Didn’t do a Q.S.S.O.T.Y. thing last year, but obvs it would’ve been Brandon Turner — hard to think of a more inspirational moment in skateboarding from 2020 than him rolling away from Wallenburg. Jenkem has a 15-minute mini doc about Brandon’s journey back to full health and sobriety. Watching him return to that bridge is nuts.
Here’s a YouTube comp of T.J. footage off the Thrasher Instagram from the summer, which is just him cruising around midtown and Soho. Those middle of Broome Street lines are so sick.
A couple New York clips in Thomas Dritsas’ new part for Thunder. The bench to Big Belly trashcan on Wall and Water Street has fully turned into a full-fledged marquee spot this past year, huh? Shout out to the contractor who installed the mailboxes at the ender. Looks sturdy.
Pete from 4Ply went on the Mostly Skateboarding podcast to talk about looking at skateboarding through a data science lens.
“Increments – Episode 3” is a new video out of Buffalo, via Skate Jawn.
“Skate videos create mental maps, albeit patchy ones.” Some writing about skate videos as city symphonies, or at least as something adjacent to them ;) via Dominique Teoh (spotted via Dr. Paul O’Connor.)
“The way in which people come together and work together on a DIY build fascinates me. It’s nothing short of anarchy in action.” The Slam City Skates blog has an article about the organized chaos of D.I.Y. builds, as inspired by the U.K’s D.I.Y. scene.
Wish this type of thing became more of a #standard for the remaining print landscape: Zach Chamberlain put together an edit of the first five editions worth of photos from Richard Hart’s Push Periodical alongside the corresponding footage.
Even beyond “13:37,” which is already one of the standout releases of the year, there’s been a lot of good videos coming out of Sweden lately: “Jakindamode” via Sean Christiansen is a 21-minute raw edit featuring favorites David Jakinda, Vincent Huhta, and Josef Scott Jatta + “All The Ingredients But No Recipe” is a new edit from the Junkyard crew out of Stockholm.
“I remember one night, there was something wrong with my board, so I was sitting on the curb watching Huf and Keenan playing like 40 games of S.K.A.T.E. When they finished, Keenan was like, ‘Yo shorty why aren’t you skating?’ I was like, ‘I just started and I’m not that good yet.’ He was like, ‘Let me see your board.’ He looks at my board and tests the tail for pop, and he was like, ‘Nah, man you can’t be skating around on this.’ Pops his board up and looks at it, and he’s like, ‘Here yo, this is yours.'” NY Skateboarding put up the latest edition of its “Wriders” interview series.
Quote of the Week: “There’s always going to be people claiming unemployment who don’t even need it — I mean, in Italy, there’s blind people driving cars.” — Francesco Pini, Chief QS Italian Operations Officer
best quote
Mr. Sutton,
When thinking retroactively to fit an emerging phenomenon into your own dusty political framework, you only succeed at limiting its potentiality.