2nd Nature’s “Eclectic” Video: Now Online

March 14th, 2011 | 4:26 pm | Daily News | 3 Comments

2nd Nature uploaded their complete full length video, Eclectic, on Vimeo. The video features several Quartersnacks favorites that have been championed on here since the original Watermelon video (the first and last video to premiere via a projector on a Lower East Side handball court back in 2006) including Watermelon Alex, Jose Pereyra, Lil’ Chris, Brian Brown, and a handful of others. And it’s certainly great to still see Burton Smith ripping on a skateboard. Lil’ Chris is in the early running for being Quartersnacks’ 2011 Skater of the Year. But who knows how this year will turn out? You know, with a new Busenitz part, Ishod Wair’s debut, a *potential* Jake Johnson comeback, and Dylan Rieder’s consistent handsomeness all upon us…

It’s amazing that in such (perhaps the most?) an anti-car city, actually having access to one significantly expands your options in terms of how many skate spots are at your disposal. Much of this video is filmed a few dozen miles outside of the city, yet the 2nd Nature dudes are pretty much the only ones you ever really see with footage at a few key locations. (The same could be said for your token Jersey video, and the respective crew/region it covers.) So many people skateboard in 2011, yet people are able to maintain small niches of crew-oriented spots just a few miles outside of one of the biggest cities for skateboarding in the entire world, and that’s definitely a great thing.

Thanks to Armand, Doug, and everyone else at 2nd Nature for producing this video and uploading it online. Check out 2nd Nature’s site and follow the shop on Twitter.

Monday Links: Chauncey Billups Edition

February 28th, 2011 | 2:30 pm | Daily News | 5 Comments

Last week was a bit slow, as a lot of attention was given to basketball, which has been way more interesting than skateboarding in the past few weeks, especially if this is the sort of thing you have been waiting for since middle school. In further tangential bits, Dylan got robbed for best leading actor, and Chris Bosh was seriously overlooked for best supporting actor. Avatar starring Halle Berry was pretty sick too.

Quantities on tees and cruisers are fairly low at this point, so if you were planning on buying either one, now would be the time to do it. Thanks to everyone who purchased something for their support of the site.

One of the main exceptions to the recent superiority of interesting-ness that eastern basketball has taken against eastern skateboarding, is the increased visibility of Mike Maldonado and Kevin Taylor. Axion has a tour clip up that features both of them with some considerable screentime. Thrasher also has a quick Q&A section up with Maldonado and Phelps, discussing the early history of the Love gap, his ollie over the wall off the bench at the Philadelphia Federal Building in Welcome to Hell, and the key difference between east and west skateboarding: “There’s no, ‘I’m gonna warm up on this six and then go hit the twelve.’ No, you’re going straight to the twelve.” Considering this website abides by a “If you can’t ollie up it, don’t ollie down it” creed, we wouldn’t know anything about that.

Taji put together another post for the Converse blog, this time centering around the world renown Tompkins Square Park, and its rich history. “Q: So what’s the story behind your crew, the Dunions? A: It’s kind of dying out as time passes. They sort of split up between sorta-hood smoker kids and the non-hood skate rats.”

Rob started putting together Diamond Days clips again, and for those fortunate enough to afford exotic girlfriends in tropical climates, the latest installment sheds some light on the conditions everyone in New York has had to endure throughout these past three months. Winter seems like it is on the way out though.

You Will Soon published an open letter to the people of Converse Skateboarding, demanding some answers on a question we have all been asking ourselves…Why the hell is Joey Pepper still on flow for them? Put that guy on the team already, damn. They also touch a nerve with Anthony Pappalardo’s endlessly devout fanbase when they allude to his mode of Marbury-isms that we have discussed in the past as well. *Waiting for half of Long Island / Slap to promise a four-minute tour de force part in the Chocolate video…which will probably be out when Cory Kennedy is in his mid-to-late twenties.*

A quick teaser for the upcoming full-length from Alex Duke’s Wizard Skull skateboards.

Here’s the San Francisco installment from 2nd Nature’s California trip.

