Elm Street

Lou stuffed a VX1000 mold with a bunch of quarter snacks. Respect.

“A group of trigger-happy skate punks shot two men outside a Latin restaurant in Queens early Saturday morning, police said.” Ummmm.

Phil Rodriguez’s Caviar part will forever hold a special place in all of our hearts, and seeing his minute-long Insta part last week made everyone really happy.

With cab flips #trending hard in the first half of 2018, we’ll throw T.J’s one from his T.F. West Insta clip as an early frontrunner for one of the year’s best.

“Skateboarding is such a beautiful thing that gathers people from different backgrounds, and is a radical practice that reimagine cities, ways of life and transcends borders. But I think skateboarding has been resting on its ‘norm breaking’ status.” Free has a piece by Marie Dabbadie from the Pushing Boarders conference that invites us to think deeper about gender identity within skateboarding, rather than giving ourselves hollow pats on the back simply for not being the lacrosse team.

Theories has a new montage up featuring what I imagine will be the last footage ever released from Ziegfeld :(

E.J. made a short video with Powers skating the Queens triangle spot (recognizable from every Bronze video ever) for his collaboration with Fila.

Taylor Nawrocki filmed an entire part at the Williamsburg Monument.

Jamie Thomas talks to Manhattanite Keith Hufnagel for thirty minutes.

Not much by way of New York footage, but Brass and Jawn Gardner have some clips in the new OJ video.

“I find a lot of that talk…Like Thrasher gear and what not, ‘Ey yo, you don’t skate, you’re not supposed to wear it bro!’ You have a baseball hat on and I haven’t seen you throw a curveball motherfucker.” Germany’s Solo mag caught up with Jason Dill.

They’re knobbing spots that, like, three people have skated before now.

QS Sports Desk: J.R’s Game 1 “I thought we were ahead” jersey sold for $23,500. Imagine the biggest mistake of your career still being worth a new Volkswagen Passat.

Quote Tweet of the Week:

Rest in Peace Jimmy Wopo.

Keep Biting — New Watermelonism

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Alexander Mosley — the most worldly traveler of all QS affiliates — just released the forth installment of his Watermelonism series, entitled “Keep Biting.” Filmed throughout a winter stint in Colombia and a summer in New York (plus a few Puerto Rico tricks), and featuring Alex Figueroa, Alex himself, Olu Stanley and Phil Rodriguez, the former Q.S.S.O.T.Y. who had quite a bit of a 2016 comeback between this, a couple Iron Claw clips, and Bronze’s Plug video from this past spring.

Other reasons aside, we don’t even have a J-Kwon on this continent anymore, but South America does. All the more reason to bail on this tense, angry place for a nice Colombian winter, or year, or four ;)

New boards + tees available over on Watermelonism.com.

Music by Alex and G.C. Colaianni, scratches by DJ Impereal, who has a fire vegan restaurant in Medellin.

Previously: Stripe Melon, Travel Melon, Sea Scenes

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First Day Out

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Late start to the week bc of the holidays :)

Attn: Hot new trendy country Canada — Blue Tile and Antisocial have new QS gear in.

The I-Beam is the hottest T.F. obstacle since the Tombstone.

Like every facet of American life, skateboarding was hit hard by the 2008 recession. Lurker Lou has an oddly insightful glimpse into the industry of the pre-recession, pre-iPhone era by giving a 2007 Thrasher a last look. “Respect the Machnau.”

Here’s post-Love Park life in Philadelphia, with a Grandpa cameo in Cell Jawn #26.

Yo for like a casual, pre-premiere session around the Lower East Side and Chinatown, this clip of the Volcom team before the Holy Stokes screening has some jams in it. Nobody’s ollied those two double bump-to-bars on Madison before, right?

Fakiehillbomb went skating with QS-favorites, the Hungarian Rios Crew in Budapest for two weeks, and came back with this bit of low-def photojournalism.

I mean, for a varial flip on a l*ngb**rd, it’s perfect.

What you know about skateboarding in Nicaragua bro?

The Green Zine interviewed John Shanahan about #fits and the resurgence of shove-it reverts, and Venture remixed a good bit of his LurkNYC footage.

Even if you skate zero transition, there are certain skate landmarks you gotta pay a visit to just because (think Burnside, the Christiana bowl, etc.) The La Perla pool in San Juan, Puerto Rico is on that list. Monster Children did a quick story on the spot’s history, and how it slowly revitalized one of the slummiest parts of San Juan.

As per the note re: everyone still wanting to see Todd Jordan skate in Lou’s segment, here’s his gem of a “Wheels of Fortune” section, checking off every box of late-90s/early-2000s New York skate nostalgia:

The Canal Wheels section from Transplants is now online.

Cafe Creme has an interview with multiple People’s SOTY winner, Dennis Busenitz.

Dane Vaughn skates some New York rooftops.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Gotta be Steph’s 4-on-1 off glass lay-up to close out the first half last night? What’s everyone thinking, Warriors in six? Durant leaves?

Quote of the Week
Inquisitive Gentleman: “Have you ever seen a shark out in the water?”
Dave Dowd: “I don’t believe in sharks.”

‘Plug’ — The New Bronze Promo

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Three hours late may not have been much in 2010, but on the 2016 internet, we might as well be posting the new Bronze promo in the 2010 archives. We blew it.

“Plug” is a departure from the past few rounds of Bronze projects not because it is in HD — not their first video to ditch the VX — but because it’s far more conservative with the nostalgic non sequiturs that made it one of the western world’s most ripped-off skate video franchises. At the same time, it’s a return to the late-2010s, post-Flipmode / pre-merch availability era that made us fall in love with the Bronze age. There’s a revived Phil Rodriguez not seen since the 2011 Q.S.S.O.T.Y Caviar days, an ender part from the venerable Trife alumnus William McFeely, and a loving tribute to the God K.T. in which he appears for one clip like Danny Way in Photosynthesis credits except way tighter — making “Plug” a two-sided love letter to new and old Bronze fans alike. Also shout out to Nick Ferro for consistently making all of us underweight skateboarders proud, part after part :)

Previously: Trust, Enron, Solo Jazz, 56k, Caviar, Sognar

What A Time To Skate At Night — A #TRENDWATCH2015 Special Report

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November 3, 2015: Future Hendrix drops “Helluva Night,” a somber unreleased tune chronicling late evening escapades of standing in the middle of orgies, putting smiles on the faces of women with loose morals, and being #influenced by Tootsie’s Cabaret in Dade County, Florida. MERE HOURS LATER, the skateboard media news cycle drops TWO night-themed video clips. Hell of a night, indeed.

If you had the slightest bit of a thought that Nayvadius DeMun Wilburn isn’t the gatekeeper of all forms of art and culture in 2015, you can lay that doubt to rest.

Skating at night was once a necessity, not an aesthetic. We waited til night to evade security, avoid the crowds, and bask in the shadows away from surveillance cameras. As the dominant mode of skateboarding in New York and other metropolises has shifted away from well-lit business districts into dimmer outer-borough crust, skating after the sun set has become a lost art. You can count the amount of night clips in your average Johnny Wilson video on your hands with a couple of fingers missing.

That doesn’t dull the fact that night footage, particularly in cities, looks cool as shit. Except that after asking your team to wallride off cobblestones in the Bronx for an entire afternoon, making them shy their sights away from the nearest bar with at least three girls in it ends up being a tall order. A “NIGHT CLIP” becomes an event, not a byproduct of zoning that placed the best marble in an area best visited after the people with real jobs had left.

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