Any Given Monday

You gonna buy the $990 Celine skateboard?

Quit Sinnin” is a 15-minute New York video by Stephan Signh, with a bit of S.F. towards the end. Lots of spot inspo for warmer days :)

“It also is a return to form for Mike Carroll’s voiceovering, the years seeming to have slightly weathered his sound but his noun and verb and adjective selection still in top form.” Boil the Ocean weighs in on the Neils Bennett part. Favorite New York trick in that was the switch 5050 into the long steps on Riverside Drive.

More »

You Know The Situation

Photo by Shari White for Mess Skate Mag

In case you’ve been under a rock since last Monday, Neema Joorabachi’s Til It’s Gone video is online in full.

“Oh, I definitely wasn’t cool enough for Zoo York back then. I was just some weirdo out on Long Island.” Long Islander, Frank Gerwer, is the latest to get Chromeballed. Frank’s Number Nine part from 1995 is a great lil’ time capsule.

Jenn Soto and Mariah Duran share the screen in a Hi-8 trip to New York edit for Mess Skate Mag.

More »

‘A Certain Amount Of Suffering’ — An Interview With Anthony Van Engelen

Interview by Farran Golding
Collages by Requiem For A Screen
Original Photography by Anthony Acosta

The amount of people who have been able to pull off skate careers spanning over two decades is low. And in the skateboard-content-creation biz, we often fall on this assumption that these skaters have answered all the questions already, e.g. what can you truly unpack that Chromeball hasn’t?

But that’s false. Because the reason this group has been able to endure through the years is their prolific adaptability. The perspective of someone at the start of their third decade of a skate career is even different than it was when they were headed toward the latter half of decade two.

With A.V.E. on the horn for the “Favorite Spot” segment (thanks everybody for the kind feedback, by the way), not digging a bit deeper felt like a missed opportunity. Farran spoke to him on where his perspective on this thing called “professional skateboarding” stands today, entrenched in the third decade of doing it.

More »

Favorite Spot With Anthony Van Engelen on The Green Bench

Figured after last week’s “Favorite Spot” with Hjalte, now is as good of a time as any to keep the momentum going with this new series :)

You may remember back in the fall when skaters of a certain age bracket couldn’t help but think one really nerdy thought while watching F.A’s Dancing On Thin Ice video: was the bench from A.V.E’s ender the same bench that he was skating in The DC Video back in 2003?

In short, the answer is yes. But the story of how the bench came to re-enter skateboard history is one of many fateful contortions that only the man himself could adequately explain. Farran tracked down A.V.E. for the story of the green metal bench, and how it has endured through nearly two decades, with the help of some archival footage from the F.A. and DC videographers that were there as it happened.

Interview & Edit by Farran Golding. Archival footage is courtesy of: Greg Hunt, Cody Green, Benny Maglinao, William Strobeck and Colin Kennedy.

Previous Favorite Spots: Hjalte Halberg on Jarmers, Gilbert Crockett on Sun Trust & Downtown Richmond

The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2020 — QS Readers Poll Results

Illustration by Cosme Studio
Ballot Tally Assist by 4Ply Magazine

One of the biggest cliches is discussing just *how much* skate content there is. Everything is available at once, and keeping track of it for one viewing — let alone multiple — is hard.

Last year’s decade poll aimed at a snapshot of skateboarding in a ten-year span, as it grew exponentially into the content waterfall it is today. It was very fun to do, but perhaps easier in that with ten years to reflect on, it was apparent what loomed large over tricks, styles and trends. We brought it back for a single year to try and form a canon at a time when so much of the conversation is geared around things moving too fast for a consensus.

Yes, you’ll notice an inherent recency bias here, and year-end content is obviously an imperfect art — the poll closed on December 4, which is before John’s Vid and Third Shift came out online, two projects that definitely would’ve ranked if eligible. (Honestly, John’s Vid might’ve ended up being #1 or #2 given the readership of this website.)

So here it is. No commentary for the full-lengths this round. Full-length skate videos capture a zeitgeist, and sometimes, it takes a while for those effects to truly make themselves known.

Shout out to all the writer friends from the internet who helped with write-ups, and extra major shout out to the team at 4Ply Magazine for the help on tallying the ballots.

And if you’re joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers during the first week of December, with voting ending on the 4th.

More »