To everyone’s disappointment, the following video clip does not contain footage of Geo Moya landing the above trick. More importantly, did you wish Moya happy birthday yesterday?
Below is a clip we put together featuring the team from Akira Mowatt’s company, After Midnight New York — not to be confused with the free newspapers or makers of metal recliners for crackheads. It has a high concentration of hood legends, in addition to music supervision from the era when Harlem ruled the summer (AKA before the Ed Hardy tees.) Features Quim Cardona, Joseph Delgado, Geo Moya, Charles Lamb, John Wisdom, Leo Heinert, Rob Campbell, Akira Mowatt, Masashi Shiroma, Dakota Segree, and Ariel Perl.
Filmed by Gosh Goto.
“Best west coast noseslide is Muska. Best east coast noseslide is Moya. Best half cab noseslide is also Moya.” — The Worst Dude These Days
As video-makers have become increasingly afraid to edit skateboarding to offensive music, and continue to submit to a fairly narrow scope of sounds (People insist that these decisions are all based on what Pitchfork approves, but that seems more like a scapegoat than the real reason), loud, obnoxious music largely intended for strip clubs has been cast aside. A safety zone for song choices exists, which makes a lot of skate part music just sit there, as a passive accompaniment to the part, and not elevating the skating to a more reflective-of-the-skater nature. This phenomenon allows a team like Expedition, seemingly filled with white guys who probably like all sorts of weird rap about hacking computers and hacking limbs, to edit an entire video to generic soul songs, or a video for a shop in Miami, a city that has probably played more Tiesto than the rest of the country combined, and provided us with so-goddamn-ignorant-that-even-Quartersnacks-can’t-cosign-it “artists” like DJ Khaled, to be edited to MF Doom and West Indian infused Muska Beatz derivatives.
Smolik might have looked like a total kook goonin’ hard with some San Diego derelicts at the train tracks, but sure as hell knew that’s who he was, and what he was trying to put across with his part. Or that Koston wanted to live in Los Angeles. And I hate that song. But it works. If you want to skate to Katy Perry because you have a crush on her bosomy physique, do it. Make people on YouTube tell you the song ruined the part. Make them thumbs down your video because of the song. As long as it’s what you wanted, and who you are, do it. Skateboarders always complain about non-skaters “trying to look like them” — maybe it would be way harder to do that if the images that you put out there actually reflected you, and not what 95-percent of skate videos tell you is okay.
Case in point: Pryce Holmes put together a bunch of Charles Lamb’s footage from various European* endeavors that occurred in 2010. Complete with gunshots, four or five song changes, girls screaming, and the “Polo” remix, a song I can personally attest to being a Charles Lamb favorite. But, with the industry figure heads constantly pushing against such downright offensive part compositions, Pryce was forced to provide a “white boy mix,” so less open-minded media outlets could utilize it without alienating a skateboard audience that they hope to one day find indistinguishable from one another, probably for marketing reasons.
*Plus C.I.A. Ledge, but we have already revealed that C.I.A. was deemed “the best ledge in New York” by a master of European skateboarding, therefore it does not break the cohesive feel of the part.
There’s a chunk of real good footage that was also left out of this part, so don’t be too surprised if you see a round two someday.
Click here for the whiteboy edit. And even though this site’s favorite “Young” is Jeezy, as we schedule updates around prominent release dates, we can gaurantee that there will be like eight or nine new clips the day Young Dro’s album comes out. (If and when, obviously.)
The 2000s summarized in one, technology encompassing shoebox — physical CD mixtapes, 3.5″ harddrives, and a grip of unmarked Mini DV tapes.
This site has never been about technological allegiances, but if the more candid, less-ambitious skateboard endeavors that make their way to this website can be shot on either of these two devices, as opposed to something that contributes to the rising need for Mini-DV-containing shoebox storage, so be it. Quartersnacks is filmed largely on a damn Canon Mini DV camera, so if you’re looking for video quality, you’ve been coming to the wrong place for quite some time. That being said, this clip has all the expected hallmarks of a digi-cam clips: skateparks, heads being cut off, feet being cut off, 12th & A, annoying security guards asking why you’re trying to put them on YouTube (you know everyone is on the lookout for the next Bush video), skating the suburbs and crashing into Lexuses, and an ensemble of other don’t-take-it-too-seriously-isms.
This clip was filmed by Josh Velez. Features Yaje Popson, Emilio, Corey Rubin, Alex, Matthew Mooney, Charles Lamb, Galen Dekemper, Josh Velez, DJ Roctakon, Pryce Holmes, Ty Lyons, Alex Mosley, Andre Page, and Ritch Swain.
