Let’s close this one out • Previously in 2017: 15-6, 25-16
Past Editions: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010
5. The Banks Re-Open
Photo by Mehring
The big banks closed in June of 2010, and re-opened this year via a convenient hole in the fence. Those seven years are a skateboard generation removed from the days when 90% of crews skating downtown would merely pass the Banks because they sucked, never mind the fact we’re two generations past anyone who’d bother to lament the small banks.
In those seven years, people got reeaallyy good at skateboarding, but no less immune the staph infections that the big banks — now more disgusting than ever — handed out to their most unlucky visitors.
4. The 917 Video
In his piece about it, Kyle Beachy wrote that, “the 917 Video’s most spectacular trick is to collapse the distance between New York and Los Angeles.”
The video actually did more than that.
It collapsed the distance between New York and Copenhagen (Hugo), New York and Paris (Vince) — two increasingly interconnected epicenters of the skateboard universe, which people tend to underrate in proximity (both are ~an hour longer of a flight than LAX) simply because you need a passport to get to them. It spoke to the globalization of skate crews, with New York at a midpoint between the most major ones.
More of a friends video than a company one, our former upstairs neighbor’s masterpiece was the most welcome arrival from skate cinema’s endless is-it-ever-gonna-come-out pile.
3. The Rise of Netflix Veganism
Skateboarders are simple people. If you’ve talked to one group of us, you’ve talked to 97% of us. We discuss skateboarding, girls, sometimes music, and that’s basically it.
Until 2017, when a Netflix documentary and a podcast or two turned half of our friends into nutritionists, telling us that the cheese in the pizza slices that have sustained our entire culture is loaded with carcinogens guaranteed to kill us by our 30th birthdays. No wonder all the new vegan restaurants open up within a minute skate from Labor ;)
2. Borough Hall
Going to call a no-jinx before typing this…
The past year was perhaps the most prosperous year for new and reborn skate spots in the twelve years that QS has had correspondents out in the field: the new ledges in Bed-Stuy and Bushwick, the aforementioned Brooklyn Banks, skateable hours at Big Screen, and most fun of all, Brooklyn Borough Hall ever since it had its ground re-done earlier this year.
Even though it is merely a couple curbs, nice flat, and a grate gap, it still stands as New York’s most European spot — completely integrated in a city center, and a place where we are left alone (at least most of the time.)
1. The City Finally Fucking Repaves Avenue A
2017 was about small victories. In yet another divisive year where anger, lies, and dark secrets that everyone seemed to know but didn’t speak up on ran amuck, skateboarders found a silver lining.
Most people never knew the living hell of pushing up a pre-rejuvenated Avenue A, on a borderline bearable January morning to force a skate day — wind blowing in your face, feeling like every person who sees you is thinking “look at this fucking idiot.”
We did, and it felt like skating on a gravel treadmill.
Big thanks to the city of New York. You may have ruined all the bike paths (except this one! …for now), but at least you smoothed over our most frequently traversed 14-block route. Even with the cost of living here seeming like more of a joke each passing year, you’re ok for this one ♥
Bonus Mini 5 — 2018 Predictions
5. The vintage skate garms market becomes oversaturated, which leads to a collective identity crisis in how to best represent ourselves as individuals via legwear decisions
4. We give up on hoping for Johnny video blogs, but at least Gang Corp has been uploading like one vid a month
3. We get O.G. Respect™ at least once, but only if there’s a 2018 Christmas clip ;)
2. Three staph infections and a case of leprosy from the big banks
1. A rail kid doesn’t get S.O.T.Y. Hopefully Jason Byoun does.
See everyone in 2018. Thanks for the love and support this year ♥♥♥
“the city finally repaving ave a” is a very appropriate but unexpected plot twist. i was sure it’d be the banks opening or some shit
I back Ave A taking number one spot. I left my phone at TF and noticed it was gone halfway into my jerk chicken at miss lilys…..coulda taken me 20 minutes had it been last year
A has always been good north of 10th Street, no?
Avenue B was always a mellower skate anyway
Muska hugging his tree was not #impactful?
It was, but it happened in San Diego