Silas Baxter-Neal | Quartersnacks

I Can Buy Myself Griptape, Write My Name on the Tail

Daily News October 2nd, 2023 · 12:00 am

For Fuck’s Sake: The Tompkins construction start date has been moved …again. October 16th. Going to stop posting these every week from here on out. It starts when it starts. (P.S. Some of the in-better-shape obstacles have been moved into storage.)

“They had a trashcan fire in one of those iconic Love Park bins. It was so cold that people’s bushings were freezing up making turning impossible… They had to grab their board and leave it by this trashcan fire for five minutes, which would buy them five minutes of skating before the bushings froze back up and they had to do it again… It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, people everywhere.” Palace videographer, Jack Brooks, is the latest subject of the Slam City Skates blog’s “Visuals” series, in which he discusses Bill’s “Pigeon” edit, the Palace Kalis board, filming Lucien’s Palasonic part, and more.

A watershed moment in the Bobshirt franchise: an hour-long interview with Rick Howard and Mike Carroll.

Slouching Towards T.F.

Daily News July 19th, 2021 · 12:00 am · 8

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions on the QS one-spot map. Going to try and keep it as up to date as possible. Funny how practically the same day we went live with it, there was a new part filmed entirely at the Dylan monument spot in Berlin, and one at the Herbis plaza in Osaka. (Portland sources seem to say that the new Silas part is filmed at two spots, thus failing to qualify for the metric of being able to pinpoint it to a single location.)

Thrasher dropped an extended IGTV raw edit of the T.J. footy from the last lil’ Instamix that came out alongside his lowtop shoe. Wow, obvs.

Ben Kadow has a new Hockey part filmed pretty much entirely in the city, on insane spots that seldom register as “spots” to us normies, e.g. the 5050 bench ollie at Central Park, the perpendicular drop in boardslide, et al.

All the Streets Are Silent — the documentary that was supposed to be about Zoo York’s Mixtape video before sprawling into a much bigger project — arrives in theaters this week.

Lost In Translation — The Alluring Difficulty of Skateboarding in Tokyo

Features & Interviews November 20th, 2018 · 10:56 am · 9

Legos not Lagos

Tell another visitor the truth about street skating in Tokyo and the response is between an eye-roll and defensive denial.

The truth: Tokyo is [deep breath] …not that good for skateboarding.

Ok, wait! Don’t start yelling! Are there spots? Yeah, there are. Are there tons of incredible skaters from there? Yes, a lot. Is there a vibrant skate scene? Yes, yes, and yes. Does it have quite literally the friendliest, most amazing locals on earth? Good God, a million times yes. Tokyo has incredible skateboarding culture, but when you find yourself a tourist there, you soon realize this previously unfathomable truth: you’re more likely to come home with five expensive jackets you don’t actually need, rather than five tricks you’re happy with for a video.

This past October was one of those great groupthink travel moments where many diverging crews all happened to be in Tokyo at roughly the same time (a la that one January when literally every New York skater was in Barcelona at once.) As we’d cross paths with newcomers, the following interaction became commonplace.

“Have you guys been skating a bunch since you’ve been here?”

“Er, um, not really, no.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s um…kind of hard to skate here.”

Cue the “You guys are probably just hungover everyday,” or worse, the proverbial “We’re more ‘core’ than you” subtext that assures the denying party will have an easier time being productive in Tokyo than you have.

Until you run into them the next time, and they concede to reality.