New York City Skateboarding & Degeneracy
August 31st, 2010 | 2:03 pm

Classics From the Distant Mid-2000s

Given that the environment surrounding skateboard videos in 2010 typically shoots through a one-month cycle, in which the routine of them being premiered at some bar, uploaded to YouTube, released on DVD, deleted off YouTube, re-uploaded onto some sketchy eastern European video sharing site predominantly used for personality gauges of mailorder brides, and finishing their lifespan with a three page topic on Slap that usually dies out around the time some token asshole says “It’s kind of boring, I don’t get why everyone likes it so much,” it’s hard to maintain a longstanding presence, or even find something you may have missed from years before. The phenomenon is particularly pertinent to local videos, which went from their nineties/early-2000s existence of being passed around their respective regions on VHS dubs, to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, where every single twelve-year-old has a HD camera and desperately tries to make the defining document of their generation, right before the majority of their friends find out about cocaine and start filling out their art school applications.

Everyone knows that Mixtape is the best New York video (of the nineties, because “New York” videos don’t really exist anymore in the same way, unless you’re Flipmode.) Maybe if you’re more concerned with dat real hip-hop than with skateboarding, or are a Japanese person who doesn’t know who Eric Koston is, it’s your favorite video of all time. Choosing such a distinction as a clear-cut statement is more difficult for the 2000s, given that there are probably, like, a hundred New York skate videos that have been forgotten by this point. But unless you have personal allegiances, a safe top three would be Vicious Cycle, Flipmode 4, and Lurkers 2, probably the best time-capsule of what it was like to actually skate in New York during 2004, with the drives to Staten Island to pretend like you’re in California for a few hours, and the shift away from skating the Financial District with the recent loss of the little Banks.

Lurkers 2 has been uploaded to Vimeo for about two months now, and is teetering around one hundred views, which is only fuel to the suspicion that it is criminally under seen outside the immediate circle of Manhattan and North Brooklyn inhabiting skateboarders. Plus, it’s a good way to cap off August. The quality looks decent, not what you’d expect from the age of faux-HD Vimeo uploads, but you’ll live. Features full parts from Dharam Khalsa, Ted Barrow, Jason Dill, Ian Reid, Lurker Lou, and Charles Lamb. Has a riveting opener by Aaron Szott, and cameos from Quartersnacks team members, Matthew Mooney, Ty Lyons, and Pryce Holmes.

A few relevant links: Quartersnacks’ 2006 review of the video, and links to some alternate edits from the video.

July 16th, 2010 | 6:11 pm

Brooklyn Banks Week: The Chrome Ball Gallery

Unlike the other three major street spots cemented in the history of skateboarding, the Banks were the sort of place that literally served no purpose to the public whatsoever, unless you were homeless or rode a skateboard. It had steps that went nowhere, bubbles coming out of the floor that made no sense, and probably the most unaccommodating benches in all of Lower Manhattan. Due to that, it is probably the most interesting spot to ever be canonized in skateboarding’s shortlist of classic spots. It was just an all around, unintentional skatepark. Unintentional skateparks > Simulations. If the ground happened to suck at Love or Pulaski, they would have never made an impact, and yet, still served their intended public function as a place to have lunch, gaze at landmarks, and accidentally run into people having sex or shooting up in the middle of the night. The Banks’ public function? Well, that’s just one big question mark.

That very same reason is crucial as to just why the 2004 renovation was so infuriating. It was the most futile, wasteful, and to put it bluntly, stupid, renovation I have ever seen the city take on (I know I’m repeating myself.) With the basketball courts being the sole exception (they take up a whopping five percent of the spot), the spot is just so unfit to be of legitimate public function that renovating it with chessboards and new benches was like trying to prove a car with a blown-out engine still works by pushing it down a hill.

Take any bridge in New York City: Queensboro, Triboro, Williamsburg, Manhattan, etc. What’s under them? Highways, major streets, and parking lots (sure, there are parks underneath on promenades, but that’s when any respective bridge is damn near 100 feet above it.) What other park is exactly parallel to a bridge off-ramp besides this one? And this place was a parking lot. It just happened to be great for skateboarding.

Perhaps that’s why it is one of the best looking spots to have ever existed — because it didn’t make sense. Looking at it in magazines, videos, and in video games as a kid, before having went there, you just can’t figure out why the hell it’s there if it’s not an intended skatepark.

Hell, how many other spots have gotten away with decades of repeated backside ollie and wallride photos?

Anyways, the gallery is courtesy of The Chrome Ball Incident, which is more or less one of the few skate websites you should be checking on a daily basis.

Thumbnails after the jump.

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September 20th, 2008 | 4:03 pm

Another Article & Photo Bag

These are a handful of scans from the east coast issue of Big Brother from 1998. The others are from the east coast based, short-lived, Strength magazine, from 1996, which was essentially a culmination of a bunch of people’s interests compiled into a publication. Seriously. There are sections in it where the writers unembarrassingly describe how they underwent freestyle and beatboxing sessions in their hotel rooms on tour. Thankfully, being born in the late-80s and coming of age during an era of Cash Money/No Limit and Jay-Z dominance allowed me to surpass an entire time that may have lead me to think beatboxing was actually cool.

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June 24th, 2008 | 12:13 am

A New York Minute

Another one of those retro things that makes us remember the good old days when things were much simpler. Scans by Jimmy Marketti.

words-nyminute1-small.jpg

A two-page spread that Ted Newsome did about New York City back in 1998, featuring a pretty sick photo from the other Globe spot, that significantly less people tend to skate. [Click to enlarge].

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April 30th, 2008 | 3:21 am

“Huf? Isn’t That a Sneaker Store?”

Since things like Police Informer continue to grow in popularity for those of us accustomed to a time when skateboarding was much simpler, devoid of sixteen year olds doing fakie front crook 360 flip outs, I figured I would join in on the party. So here is Huf’s Pro Spotlight from Transworld back in 1998, when east coast skateboarding still kind of mattered to people.

You can find kickflips, 180s, and ollies in..

Real’s Non-Fiction (1995)

Real’s Real to Reel (2002)

FTC’s Penal Code 100A (1996)

P.S. If you had not already noticed.. I added this “Recent Comments” thing underneath Iron Mike’s head to the right of the posts, where you can stay up to date with all the very intelligent discussions that go on here at Quarter Snacks regarding french literature, foreign films, classical music, politics, existentialism, and Black Dave.

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