Photo via Drew Adams
Once upon a time in the sweet, innocent year of 2014, the Quartersnacks newsroom came up with the idea of doing a “Reps Who Rip” series of video parts. They would be shortish, not-too-serious parts from guys working a job hawking skate goods and still finding the time to shred.
Photo via Stafhon
#SaveTompkins in The New York Times. Sign and share the petition to keep synthetic turf off the courts at Tompkins.
The JHAKX video from Takeshi Nagamatsu has a New York section to start it off, plus a lot of familiar faces. It’s funny to see the metal strips across the Cooper Union bank get defeated one at a time over the years.
“Pleasure” is a 20-minute NJ/NYC/Philly video by Hugh O’Hare, and “Don’t Smoke That Wood In Here” is a 10-minute NJ/NYC/Philly video by the Lottery Boiz. Shout out to the enduring badness of bust-free ledges in the greater New York metropolitan area, which causes all of us to still drive out to Staten Island to skate P.S. 6…in 2019. Also, of course skaters wasted no time editing something to Young Thug’s late summer beach anthem, but tbh, “went from boogie board shorty and now I’m the big kahuna” is a lot to live up to.
#Mandatorypost of #TylerTuftycontent for our core readership.
Congrats again Bob LaSalle on the pro model basketball. Photo via Antosh.
“Day in the Life” videos warrant a cursory skimming through at best, but this one with Jawn Gardner skating around Long Beach and making friends with everyone kicking him out of spots could have gone on for twice as long :)
You’ve probably caught this one already — but Go Skate Day in Bogota, Colombia was insane. Hope everyone is ok.
Philly from Humidity, Tyler Tufty, and Keith (!) Denley (!!) all have cool clips in this Nike SB wear test montage from Minneapolis a few weeks back.
People are still flying down that hill from the Long Island Expressway by Queens Mall, huh? Iconic 2008 spot. OMW is a twenty-minute video by Angel Delgado that Skate Jawn posted up last week. Features a bunch of familiar faces.
Collages by Requiem For A Screen
There’s no shortage of talk about a deck’s notorious resistance to inflation. But what about shoes? While something like a Lebron in 2019 is substantially more expensive than a Jordan in 1999, skate shoes have hovered around the same average $70-80 price tag for the better part of two decades, even as skateboarding itself has grown and adapted to new trends, technologies, and customers. Meanwhile, every fashion house in Europe has been raking in the money these past few years, pushing puffy sneakers reminiscent of old skate shoes.
We tracked down the principal figures behind the first three-figure skate shoe, released in 1997, and got their story on what was as much of an anomaly as it was a watershed moment for skateboarding as a cultural phenomenon, and style of footwear design. (Keep in mind that, adjusted for inflation, $100 in 1997 is the equivalent of $156 in 2019.)
What was the skate shoe landscape like at the start of the nineties?
Don Brown, Chief Brand Strategist at Sole Tech: Airwalk, Vans and Simple were the only other shoe brands. They had become so mainstream and rigid — and there was a dip in the economy, so they scrambled to get sales wherever they could. Pierre [Andre Senizegues, founder of Sole Technology] was doing the distribution for Etnies at the time, bringing it over from France. When skateboarding crashed, vert and freestyle were pretty much eliminated. There was a whole generation of upstarts, like Rocco and them, and everyone in skateboarding rode for Etnies at some point.
Chad Muska: There were a hundred riders on Etnies, or something crazy like that. Even that High Five video had so many people in it. The shoe industry then was like, “Oh, this company is going to give you free shoes. Maybe there’s a chance you get paid.” It was so secondary to boards. There were early pro shoes, like the Half Cab, the Natas, and the SLB, but I think the real start of the skateboard shoe industry being serious was when they began making videos.
Diego Najera with the first trick in last week’s #1 QS Top 10 line. 125th Street. Photo by Mike Heikkila.
Diego and Tyshawn are leading everyone else in 2018 for tricks that leave phone screens and comment sections, and actually enter conversation between IRL humans.
Check the full Humble Laboratories commercial from Conor and Genny (2x as long as the Instagram one) + then go support the boys.
“Midtown to us was really just like 5 blocks though. Like 50th Street to 54th Street on 6th Avenue.” Village Psychic catches up with R.B. Umali for some stories about skating Astor, Pyramid Ledges, Union, Courthouse Drop, Flushing, etc.
Tufty showed up and surprised us in Paris on our first day, then we didn’t see him for the rest of our trip because he was doing grown man shit, like waking up before 1 P.M. to go skate spots before they get too crowded.
Here are seven minutes of recent-ish Sean Pablo footage loosies.
Antosh uploaded a quick montage of all our friends out in Vancouver, aptly titled “Hiatus.” You can also pick up his zine from a summer 2017 tenure in New York at the Stussy store on Spring Street.
Like everyone else, our first thought was, “Whoa, they still do X-Games Real Street?” Bobby’s entry is all Pulaski footage.
Posting “2017 in Review” content the day before May 1 is pretty dumb, but TWS has a quick recap of Cyrus’ past year over on their site, so why not? ♥
TWS also uploaded 411 issue #2, which features a Tom Penny “Wheels of Fortune” section filmed exclusively at the skatepark that Palace’s winter pop-up park, Mwadlands, was based on. Fwiw, 411 creator, Josh Friedberg, said that the Penny section was one of his favorites ever from the video mag’s run.
Staletape is a 28-minute long Philly scene video by Joe Ostrowski.
“Whereas Torey Pudwill’s arm motions often hit the red while balancing on history’s most drawn-out backside smith grinds and backside tailslides, Magnus Bordewick’s flapping generally coincides with rocketing pop and crater-making impacts.” Boil the Ocean re: the state of arm movements in skateboarding and Magnus’ new part.
7-minute iPhone clip of Tyler Pacheco and the Crailtap dudes skating New York.
“Popwave” made me want to go skate not-so-good skate spots with all my friends.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Donovan Mitchell should be fun to watch for like, the next decade-and-a-half? Who does everyone have for Sixers-Celtics?
Quote of the Week
11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “What’s the best trick you can do?”
Adult Skateboarder at Le Dome: “Pop shove it.”
11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “…you’re kidding me, right?”
This is the first semi-late Monday Links post since we vowed to swear off them in honor of the queen’s 30th birthday. BUT — in our defense, the entire office is a bit lagged from traveling back to New York yesterday. We don’t deserve a Gucci polo, but at least it’s not going up at like 4 P.M. ♥
