Down & Out in [Downtown] New York City — An XL Update of Demoralizing #spotchecks

That swath of street from Blubba, through the Banks, onto Water Street and into Battery Park is something like the Vegas strip for New York skate spots. If you’ve taken advantage of these recent warm days and hit downtown, you have noticed there is substantially less to skate at the strip’s southern end in 2024.

Let us start from the bottom and head up.

The Battery Park slanted ledges are done. Obviously those silver rail things nearby have been under construction for a while now, but that construction now extended into the most oft-skated section. Anything that was skateable in this portion of the park except the short out ledges is fenced off and being demolished.

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#TRENDWATCH2023 — The Search For This Moment’s Really Long Ledge

Human beings are infatuated with ways to measure their endurance: Usain Bolt’s 100-meter dash, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, 76 hot dogs in ten minutes, etc.

In ledge skating, this measuring stick is holding a given trick over a long ledge. If it stands to reason that everyone’s first time doing anything on a ledge is a quick grind off the end, then holding it the distance is the true form of mastery.

For this purpose — in New York, at least — The Grate™ is a unit of measure.

Have you been getting really good at backside tailslides? There is no doubt that one of your idiot friends will ask, “D’ya think you could do it over the grate?”

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R.I.P. To The 12th Best Spot In The Financial District

This place — whatever you called it — got knobbed.

The neighbors from the adjacent roof threw marshmallows at us the second or third time we ever skated here, so it got dubbed “Marshmallow Ledges” on the spots page — though nobody ever called it that. It was “those wooden ledges on the sidewalk over by World Trade with the kinked metal bench before it.” The park was part of a W Hotel, except what a boring thing to name even a boring spot after.

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The Vicious Cycle House — An Interview With Zered Bassett via 2003, a Year Magazine

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The following feature appeared in 2003: A Year Magazine. (We ran a feature from 1991 last year.) The issue is now available for purchase on 2003magazine.com, along with a QS hat we produced in collaboration with 2003 to commemorate the northeast blackout of 2003 — the day the T.F. was dubbed the safest place on earth.

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Skateboarding was maturing in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Videos went from handycam promos to hour-long blockbusters with pro-level production values, skaters were padding their pockets with royalty checks from sponsors that were fatter than ever, and prodigious 15-year-olds were outshining the grown-ups with tricks that were unimaginable in the early 90s.

Except in New York, where skateboarding was still synonymous with chilling, of a lifestyle without an end goal. After 9/11, it felt even further removed from what was happening in the skate industry at large. The spots throughout Lower Manhattan became either desolate or off-limits, which made chilling (instead of missioning into the outer boroughs) that much more appealing.

But being New York, there was, of course, an exception. Vicious Cycle, released in 2004, was a video made throughout those years that upended the attitude associated with New York. Filmed by R.B. Umali and Doug Brown for Zoo York from 2002 to 2004, it was the first video to emerge from a crew of skaters living in New York who refused to accept what was becoming the status quo for a city that dominated in most other areas of culture. The result was very much up to par with anything coming out of California or elsewhere.

In 2003, Bassett and other skaters involved in the making of the video cohabited a windowless apartment in Lower Manhattan. This is the story of the Vicious Cycle house.

Where are you from and how did you end up in New York?

I grew up in Chatham, Massachusetts, which is in Cape Cod. I started skating there, met people, and then started going to Boston a lot. From there, I started getting hooked up with Zoo stuff from Jeff Pang, and would go out to New York to visit those dudes. I went back a few times, and then on my 18th birthday, I moved to New York. That was in November of 2002.

Were you getting paid to skate at that point?

Zoo paid for the house that I moved into, but I wasn’t getting paid.

How did the house come together?

The house was on Broadway and Fulton Street. I wanted to move to the city, so I talked Zoo into getting a house for me, Brian Brown, and Billy Rohan at the time. Billy eventually moved out, and Brian’s brother, Doug, moved in. He was the main one filming us back then. Lou [Sarowsky] would stay over a lot, too. People would always come to town and crash, whoever was around skating.

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