Still devastated after finding out that his Yeah Right! part was fake back in September. Never thought Takeshi 6ix9ine would be the one to ruin all of our childhoods…
Crawled under a rock Friday morning? Dime’s Knowing Mixtape Volume 2 is live.
Safe to say that Marcello won the Pyramid Ledges best trick contest that Jenkem has going on. Wow.
Rashad Murray’s part in the D.C-based Bottleneck video rips.
The abridged history of flatground trends in the current decade goes something like this: we entered the 2010s doing 360 flips before/between/after every single trick, then decided that varial flips were so underutilized that we over-utilized them, giving way to a brief flirtation with plain-regular-old heelflips.
Oh, and between all of that, backside big spins went from being a seldom used Welshian or Ellingtonian maneuver, to the lay-up of flatground tricks. Every single bump-to-bar ollie, wallie over something, or trash can line of the past five years has been proceeded by a backside bigspin on flat. If you spent sixty minutes watching skate footage released between 2012-2018, at least one of those minutes will have been spent watching people confirm to you that yes, they can backside bigspin on flat.
In 2018, most skaters who have cameras pointed at them have began to feel confident that the general public believes in their flatground backside bigspin, 360 flip, or backside bigspin capabilities.
But now — there’s a loneliness. It feels empty when you end a line. The pressure is there. You have to squeeze another trick out. But what?
Apart from Kevin Tierney’s love affair with the switch laser heel, the most re-blogged flat trick in Tumblr history never caught on. When the entire northeast spent the better part of the decade attempting a white whale of a stylish varial flip, such a complicated maneuver is understandably out of reach.
Diego Najera with the first trick in last week’s #1 QS Top 10 line. 125th Street. Photo by Mike Heikkila.
Diego and Tyshawn are leading everyone else in 2018 for tricks that leave phone screens and comment sections, and actually enter conversation between IRL humans.
Check the full Humble Laboratories commercial from Conor and Genny (2x as long as the Instagram one) + then go support the boys.
“Midtown to us was really just like 5 blocks though. Like 50th Street to 54th Street on 6th Avenue.” Village Psychic catches up with R.B. Umali for some stories about skating Astor, Pyramid Ledges, Union, Courthouse Drop, Flushing, etc.
Tufty showed up and surprised us in Paris on our first day, then we didn’t see him for the rest of our trip because he was doing grown man shit, like waking up before 1 P.M. to go skate spots before they get too crowded.
Here are seven minutes of recent-ish Sean Pablo footage loosies.
Antosh uploaded a quick montage of all our friends out in Vancouver, aptly titled “Hiatus.” You can also pick up his zine from a summer 2017 tenure in New York at the Stussy store on Spring Street.
Like everyone else, our first thought was, “Whoa, they still do X-Games Real Street?” Bobby’s entry is all Pulaski footage.
Posting “2017 in Review” content the day before May 1 is pretty dumb, but TWS has a quick recap of Cyrus’ past year over on their site, so why not? ♥
TWS also uploaded 411 issue #2, which features a Tom Penny “Wheels of Fortune” section filmed exclusively at the skatepark that Palace’s winter pop-up park, Mwadlands, was based on. Fwiw, 411 creator, Josh Friedberg, said that the Penny section was one of his favorites ever from the video mag’s run.
Staletape is a 28-minute long Philly scene video by Joe Ostrowski.
“Whereas Torey Pudwill’s arm motions often hit the red while balancing on history’s most drawn-out backside smith grinds and backside tailslides, Magnus Bordewick’s flapping generally coincides with rocketing pop and crater-making impacts.” Boil the Ocean re: the state of arm movements in skateboarding and Magnus’ new part.
7-minute iPhone clip of Tyler Pacheco and the Crailtap dudes skating New York.
“Popwave” made me want to go skate not-so-good skate spots with all my friends.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Donovan Mitchell should be fun to watch for like, the next decade-and-a-half? Who does everyone have for Sixers-Celtics?
Quote of the Week
11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “What’s the best trick you can do?”
Adult Skateboarder at Le Dome: “Pop shove it.”
11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “…you’re kidding me, right?”
