Classics From the Distant Mid-2000s

August 31st, 2010 | 2:03 pm | Time Capsule | 5 Comments

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.

A few relevant links: Quartersnacks’ 2006 review of the video, and links to some alternate edits from the video.

This ain’t New York, this is the Bronx (or Washington Heights)

December 7th, 2009 | 2:55 am | Daily News | 33 Comments

120709.jpg

A widely unsung fact about skating in New York is that a lot of the best skaters are from the Bronx. And not only the best skill-wise, but in the sense that they all skate like they never saw Static II and could care less about what’s trendy, how they are expected to dress, what’s “acceptable” and whose wallie-laden video part is being discussed on the Lower East Side in between sips of PBR. They have fun on their own terms, even if they have to do it on a crusty board that looks like it has been floating in Eastchester Bay for the past two years. In the six months when the plaza across from the Bronx County Courthouse did not have gigantic chunks taken out of it by some assholes from the parks department, every single one of those Bronx kids progressed faster than any group of young kids I, or probably anyone else had ever come across. They finally had an actual ledge to skate, and you could tell they couldn’t be more psyched.

Mira Conyo (rivals the Queens-made Niggas With Skateboards as the best name for skate video of all time) is a video made by the Bronx Courthouse crew, back when the spot was in its prime. You should watch all the parts to hopefully remind you of what it was like to once have fun, but if you are strapped for time (meeting on the 38th floor with project management at 9 a.m. tomorrow, I know, you’re busy), watch Starlin’s part and George’s part, because they rip.