Put A Date On It

T.F. Global. Photo via Claudio Majorana’s book, Head of the Lion.

Is there a compilation of board flip challenge fails yet, or are we going to have to assign that grueling job to an intern?

Looks like the solid barrage of upstate New York videos is gonna keep rolling in 2019 (see #5.) The Seasons guys have a new ten-minute video on Thrasher entitled “Albany 2.5” with tons of Empire State Plaza footage, and a mini S.F. section at the end.

Wasn’t really sure what to expect from this upon click, and it thankfully ended up being smiles the whole way through ♥ Here’s a good seven minutes of Fred Gall iPhone footage at some D.I.Y. spot and a bunch of typical New Jersey crust.

ICYMI: Cooper Winterson unlocks another dimension of ConEdison Banks in his Skating Is Easy part.

Had a bunch of “wait, that spot’s been gone for years” thoughts watching this, and then realized it’s more of a remix than a new part. Either way! Any B.A. is good B.A., and Grant Yansura was nice enough to pull together a bunch of his [mainly New York] footage from SB Chronicles 3 and onward for a new-old “Slappy Seconds” edit, which includes a handful of unseen clips.

Theories is doing another “Underground Skater of the Year” thing this year, and we’re writing in a ballot for Jawn Gardner.

“Oh, you were just skateboarding? That’s weird. You can leave.” Solo has an interview with John Shanahan, and Skate Jawn has a lil’ feature on his photos.

Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Tim O’Connor posted up an unreleased episode of his podcast with Ricky Oyola, and Steve Brandi has a “Skater’s Favorite Skater” TWS vid where he talks about how Ricky influenced him over the years.

Not a lot of content like this going live on the skateboard internet in the age of Instagram Stories: the Village Psychic dudes drove from Minnesota to Memphis to escape the cold and did a long[ish]form blog post with photos about their journey.

One of those “I’m not really sure wtf this is about” Boil the Ocean posts: something about testing for weed and the Olympics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Forever love that double noseslide line. Or any double noseslide line, for that matter. Matt Velez uploaded three minutes of Mark Wetzel raw files to his YouTube.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Gotta be that Kyrie v.s. Iggy highlight — no, wait. J.R. Smith’s hat. Yeah, J.R. Smith’s hat is the play of the week.

Quote of the Week: “OVO is the new RDS.” — Torey Goodall

Just Throwing Rocks

jr smith tweet

*We only care about J.R* *Not an official Cavs endoresement* *We only care about J.R*

Obvious first link: Three minutes of Rick Howard B-sides from the past ~five years.

The always brilliant Tennyson Corporation compiled all of Kalis and Stevie’s footage to appear in issues of 411 into fuzzy feeling remix video. Yo all those flip tricks, wow.

2016 Q.S.S.O.T.Y Daniel Kim London footage via “Regulate 005” from Jenkem.

Mark Humienik made a six-minute Hi8 (?) montage of the Bronze boys.

“Man, I’m just trying to live. I ain’t trying to pay no fucking dues. You only pay dues if you want something out of it. I’m not paying anything. I just want to be able to wake up and be able to go skateboard every day.” — An interview with Philly Santosuosso from Humidity Skateshop for Real’s Actions Realized fundraiser.

Damn, so if the 2015 #trendwatch was backside 360ing out of 5050s, is the 2017 #trendwatch doing that no comply backside 360 where your foot doesn’t touch the ground out of 5050s? Who can even keep up man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“The resulting photos are personal and gorgeous, using LOVE as a subject to tell its own, final chapter and representing the parable of American urbanism: nothing lasts forever.” Adam Abada re: Jonathan Rentschler’s book on the final years of Love Park.

Someone made an Antonio-only mix of the previous Numbers clip.

Haven’t listened to either yet tbh, because I’m typing this with no headphones from a cafe where the coffee tastes like ramen, but here’s the latest episode of The Bunt with Mark Suciu, and an episode of Thrasher radio with Gonz. You know what to expect ;)

“It seems that defensive architecture, even as it becomes commonplace and increasingly surrounds us, still goes under most people’s radar, which makes the problem all the more insidious.” Village Psychic has a cool interview about using sculpture to raise awareness about how public space is becoming less public.

Boil the Ocean post for those who don’t read Boil the Ocean posts: “In Lieu of Some Longwinded and Semi-Coherent Blog Post, Here’s a Bunch of Justin Henry Tricks.”