Howard Glover posted another installment from his Pre-2k video. This time, it’s a shared part between Rodney Torres, Mike Wright, and Quartersnacks’ favorite, Geo “TOMA!” Moya. Features plenty pairs of Osiris Peter Smolik pro shoes, in addition to footage from what was previously the biggest health hazard to New York City skateboarding, the Chinatown Shit Hubba.

Quote of the Week: “What is anxiety? I think only girls get that.” — Matthew Mooney

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Keep your kids out the kitchen!

February 21st, 2011 | 10:08 am | Daily News | 4 Comments

The much mythologized Burger King at Fulton and Gold Street, of Brooklyn Banks era fame, is officially gone. Even though its relevance dwindled over the past decade (beyond the “free” refills utilized by cost-cutting skateboarders), it is still among the most prominent fast food establishments within skateboarding’s history books. Be sure to check out Quartersnacks’ Brooklyn Banks week from last summer for plenty of stories about this particular Burger King and some background info on its significance.

Kevin has a checkout in the new (April 2011) issue of Transworld. Here’s a picture of the page. It’s not a scan, so it’s not the best quality, but you can still mostly read everything there. That Sunset Park 5050 is pretty wild.

They moved a bunch of planters at the Mars 2112 bank on 50th Street and Seventh Avenue. The runway used to be a tight curve in, and now the thing is approachable from straight on. Makes a difficult spot mildly less difficult to skate.

Danny Falla already shot a photo (with snow in the background, of course) of a backside flip over the ledge to street gap across from the Federal Reserve. You can get time there, but the outdoor guards will kick you out after a while, insisting that you’re going to sue the Federal Reserve when you jump into traffic and get hit by a car. That actually sounds like a brilliant idea.

Probably the funniest video of an ollie up a curb you’ll ever see.

An interview with the man behind The Chrome Ball Incident, which addresses the frequent question of what the name means. (“The Chrome Ball Incident was a comic strip that Neil Blender used to come up with every now and then. It was a three-panel comic strip and the chrome ball would come through and just smash something.”)

Here is part two of 2nd Nature’s California trip, this time in San Jose. Check last week’s post for the Los Angeles edition. San Francisco is slated to be up next.

There’s a new, pretty gnarly-looking, all-brick quarterpipe to a wall at the Below the Bridge skatepark in Bayonne. Given the weather’s turn for the worse, it looks like refuge might continue to be sought there for quite some time.

Ryan Gee with a 1997 Quim Cardona classic at the old Jersey City Hamilton Park pyramid.

Another throwback clip of the week, thanks to the person who linked it up in the last Monday Links post: Keith Hufnagel and friends from Transworld’s fifth video, Interface. The ollie up on the bench, over the planter to lipslide on 37th Street still has to be one of the sickest tricks ever done in New York. You can catch a lot of the photos from this bit of footage in these interview scans we posted a while back.

Quartersnacks tee shirts and cruiser boards will be available for purchase off the website tomorrow morning. Real this time.

Quote of the Week:
“Do you even know what The Onion is? It’s a fake newspaper.” — Tron Jenkins
“Damn, really? I always think it’s mad real.” — E.J.

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“Tote guns to the Grammys, pop bottles on the White House lawn…”

February 14th, 2011 | 10:33 am | Daily News | 9 Comments

Flockavelli got robbed for record of the year at the Grammys. But masterworks like that often take years to marinate before people understand their true brilliance. What the hell is this Cadillac commercial nonsense? At least basketball went in a good direction yesterday.

Ok, wait, this is a skate site, right?

You can find QS affiliate, and 360 flip extraordinaire, Andre Page’s thirty seconds worth of tricks from Thanks Camera 4: Jump the Shark on the QS YouTube page. If you haven’t already seen it, go to Thankscamera.com to check out the whole video.

2nd Nature put together a video clip of their whole squad’s recent trip to Los Angeles. Features all of the remaining classic L.A. spots, and QS favorite, Little Chris, who is bound to become one of the best skaters in New York in the next few years. Four years ago, he was doing gnarly little kid kickflips down five sets in the first Watermelon video, now he’s front blunting ledges like a grown man. Just wait until he actually grows up.

