The T.F’s Final Beacon of Hope

January 12th, 2012 | 1:20 pm | Spot Updates | 12 Comments

The dust has finally began to settle on the T.F. after the last two months’ worth of socio-political crises. Nearly all prominent East Village skateboard institutions were toppled, and much like Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a gigantic landmass has been left without a stable government. The only morsel of civilization is perhaps the most archaic symbol of civilized society there is — a wooden box with angle iron.

This post is an open call to all those who have not turned their back on Tompkins at this pivotal point in history. We have documented how it has achieved legacy status, and we will all still skate here even if there is a 50-foot diameter crater in the ground with ten district attorneys’ offices playing softball around it, but let us use this one remaining box as a building block to a greater future. We are already witnessing a miracle as it approaches two weeks of life without proper storage (on track to tie or break the blue flatbar’s record.)

Several ideas have been tossed around in an effort to prolong the box’s life and stability altogether. Most notably, there is an idea of offering a contract to nearby businesses to store the box during T.F. off-hours in exchange for advertising on its exterior (chalk panels would be affixed to the sides to display daily specials.) 9th Street Espresso (skaters love coffee), Mamani’s (skaters love food that only costs $1), San Loco (skaters love diarrhea), and Blind Barber (skaters love alcohol) are several names that have come up for discussion at high-level T.F. personnel meetings. The problem is actually getting people to return the box to the said establishment should an agreement be reached. Another idea has been appealing to the most prominent weed salesmen in the area to get on some Frank Lucas/Nino Brown shit, and give back to the community by furnishing the T.F. with new obstacles, and an adjacent shipping container for their safekeeping, in exchange for a bolstered public opinion of their otherwise frowned-upon industry.

Feel free to share any ideas below (and bring the box behind the tree, next to the hockey nets next time you’re done skating it for the time being.) Astronaut Status just dropped, so maybe the T.F. won’t ever matter again, since we’ll all be living on the moon by the end of the day.

Allergic to Stupid Shit: Special Deluxe Holiday Edition

December 20th, 2011 | 12:29 pm | Spot Updates | 19 Comments

Around every April Fool’s Day, we have an idea to do a fake post about how Tompkins, 12th & A, the Tribeca park, etc. got knobbed. Ultimately, we get too lazy to procure fake photographs for such a post, but the real world may have just provided the closest thing to a knobbed skatepark you’ll ever see.

They have began knobbing the new Seaport ledges. Yes, the perfect concrete boxes with metal lips that are only otherwise seen in skateparks, and…well, nowhere else. The ledges at the northern end are the only ones knobbed as of today, but it would be safe to assume that they’ll make it to the rest of the plaza sooner rather than later. So much for waiting for construction to finish before they allow skateboarding there (not that anyone believed such lies to begin with.) Now would be a good time to do what Gino did, and get any remaining sessions/lines in before the spot is completely gone. And yes, you still get kicked out.

We have filed a handful of things under our “allergic to stupid shit” filter over the years, but this one probably takes the cake.

2011 was sick. New York’s best new ledge spot got knobbed in six months, the best spot in Midtown is unskateable, and the best psuedo-skate-spot-park is a wrap thanks to a bunch of dickheads who can’t walk two blocks to smoke weed somewhere that isn’t school property.

End of an Era: Bodega Across From Tompkins Officially Closed

October 12th, 2011 | 3:25 pm | Spot Updates | 18 Comments

Many know that “Closed For Renovations” is often code for “Closed Because the Landlord Raised the Rent to a Price Only a Multi-Million Dollar Chain Could Afford,” but Tompkins’ wishful thinking lead us to believe otherwise. The bodega across from Tompkins officially has a “Business For Sale” sign on its front window, after a month-and-a-half of leading its devout skateboard-riding consumer base to believe that it was merely undergoing a non-existant renovation.

So, we salute you, Avenue A Mini Mart, for most likely earning more money from skateboarders’ pockets than ABC and Autumn combined over the past ten years.

We salute you for selling quarter snacks when they were still a quarter, and allowing the expired ones with the old price tag to sit on your display late into 2004 when Little Debbie doubled the price.

We salute you for providing the sugar, tobacco, and alcohol that has inevitably heightened Tompkins’ collective risk for diabetes, lung cancer, and liver failure throughout these years.

