Consensus in the skateboard world is a rare and fleeting thing.
But for a sweet moment in time there, we agreed on a few things.
For example: if a ledge is on fire, it is not the best place to administer a switch crook. Or that a pond of toxic sludge is not the ideal place to roll away from an ollie.
But even those onetime uncontroversial viewpoints have been shaken in recent months; the lessons from those two beautiful idiots with the gas can have — shockingly — been learned.
Something was afoot in videos released this spring. If you looked carefully, people didn’t seem like they were waiting for spots to dry anymore. Not in a Phil Zwijsen going-out-to-skate-in-the-rain-conceptual-(p)art sort of way — but if there was a puddle in the landing, fuck it, maybe it’s easier to wrestle with the make now, rather than coming back after a few days of dry weather.
Sam Mason via Vague “Hangar” part
Val Bauer via Vans’ Much Quiet
By the time summer blockbuster skate video season rolled around, Joe Campos was rolling through a puddle to do a wallride, and John Fitzgerald had an ender on a bank-gap-to-potential-staph-infection in Hockey X.
Except it’s not only impatience with the substance that covers 71% of our planet.
For a blip in time, dragging a sheet of wood to smooth over a rocky landing wasn’t the faux pas it has increasingly grown to be. Today? We’re ten years deep into watching Aidan Mackey off-road down hills, so a bit of rubble at the end of a double-set is hardly worth the time you’d spend to remedy it in 2022.
Michael Brunner via “Slow Def“
Niklas Speer via “Lobby Dreams“
And manual pads? Fucking forget about it.
Have you seen the kind of shit the people good at manuals are doing — only to get funneled down to 3-days-ago purgatory on the explore page? Are you going to scour the fine print of a 245-page A.B.D. scroll on the Chinatown Manual Pad, or are you just gonna wheelie through some cobblestones like the industrious young mind that you are?
Quinn Batley via Much Needed After A Long
Jasper Stieve via Neema Joorabchi’s “feast ur eyes”
And of course, there is Torey Pudwill, giving himself respite from the gruel of 50-foot-long grinds by allowing the fire to take all the spectacle for itself in his prequel to 2032’s “The Biggest Bang.”
Torey Pudwill via “Bigger Bang“
The skateboard attention economy is at an all-time low, while the volume of content remains at an all-time high. The luxury of “I’ll come back tomorrow” continues to erode; the hot new flow kid in town will scoop up your clip an hour after it gets tossed in your in your do-later pile. The sort of outer-borough crust that defined some more aesthetic types’ oeuvres in years past is standard-issue skateboarding now. All that skating on grass and into stairs rather than over them was bound to lead us to a place where no spot was too wet, too rough, too cobblestoney, or, um, too engulfed in flames.
Everything was a spot, and now, EVERYTHING is a spot.
However, spots are only temporary.
But a clip? A clip is eternal 🔥
Everyone is still ten years behind Daewon on this.
sour videos are normally good for this stuff
awesome article, but you guys shouldve showed Sammy Montano’s grass throw down.
maybe it wasnt “messy” enough though, i could see that.
Grass was a 2021 trendwatch! https://quartersnacks.com/2021/03/grasswatch2021/
Last 3 lines of this post are the realest shit you ever wrote.
Love this shit