Egg Noodles & Ketchup

Love this photo • Genesis Evans by Ryan Mettz ❤️

Has anyone coined the term “Boardwalk crust” yet? Like, it’s regular crust, but windier with more weathered wood. (The Pandora’s Box video, Vague‘s “Maritime” edit, and “Jacky Biarritz” are the most obvious recent examples.) Anyway, Devon Connell made a full-length video out of Atlantic City, NJ that fits the bill, and Skate Jawn has Jason Klotz’s part from it.

Some raw iPhone footy via Naquan and crew in anticipation of the summer.

Alex Greenberg uploaded a quick HD edit of a bunch of the Homies Network dudes.

More »

Grand Reopening

Naquan Rollings has a new 16-minute video up on Thrasher. Mostly footage from trips out west, but a few New York clips in the middle. Marcello’s trick on the Joe’s Pizza Park thing was rad.

This story is crazy, sad, unbelievable: three men died early on Saturday morning after speeding past an intersection into the dead end street that contains the L.I.C. D.I.Y. spot. The car apparently went over the barrier, through the woodsy zone, and was submerged into Newtown Creek.

Anyone know if Little Island has spots yet? Jk, jk — that’s a rhetorical question. They prob won’t even let you in there with a board ;)

More »

Made Mistakes In ’98, But ’99 Will Be Better

Salomon Cardenas, Etienne Gagne + Jason Byoun share a part in the Frog video, Killer Skaters 2.

The first one-spot part of the decade: Sergio Rodas and Brian Douglas share a section entirely filmed at Scudder Plaza A.K.A. the Princeton University spot. It’s crazy how no matter what talk there is about the decline of plaza spots in the U.S., post-Love skateboarding on the east coast has coincided with a surge in footage from here, Empire State Plaza, Everson, etc. — all of which went largely under-covered in the two decades prior.

More »

QS Film School — An Intro To Modern Skate Videos With Plots

In Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film about the porn industry of the 70s and 80s, Burt Reynolds’ Jack Horner gives a fateful speech admonishing the advent of home video: “I have a stable of actors and actresses. They’re professionals. They’re not a bunch of fucking amateurs. They’re proven in the box office. They get people in theaters, where films should be seen, and they know how to fuck.”

It is not hard to imagine similar tirades (maybe with a few words switched out) occurring in Powell-Peralta boardrooms as the 80s were coming to a close, and skateboarding was around the corner from a crash. Skate videos of the decade were refined and narrative-driven, and for good reason. There were only like, six tricks invented at the time, so they had to fill up those other 53 minutes in an hour-long skate video with story, personality shots and other shit.

But what would come after skateboarding’s believed-to-be demise was a rebirth. Videos like Snuff, Video Days, Tim & Henry’s Pack of Lies, and Questionable were unrepentant in their progression — they were too busy inventing modern skateboarding in front of your eyes to worry about the extracurricular malarky from the Animal Chin days. New faces and a camera thrown in a backpack was the name of the game. The old mode was dead. But for how long?

Skateboarding draws many parallels to pornography, but one of the most curious ones is an incessant need to add narrative to something that nobody watches for the story. As we will soon learn, plots returned to skate videos as quickly as they went.

More »