Umusu Curtain Call

Since New Year 2009 is just around the corner, we, umusu crew would like to wish a happy new year to our readers!

A lot of things had happened and a lot of plans have been made for this new year (assignments, work, side-projects etc). These sadly, forced us to stop blogging about the street culture. We just don't have the time anymore to continue to bring you the latest hype.

Umusu won't be around with you guys starting next year but anyway, Umusu crew hope that we all will continue to live up the street culture spirit.

Cheers!

Nike Quickstrikes, Laser Engraved Skateboards, 1546 Kickflips, Adidas Shoes With Real 0.2 Carat Diamonds.

New exclusive Nike Quickstrikes are available at Sole What.


Refill magazine, an Australian skateboard magazine organized a laser engraved skateboards exhibition titled as Refill Seven.


Checkout Electronic Arts' Skate 2 introduction movie here : http://www.tackyworld.com/skateboard/video/?id=110981

Fourteen year old Zach Krai made a new world record by becoming the first person to do 1546 consecutive kickflips. This will be embedded into the Guiness World Book of Records.


fragment design and INCASE collaborated to make slider case for iPhone 3G.


Update. The Adidas Diamond mentioned on the previous post will be embedded with real six 0.2 carat diamonds inserted in-between the medial-side of the stripes. Wonder how the owner feels if the diamonds come out.


Sources:
http://www.solewhat.blogspot.com/
http://www.skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/
http://www.skatedaily.net/
http://hypebeast.com

Mike Shinoda’s favorite shoe, Casio Data Bank, Lomography Diana F+ Chrome camera, DVS Bailout Stimulus Plan

Sneaker Freaker finally released their annual Best of the Best list for this year, which highlights 30 favorite sneakers favored by 30 famous people or key players in the street lifestyle. Check out http://www.sneakerfreaker.com/feature/2008-best-sneakers/1/ . Yes, Mike Shinoda is in the list.

2009 will be Adidas 60th birthday and here is a glimpse for the upcoming Diamond Pack.


The Hundreds made an interesting collaboration with Disney.


Casio resurrected Casio Data Bank watch series. Get yours at the nearby Casio outlets.


Lomography Diana F+ Chrome camera, a tribute camera to Diana, one of the great lomography photographers, is available now for lomography enthusiasts. The special limited edition will include Diana’s artwork and stories.


DVS released a stimulus plan (a bailout plan) to keep skateboarders spirit high during the economic crisis. No money involved but skate footage from DVS’ recent summer skate trips. Go to http://www.dvsskate.com/ to get bailed out.

There is Converse Warehouse sale going on now at 5th floor, Bangunan Panglobal, Jalan Tandang, Petaling Jaya. Expect pride drops up to 70% and this will go on until this Sunday.


Resources:
http://www.streething.com/
http://hypebeast.com

Converse Skull, Black Crazy Michael, Nixon headphones and earphones, Adidas warehouse sale

Do you want Converse shoes with skull on it? Mastermind Japan collaborated with Converse for Converse 100th anniversary to produce these Converse kicks which have the skull design. Priced at around USD362 or RM1300! Grab at bobosshop.com


Supreme and Vans join force together to produce these good looking kicks. They will be launched this month.


Michael Lau is going to release the black edition of “Crazy Michael” vinyl.


Nixon has entered the audio market by releasing their own line ups of earphones and headphones. Check out at www.nixonnow.com


Zippo, Neighborhood and honeyee released “Like a Canvas,” volume 2 limited custom Zippo lighters.


Skate Malaysia has posted the event itinerary for Vans King of Gap event tomorrow as well as the shirt design that will be worn by the participants. Go to skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com


Adidas is having warehouse sale at Jalan Tun Dr Ismail now until 7th December 2008. Grab this opportunity to buy Adidas stuff at killing prices.


Sources :
streething.com
skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com
hypebeast.com

Michael Lau Nike Air "Crazy" Force 1, TKS and Customize Your Oakley Here.

Sneaker Subang will be having Christmas and New Year sale. Expect price to drop up to 20%! See the flier below.


Michael Lau will be releasing his new Nike invention, Nike Air "Crazy" Force 1 on this 3rd December 2008. Each purchase will come together with Crazy Michael vinyl figure and both tag at skyrocketing HK$2,599 which equals to USD335 equals to RM1215!