Daniel Lebron is absurdly good at skateboarding, and has some of the most well-formed flatground trick execution out there. Watch his new Stacks welcome part a couple of times. The first line strikes such a harmonious balance between classic simplicity, and modern day trick extravagance. It never hurts to toss in a regular stance backside heelflip in the middle of a line.

Taji has a photography feature / interview over on the Converse website. Includes a shot of the East Village lurking degenerate that could probably be chalked up as having the longest-standing allegiance to the green and black flannel shirt.

Allow this to be a warning for anyone not keeping a solid, attentive look-out when spotting for a friend skating a gap into a street. It would be unfortunate if you’re the asshole responsible for a homie landing in the hospital after getting hit by a car because you were too busy checking Facebook or texting.

The digital version of the Philly-based skateboard ‘zine, Skate Jawn is now online. Physical copies are available at KCDC.

It was a heavy topic of discussion this past week, so you have probably already seen it, but Casey Rigney deserves a plaque of some sort for the feats he accomplished on the streets on New York in his most recent web part. Not really mad at the Cappadonna soundtrack either.

Time capsule clip of the moment: The New York section from Transworld’s Transmission 7 video. Thanks goes to whoever dropped the link in the comments.

If you want a quick shortcut to the straight skateboarding section from yesterday’s post of the Love Park On Video documentary, we threw up an upload of just Stevie and Kalis’ section on YouTube.

Quote of the Week: “I want my party footage to outshine my skate footage.” – Pad Dowd

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YEAH IT WAS A TRAGEDY…Can you repeat the question?

October 11th, 2010 | 3:39 pm | Daily News | 8 Comments

Monday links and other, exciting things.

The latest Habitat video, Origin will be premiering at KCDC Skateshop this Friday (the 15th) at 7 P.M. It says seven to nine on the flyer, so hopefully that means there are two showings, and not that the video is two hours long.

The Derick Z. little kid footage reel. Double angles at the Beer Bar drop to can (which is kind of skatestopped now, by the way… A whole generation of younger kids will never share our experience of the spot’s glory days), lines at the little ledges in Battery Park, and the manual pad in the back of Union Square — skateboarding seemed a lot more fun six or seven years ago.

Whatitbe has a quick Q & A with Jahmal Williams about Hopps, Eastern Exposure, and John Coltrane’s tie-in with street skateboarding. On that note, no excuse needed to link this part.

This is super late, in that it has been in effect since the summer, but we’re only getting to it now: You can’t really skate the manual pad at Penn Plaza for the time being, because the adjacent restaurant to the plaza decided to show off the neighboring crackheads to its patrons by installing an outdoor seating area that takes up the entire landing space of the marble block.

Trailer for the Second Nature video, Eclectic. Features Alex Mosley olling out of a truck over a bunch of watermelons, which is already the highlight of the week.

“Be Pretty” montage. If there’s dirt on the lens, we support it. Spotted via The Skate Rack

And no random links post is complete without something pertaining to the wonderful world of loud rap music, so it seems like a good time to include this list of the fifty greatest Queensbridge rap songs. #4 should technically be #1, seeing as how it is more or less the best rap song altogether, but the actual #1′s positioning is understandable from a historical standpoint. We’re going to go ahead an embed the video for no apparent reason. They walk up Indoor Ten at around 1:40. Probably the best trick ever done there.

If one day, a Flipmode clip gets edited to this song, the internet will explode. Even more than it did when they dropped a clip to “Purple Rain,” or the wide release of Kevin’s “Scatman” video part. The biggest problem with the internet is that there isn’t enough Flipmode on it.

Two hours ago, they found a few blocks of C4 in Marble Cemetery on Second and Second.

Jersey City: America’s Breakdancing in the Middle of Church Capital

Quote of the Week: “We ate at this Thai place with an entree that included unlimited free beer…I don’t think I ate anything.” – Tufty

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