New York City Skateboarding & Degeneracy
August 24th, 2010 | 6:17 pm

Authentic New York Skateboarding

Every Tuesday and Friday, the Quartersnacks Board of Trustees has a meeting around a fold-out, linoleum-topped table weighed down by New York phonebooks from 1992 on the 18th floor of the Standard Hotel. In between eating ice cream sandwiches, the events of the week are discussed: how our visitor count and site ranking is doing, how we can improve search engine optimization, the latest obscure skate spots, who made out with who at password night, what everyone is wearing to Avenue tonight, Twitter trending topics, how to expand into emerging markets, and the like. In the past week, it has been brought to our attention via word-of-mouth, site comments, and text message communication, that our brand image is becoming less and less oriented with embittered New Yorkers than can do good frontside shove-its. As we seem to be losing our stronghold on the demographic that has been so loyal to us for all these years, an outside consultant suggested that we employ some serious damage control, and come up with “some mad authentic shit, yo.”

As we plowed through the contacts in our phones, discussing potential candidates for this job, we came upon one of our most promising employees in Quartersnacks’ (un)vast network of content generators, Michael Gigliotti. What he came up with after the adjournment of our meeting a mere two hours ago is embedded below.

August 23rd, 2010 | 2:16 pm

Only Built 4 Monday Linx

Do you read the comments? You should. They reveal a lot of pertinent details: “This site has really turned into a west coast site that attempts to take place on the east coast.” A west coast site taking place on the east coast that constantly references southern rap music. Where does the midwest figure in?

Youness Amrani (it’s not ARMANI, for all you dyslexic guidos) deservedly won the AM Manny Mania competition this past Saturday after killing it on the streets for a week-and-a-half. There are some clips of him online, but only from skateparks. He claims there are barely any street spots in Belgium, so maybe that has something to do with it.

The Chrome Ball Incident posted Gino’s Big Brother interview from 1996.

Just felt we should let everyone know that Lenox Ledges has a Facebook page. Now you can stay up to date with all the latest news about skater fights, crackhead ramblings, and misinformed Parks Department employees claiming that you cannot skateboard there.

Remember those Brooklyn Banks interviews we ran back in July? They all had stories about thugged out skaters and brawls at contests throughout the nineties. By the looks of it, the nineties made a resurgence this past weekend at a certain contest sponsored by an energy drink.

Elephant Direct, a Montreal-based video from the crew that brought you the pretty great Lo-Def video, is premiering in New York on Thursday, August 26th, at 9:30 P.M. at (eww) Gallery Bar. Features footage of QS-favorite, Torey Goodall, a title holder for one of this website’s favorite video parts of all time. Flyer here. Stay Gold premieres today in New York. Pre-2k releases this weekend. (I saw a portion of the video that was not on the original, premiere version that screened at Maloof, and it is pretty insane in terms of nineties degeneracy and antics, the premiere sections were straightforward and tame.)

A good, quick read from New York O.G., Rodney Smith.

If you ever skate North Jersey, there’s a sick new spot along the waterfront. The part depicted is alongside a fountain, so it might be a better winter spot, but there are other things over there. It’s super-smooth polished concrete that’s pretty rare for skate spots in this part of the county. Not going to post the location, but the Palisades in the background should be a pretty dead giveaway if you know your Jersey geography. Just watch out that the rich Koreans don’t call the cops on you.

They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad…

Quote of the Week:[I've been] training. Getting ready. For zombie apocalypse. Or the Russians. Whichever comes first.” – Michael Gigliotti

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August 22nd, 2010 | 7:02 pm

Still gorgeous, even without the hair

The Five Best Tricks That Have to Do With Impossibles in the New Dylan Rieder Gravis Video:

5. The impossible to 5050 down the hubba ledge is a maneuver that will solidify the resurgence of impossibles within modern skateboarding to a more absurd height than ever previously imagined, granting it the sort of ubiquity that coincides with the 360 flip or the nollie flip. Only time will tell how long it takes for east coast “trendsetters” to adopt this trick, and grant it permanent residency in the canon of previously neglected tricks (the backside 360, the no comply, etc., thanks Gino.)

