Back in October, we asked QS visitors to choose their favorite video parts of the 2010s. If civilization and skateboarding were to end today, which five parts would you bury in a weather-and-nuclear-proof time capsule for post-apocalyptic earth dwellers to reference when they rediscover skate culture of these past ten years?
QS prides itself as being a destination for people who think a lot about skateboarding. Rather than poll a few close colleagues for their favorites, we felt we had a wide enough reverberation in the skate nerd universe to try and crowdsource a canon of the 2010s from anyone willing to sit down and think about it. I can emphatically say that in reviewing the mountain of ballots, everyone took their votes seriously — save maybe the guy who voted for five Micky Papa parts.
As we tallied the results, consistent trends in the count were apparent. Any fears about a recency bias went out the window; there’s only one part from 2019, and the average year of the top 25 is 2014. QS obviously has its own breed of skate nerd audience — this poll would look different if taken by Thrasher or Free — but I would bet that their lists wouldn’t be TOO far off from this one.
Presented without comment for the top 25-11, and then via a lot of favors from writer friends on the internet for the top 10: here are the 25 best video parts of the past ten years.
Quartersnacks for Spitfire Wheels arrives in stores today. We will not be carrying this in our webstore, but have a lot of fab regs QS stuff in there if you’re trying to support. Any shop with a Deluxe account near you should be a safe bet though ♥ (And for anyone asking, yes there are both hard wheels and cruiser: hard wheel is Formula Four 53mm 99du, and soft wheel is 54mm 80du.)
“We did crime to fund it basically.” File this one under: Had no idea how much I would love this interview when I first started skimming it. You’re probably familiar with @muckmouth the Instagram page, you might be familiar with Muckmouth the website, but you probably aren’t familiar with Muckmouth the Auckland-based skate magazine. Free has an incredible interview with Muckmouth founder, Alex Dyer, about his journey through three generations of skateboard media that is full of stories to make you laugh and sit at the edge of your seat. “Where the fuck is Callum?”
Skating to one of the ten best songs ever recorded by humans is bold, but whatever, the world is gonna end soon anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Justin Grzechowiak’s part in the Buffalo, New York-based Remedy video is a good time.
As you likely heard, on Monday, current subscribers to Transworld received notice that March / April 2019 would be the magazine’s final print issue. And in what made me initially think they had to be trolling, the remainder of everyone’s subscriptions would be replaced by issues of Men’s Journal. Associate editor, Mackenzie Eisenhour, wrote on Instagram that TWS would continue producing digital content, though he will no longer be with the mag.
I sat for a couple of days thinking what to write about the #2 Skateboard Magazine’s demise (which spent some years as the #1 Skateboard Magazine, depending on who you ask) without only veering into nostalgia that has very little to do with how we got here, and without “print is dead! long live print!”-isms. The average 2019 skateboarder’s attitude to legacy media can be summed up as “I’m happy magazines exist” at best — and that is simply a symptom of where media and our collective attention spans are now.
Not quite sure why the willy grind has been making a comeback as of late, but there’s a lot of good stuff in Brandon Gironda’s part via the Westchester County-based PFP5 video (ender is wild) + an accompanying Q & A with Mike Sassano about the long-running video series.
“When people are in public spaces or people are walking through public space…They conceive it as a kind of as a private property. Do you understand what I mean? So it’s like, ‘this is for this…Look there’s a bench here and it’s clearly meant for people who have shopped in that store to come here and eat this kind of fucking sandwich…’ They have a certain kind of possessive sense of everything.” — The always insightful Ocean Howell, with your #longread for the week via an interview about *shock* how skateboarders interact with public space in 2018.
We’re holding an editor’s meeting first thing this morning to see if it is possible to do a skateboard version of this New York mag article: “The Oral History of Four Loko in New York. A lot of cancelled following day sessions, and a lot of unnecessary nights in bookings coincided with this era writ large.
Two Brazilians came through and filmed his five minute shared New York part during that one magical week when the planters were moved away from the CBS Ledge. I know GX got all you psyched, but everyone please be careful filming in traffic, for the love of God.
“I didn’t really receive shit out of it other than 11-16 year-olds hating me. Now that they’re 23 and they finally meet me, they tell me I’m a nice guy.” Love Skate Mag has an interview with Lurker Lou.
……aaaaaannnnnddddd Jim Thiebaud — someone who has received death threats over board graphics — has some thoughts for the “leave politics out of skateboarding” crowd.
Interviewing skaters alongside their moms could actually be a good interview series idea.
Quote Tweet of the Week:
(On that note, you might want to check out Stefan Janoski’s stop motion short film, “God I Need A Girlfriend.”)
If you need affirmation of how incredibly difficult it has been to do these posts over the past two weeks, look no further than the fact that Thrasheris posting astrology content, this girl is still looking for which one of you who spilled coffee on yourself at Herald Square, and apparently, EVERYTHING is “going right” in skateboarding right now…Spring can’t come soon enough.
“I used to be more of a character back in the day and just dive into the river, swimming for the board and making people laugh. I remember Jaime Reyes gagging because I was in there doing backstrokes. They say swimming in that shit helps your immune system.” Village Psychic spoke to Brian Wenning about some of the spots that were instrumental to his skating.
Caddo and Lou gave up on skateparks in 2016. It looks like it has beenworking out.
(Three raw clip links in a row, see what I mean? Springtime hellooo where r u…)
PFP5, the latest installment of Michael Sassano’s now long-running Westchester skate video series, will be premiering up in Peekskill on Saturday the 14th. Teaser here.
The crooked rail at Columbus Park is maybe the last place anyone expected to see a slappy front nose 270 A.K.A. the Explore Page, but there it was in Matthew Martin’s Hombre Hardware part.
“Cyclist stabs skateboarder during street spat.” Ok, the “It’s a fucking bike lane, asshole!”-guys are getting a bit out of hand.
This clip got posted on April 8, 2007 (Marcus Garvey rails were a new spot then…), and dubbed “The Neverending Winter.” Same mood eleven years later (a lot of these spots are still around), though I wish the quality of the upload wasn’t full trash.
