Late start to the annual “Year in Review” series, but we weren’t about to let up on one of our favorite annual traditions in this occasionally great but more often awful year. We are going to condense the first installment into ten entries for the sake of time. One a week from here on out though :)
The 2016 reality of bust-free spots in the nation’s largest city is grim (e.g. they knobbed a bump in the ground this year, and people are literally interrupting their lives to argue about the placement of a trash can on the street.) And so, New York’s underemployed population of industrial design grads began to ransack the plastic horizontal beams off construction barriers city-wide, and stacking them to create some sort of pathetic poverty row parking block.
Fall QS gear available at Supreme (New York + Los Angeles), Labor, 35th North, 510, Alumni, Atlas, Black Sheep, Civil, Commissary, Exit, Homebase, Homegrown, Humidity, In4mation, NJ (Hoboken + New Brunswick), Orchard, Palace 5ive, Pitcrew, Seasons, Select Skates and Uprise. Hitting Japan this week, Europe next well. QS webstore launches [next] Monday, November 2nd at midnight.
“Dare I say that the Dime Crew is possibly even better than Rick Howard?” Chris Nieratko spent Canadian Thanksgiving with the Dime squad. (Full Disclosure: They don’t celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving in French Canada.) Skateboard Story also interviewed Phil Lavoie about the inner-workings of Canada’s greatest fashion house.
Leave China alone, guys. They have enough problems without you telling them their flawless public spaces look “boring” on the internet.
ANYWHO, Japan is having a moment this week, and this Traffic clip from 2010 — described as Ricky’s “last hurrah” in the final episode of his Epicly Later’d — is a fun watch. Happy Thanksgiving.
“I don’t try hard tricks anymore.” — Jack Sabback, 2012
Chapman has been producing skateboards for over two decades. This makes them the longest-standing northeastern skateboard company, in addition to one of the few remaining places where you can produce a deck that comes with a “Made in the U.S.A.” emblem. Their Deer Park, NY headquarters doubles as something of an east coast skateboard museum. Everything from the first Zoo decks, Supreme artist series boards that resell for thousands of dollars, to one-offs that were never mass-produced line their walls. If someone started a skate company on the east coast these past twenty years, they probably dealt with Chapman.
We asked Gregg Chapman, one of the company’s founders, to take us on a tour through the building, and share the stories behind a select few of his favorite boards.
(Plus their guest verse in a rap song counterparts.)
As America’s premier inventions, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that both rap and skateboarding have similarities. For example, guest verses on rap songs and guest tricks in parts virtually operate in the same exact way: they start careers, they rejuvenate careers, give way to friendly competition on the same spot/beat, and sometimes, they simply provide material for the nerds to nerd out over.
…and yes, this is maybe the nerdiest thing ever posted on this website.
Putting your team on is the most hip-hop shit you could do in any realm of life, even if it often results in bankruptcy. We dug through the rich dual histories of putting other dudes on your song, and other dudes in your video part, seeking comparisons whenever they were applicable. This is rather Transworld video heavy because they embraced the power of the cameo far more than other institutions. Think of them as the Hypnotize Camp or Wu-Tang of skate videos…or something.
