QS Restaurant Week — An Oral History of Skateboarding’s Most Notorious Fast Food Hangouts

Words & Interviews by Frozen in Carbonite
Illustrations by Cosme Studio

The history of the [largely extinct] American Skate Plaza™ has been documented meticulously in thousands of hours of video footage, interviews and podcasts.

However, documentarians of #theculture have largely overlooked the ancillary dining establishments that fueled — on a molecular level — the innovation and unforgettable sessions at spots like the Brooklyn Banks, Pulaski, Embarcadero and Love Park.

Until the rise of “foodie” culture, Yelp and the general trend of eating healthy and shit, most skaters’ palates trended towards the most convenient fast-casual options.

With that in mind, and in conjunction with New York Restaurant Week (which is apparently almost a month long ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), we present Quartersnacks Restaurant Week — an oral history of legendary spot-adjacent fast food restaurants. Over the course of conducting the interviews, some common themes emerged, i.e. most skaters favored carb-heavy menu options as an easily accessible energy source. In addition, at most spots the skaters and food service workers formed alliances — an interesting anthropological wrinkle in terms of how different cultures interact.

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Don’t Care If That Drop-Off Got Some Mileage Mileage

It’s one of those “more words than videos” weeks :)

“But skateboarding’s worldview can often become so totalizing that commitment to it far into adulthood, past the age when it’s socially acceptable to ride around in a school bus smoking weed and listening to Slayer, can look like protracted adolescence. This is why skateboarding, for a large chunk of the country, will never fully outgrow its degenerate associations. And that’s fine.” It is notoriously difficult to produce a genuinely great piece of writing about skateboarding, but Noah Gallagher Shannon’s profile of Grant Taylor ticks all the boxes. Send it to your mom.

The cutest skate interview you’ll ever read: Skate Jawn spoke with Alexis LaCroix about life with his Instagram-famous cat, Rita.

Supreme has a quick Hi-8 Insta clip with Gonz, T.J, Rowan et al. for their upcoming collaboration with Spitfire.

“Love gave you this feeling, and I can’t explain it. Muni does not. At least for me it doesn’t.” Brian Panebianco checks in on a Love-less Philadelphia skate scene.

Sidewalk interviewed the mind behind Science Versus Life, and touched on the connections between New York and London skate history a bit. Your photo incentive check is in the mail btw ;)

With Ripped Laces effectively dormant in 2018 (no shade), The Hundreds blog has oddly been publishing some dece coverage related to the world of skate shoes: “Retracing the Strange History of Shoe Design” + a #listicle of five non-skate shoes that still became tied to skateboarding.

Stefani Nurding has an op-ed piece about how “Girls Nights” have bolstered the acceptance of femininity in skateboarding.

An interview with one of everyone’s favorites, Justin Henry, where he reveals that Lebron James does, in fact, have more J.R. Smith in him than he cares to admit hehe.

This goes a good deal more in depth than his Epicly Later’d, though he isn’t as amorous with nature in it: Jamie Thomas talks to Chad Muska for an hour.

A decent bit of New York footage in feel-good Rob Hall part.

Spot Updates — 1) As you probably caught on already, Skate Jawn built a box to go over the cobblestones at Blue Park. 2) Columbus Park will probably be fine. Fingers crossed. 3) The building moved the planters back in front of the ledge at CBS.

QS Sports Desk: More excited for the off-season, than we were for like, the entire second half of the postseason. And if you think Lebron is coming to the Knicks you need to move to Mars.

Quote of the Week: “Hell no I don’t watch soccer. A bunch of buddies kicking balls? I’m good.” — Meatball

QS is perpetually giving 90% of skate video editors a hard time for their uninspired marriage to Big L + and this idea that basically all rap still needs to sound like nineties rap (how boring does that sound tbh?), but we’ll throw you guys a bone here because there’s a substantial chance you haven’t heard this one before, and it’s really fun:

So Random, This One

Photo by Bryce Kanights. Scan via Science Versus Life

“So, you’re smoking weed on the plane at…13-years-old.” This Steven Cales “Nine Club” interview is full of gems from late-80s and early-90s New York. If you want some footage accompaniments to the people/companies/places/era he talks about a lot, check these 88-92 Skate N.Y.C. videos that surfaced on YouTube back in 2011.

Our dear friends at Lottie’s Skateshop collaborated with Spitfire and released one of the funnest all-L.A. edits in recent memory. Features legends like Andrew Reynolds, Michael Gigliotti and Danny Brady.

Memory Screen has a nine-minute montage up to commemorate the bro Mark Gonzales’ 50th birthday, edited to the another early-00s Real rider’s song from maybe my favorite video part ever :)

#TRENDWATCH2018: Are trips to Marseille the new trips to Paris?

The new, and improved Love Park is finally open! And it’s so bad that the designer of the Love sculpture decided to depart to another plane of existence.

