NPBP*S: The Top 10 Partyboy Pro Skaters

May 11th, 2012 | 10:35 am | Daily News | 19 Comments

Though it may appear that having a next-best-thing-to-free apartment on Spring Street, and the luxury of avoiding work or higher education for the better part of a quarter-century is easy, such an assumption would be a mistake. To the superficial eye, Matthew Mooney’s lifestyle affords him a plethora of free time. However, you should know that he toils in his Nolita office day-in and day-out with the burden of having to solve all of life’s crucial questions. For example, who are the ten best partyboy pro skaters?

For most, concluding on such an elaborate topic would require the time it takes to complete two, maybe three dissertations. Mooney solved it in a mere afternoon, when the Jewish Hockey League had taken over the T.F. and he had nowhere to go. Here is Mooney’s finalized list, just in time for the weekend…

The Events That Defined New York City Skateboarding in 2010: 5-1

December 31st, 2010 | 5:52 pm | Features & Interviews | 16 Comments

Billy Rohan and Saddam Hussien

With about six hours left in 2010, here is the final set of five. Happy New Year, and thanks again to everyone who helped out spreading the word and contributing to Quartersnacks this past year. See you in 2011. #25-21, #20-16, #15-11, #10-6. So, like, what are you guys doing tonight?

5. Billy Rohan goes to Iraq

In a career that has been defined by insanity, Billy’s most absurd feat came not at a time when he was actually “crazy,” but when offered the chance to go to Iraq for the purpose of skateboarding. While there aren’t too many places that white people like Kenny Reed haven’t gone to with the intention of skateboarding, Billy one-upped the entire travel game this past summer by looking for spots in Saddam’s Palace. Leading travel consultants have since began booking tickets to Mogadishu (do planes go there?) in hopes of reviving the seemingly dead “white dude who likes to travel to places that you wouldn’t expect to find spots in but you find two or three and spend the rest of the time experimenting with exotic prostitutes” gimmick.

The Events That Defined New York City Skateboarding in 2010: 10-6

December 28th, 2010 | 1:16 pm | Features & Interviews | 7 Comments

Slightly behind schedule, but down to the final ten… #25-21, #20-16, #15-11.

10. The rise in popularity and subsequent banning of Four Loko

The lifeblood of New York skateboarding has always been diluted with alcohol. When sizing up the abilities of skateboarders in this city, is it important to not merely assess tricks, but the social environment within which these tricks are accomplished. It is not what tricks you can do, but what tricks you can do after waking up at 5 P.M. with half of a six pack you purchased at 4:48 in the morning still in your fridge, a pounding headache, and your friend-who-used-to-skate’s unread mass text about his acquisition of a bottle in six hours. Film a part amongst this madness (or avoid it altogether), and you will be ranked among the greats. If you falter, well, you’re just like the rest of them.

This dependence on alcohol is not comical, or tangential by any means, and it all begins with one simple exposure. For the pre-internet nineties, it was the frequent sight of the 40 ounce bottle in Kids that told youngsters what to drink. In the early-2000s, half of the under-eighteen contingent that would skate flat in the back of Union Square past 10 P.M. was introduced to alcohol through Sparks. And even further down the line, the 2008 opening of Trader Joe’s on 14th Street brought forth the availability of $2 wine for a whole slew of younger degenerates, bringing new relevance to the otherwise outdated term, “wine-o.” But 2010 was hit hard with the youth-marketed Four Loko beverages, which fueled this past summer with relentless forays into bad decisions, and can now be found on Craigslist for $10 a can.

The Events That Defined New York City Skateboarding in 2010: 15-11

December 20th, 2010 | 3:53 pm | Features & Interviews | 12 Comments

Took a week off from the countdown, sorry. There will probably be two of these posts this week. Moving on with the retrospective…#25-21, #20-16.

15. The Dipset Reunion

It is no secret that video part song choices are crucial to developing musical preferences of all those who have grown up on skate videos. From the punk rock of the 1980s, to the indie shit that accompanies any emotional “skating is an art, bro” video of today, skateboarding has a much closer tie-in with music than traditional sports, whose typical soundtrack ranges from “Kernkraft 400” to “I Like To Move It Move It.” If you came of age in the early 2000s, the impact of Dipset, and its days of making era-defining opuses of ignorance, cannot be understated. The reunion was a beacon of hope for all of those who miss the magic that defined early-to-mid-2000s skateboarding — when the internet, skate plazas, reality shows, and awful rap dynasties like Young Money were not a part of the cultural landscape. The reunion was also a chance for New York rap to get another shot at the previous-decade-dominating rap comeback, as Wu-Tang’s return in the 2000s was hardly worth the attention it was given.

The Events That Defined New York City Skateboarding in 2010: 20-16

December 8th, 2010 | 3:32 pm | Features & Interviews | 14 Comments

Continuing on with the weekly installment of the list. Numbers 25 through 21 can be found here.

20. Autumn / Tylenol Bowl gets destroyed

The longstanding (by New York indoor skate fixture standards) Autumn Bowl saw its demise via bulldozer late this year, after a much-publicized effort to be sold to an enthusiastic enterprise with $20,000 on its hands and airlift transportation capabilities. For a significant portion of the decade, the Autumn Bowl served the city’s seemingly high concentration of transition skaters, or those who were sick and tired of looking for metal scraps in Brooklyn to channel their artistic tendencies with a skateboard. It was also responsible for many frostbite cases within New York, as it victimized all those who chose not to follow the plywood-suggested navigational moat that ran alongside the frozen swamp at the entrance.