The Zoo York Institute of Design

In the introduction to his interview with Zered Bassett, Chris Nieratko details how Zoo York was once a source of pride for east coast skaters. A few buyouts and a decade later, nobody sets up a Zoo board with a geographic bias in mind anymore. Even if the company completely phases out of skating, people will forever nerd out over their first three videos (Mixtape, at this point, is just as much of a hip-hop classic a la Wild Style or Style Wars as a classic skate video), and chances are, most who began skating after Zoo ceased being any sort of an east coast status symbol have seen those videos and cried about how all the spots are gone.

You can’t type “zoo york ads” into a Vimeo search bar and get any results, so a lot of younger kids won’t see the old Zoo ads. (They probably won’t see the new ones either…do kids still look at magazines?) Those ads are just as full of classic nineties east coast iconography as the original videos.

The Zoo ads throughout the nineties were HIP-HOP at a time when that meant more than leaving comments about how Lil’ Wayne sucks on every pre-2000 rap video’s YouTube page. Other companies even jocked their whole hip-hop scrapbook vibe when it was appropriate: Transworld styled article layouts for east coast skaters with Zoo’s look (see here), west coast companies would run Zoo-esque ads for their east coast riders (see here and here), and start-up east coast brands like Illuminati, Metropolitan, and Capital all had a bit of Zoo DNA in their ads. It’s unfortunate that now, even when paired with a sick photo, Zoo ads look pretty generic.

Thanks to the internet’s leading scanner-based skate sites, we gathered a handful of ads from 1994-2000 into one place. The scans are stolen from The Chrome Ball Incident, Police Informer, and Skate.ly.

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Spike Lee Need To Get This Shit On Film

Nothing like a good front shove. Ishod Wair at some secret gap spot. Photo by Zander Taketomo.

As if Matt Mooney getting busted for the croissant heist of the century after tweeting about it wasn’t enough, here’s further evidence that you should avoid social media after committing idiotic hilarious “crimes.”

Chris Nieratko interviews the judges, skaters, and producer from this year’s mess of a One in a Million series. What are skateboarders who spend an unhealthy amount of time typing YouTube comments going to complain about now? (Full QS interview with Lurker Lou coming this week or next at the latest. Weather has been nice, so transcribing/editing has been slow.)

Called it. Lil’ Wayne inks an endorsement deal with Supra. (Original post here.)

Here’s a New York-based “Day in the Life” clip with Danny Supa. More “lifestyle” stuff than actual skating, but the song makes it great. Any skate clips edited to a song off AZ’s first few albums are more or less guaranteed a link here — maybe even that Tyrone Olson part where he skates to “Sugar Hill.”

Someone is making a documentary about Harry Jumonji. The interviews in the trailer seem real honest and unfiltered, so it definitely has the potential to be great. Watch the trailer here.

Andre Page flatground lines at the T.F., Hawaiian shirts, strobe lights, and an avoidance of the most notorious line off that “Ass” song, all in this GoPro clip.

The VHS aesthetic continues with Twomanji, a video whose description boasts the revitalization of laserdiscs.

Pro skaters giving back to the community, one worn-out ledge at a time.

Some new photos over on the Dunions Tumblr, including one that solves the mystery of what happens to Tompkins’ legendary cones. (A dog ate them. No, really.)

KCDC temporarily moved to 68 N. 3rd for the summer. It’s still off the Bedford stop, but a bit further west than before (closer to the bridge, as well.)

Bill Strobeck recommends some music over on The World’s Best Ever for people who don’t mind playlists that exclude Meek Mill. Oh, and Dreamchasers 2 comes out Monday, May 7th.

R.I.P. Os Dias Do Video, the internet’s leading destination for pirated skate videos.

Quote of the Week:


FOR THE 21.3% OF QS READERSHIP THAT FOLLOWS SPORTS: In commemoration of the regular NBA season ending this week, here are JaVale McGee’s top eight dumbest plays. The most entertaining player in the league, but not in a Derrick Rose sort of way. We’re eternally grateful that he got traded to a playoff team, because it means at least an extra week of this.

Danny Supa Big Brother Interview from May 2000

If you pay attention to conventional skateboard media, you may be aware that Danny Supa recently signed on with BLVD Skateboards. He’s got a new commercial over there, a new interview on 48 Blocks, and hopefully an ensemble of other new things surfacing in the future. The skate media world has been sparse in Supa coverage since his Nothing but the Truth part, which featured him grinding a ledge maybe two times. When you have flip tricks like those, that’s not exactly a bad thing.

Historically speaking, like many who spent the last golden days of VHS (somewhere around 1999-2001) constantly replaying the Mixtape cassette, and treating it as an outdated tour guide to what skate spots New York City had to offer (and calling Paine Webber “the Mixtape benches” for many formidable years of skateboarding), his part from that particular video has always been a favorite. If not for the top-tier backside flips, and successful only-5050 incorporating ledge lines (switch front 5050 180 out, nollie backside 5050 bench lines, and the like), than for the part’s status as probably the only skate part to be filmed mostly in basketball shorts, some of the most comfortable skateboard attire short of Polo sweats. Until your shins get hit.

The interview below is from the August 2000 issue of Big Brother, taken after a brief hiatus from skating for Zoo York. It discusses Guess watches, Ryan Hickey, and Mike Hernandez, so it’s worth five minutes of your time. All of the photos are enlargeable, and a text-only version of the images is at the second half of the page so it is easier to read.

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