Photo by Shari White for Mess Skate Mag
In case you’ve been under a rock since last Monday, Neema Joorabachi’s Til It’s Gone video is online in full.
“Oh, I definitely wasn’t cool enough for Zoo York back then. I was just some weirdo out on Long Island.” Long Islander, Frank Gerwer, is the latest to get Chromeballed. Frank’s Number Nine part from 1995 is a great lil’ time capsule.
Jenn Soto and Mariah Duran share the screen in a Hi-8 trip to New York edit for Mess Skate Mag.
One of those, “Could have been a Top 20” weeks. Apologies for missing some favorites in what was a very nuts week. Everyone’s “#__ should’ve been #__!” is correct, as usual ❤️
We have a rare indoor park inclusion, and — in only January, mind you — The Best Noseslide of 2022. Any week with a surprise mini drop of K.B. footage should otherwise be a clear shoo-in for #1 (the background dude’s reaction says it all…)
There are spots that everyone always skates by and throws hypotheticals on: “one day, someone will ollie this gap,” “one day, someone will 5050 this rail.”
For years, people would throw out eventualities about the kinked rail beside the 53rd Street side of the Seagram Building, which is, of course, a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed landmark, a onetime home of The Famous Expensive Restaurant™, and the site of the green step-up ledges that the building’s security guards have grown an increasing affinity for throwing water on.
As ride-on grinds expanded in popularity, that fantasy got adapted for the modern age: “imagine if someone grinded that.”
“That” being the ledge that ran beside the eight-flat-nine double set.
“TREAD” is the latest video by Tanner Diamond — the follow up to the QS-favorite from last March, “OTIS.” It is hard to not feel bittersweet watching this one because it exemplifies the type of skating that versions of our younger selves once pursued on a 6x a week basis: barging midtown and Financial District office plazas in endless succession, fishing for a stroke of luck with security at each one. These dudes cover everything from relics that have been popping up since the original three Zoo York videos, right down to plazas embedded between buildings that were plots of dirt and trash when those three videos were being filmed.
Here is a rundown of skate spots located at landmarks named after Martin Luther King Jr. — though the most famous is the ledge spot in Miami and that got omitted. (Also! The benches have been knobbed for a decade-plus, but MLK High School on 66th and Amsterdam has the janky runway 13 that got tre flip’d in The HSS Video.)
“You trying to skate?
“Where you going?”
“We’re going to ConEd.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
👆 This actually sounds like 90% of the conversations ever had about Con-Ed Banks. Congrats to Max Palmer for his Best Special Effects Oscar nomination, and to Max Hull for his Best Director nod!