Given that the environment surrounding skateboard videos in 2010 typically shoots through a one-month cycle, in which the routine of them being premiered at some bar, uploaded to YouTube, released on DVD, deleted off YouTube, re-uploaded onto some sketchy eastern European video sharing site predominantly used for personality gauges of mailorder brides, and finishing their lifespan with a three page topic on Slap that usually dies out around the time some token asshole says “It’s kind of boring, I don’t get why everyone likes it so much,” it’s hard to maintain a longstanding presence, or even find something you may have missed from years before. The phenomenon is particularly pertinent to local videos, which went from their nineties/early-2000s existence of being passed around their respective regions on VHS dubs, to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, where every single twelve-year-old has a HD camera and desperately tries to make the defining document of their generation, right before the majority of their friends find out about cocaine and start filling out their art school applications.
Everyone knows that Mixtape is the best New York video (of the nineties, because “New York” videos don’t really exist anymore in the same way, unless you’re Flipmode.) Maybe if you’re more concerned with dat real hip-hop than with skateboarding, or are a Japanese person who doesn’t know who Eric Koston is, it’s your favorite video of all time. Choosing such a distinction as a clear-cut statement is more difficult for the 2000s, given that there are probably, like, a hundred New York skate videos that have been forgotten by this point. But unless you have personal allegiances, a safe top three would be Vicious Cycle, Flipmode 4, and Lurkers 2, probably the best time-capsule of what it was like to actually skate in New York during 2004, with the drives to Staten Island to pretend like you’re in California for a few hours, and the shift away from skating the Financial District with the recent loss of the little Banks.
Lurkers 2 has been uploaded to Vimeo for about two months now, and is teetering around one hundred views, which is only fuel to the suspicion that it is criminally under seen outside the immediate circle of Manhattan and North Brooklyn inhabiting skateboarders. Plus, it’s a good way to cap off August. The quality looks decent, not what you’d expect from the age of faux-HD Vimeo uploads, but you’ll live. Features full parts from Dharam Khalsa, Ted Barrow, Jason Dill, Ian Reid, Lurker Lou, and Charles Lamb. Has a riveting opener by Aaron Szott, and cameos from Quartersnacks team members, Matthew Mooney, Ty Lyons, and Pryce Holmes.
As skate parks and their “superior” alternative, skate plazas, begin to eat away at actual street skating, leading us into a path that demands previously unnecessary distinctions like “real street” to be made when discussing skateboarding, we’re losing a lot more than places to be unwanted in. The next generation will probably grow up to become an insanely talented group of skaters, but at a complete loss when they happen to encounter a crack or rough ground, confining them into an institutionalized, synthetic, parks-only existence. There will probably be a flannel-wearing, bearded, post-apocalyptic sect of survivors that strives to preserve skateboarding on things that were not intended to be skated on, and will do so on the four or five remaining metal grate spots in Brooklyn while converging around a campfire to watch dubs of Dan Wolfe videos on earth’s last remaining VCR as well.
But before all of that happens (and idiots from Florida doing ollies onto parked cars in Harlem seems to be expediting that hypothetical situation), we need to take these moments in time and admire our prominent locations today for the unique blends of character that they continue to churn out. Every classic skate spot comes with a batch of stories about entertaining crack heads, wild cops, and entertaining crack heads, and as we slowly dive into a prefabricated world of skateparks and recreations of actual skate spots, we need to remember that no skatepark designer is astute enough to clone the crackheads and ten-year-old scooter kids that listen to too much Roscoe Dash and incorporate them into the design of the park. Some parks in the Pacific Northwest definitely have their token meth-heads that could be seen as distant relatives, but most skateparks don’t seem to be marked with a lifeblood of anecdotes beyond who-did-what, making them pretty boring in the end.
Basically, what all this tallies up to is me having a free thirty minutes on my hands and making a Lenox clip. All of the lines are recycled. Some of the character footage has been used, but it’s mostly extended versions of the aforementioned crack addicts and young Roscoe Dash fans.
Features Miles Marquez, Charles Lamb, Kevin Tierney, Ted Barrow, Ben Nazario, and Tyler Tufty. If you’re from Brooklyn, you might get offended watching it. Depending on how seriously you take ten-year-olds.
And for the record, Alicia Keys is from Hell’s Kitchen.
“Shut up, you gonna get beat up by….50 Cent. So shut up.“
