB the other day….Found some cool ish. Funny my cousins in the Midwest tell me they want to move to Williamsburg not Manhattan. There 15 and 17 and I believe to kids in the Midwest BK has replaced Manhattan and Willyburger has replaced the East Village as the perceived cultural center of youth culture in America.
The changing of the guard has happened while we were sleeping please take note.
Enjoy
Dante Ross
DANTE ROSS X WESC: LOWER EAST SIDE HEADPHONES
These are crack and so is the CD by my boys Bunjii I’m dropping with…More to come on this as it develops nuff said!
THE BERRICS:HIPHOPHISTORY 101
The latest and possibly the greatest episode I have ever done….Amazing Dave on the Hype man tip
Enjoy
VENICE BEACH
Pictures courtesy of Ray Mate/Mighty Healthyhttp://www.mightyhealthynyc.com/
Christian Hosoi in case you dont know is the world greatest skater ever of all time period.He’s also a great dude just had to say it!
The Denial of Organ Transplants to Medical Marijuana Patients
As a supporter of medical marijuana for a multitude of personal reasons I found this story very disturbing on a few levels. Read this if you agree my thoughts on medical Marijuana you will be spooked. Might be time to turn in the medical marijuana card people.
READ THIS:
Medical marijuana activists like to claim that cannabis has never killed anyone. While it is true that cannabis is remarkably non-toxic (”the safest therapeutically-active substance known to man,” according to a DEA judge), medical marijuana use has actually killed many people in the United States.
For in the now fourteen states that allow legal medicinal use of cannabis, a registered patient in need of a life-saving organ transplant will be disqualified for “abuse of illicit substances.” For people like Tim Garon of Seattle, that was a death sentence.
Recently the Los Angeles City Council held hearings on the thorny issue of medical marijuana dispensary regulation. For years city officials have abandoned their duty to create sensible regulations for the dispensaries that have proliferated across the Los Angeles basin. The number of dispensaries has ballooned to over 500 (not the 1,000+ often claimed) following an ineffective moratorium on the retail medical marijuana outlets.
As usual, the hearings were packed, with medical marijuana patients and activists flooding the chambers to add their testimony to the record. One citizen petitioning her government for a redress of grievances was the Executive Director of the new Beverly Hills NORML 90210 (http://www.norml90210.org/become-a-member.php), Cheryl Shuman. In sixty seconds of testimony, Cheryl recounts her own personal medical marijuana tragedy, one that has befallen many desperately ill patients who use cannabis — even legally — and require life-saving organ transplants:
Cheryl’s case is not unique. All across America, hospitals are booting patients off of organ transplant lists because of their use of cannabis. Being a legal user of cannabis for medicinal purposes in the now fourteen states that recognize that right is of no help; even legal medical marijuana patients are essentially given a death sentence by hospital and insurance bureaucracies for their use of a safe, non-toxic herbal remedy.
Timothy Garon was a Seattle musician who had contracted Hepatitis C. Garon was on a waiting list for a life-saving liver transplant. The state of Washington recognizes Hep C as a qualifying condition for the medical use of cannabis. Garon’s physician, Dr. Brad Roter, authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate his nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite while he awaited. Garon had become dangerously thin and malnourished and the cannabis therapy helped bring him back from the brink of death.
But unbeknown to Dr. Roter, hospital transplant programs have strict rules that forbid “substance abusers” from qualifying for organ transplants. Seattle’s University of Washington Medical Center told Garon that if he ceased his marijuana use and tested clean for 60 days, he could have his liver transplant. Another medical center specified six months of marijuana abstinence before they’d save his life with surgery.
Doctors had told Garon he had about two weeks to live and he died on May 1, 2008. The cruelest irony is that cannabis is one of the few therapies Garon could have taken for pain and nausea that is not hepatoxic (liver-killing) and laden with a list of other nasty side effects.
