We’ve seen a fairly unfortunate blossoming of the “death comes in threes” superstition this year (well technically, The Banks might be saved come 2014 according to a statement released by the Department of Transportation, so we have not exactly suffered the greatest symbolic loss yet, and the Flushing situation remains up in the air). I passed through Ziegfeld last Tuesday afternoon on a coffee run and noticed all of the benches removed from the floor, and all the picnic tables unbolted and caution taped off — uh oh. Writing it off as a routine power-washing of all the slide marks on the floors, today’s morning coffee run pass-through yielded a heartbreaking sight. They completely re-did the floor surface, rendering it a hard version of essentially the harshest sandpaper you could imagine. Lets just say if you skate here five nights out of seven on a given week and a board usually lasts you a month, it will probably live two weeks less now if you continue that same routine. Beyond the fact that the entire spot was essentially built on some of the best ground in Midtown and now has a similar texture to a shitty patch of concrete, speed and flat in and of themselves have become a lost cause here. Nevermind that fact that it’s literally impossible to finagle a “270″ out of a slide trick by turning the last 180 degrees on the floor. And I am not going to even begin to theorize on what would happen if your skin just so happened to skid across the surface. If this is what skatestopping is turning to (I’m guessing it was a calculated measure, as our wheels weren’t exactly the friendliest marker towards their off-white floor), I am terrified for what the future holds.

Photo by Keegan Gibbs

And in the realm of Quarter Snacks updates, I am fully aware that this has probably been the slowest fourth quarter of updates in this website’s four-year history, particularly when people from Boston are walking into certain skateshops on Lafayette Street and complaining about the lack of updates. I am not fortunate enough to live Matthew Mooney’s bohemian (good call on whoever coined that one) lifestyle, and have had other, boring life obligations ruin my updating habits these past few months. Hopefully the Christmas clip will make up for it, but who the hell knows. Otherwise, I’ve been “working” on a large scale revamp that should launch this winter, but that’s been taking um.. a bit longer than expected.

The prospect of a Trap or Die 2 mixtape will inevitably skyrocket my productivity level, as the Snowman’s early-summer mixtape release did not necessarily meet his otherwise extremely high standards of motivational music, and Gucci Mane, despite all his merits, is nowhere near as an inspirational figure as Mr. Jenkins, so his output has fallen flat in that realm. Jeezy’s status as pretty much the only southern rapper not in jail for parole/probation violations or gun charges right now will inevitably propel Trap or Die 2 into classic status of inspirational literature.

Shawn Powers’ nighttime visualization of Queens as San Francisco

Random clip featuring Kerel and others

Flipmode = the Best

Skateboarding needs more Quim Cardona. More New Jersey and less Ohio and Brooklyn.

Pimp C died on this day, two years ago, and rap music has pretty much sucked ever since. If half of these bums on records nowadays put in half the passion on their songs that he had when discussing female pubic hair, we wouldn’t have such an awfully boring corpse of genre on our hands right now.