Tompkins Square Park — like all other skate spots, institutions, and thinktanks — is subject to the winds of time and generational shifts. The Tompkins of today is a different ecosystem of personality and obstacles than even the one that stood on the original Save Tompkins Day in 2019.
…much like that one is different from the immediate post-Autumn days when the lifespan of a box or rail would rarely exceed 72 hours.
…and that one was different from the post-9/11 years when it first became a buzzing central hub that exceeded the popularity of any traditional street spot.
…and that one was different from the Skate NYC days depicted in endlessly reposted nineties lore.
Since the pandemic, @fuck.this.industry has served as a de facto surf cam into the daily happenings at T.F. — sped up (bc who has the time to watch a rollaway on their phone anymore), and siphoned through the perspective of crews who have the luxury of spending prolonged days on those soon-to-be-replaced green benches. (Naquan’s “will he send us some weed” edit from the summer is another vision of this very same dynamic.)
And so, F.T.I. made a YouTube comp (the medium of record, of course) to bottle up this moment in time, for posterity’s sake :)
And to any T.Fers of yesteryear who still tap in from time to time: It might not be the T.F. of your days, but like the old adage goes, “Tompkins don’t stop, it keeps going.”
F.T.I. got some new goods also. Put some 2008 in your body.