Four minutes of Sremmlife B-sides from Mick Robbins.

So happy that Gunplay and Mozzy found each other

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: As everyone mentally shifts from “Wow, the Warriors are going 16-0 in the postseason” to “wow, maybe this is going seven!” — allow us to revisit the complete 2016 timeline of J.R. Smith partying shirtless from Vegas to Cleveland. We thought this shit was going four last year too.

Quote of the Week: “Just wait until I fucking tell the habibis back in New York that they sold me half a chicken with no sauce.” — Josh Velez re: Copenhagen Halal food

Heard it’s finally summer back home ♥ :)

And the summer reminds me of Fetty Wap :( Miss you bro.

Thunder in Eight

scrapbook

Via Requiem for A Screen, duh ♥

Phew, The Bunt is back. Season four, episode one with Elijah Berle.

Really heavy new edition of LurkNYC’s “Mean Streets” series went live this past weekend. The 5050 at Chase, Howard Street ollie and Columbia ollie were all insane. Is that Water Street ender an NBD? Wow.

Jason Byoun is like an O.G. nu-age Brooklyn Banks head.

This past weekend, Brian Wenning did his first switch back nosegrind pop-out since Photosynthesis, and it looked fab. Sorry to link two single tricks two links in a row :)

There’s an official trailer out for Pat O’Dell’s feature documentary about Big Brother.

Is a “VX Montage” in an HD video like when they throw a random experimental song in the middle of a rap album? And holy shit, that 360 flip

A couple more parts from Ricardo Napoli’s Making It Happen video are up over on TWS: A non-VX montage featuring Akira and a bunch of dudes, Taylor Clark + Jarrod Brandreth’s shared part, and Bruno Aguero + Lindolfo Oliveira’s shared part. Also, Transworld, please do something about your video player. Tried to rewind a trick and had to watch a Pennzoil commercial mid-video…

Ripped Laces on the recent resurgence of yellow gear in skateboarding.

“Alas, as ledge skating gained supremacy and skateable blocks began trading at a premium due to police pressure and general scarcity, peg damage and huffy attitudes came to divide the camps, such that by the time the handrail age set in, extreme bike riders became punchlines.” Dunno about the “punchline” part, as we’ve linked a BMX video or two on here before and like ummm, ROB CAMPBELL, but Boil the Ocean considers the relationship between bikes and skateboards, circa 2017. We Citibiked up to Lenox from Soho yesterday, and it was pretty beast ;)

An extensive interview with Ian from Jenkem.

Luis Tolentino was actually Spiderman all along.

Spot Updates — 1) Defeated lol on them re-paving every part of this spot except where we needed them to re-pave. At least Avenue A getting re-paved is the biggest thing to happen to New York skateboarding since children discovered Indoor Ten. 2) Spot was a two second bust and for pros, but those rails parallel to the narrow banks on 33rd Street are mad high now. 21. 21. 21.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: So, Thunder in 8, right?! With the Russ adoration running high on here this past season, let’s take a second to remind ourselves of J.R. Smith’s brilliance — sorry, meant NBA Champion™ J.R. Smith’s brilliance. [Also remembered how annoying it is that we now have to wait until the end of June to find out who MVP, 6MOTY, etc. is now.]

Quote of the Week: “Harden is like the guy at the spot who knows how to land all tricks, but he’s wearing fat Globes and skinny pants.” — Francesco Pini

Trying to Get Off the Fall-Off List

FullSizeRender

The QS Sports Desk didn’t have a horse in the playoff race, but it’s pretty obvious that this Cleveland title is both A) the closest New Jersey will ever come to winning a title thanks to Freehold’s J.R. Smithony, West Orange’s Kyrie Irvings, and the back-to-back Finals appearances New Jersey Nets’ Richard Jefferson, and B) the closest the New York Knicks will ever come to winning a title because we now live in a world where Timofey Mozgovonzsky and Iman Shumpert’s hair are NBA Champions. (It’s still fuck Dan Gilbert forever though.) Last night and Game 7 OKC-GSW were the two best basketball games of all time :) lol Melo.

ANYWAY, been pretty bad at updating lately, huh? Should be back to normal programming this week. Sremmlife 2 is delayed and we’re devastated.