And on a related, nothing-to-do-with-skateboarding but everything-do-with-skateboarding note, Village Psychic interviewed Nils Norman about the study of defensive architecture via Dismal Garden.

Theories of Atlantis is at the helm of a new wheel company called Dial Tone MFG. They have a new edit up featuring teamriders Jahmal Williams, Alexis Sablone, others.

The Bronze Instagram story has documentation of perhaps the biggest development to happen to skateboarding in midtown Manhattan since incentive zoning.

With every New Yorker’s favorite L.A. spot reaching an unfortunate demise, Andrew Allen provides us with the story behind the day when he backside flipped into the main bank at L.A. High.

Max Hull put together an iPhone montage from a winter Barcelona trip.

Smalls uploaded Pulaski montage 12 of 500 from Stop Fakin’ 3 ;) ♥

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: By the looks of it, this might be the final installment of the Sports Desk until the fall, but gotta give it to J.R. Smith running to the liquor store in the final two seconds of an NBA Finals game.

Quote of the Week: “So, Die Antwoord is these white people who rap.” — E.J.

Fredo In The Cut That’s A Scary Sight

The fingerboardable history of Columbus Park, coming soon…(Via @bobbybils on IG)

Whoa have you ever seen Mark Suciu’s Photosynthesis part?

Now that that’s out of the way, this is maybe the first Monday Links post ever where there are more links to articles (i.e. written words) than videos…

“After drilling his truck bolts back for a bigger nose and noselsliding ledges in the ’80s, Mark had one of the first noseslide photos on a rail (one where he’s actually sitting on it rather than just dinging it) as a sequence in his June 1990 Poweredge.” As per an indirect solicitation, Mackenzie Eisenhour enlisted Guy Mariano to chronicle how the modern noseslide was invented. As suspected, Mark Gonzales is responsible.

“As he flies through the air, he is caught between life and death, suspended in the void of nonexistence — the ultimate Kleinean motif.” Jamie Thomas’ “leap of faith” as a work of avant garde art juxtaposed against the art of Yves Klein. Yeah, fuck it, why not.

Vice has an interview with Jonathan Rentschler about documenting the final years of Love Park for his book, Love. QS review for it here. And you can should buy it here ;)

This is oddly…not bad? Deadspin (of all places) has a #longform article about the full history of Rodney Mullen V.S. Daewon Song — though idk about it “changing skateboarding forever.”

If you’re wondering how many nights the five-minute line in Miles Silvas’ new Adidas commercial took, Monster Children has an interview with him about it. (Spoiler: 4.)

Boil the Ocean offers some thoughts on J. Scott Handsdown and Dan Pageau taking crowdsourcing via the skateboarding community to newfound heights. To be fair, they ain’t special — Meatball pioneered this concept when he tried to GoFundMe a ticket to Australia so he could tag along on a Hardies trip.

Dill gets nostalgic for eighty minutes in probably Bobshirt’s longest interview to date.

This is the funniest spot in New York right now.

Volume 7 of Elkin raw files via Theories. Ollieing an open newspaper box door in the middle of a line is some real shit huh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A thirteen-minute remix video of Wes Kremer and some DC friends from Mick Robbins.

Quick clip from Cooper at Owl’s Head Park.

The new Byrdgang video is premiering at China Chalet this Thursday. 8-11. Video plays at 9:30. 47 Broadway obvs. Flyer here.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week:Hello, police? Chris Paul is trying to beat me up.”

Quote of the Week:

Sabotage 5 — #theprocess Continues…

Photo via @brian_panebianco on IG

Words by Frozen in Carbonite

“The Process” refers to the Philadelphia 76ers’ management philosophy under former General Manager and President of Basketball Operations, Sam Hinkie. In a nutshell, The Process contains three guiding principles:

A. Minimize competitiveness in order to obtain high draft picks.
B. Stockpile those draft picks in order to maximize trade values.
C. Delay “trying to win” until the team drafts a transformational, once-in-a-generation player. Based on the history of the NBA, this is mainly how teams have set themselves up to win championships.

This strategy requires a shit-ton of patience. Nevertheless, over the years “Trust the Process” has become a mantra, a philosophy, and a rallying cry for 76ers fans.

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Back in the essay on the Philadelphia sports mythos, I focused on #toughness as Philadelphia sports’ guiding principle. Nothing exemplified this in 2017 more than Sabotage 5, in which Brian Panebianco and his usual suspects — plus some new additions — skated Love Park until every last slab of marble had been extracted and nothing remained but a few dirt banks into which to ollie.

On the other side of town, perhaps as a form of karmic balancing of the universe or some shit, something happened to the 76ers basketball club: They became sick-ass fun to watch.

So here we are, at a crossroad in which the Sixers are displaying flashes of basketball genius, Process believers looked ahead to a promising future, and the Sabotage crew released their final video chapter. As an homage to both #theprocess and the extensive Sabotage legacy, let’s take a deep dive into how the two crews match up.

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