This is the first semi-late Monday Links post since we vowed to swear off them in honor of the queen’s 30th birthday. BUT — in our defense, the entire office is a bit lagged from traveling back to New York yesterday. We don’t deserve a Gucci polo, but at least it’s not going up at like 4 P.M. ♥
Jk, jk ;) ♥
Though it was not the firestorm that followed our original M.N.M.F.T.B. post — no doubt one of this website’s most controversial moments — in 2014, we caught a bit of heat for denouncing some unknown child filming his Grizzly Grip sponsor me tape for waxing the top portion of Three Up Three Down.
We were called regressive. We were told that such rhetoric ran contrary to skateboarding’s “there’s no rules!” rule. We were bullies for imposing our worldview on this coveted piece of Tribeca land. We were labeled cowards for harking back to a time when a simple trick up / trick down was “enough” for the spot.
Everyone knows that nostalgia for a fairytale version of a greater past is in the first chapter of the authoritarian handbook, and here at the QS office, we like to think of ourselves as free spirits.
People make mistakes. People change. We come here today to ask for your forgiveness. We apologize not for saying that a forty-foot-long lipslide to tailslide across Three Up Three Down would look stupid, but for side-eyeing our much more talented colleagues for enjoying a #lowimpact spot that we tried to keep for ourselves.
Three Up Three Down belongs to anyone who cares to enjoy it. Bring your Shake Junt wax and your Grizzly Grip. Put angle iron on the side. Wax the top if you want — the last thing you want to be is some guy on the line to get into heaven, talking about how your only regret in life was not powersliding across the entire top surface of Three Up Three Down because some skateboard blog told you not to.
(Obviously you’d be going to hell if you did that.)
In extension of this olive branch, we’d like to commend the Primitive team for their work at our favorite skate spot. Though it has fallen out of the coverage circuit on QS as of late, you’re maybe a bit tired of seeing Meatball kickflip up it and tre flip down it for the third year in a row. Shout out to whoever is showing P-Rod’s friends around.
It took three viewings to realize he was actually skating the Four Up Four Down that Rodrigo skated last year, but when you can nollie flip over Black Hubba, does it even make a difference? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Via Diego Nájera’s new part, btw.)
“I took so much acid that I started riding l*ngb**rds.” The governor of New Jersey has a sharp memory and is endearing as could be in yet another Bobshirt longplayer classic. Tons of stories about S.F/Philly/New York in the nineties, his mom taking him to *the* Banks contest, and plenty of memories about some legendary names.
We live in a place we are often convinced is the center of the world, despite the fact we all fall victim to the same merry-go-round of spots, tricks, ideas, etc. “Steel” is an incredible ten-minute video by Adam Bos filmed throughout that vast state above — in zones that are closer to Toronto than Brooklyn — and feels more refreshing than a lot of what our center-of-the-universe selves have been releasing as of late. Also…do we do another “core” tour? ;)
No other skate crew has logged more hours on the always en vogue corner of Howard and Crosby Streets. “Mean Streets” volume eleven from LurkNYC is now live.
There’s 7,000 articles out there about the rise of Small Brands™ over the past ~five years, but here’s one about the rise of Small Brands™ focused specifically on women.
Listen the Skater You’d Be Most O.K. With Your Daughter Dating get slut-shamed by Cephas on the latest episode of The Bunt.
Happy ten year anniversary to skateboarding’s Library of Congress A.K.A. The Chrome Ball Incident. Chops celebrates a decade with an interview, tons of stories and some raw clips from World Industries’ earliest filmer, Socrates Leal.
Aaron Herrington reminds you that Diego Najera nollie flipped over Black Hubba, and then had the audacity to follow it up with a switch varial heelflip eight feet over the top of a picnic table. P.S. He nollie flipped over Black Hubba.
Gonz skates around downtown with a white spine ramp for Adidas and Krooked’s collab. They better have left all of those things at Tompkins…
Yonnie Cruz’s lost part from Chocolate’s 1995 video, Las Nueve Vidas De Paco.
ICYMI, E.T. has his first-ever interview over on Thrasher.
Bummed we missed the House of Vans Calgary pop-up / Alltimers premiere, but also we got to host a legendary sporting event that weekend so it’s ok. BUT, if you’re the photo recap type, here you go.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: A 68-year-old beat the Warriors by himself.
Quote of the Week: “I don’t know why they even bother giving customer copies of receipts in 2018.” — Conor Prunty
Also, somebody nollie flipped Black Hubba.
