“Yo, I’m 36-years-old, give me a break”

March 22nd, 2010 | 5:20 pm | Daily News | 24 Comments

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The Get By (HBO Skateboard Documentary)

Continuing with the previous How to Make It in America off-shoot spot, this one is a bit more on-the-surface, targeted to people who don’t know who Sean Sheffey is, with a bit less insider skate-related anecdotes. The cast of interviewees is amazing. It contains Freddy, Gino, Quim, Luis Tolentino, Jake Johnson and Rob Campbell, which are about a solid 40% of the only people who matter in skateboarding altogether. Seeing Gino skate through Wall Street and do backside 5050s on the Helmsley building black benches is enough to make anyone wish it wasn’t raining outside right now. Jake’s section is also pretty great, even though the wider-in-scope nature of the doc doesn’t really allow it to dwell in specifics of his situation. Seeing him skate over a sewer cap and do wallrides over a cone is great though. Oh, and Brengar is labeled as an “iconoclast,” which is a debate in and of itself. Pappalardo uses his screentime as a means through which to justify his avant-garde approach to professional skateboarding over the past half-decade. Knowing that he was Danny Weiss’ favorite skater was probably a bit too much to handle back in 2005 and the pressure finally won the battle.

Overall greatest quote: “Don’t do drugs.” – Fred Gall.

Solid viewing for a rainy Monday. (I don’t think you need an account to watch it.)

Post-First-Weekend-of-Spring Literary Discourse

March 22nd, 2010 | 1:00 am | Features & Interviews | 14 Comments

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I Usually Got Those: A Manifesto For Sucking After a Long Winter
By Theodore Barrow

Aaah, winters in New York. As the seasons change, the auburn leaves of summer turn into a golden brown and ultimately fall off, heads be makin’ crazy jacket moves. Lo (as in PoLo) cats dust off the old oilskin jackets for a wicked noreaster, and as the leaves of autumn litter the ground, the ironic and downright offensive (PLO) scarves of hipsters and highschool girls alike come out in full blossom like it ain’t even funny.

So what do you do if you skate? Nothing. Sit at the shop. Make claims. Talk shit. You know, nothing much changes. Oh, except you don’t skate, because if you do leave the safe haven of the skate shop, you are assaulted with bone-chillingly awful winds that cut like a knife and sting like a shotgun blast, and if you think it’s fun trying nollie flips with your private parts shriveled up like a raisin, then just remind yourself that this is only November and you have four more months of this shit! It hasn’t even started snowing yet.

First snow. The whole city is covered in a quiet white blanket of beautiful powder. It’s heaven. For about half a day. Then it turns into gray sludge and petrified piss. As winter progresses, the gray sludge turns into black ice, deadly black ice. Thinking about skating is a wrap. The last contact you had with your skateboard was a month ago when you tripped over it in your room, which is dark because you sit in it all day and cry while staring at candles.

“But,” you think, “there are warehouses in Brooklyn and it’s only a subway ride away…” and then you think “but then there is Lit, and that’s only a subway ride away, and there are girls there with moist and ready private parts under layers of stylish accouterments, and all the warehouse offers is territorial mid-life crisis-having skaters and young and hungry ams playing skate. Fuck that,” you think, “I’m going to LIT!” Repeat this pattern for three months at least.

Everyone loves the nineties

March 22nd, 2010 | 12:37 am | Daily News | 3 Comments

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I received an exciting e-mail in my inbox yesterday from Howard Glover, the man responsible for the Banks and Manhattan clips linked in the previous post:

I’m working hard on a new OG video called “PRE 2K” its all footage from 97′-99′ in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Cali. Heres a trailer I put together. Looking to finish around the middle of May.Footage includes the likes of Rodney Torres, Joey Alvarez, Matt Bell, NA, Brain Wenning, Ian Reid, Ryan Kenreich, Mike Wright, Geo Moya, Maurice Key, Fred Gall, Lennie Kirk, Gary Smith, Charles Lamb, Ronnie Creager, Chad Muska, Ryan Hickey.

