“What does that even mean?”
Nothing. Or at least, something different for everybody.
Torey Goodall said it one time, and it always stuck with me. As you age, “romance” in skateboarding doesn’t get less abundant, but it does stubbornly confine itself to specific memories. It ties itself to finding the feeling of why you’re still doing it in the first place. Do it long enough and on some days, skateboarding feels like a routine — your past three attempts at having fun remind you of why you hate the spots that you hate. But it’s there. Somewhere. Though not necessarily at home.
Between 2014 and 2017, various incarnations of the Quartersnacks office have visited Copenhagen six times. No place is perfect, but Copenhagen is perfect. Is it perfect to people who have lived there for years? Of course not. They hate Copenhagen how we hate New York. Anytime we show up and ask them to take us to some spot that quite literally has no equivalent on our continent, what’s the response?
“Oh, I haven’t been there in over a year. That’s a tourist spot.”
Just as the monotony of taking a group of out-of-towners around New York’s Financial District is only quelled by vicariously living through someone having fun at a spot you haven’t enjoyed in half a decade, you find it in unexpected places. Our romantic notion of a marble ledge with good ground and no bust is someone else’s dream of slappying a curb that only exists in this hot, annoying, expensive city.
There’s some cheesy metaphor in there about junkies chasing their first high, but I think like six hundred other people have used it before.
We just want a straight [fucking] ledge, man.
Contributing Filmer: Anton Juul
Quartersnacks for Street Machine will be available at Street Machine [online & in-store], Civilist, Arrow & Beast, Ben-G, Lockwood, Slam City Skates and Labor tomorrow. Available on the webstore at midnight.
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