Malaysia has new local skateboard brand TKS which stands for Thong Kar San we guess. Available products for now are skateboarding decks. Check out below. But we think TKS should concentrate on design variation rather than colour variation.


Last week we featured Bramford and Sons. Now Oakley. Now you can personalized your Oakley sunglasses. Customize your Oakley here : http://oakley.com/custom


Sources:
http://www.streething.com/
http://www.skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/
http://hypebeast.com/

Turn Your Digital Pictures to Polaroid Pictures, Nike Made for Skate Expo, iPhone 3G Power Slider Case

Crazee Causa has updated its skate team line ups, comprising Joe Ipoh, Kecik Senn, Adam Kepong and Ahmad Fauzan.

Nike Made for Skate Expo will be held in Amsterdam, from Nov 30th to Jan 4th.


Bramford & Sons offers customable Rolex Submariner watches.


WeSC and Nokia teamed up to produce fashionable headphones, matching the Nokia 5220 and 5320 Express Music bodies. Available only with a purchase of a hand phone, and not to be sold separately. Why is that?

Incase released the new iPhone 3G Power Slider Case which not only protects your iPhone, but it doubles your iPhone battery life too. For more information, go to apple.com or goincase.com


Umusu Snippets

Do you want to turn your pictures, taken from a digital camera, into a Polaroid-like-pictures? Go to http://poladroid.net/ (its Poladroid, not Polaroid, notice the D)and download the free software which does that. Available for Mac for now. Windows users need to wait.


Sources
http://www.skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/
http://www.nikeskateboarding.org
http://www.hypebeast.com

Vans The Germs shoes, Ryan Sheckler Bearings and movie, Sunburst 2, Tony Hawk Selling Vitamins, Apple Store Malaysia.

Streething people has visited Japan’s Nike Sportswear Store, which is the first Asian stand alone Nike Sportswear store. Visit their review at http://www.streething.com/archives/6068


Streething also put up pictures from No Comply art show which the main theme is using skateboards as a medium of expression. See the pictures at http://www.streething.com/archives/6019


Skateboarding Malaysia reported on their blog that there is a new invasion of local skate shop in the dot com world. The new website is www.grindhouseskateshop.com , obviously the official website for Grind House skate shop. Good luck in getting exposure and by the way, there is new stuff at zone5 website. Check it out.


Clayton Brothers collaborated with Krooked to produce limited edition skateboards decks.


Vans on the other hand collaborated with the Germs (LA Punk group). Get the fusion shoe at Sole What.


Tony Hawk is now a vitamin and minerals seller. The gummy multivitamins will take shape of skateboarding decks, wheels and hawk skulls. That’s what you should expect to get from a skateboarder, not pharmacists.

Move on to next updates is regarding Ryan Sheckler. Ryan Sheckler now has his own signature bearings under FKD bearings. And just for your information, he is part of the casts of Michael Lembeck’s Tooth Fairy.


To music lovers, be it local or international, Pineapple Concerts is asking for your opinion which artists you would like to see to perform on Sunburst2. Voice your opinion democratically at Sunburst2’s Facebook account : http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?drop&ref=mb#/group.php?gid=98144940110

Snippets:

Flip releases mini HD camcorders with ‘fun’ designs.


Apple launched Apple Store Malaysia this week.

Our website is suffering a very serious post-domain-migration-shock. Traffics drop by 99%. Hope that our blog will recover soon and fast.

Sources:
http://www.streething.com/
http://www.skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/
http://www.solewhat.blogspot.com/
http://www.skatedaily.net/
http://etniesskate.com/blog/
http://www.junkonline.net

Glam Wheel Pictures, Adidas Giving Rebates, Paul Smith Cool Camera, BAPE Nasa Engineered Pillow

Streething and Skate Malaysia have released pictures during Glam Wheels opening ceremony and skateboarding competition. See them at
http://www.streething.com/archives/5890
http://skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/2008/11/glam-wheel-gap-best-trick-photos.html

Zone5 has new stock of t-shirts.


