If you’re pessimistic, you could make the claim that in our wholly rationalized, mass-industrialized, and big data-analyzed world we’re nothing but numbers. Like, we’re categorized into risk groups for heart disease, strokes, and our likelihood to die in a car crash. Our smartphone usage is tracked and the resulting metrics are sold to big companies who sell the numbers to advertisers, enabling them to further specify their target audiences. How long are we hovering above an Instagram post? What is the average amount of time we can be bothered to look a YouTube-Video before we lose interest? How many cum shot compilation videos are necessary for you to jizz on your keyboard and which keys do you mostly hit? In the right hands, numbers can be used to quantify, express and predict human behavior. If you’re optimistic, you can make the claim that numbers are awesome: they reduce the world to its bare essentials.
That’s probably what Eric Koston and Guy Mariano thought when they started Numbers Edition end of last year – to everyone’s surprise. Among the retro-obsessed VHS fetishists that dominate much of skateboarding’s aesthetics at the moment, Numbers sticks out like a sore thumb with relaxingly unagitated videos and clothing. In their new video, aptly dubbed Edition 2, the Numbers gang welcomes two newbies from Europe, Kyron Davis and Magnus Bordewick, both exceptionally good skateboarders. Sticking to their nonchalant attitude towards skateboard cinematography, the video showcases the Numbers crew hanging and skating around various US spots, including bails and chatter with security guards. There’s something about Numbers that’s just so damn appealing: maybe it’s the likeable video aesthetic, maybe it’s the clean, effortless design of Numbers apparel. But we think it’s because Numbers succeeds in showcasing skateboarding in a manner that we all can relate to. Hanging around with the homies, filming some tricks, talking to interested pedestrians. Numbers doesn’t have to pretend it’s rebellious and edgy. It’s just boiling down skateboarding to its bare essentials. In times when everyone and their mother wants to one-up another in terms of coreness (there should be a capital punishment for using the word “core” in all seriousness: clubbing to death with Supreme x LV hip bags), it’s refreshing to see an emerging brand going in a different direction. Their clothes and decks are minimalistic and functional, perfectly suitable for every day, yet never boring. Form follows function and all that jazz. You can buy the Numbers Edition 2 collection, including a couple of shirts, sweaters and caps, as well as decks, both online and at our store in Frankfurt from now on.
