‘Free’ Premieres Loophole’s ‘No Borders’ Mexico Trip Video

Loophole Wheels, the urethane brand that sponsors a hefty ratio of Magenta riders, released its latest video this morning at the Free magazine site featuring the team’s trips to some of Mexico’s many hillbombing getaway spots. Glen Fox, Ryan Barlow, Jesse Narvaez, Max Brooker, Benny Santa Cruz, Roger Krebs, Josh Narvaez, Chris Athans, and Jameel Douglas fry and re-fry the already crispy streets of Tijuana and Mexico City with a bean-there-done-that attitude to reassure you that, hey, these four-wheeled bandidos really know what they’re doing. Watch the edit, by Zach Chamberlin, above!

Skateboarding is a crime, except when it’s not.

We’ve got to give credit where credit is due: Loophole is an excellent name for a skateboard wheel company. (We wish that we’d thought of it.) It ranks right up there with Quattro—a short-lived brand that sponsored Berrics co-founder Eric Koston—which is reportedly the Italian translation for “four,” as in “four wheels” (that’s a spicy meat-a-ball!). The word “loophole” immediately brings to mind gray areas in thinking, or places in society where laws and rules are fuzzy. Like, skateboarding is a crime… except when it’s not.

For decades, municipal government in the U.S. has struggled to classify what skateboarding is. Cities have banished it from their downtown areas; parks departments have tried to satisfy the need by commissioning quickie skateparks that don’t amount to much more than a city dumping ground (but we shouldn’t complain). And after the dust settled from this complex and maddening municipal planning, the sometimes-illegal sport is included in the Olympics… exclusion became exclusive. Now that’s a loophole.