Adidas is giving away rebates of RM50 and RM100 for each old original Adidas sneakers as part of their Reborn Campaign

Terms and conditions apply:

• Campaign duration: 1st November – 31st December 2008. Bring in any old sport shoes and receive an immediate RM50 reduction on Adidas shoes worth RM250 & if you buy Adidas shoes worth RM500 and above you are entitled to an immediate RM100 reduction.
• Each discount value is applicable for one item purchase only.
• Any brand at any value of old items in decent condition is accepted.
• Only sport shoes are accepted, high heels, sandals, slippers will not be accepted.
• This promotion cannot be applied with any on-going promotion.
• We reserve the rights to change the terms and conditions without prior notice.
• Offer not applicable to Bounce medal, Adidas Originals, Adidas Gold and Stella McCartney range.
• For every 20 pair of transaction, Adidas will donate 1 pair to Harvest Centre Bhd.

This promotion will be available at the following Adidas sports performance stores:
• KLCC: Lot 310, 3rd Floor Suria KLCC, 50088 Kuala Lumpur
• SACC: Lot GS-03A, Ground Floor, SACC Mall, Jalan Perbadanan 14/9, 40000 Shah Alam
• Pavilion: Lot 5.01.01, Level 5, 168 Jalan Bukit Bintang, 55100 Kuala Lumpur
• The Gardens: Lot T-220, 3rd Floor, Lingkaran Syed Putra, 59200 Kuala Lumpur

Matt and his friends are investigating why old sneakers ended up at power lines and the practice is practiced in the whole world. Read the interview with the man behind this documentary here http://www.sneakerfreaker.com/articles/The-Mystery-Of-Flying-Kicks-Interview/


Paul Smith collaborated with Lomography Cameras to produce a fish eye camera with viewing degree of 180, plus happy looking body. Unique.


Stussy and Futura Laboratories collaborated for Futura Laboratory’s 10th anniversary. These are what they got to offer.


On the other hand, BAPE made a weird (or cool) collaboration with Tempur (Nasa engineered pillow maker) to produce, exclusive BAPE pillows! Expected sales price, USD127.


Sources:
http://www.streething.com/
http://dailywhatnot.com/
http://Paulsmith.co.uk
http://hypebeast.com
http://skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/
http://www.sneakerfreaker.com
http://zone5.com.my/

Reasons for migrating to umusu.blogspot.com

On 17th October 2008, a discussion has been made and Umusu Crews have decided to migrate to umusu.blogspot.com. This is due to:

1. Change in objectives and aims
•The main objective for setting up umusu website is to simply publish a guide on street lifestyle but it has been irrelevant because people have their own style and freedom on what to wear.
•Most of the visitors come for the blog. Thus, we think, it is better to change the objective to inform the audience the updates on street culture by blogging.

2. Maintenance issues
•We got hacked by a couple of times and since we are not good in programming, it is better to migrate to a platform where experts in programming gather around and maintain the system full-time.

3. Space, domain name and bandwidth issues.
•These cost us money and because of that, we need to rely on imageshack to become our third-party photo server (to save space and bandwidth) which results in poor efficiency when publishing blog.
•Separating the hosts does cause a little bit inconvenience since if one host is down, it will render the other host useless, in context of publishing the contents.
•Migrating to blogspot will free umusu from these limits.
•Although dot com looks more professional than dot blogspot, we think that will not be a problem since that is not what people are looking for. They are looking for quality contents.
•However, we will keep the domain name exists as long as possible until we decide when to let it go.

4. Features
•You now can subscribe to our blog using rss feeds which is not supported by our website.
•You can now search for previous post easily, by looking at the titles at the expandable drop down archive menu.
•Blogspot are easy to modify and we do not need to dig deep into the html codes to make minor and major changes in our layouts.

5. We do not want umusu to disappear
•Blogs in Blogspot does not expire but domain and webhosting do. When we think about this, we decided migrate to blogspot and stay in the internet world as long as we can. When we are old and tired for blogging, hey, our posts will be here to be read by the future generations.

6. Rebranding
•New objectives with new directions. When want to resurrect umusu with new attitudes.

From these 6 string points and reasons above, we decided to migrate to umusu.blogspot.com .

We never thought of blogging and we simply blog without any direction in the beginning. That’s why you can find useless (which some has been removed) posts on the early days.

