(Late) Monday Links & Things

February 7th, 2011 | 4:00 pm | Daily News | 10 Comments

It seems to have been a slow week for the internet. A big week for being “under the weather” in more ways than one. Need to get back in the habit of posting these in the morning though.

Thankfully, it’s forty degrees outside and nothing is really skateable. Midtown is actually pretty clear, but the one decent spot that you might not get kicked out of up there is still covered in snow.

Forty Degree Snow Report: 12th Street Edition

Forty Degree Snow Report: 54th Street Edition. It’s permanently raining from the scaffolding here.

Forty Degree Snow Report: Alexander Mosley Edition. I’m going to be sure to e-mail him back with a vivid description of our weather to get him jealous.

Forty Degree Snow Report: Fashion / Cargos & Uggs Edition (?)

Not sure where this video is based out of (there’s a lot of footage from around here though), but it’s a solid thirty-minute project by Max Hull featuring Dylan James, Paul Tucci and others. A good way to pass the time if you’re forfeiting efforts at skateboarding for a few more weeks.

Great Song Choices in Video Parts: Volume One. Completely forgot Rick had skated to this, at least prior to a few weeks ago when someone’s maligned conception of “a half hour,” turned into us sitting in an office for three-hours and almost watching the entire Girl/Chocolate Box Set.

Some late-to-the-party news…

Be sure to check out Joseph Delgado’s promo video for NYC Griptape. It’s been online for a minute, but is the first great local part of 2011. Features cameos from Rodney Torres and Shawn Powers.

In case you have been in a place without the internet, Luis Tolentino now rides for DVS and grinds up Houston, Texas handrails with plywood-on-grass runways. Big congratulations goes to Luis, he’s been skating fast as hell, doing his own thing, and channeling New York skating no matter where he is for as long as anyone can remember, so him getting some recognition like that is way overdue.

Aside from the skate spots, and an occasional cool building or two, the east side of Midtown is the most disgusting place in New York during the weekends.

Quote of the Week: “I wish Lady Gaga would make some new songs, but she’s on tour.” — Switch Michael Strobert

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End of the Month / Seasonal Depression Links

January 31st, 2011 | 4:14 pm | Daily News | 6 Comments

This forecast is absolute murder. The ghost of winter 2010-2011 is definitely going to leave many reminders in our springtime recovery efforts, as well.

Japanese MTV ran a New York sightseeing bit on Supreme back in 1996. It’s a time warp into what skating seems to have looked like fifteen years ago: World Industries boards still up on the wall, a copy of Mouse in the video display, bulky-ass skate shoes, Triple Five Soul being down Lafayette Street (That actually lasted much longer than 1996, but unless you were trying to keep swooshy cargo pants or army green bucket hats with stash pockets alive, that probably had little bearing on your existence), and Nas in his Raekwon-envying, confused, chipped tooth era.

Assuming you’re like most people who skateboard and check Crailtap regularly, you have already seen this. In case you missed it, the latest Mini DV Drawer features the B-roll version of Mike Carroll’s masterwork of a downtown Los Angeles line from Fully Flared. I wonder what the original fakie flip inclusive rendition was, before it got switched to the switch frontside 180 / backside flip combo.

Although this website has never really been on some naïve message board nonsense by dwelling too hard (or at all) on skateboarding’s duo of most visible representatives (aside from occasionally complimenting Ryan on his New York based skate tricks)… Sheckler and Dyrdek are really fucking these kids up by endorsing something called “Bill My Parents.”

Some late-90s New Jersey footage from Robert Brink over at Already Been Done. It’s an over four-year-old upload, but it’s new to me. Features some raw Tim O’Connor and Pancho Moler footage, plus shots of the beloved Hoboken Ledges.

The Chrome Ball Crack Rock Incident presents the Hubba Hideout photo collective.

A token Norwegian has done his best in channeling one of the more difficult endeavors in Southern California schoolyard bank skating, by skating the parallel six-stair rails at the brick section of Columbia from the actual incline. Well done.

There are some new ledges in Boston, they look beveled, but the good ground would probably make up for that. Hopefully the snow covering the northeast right now thaws out by July.

Howard Glover has uploaded the Brooklyn section of his Pre-2K video onto Vimeo. Half of the four minutes is set at the best spot to ever reside on Kings County soil. Billy Rohan insists that the Parks Department stores all of the marble they remove from renovations in some warehouse, i.e. it never simply gets thrown out. We should write up a letter telling them to keep their skate parks, and just install a few skate friendly plazas throughout the city with already-skated-on marble.

They have security guards watching that stupid wall on Bowery & Houston now. Art game is intense, bro.

Quote of the Week: “Tanqueray is like drinking a Christmas.” — Ben Nazario

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Winter Warz

January 24th, 2011 | 2:47 pm | Daily News | 3 Comments

Someone explain how Antarctica is winning right now, weather-wise.

William Carpio, the man responsible for sitting there with me over several rounds of Presidentes and turning this site’s logo into a tangible cruiser board, wrote some kind words about our operation over on 12 Ounce Prophet. Big thanks to Will and all his help this past year.

“Dude, when the hell did Spanky get a gnarly tan, cut his hair, and move to Indonesia? Filming that Stay Gold part must have really done him in mentally.”