Occupy Seaport

October 5th, 2011 | 12:19 pm | Spot Updates | 5 Comments

“Skipping occupy Wall St. and looking to start an occupy that new park by Seaport movement.” — Roctakon

By now, the period for high hopes is long gone, and there appears to be no chance of the lies you were told throughout the summer becoming truths. Taji’s mom didn’t design it, Rob Campbell didn’t build it, California Skateparks didn’t pour the concrete, and Mayor Bloomberg isn’t going to let you skate it after he does a 9/11 ceremony there, considering there was no 9/11 ceremony here to begin with. There’s going to be a restaurant on the north side, and a dog park on the south, so the new security guard favorite, “We’ll talk to the park and see if they can open an area designated for skateboarding” isn’t going to come true either. (Evidently, security guards are the ones who dictate the allocation of public space.)

Though Occupy Wall Street’s objective(s) may be all over the place, its “99% against the greedy 1%” mantra aptly falls under the “allergic to stupid shit” umbrella. Whether they aim to combat stupid shit with more stupid shit remains to be seen. This skateboarding site does not care to dwell on the movement’s convoluted political goals, but it does applaud them for sitting in at a skate spot for multiple weeks and trying to make a point, as their headquarters are at Zuccotti Park, or what skateboarders simply call “World Trade Center.”

With Seaport, our goals have more to do with the structure of the spot, and the greed of the dog walkers and lunchtime office workers taking a much larger piece of the pie than they deserve. Preventing skateboarding in a place designed for it falls in line with “allergic to stupid shit” principles, and we will need to adjust our percentages to reflect lunch-hour crowds and dog walkers v.s. skateboarders to qualify the inequities plaguing this spot. A Wall Street Journal columnist described Occupy Wall Street as “a Tea Party with brains.” Occupy Seaport will be an angry-kid-throwing-a-tantrum-cursing-at-security-and-refusing-to-leave with brains.

There are two security guards here, and an entire downtown police force busy with protesters. It’s time we take back the Seaport, and see this movement spread to other spots, and eventually, other cities. Occupation is set to begin after Roctakon’s birthday party on Friday.

See you on Saturday.

P.S. Do you think those fully lit volleyball courts in Tribeca are still PACKED now that the weather in New York is consistently below sixty degrees?

P.P.S. If not the Seaport, this plaza in Cologne, Germany is basically what we need…not parks full of ramps up to ledges and a fifteen-skater capacity. Ledges, banks, flat, that’s it. But then again, the Germans were always ahead of the game with engineering.

Have you heard about this hip, popular new sport called volleyball?

September 8th, 2011 | 10:20 am | Spot Updates | 12 Comments

“This isn’t a skatepark, you need to leave.”
“Well the skatepark is closed and doesn’t have lights on after dark.”
“You still need to go.”
“Why does the volleyball court have lights and stay open after dark, but the skatepark doesn’t?”
“I don’t know, you should ask Hudson River Park Trust that, but now you need to leave.”

Did you know that volleyball is the fastest growing sport in New York? Demand for volleyball continues to rise, and the city responds by building manmade plots of sand on the waterfront, decking them out with gigantic spotlights that stay on until midnight, so volleyball players could enjoy seven hours of playing time after work.

And it also makes perfect sense that the nearby skatepark they built — the one that Hudson River Park Security loves to point in the direction of when kicking you out of here, here, here, here, or here — doesn’t have lights, and its gate is locked as soon as it gets dark. Seriously, how many people skateboard in New York, like thirty-five, MAYBE forty? That’s opposed to at least 2.5 million volleyball players. Why would the city waste precious electricity in the midst of a budget deficit for the thirty-five remaining skateboarders in New York, when there are literally millions of volleyball players that need it so much more? Plus, everyone knows that skateboarders aren’t responsible enough to exist in a place designated for skateboarding after dark, given that they are all drug-dealing rapists.

So next time you’re skating Three Up Three Down or Battery Park after 7 P.M. and a Parks employee reminds you that your spot of choice “isn’t a skatepark” (the skatepark being the sole athletic facility besides the children’s playground without lights on after dark on the entire downtown waterfront), remember that America is a democracy, and the volleyball players, given their massive numbers, earned those lightbulbs. Focus your board, put on some suntan lotion (for the spotlights), and go for a few pick-up games of volleyball.