In Hawaii, Kimberley Reyes suffered from cirrhosis and hepatitis and was given thirty days to live. She applied for and received approval for a life-saving liver transplant, only to have the rug pulled out from under her three days later when her insurance company, Hawaii Medical Service Association, discovered cannabis in her system, which she had used to relieve feelings of nausea, disorientation and pain. Ten days later she, too, was dead.
In Washington, Jonathan Simchen suffers from kidney failure. Doctors at Virginia Mason and University of Washington medical centers deny him a life-saving kidney transplant because of his participation in the Washington State medical marijuana program. According to Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason, “any patient who smokes any product — tobacco, cloves, medical marijuana — would be precluded from receiving a transplant here.”
In Georgia, a man named Walter emailed me after reading these transplant stories:
My name is Walter and my kidney transplant was denied by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia due to the fact I smoke marijuana.
In January I went to the University of Minnesota/Fairview Transplant Center for an evaluation. In order to be completely honest with all the doctors I made them aware of the fact that I smoke marijuana and have for quite some time. I also made them aware that the use of marijuana has helped me with the decline of my appetite due to end stage of renal disease. With the exception of the hospital shrink, no one seemed to have a problem with it and even commented that my smoking had nothing to do with my kidney.
Blue Cross Blue Shield approved the evaluation but [after] having received the paperwork from Minnesota has declined my transplant, stating “Kidney transplantation has not been shown to be more beneficial than other alternative treatments for patients with ongoing substance abuse. Thus, I recommended denial of kidney transplantation” (Ronald Hunt MD - Medical Director).
Jim Klahr is a well-known medical marijuana activist here in Oregon who also suffers from cirrhosis and hepatitis C. In an ironic twist, he sits on the state’s advisory committee on medical marijuana, yet hasn’t used his most effective medicine for his pain and nausea since 2004 because he’s terrified of losing his chance for a liver transplant. “I’ve capitulated because basically I don’t have much of a choice,” says Klahr. Paul Stanford of The Hemp & Cannabis Foundation, the state’s largest medical marijuana clinic, estimates at least 30 Oregonians who use medical weed have died in the past 10 years after hospitals denied them new organs.
We understand why hospitals have strict qualifying criteria for transplant candidates. Transplant organs are in high demand and doctors want every recipient to have the best chance at survival possible. Hospitals screen their transplant lists for “substance abusers” because it really doesn’t make much sense to put a new liver into an alcoholic who will just go out and drink that organ into cirrhosis and failure as well. It’s foolhardy to give a new kidney to a heroin addict who would then possibly share needles and come down with another life-threatening disease.
But in the case of cannabis users, the concern for the chance of post-transplant survival is misplaced. According to new research at the University of Michigan, cannabis use has no impact on the long-term survival rates of liver transplant recipients. After studying 1,489 liver transplant patients, 155 of whom were cannabis users, over a span of eight years, researchers concluded, “Patients who did and did not use marijuana had similar survival rates. Current substance abuse policies do not seem to systematically expose marijuana users to additional risk of mortality.”
The cases of Cheryl Shuman and all these victims of a cruel and needless discrimination against desperately ill cannabis consumers illustrate why existing medical marijuana laws, while commendable, do not go far enough. Cheryl Shuman, Tim Garon, Jim Klahr and others are all legal medical marijuana patients in their state, yet powerless under the law to force hospitals to keep them on the transplant lists. This discrimination exists because cannabis is considered an “illicit drug of abuse” in the same category as heroin and LSD. This is why cannabis must be removed from Schedule I, legalized for prescription by any doctor in any state, so that it may truly be treated like other medicines, including the prohibition on discrimination against a transplant patient for the use of his or her doctor’s prescriptions.
Taken from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-belville/the-denial-of-organ-trans_b_435348.html
“Radical” Russ Belville is the Outreach Coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Washington DC. He hosts “NORML SHOW LIVE”, a 60-minute news and interviews program for the cannabis community every weekday at 4pm Eastern at http://live.norml.org, archive and blog available at http://stash.norml.org.