It is no secret that this site prides itself in being one of the internet’s greatest resources in all things Dylan Reider. He is an almost unanimous favorite skater for the QS crew right now, and has been the reason why many of us have deemed it unnecessary to hire a stylist for skateboard-related pursuits, as his video parts fill that void. Yet, we’ll be the first ones to admit that this Fuck Yeah Dylan Rieder site is kind of…uhh…uncomfortable?

While on the topic of handsomeness and Thrasher meets Vogue, all headshots and upcoming S/S 2011 ad campaigns can be submitted here.

And also on the topic of QS-favorite skateboarders, The Chrome Ball Incident has a great Rick Howard post up for today. What the hell is going to happen at Girl and Chocolate once all the older dudes fade behind the scenes?

This late-90s Base Brooklyn Promo (not late-80s like the description says, that’s insane or a typo) was posted this past summer, but even taking into account the redundancy, it features many shots of Fred Gall skating in camo pants.

There is no reason you shouldn’t have seen the Epicly Later’d Season 3 trailer yet. It involves discussion of Love Park tattoos from 1993, Polaroids of lower back tatted strippers, why Javier Nunez deleted his Facebook, “dressing like a whore,” stealing skateboards from “two Oriental kids,” the correlation between shootings in North Philly and bump-to-bars, prison stories, why pushing someone while having a meat cleaver in your hand is considered robbery in the first degree, “the first time I seen a real uzi,” guns, knives, crack pipes, five lighters, and getting arrested for being “too silly.” Oh, and tell Kareem Campbell to call back Patrick O’Dell!

A lot of great off-shoot content from last week’s big mafia bust surfaced (largest in New York City history.) Check out this one of the 20 best nicknames (“Tony Bagels” is either the best nickname ever, or the name of Ghostface’s lost single) or this New York Post story about the significant decline in the mob’s fashion sense.

Download the NPBS mix if you haven’t already done so.

Quote of the Week: “Girls from L.A. and gay dudes love the Jets.” — Leroy Holmes

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Winter Refuge: Below the Bridge Skatepark

January 21st, 2011 | 3:22 pm | Spot Updates | 12 Comments

It snowed again. With one more inch, we’re en route to having one of the snowiest Januarys on record.

Although mentioned in previous posts, we have had a few chances to actually skate the Below the Bridge Skatepark in Bayonne over the past several weeks, as it has been the only real source of non-weather dependent terrain, aside from maybe a fun box in an office. The park isn’t that big, but they maximized on what space they had. The normal protocol here has been that the people who only skate ledges stick to the left side of the park, and everyone else skating the stairs, bowl-half and euro gaps stick to the right side. It does tend to get crowded in the evenings, but is pretty much clear at any time you expect kids to be in school, and weekday nights have never been too much of a hassle in terms of overcrowding.

The ledge is really solid. If it was in Brooklyn or Tribeca on decent ground, it’d be one of the best ledges in the city, so you’re not really settling for merely a box with some Home Depot angle iron glued on. There’s not much here in the realm of transition beyond the half of a bowl, which some kids treat as a mini ramp, and a three-foot-high quarter pipe at the top of the stair platform. (There has been talk about building a bowl or a mini ramp in the space next door though.)

The park has already been responsible for some new Zipcar accounts, so it’s definitely worth venturing out to a few times over the winter. They have three sessions: 12-3 P.M., 3-6 P.M., and 6-9 P.M. (There actually might be a 9-12 on Fridays and Saturdays.) Each session is $15. Located at 9 Gertrude Street in Bayonne. (Ten to fifteen minutes via Holland Tunnel when there’s no traffic. 25-minute to three-hour drive when there is traffic.)

Both of the pictures are enlargeable. Yes, there’s a weird ghosting thing because they were taken with a cell phone and not a real camera. I was gonna post some footage of Andre Page doing ollies onto absurd things, but there might actually be a half-indoor / half-ignorant winter clip on the horizon to relay the largely undocumented face of New York skateboarding in the wintertime.

Winter Viewing 2011

January 12th, 2011 | 5:23 pm | Daily News | 3 Comments

Much like the previously-unheralded Lurkers 2 Vimeo upload, and due to the fact that there is nearly a foot of snow outside, we should probably tell you that Coda’s Self-Titled (from 2007) video is online in full, just barely making it to three hundred views.

Upon release, this video sent tons of kids to Google Earth, searching for pixelated views of spots in the less-friendly portions of the Bronx and Brooklyn, and onto a two-hour A train ride out to Rockaway so they could skate in the middle of the projects. “Classic” New York videos barely had any outer borough footage, and we’ve gone on about how Static 2 and Mosiac had an influence in changing that (along with white people and their natural tendency to do weird things like skate into walls because they’re mad at their parents or something), but this video brought New York spot-seeking to a whole new level. Every part is solid, and unlike most videos today, there’s no bad pacing or annoying music in it. Aside from Lady Gaga, Creedence is the only unanimously QS-approved white people music, so there are plenty of great things about the video. It’s always been a personal favorite around here.

The quality isn’t the best, but what can you do?

Coda coincidentally has a new site up, so be sure to give it a browse once you’re done watching this and your umpteenth personal screening of the Daewon part. Speaking of which, Daewon should hire the Coda dudes to take him around to spots in New York, now that would be a great video part. There’s the real king of “abstract spots,” don’t ever forget that. Why he hasn’t gone the more Puleo direction and tried to get more “urban” with it is anyone’s guess, but realistically, it probably has to do with the weather.