Shout out to Sage and TJ for turning pro :)

Are there even people out there whose favorite skater isn’t Max Palmer? Unofficial Frog x 917 demo @ Tompkins via Genesis Evans.

Yaje has a new part out for Venture, where he brings the 2000s back super hard by ending it off with a trick over the Grant’s Tomb four-stair ledge instead one of the banked ledges. Shout out to Ja$onwear x infinity.

“I don’t think we ever really thought of who we were writing for, we did what we wanted to do and what we liked.” Yet another interview about the Big Brother book, but all of them have been pretty great and strangely echo a lot of what’s going on in skateboarding now. (QS review of Shit here btw.)

ON THAT SAME NOTE, you’ve no doubt heard plenty old #oldheads talking about how skating is in some circle (bro) and history repeating itself phase right now a la the post-Bones Brigade era, and while everything it discusses was before my time…thoroughly enjoyed this new Ron Chatman interview about his early career days. “I never did three flips because that was Jason’s shit. I never did impossibles or heelflips because Ed did them. You couldn’t do it better than that.”

Boil the Ocean tackles the growing conspiracy that big shoe companies are deliberately flooding the market with small skateboard brands to dilute the resonance of small shoe brands, or something along the lines of skateboarding’s version of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? I dunno man.

Transworld was feeling the Non Fiction 2k16 vibes, and picked up LurkNYC’s New York Times outtakes series for their website. Good God that backside flip…

Nice read about what it’s like be a sk8er and work as a professional architect.

Jersey Jersey Jersey… “Meadowlands Promo,” featuring QS favorite Nick Ferro.

“Crybaby,” a new one from the youth.

Here’s the New York-based raw footage from Justin Henry’s OPM part.

Quick interview with Jason Dill over at Place.

Samsung is doing a retrospective event on R.B. Umali’s work later today.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Pipe it up.

Quote of the Week: “The room was $140, but ended up being $500 because my girl picked up the walnuts.” — Carl Williams

I mean, who doesn’t love a good vocal interpolation of a truck backing up? Decisions..

Banned From Sweden

FullSizeRender

Photo via @oldbearsweatpants on IG

Yo did TWS really just hint that The Storm 2 is in the works?

In 2012, it was “I’d rather watch Gino push.” In 2013, it was “I’d rather watch Busenitz skate a curb.” In 2014, it was “I’d rather watch Jahmal do a 5050.” In 2015, it’s “I’d rather watch a bunch of kids in Ethiopia skate than Chris Cole do some NBDs at the DC park.”

Pretty much every skateboarder outside of the Bay Area who knows about Andre Nickatina discovered Andre Nickatina through skate videos. SMLTalk gave a rundown of notable Nickatina #musicsupervision throughout skate video history.

Pretty rare that you see a New York clip in 2015 almost entirely filmed in Manhattan. Nice to see a lot of seldom-skated U.W.S. and Morningside spots.

Paych (or whatever) is now online in full.

Corey Rubin is my one friend who can skate bowls.

Anyone who started skating at least ~10 (or maybe less, who knows) years ago grew up with at least a couple Mike Blabac photos on their wall. This Chromeball interview with him is great, and gives the behind-the-scenes details on what we now consider some of the most iconic images of skateboarding. Also worth reading for any young skate photographers looking to be humbled by how good they have it in the digital era. That A.V.E. nollie crook revert sequence story is wild.

Jenkem has a bunch of behind the scenes photos from the Palace / Bronze video.

Yeah.

Huf doesn’t really flip his board anymore, just like Kevin Tierney ;)

The video that brought the concept of “oft-delayed S.V.A. skate video” to absurdly new heights released a twenty-minute B-roll clip, twenty-something years after the announcement of said video’s production: Outdated B-sides, 2007-2012.

Skaters are idiots.

Some quick vids“Subway Series” via the Mood NYC crew, and a Village Psychic bro cam clip edited to a relatable song about women repeatedly not understanding that you have a chauffeur. Live life.

QS Sports Desk: Anyone pretending like they know what’s going to happen in this series is lying. If it’s a one-point Game 7 decision, it won’t be surprising in the slightest. Also on the slim chance you missed it…J.R. Smith’s Game 4 entry.

Quote of the Week: “Young Thug is good at making sex sound unappealing.” — T

Rest in Peace Ryan DeWitt.