4. The impossible to nose manual down the low hubba ledge, that could easily be straight out the nineties if not for the distinctly post-millennial skateboard fashion at hand and fancy HD camera. Give him some baggy chinos, a XL tee, and film it with a Hi-8 and see how well it fits.

3. The impossible tailgrab. I previously would have never thought that such a maneuver could look appealing to the eye, especially since grabs on street are the most unnecessary things known to skateboarding, right up there with doing a no-comply to revert your stance in the middle of a line, but there are exceptions to this rule. (Another major exception is Benjamin Nazario’s kickflip backside grab down the FedEx six-stair in 2002.)

2. Angle two of the impossible over the Seaport Bench.

1. Angle one of the impossible over the Seaport Bench. My policy on the use of slow motion is that it is absolutely useless, unless it makes it easier to see the trick at hand, i.e. if it is difficult to understand what trick is being done without slowing down the movements onscreen. Mouse barely had any slow motion, therefore, its overall usage is unnecessary. Not only is it unnecessary, it’s stupid. It is just that the majority of videomakers (skate-video-makers are not filmmakers, and skate videos are not films, sorry) have the little kids filming their friends convinced otherwise. This particular trick made absolutely no sense when Bill Strobeck dropped it into one of his B&W montages a while back because it went by so fast. The slowing down of things enables us to see the nuances of the trick in question. It is so absurd that it tends to slip everyone’s mind when discussing the best tricks done at Seaport (P-Rod’s switch back tail, Matt Miller’s switch back lip, Pudwill’s flip back smith, and if you’re as stylistically inclined as you should be, Anthony Correa’s most-tweaked-backside-smith-grind-of-all-time from Peep This.) Seeing it in the beloved slow motion shed some light on the otherwise illogical feat at hand.

But then again, maybe that’s because we’ve all been to that spot, and have never seen any of the others ones in person, so those could all be just as crazy.

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August 20th, 2010 | 10:33 pm

Quartersnacks for Nike SB

“Whole clique faded, we geeked up crazy.” – Photo by Zach Malfa-Kowalski

Here’s the final edit of what we managed to get accomplished in a week. Some of the stuff has been included in the dailies, but a handful of it was saved for this final montage. Features Ishod Wair, Theotis Beasley, Daniel Lebron, Paul Rodriguez, Shane O’Neill, and Youness Amrani. Thanks to everyone at Nike SB that made it happen, it was a real fun week, and a welcome change of pace for a website composed of individuals that typically do not skate or film at any time before 9 P.M. throughout the summer. Taking people who have never been to New York around to spots in this city is always a challenge, and a fun experience at the same time, particularly if you’re dealing with the added bonus of them all being extremely talented. Altogether, a lot of ground was covered in a week, especially taking into account the rain and heat. Everyone killed it, even when it seemed like the weather and spot factors added up against us, and hopefully everyone is psyched on what we came up with.

(We’re working on a traditional “End of Summer” clip with all of the usual suspects, featuring camo pants, three up three down footage, and maybe some cameos.)

Thanks to Zach Malfa-Kowalski for the excellent photographs throughout the week. And the biggest thanks of all goes to Radric Davis for shutting down the Bowery last night. Burr!

(Alternate YouTube Link)

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August 19th, 2010 | 3:07 pm

Holiday Season!

QS+SB. Dropping Friday. Tonight.

Day 7: “Lookin’ at My Gucci, it’s about that time.”
Day 6 / Interlude
Day 5: Three Up, Three Down
Day 4: All City
Day 3: Rained Out in Brooklyn
Day 2: Uptown, Baby
Day 1: 25 Cent SBs






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