The past two clips already had an ensemble of tricks a lot of people had heard of or only seen photographs of, so the promise of a full-length seems promising, especially since the two clips barely had anything from already released videos.

Also, vaguely on the topic of the nineties in that it is an overt homage to one of the most iconic lines in New York City skateboard history, this is absolutely insane. You can’t knock Mars Attacks after that.

Trailer after the jump.

Quartersnacks: Still a Frugal Enterprise

March 11th, 2010 | 12:05 am | Daily News | 35 Comments

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Much in the vein of how rappers release songs condemning “snitching” when they are caught up in massive controversies of potentially being snitches, or members of their crew get rooted out as federal agents, just so their audiences know how they stand on the issue, I felt it should be necessary to draw a line in the sand to let the world know the Quarter Snacks stance in light of recent controversies. Clearly aligned with the now nearly-extinct twenty-five cent snack cakes that the site is named after, this website is down for the meager corners of a metropolitan existence, and not a trust fund enterprise by any means. The issue of “trust fund-ed” skate / internet institutions is clearly a very prominent topic in the changing landscape of this wonderful city, and it has caused the greatest uproar in the Quarter Snacks comments section since its previous summer 2007 high point of hate when Thando and Mooney were on the most-hated list and the Green Diamond first announced their impending endeavor of releasing a full-length video. At least I figured out that if I don’t update the site for two weeks, the invisible hand intervenes and updates it for me. I have no insight to offer on this controversy and hope that you guys have all settled your quarrels so we can continue to go about discussing Proust, Tarkovsky and Gucci Mane like we typically do here.

Now, here’s the bad news — this isn’t a real update. Sorry. I have a block of free days in the coming week, in which I am hoping to get done the bulk of the re-formating work I have been talking about since maybe ten months ago, but you know, that’s if I’m lucky. Updates should hopefully coincide with that. If not, it’s getting warm, clips soon. You know.

Here’s some shit to watch that I’m super late on.

Howard Glover — Manhattan Montage from 1998
Howard Glover — Brooklyn Banks Montage from 1998
I don’t know who this dude is, but he just dropped these two clips (which you have probably already seen), that I simply hoped would never end. Late-90s, raw New York stuff. Kind of like Revisited, but almost better in that I don’t think ANY of it has ever been in any other videos. What’s really striking about them, especially with the non-Banks one, is that people really haven’t gotten that much better in the past ten years. Take out some of the tricks, switch up the gear, and a lot of the tricks would look perfectly up to par with a lot of videos these days. Especially Rodney’s footage at Newport. If this guy has any more footage, he needs to make a Revisted-esque DVD with it, because who the hell knows if the mythical “in-the-works” Strobeck video of unreleased late-90s/early-2000s footage will ever come to fruition before all the DV tapes on this planet disintegrate. This might be the next best thing.

Jame’s Frankhouse’s S.O.N.2 is worth a watch if you haven’t caught it yet. Like the first installment from last winter, its a homie-cam formatted type deal, which is pretty much the only format that I’m backing these days, seeing as how VX1s are obsolete and HD is too expensive for an institution like this one where good (or even borderline competent) filming has never been a priority. It has the added bonus of a soundtrack select by DJ Dirrty from East Village Radio’s wonderful Baller’s Eve program, which has become a part of my Wednesday night routine for the past few months now. Pretty much the only place you can hear new Pastor Troy songs or Alabama rap these days. They don’t play enough Boosie, Z-Ro or All Star, but you can’t have it all. Oh well.

5050 Skate boarding Forums “Where are they now?” Series: Volume 1 — “Neuman”

Quote of the Week: Fourteen-year-old Asian kid at Sayreville skatepark: “Hey dude, has anyone ever told you that you look like Dill?
Watermelon Alex: “Fuck you, you look like Pat Chanita.
Fourteen-year-old Asian kid at Sayreville skatepark: “Who’s Pat Chanita?

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