And for your information, we have put optimized google search special for street culture. We don’t know how much it will help you but it is better to try to contribute something than never.

Changing host does cause umusu to suffer since Google Bot do not know we are migrating and takes time to build back the index and ranking but it is good long term planning and just temporary side effects for… 6 months perhaps?

The new direction looks more interesting, promising and relevant and we are heading that way. Last but not least, thanks for your support. Enjoy!

Preduce 08 Sales, Glam Wheel Malaysia, Vans King of Gap updated, Nooka’s half invincible watch, and congratulations to Manuel Uribe!

After Showroom, Preduce Thailand is having sale from 28th October 2008 to 10th November 2008. Check out flier below.



Today marked the birth of Glam Wheel, our local brand for skate wheels, and the person behind it is Sando Riyaz, one of the talented skaters out there. Available in 50mm and 52mm with hardness of 101A, the wheels sure will provide alternatives to local skaters without compromising on quality. If you have time, why not drop by at Stadium Melawati since Glam Wheel is organizing a skate competition and launching. Wishing Glam Wheel all the bests!


Skate Malaysia has posted, re-corrected and updated about Vans King of Gap competition. Check out the new announcement regarding it at http://www.skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/


Sneaker Freaker does not stop from amusing us again. This week, Sneaker Freaker has 4 combo articles regarding the sneaker business. Go to http://www.sneakerfreaker.com/articles/


See the 3 pairs of watch below? If not, you better go to the hospital fast. Real fast. We think this the advertisement and the watch design really ‘dig’. Available for pre-orders at Nooka.com


Umusu Snippets.

Manuel Uribe, once the heaviest man in the world, married recently. Congratulations.

Hey we have moved to umusu.blogspot.com. It feels great but sad at same time. Anyway, we will post the ‘whys’ in a short moment after this.

Sources:
http://news.aol.com/weird-news
http://www.streething.com/
http://www.skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com/
http://hypebeast.com/

Showroom’s 5th Anniversary Sale, Poin8Cam and Bryon Sheng of UndrCrwn

Showroom just had their 5th anniversary sale today and my God, they had a very ‘impressive’ flier.


Nasrillian of KL Minute is the owner of Point8Cam, an online skate video website (local’s first ever?). We wish happy shooting and do keep the website’s bandwidth at a safe level. Check out at www.point8cam.com


Sneaker Freaker Magazine continues publishing cool interview with cool people behind the sneaker industry. This week, they have Bryon Sheng of UndrCrwn. Read the interview here, http://www.sneakerfreaker.com/articles/The-Biz-Bryon-Sheng-Adidas/


Sources:
http://www.streething.com
http://www.skateboarding-malaysia.blogspot.com
http://www.sneakerfreaker.com

All Day I Dream About Sneakers, Sole What and Zone5 new lineups, Converse 1HUND[RED], New Apple Macbook.

Lifelongue team up with Adidas to produce a book, All Day I Dream About Sneakers, which about a fictional character, Fritz Traumer, who is a sneaker designer.


Sole What has updated and announced their new line ups for Nike sneakers in their store at their website last week. One of the sneakers that caught our attention is Nike Terminator Hi Heavy Metal. No, Arnold Schwarzenegger did not wear this in the Terminator Trilogy.


Same thing happen on Zone5 official website. After a long blog update hiatus, Zone5 has updated their blog with new stuff available at their website. Below are some of the Etnies new products in their store.


Converse launched their new product in London, the 1HUND[RED] series. It is said that this series is not for charity purposes, but economic initiative. We don’t get what it means by economic initiative anyway, so don’t ask.


You can now fly with money. Aaron Bondaroff revealed his dollar skate deck, with paper money motive. Sadly, all the papers have been tagged during the production of this deck. Interested? Head on to colette.fr


Umusu Snippets

Apple last week announced their new Apple Macbook at Cupertino. No blue-ray and definitely not going under the USD 1000. But it does have astonishing improved design and jaw dropping of 5 hours battery juice. For more info about this new machine, go to apple.com


Sources:
http://www.streething.com/
http://www.solewhat.blogspot.com/
http://www.sneakerfreaker.com/
http://www.apple.com/
http://www.hypebeast.com/