The Kareem Campbell Pager Mystery Has Been Solved

jfk kareem

If you follow the comments section of this website, you may have noticed a slight hubbub under our “Chillest Lines” study. A commenter insisted with surefire certainty that Kareem Campbell did not check his pager in Trilogy, and had checked it only during his opening line in 20 Shot Sequence. We called an emergency weekend meeting to study both of these clips, wondering how the error had made it past the eyes of some of the internet’s most esteemed skate nerds and was only being brought to light 36 hours after the post went live. (You’ll notice multiple parties helped in compiling the list via the thank yous at the bottom.) Do we issue a correction? An apology? Hold our first-ever press conference to remedy this crucial reporting error?

Following an admission of the believed-to-be error, we replaced the Trilogy screencaps with 20 Shot Sequence ones in utter shame. But then, Frozen in Carbonite, the Jim Garrison of our day and as astute of a Menace scholar as any (he was the one who contributed Billy Valdez’s “Cafe Line” to the list) came to the rescue with a conclusion after some meticulous research:

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Quartersnacks Trendwatch 2012

Video parts from smaller names (sometimes) provide a window to the trends that will later be attributed to more well-known skaters. Someone posted this new Tony Carr part in the comments yesterday, and it has several hallmarks that could potentially wedge themselves deeper into skateboarding’s current framework of trends. Our team of trend forecasters met late last night over a few cups of overpriced coffee to discuss what you (as a superficial skateboarder) should be keeping an eye on while we all wait for an enterprising pro to adopt Kellen James’ sock-tuck.

1 – The smith grind kickflip looks like it won’t disappear anytime soon. Jimmy Gorecki recently went on an agreeable Twitter mini-rant about how unnecessary it is for this trick to exist, ending off with what should be the ultimate rule for any pursuit at technical skateboarding: “If you didn’t see it in Trilogy…assume it shouldn’t be performed and/or displayed.” Those of us born before 1990 can all harmoniously nod our heads, until we realize that ten years from now, when technical skateboarding has strained the Osiris-era so much that it has no choice but to bring back the darkslide, there will be someone in their mid-20s saying, “If you didn’t see it in Fully Flared…assume it shouldn’t be performed and/or displayed.”

A QS iPhone app where you enter a trick you want to try and it cross-checks it against a database of all the tricks in Trilogy — Coming soon to the App Store.

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Trilogy Turns 15

The history department over at Frozen in Carbonite made a timely observation that Trilogy turns fifteen-years-old this summer. We are not qualified to dwell on the finer points of this video’s impact upon release (Photosynthesis on the other hand…), as we were not yet skateboarding when it came out. Those of us who started skating after 1998 unfortunately know Kareem Campbell more as a video game character than the guy in Trilogy. Hopefully, the internet’s prevalent cult of Menace nostalgists will seize this anniversary to write something substantial about what the video meant in 1996. It has held up remarkably well, and though much has been said about skate videos becoming more disposable over the past several years, only a few artifacts from the “golden age” of VHS have stood the test of time well enough to inspire nods from the modern era.

The only full, online edition of this video is on Google Video, and the quality is awful. It has been on there for almost four years without deletion. So we’re hoping the folks over at Dwindle do not mind us putting a better quality version online. (Seriously, if you have anything to do with the ownership of this video and you don’t want it here, please e-mail info *at* quartersnacks.com, and it’s gone.) Unicron has the three DVD World Industries box set for $39.99, and mentions that the set is recently out of print. It’s like a Criterion Collection release, but for skateboarders. Buy it while you still can.

Here it is, in Vimeo faux HD. Even with a correct aspect ratio. Watch it, study it, hope Kareem Campbell called back Pat O’Dell to get the Menace episode done, and enjoy the first weekend of the summer. 80 on Saturday, 80 on Sunday. “Where’s your footy at ‘Reem?”