The final installment of the QS year in review. Still have the Readers Poll results, Top 10 of the Year, etc. to get through :)
5. Inflation Gets The Dollar Slice
Whether it was your landlord jacking up the rent by $1,000 for the place you snagged during peak COVID panic, or reeling from the first-ever unanimous hike in deck prices — it was tough to not talk about money during 2022.
It is almost insane that dollar slices existed for as long as they did. Their run defied the odds, year after year, with an unprecedented resilience matched perhaps only by 99¢ Arizona cans. Today, it’s still the same bad slice that tastes better on the way home after a few drinks, but now, it’s $1.50 — or, shit, even $2.
Yes, there are a few $1 holdouts, but it’s only a matter of time…
4. Leo Heinert’s PROdemic Part
At least half of the most famous spots in New York have a crazy Leo Heinert trick on their scroll — often one that unlocked another approach to the spot altogether. Yet Leo’s Torro part finds him in another realm. He skates already slippery midtown marble …in the rain. He grinds up granite hubbas …landing into their stairs. He charges the wrong way on the Flushing six …and still finds time to nollie flip out of it.
He changed his Insta name to his real name instead of @tonyhawkny this year, but that old one really summed up this part.
3. They’re Repaving Tompkins
We knew this day would come, especially as the cracks in the ground have worsened tenfold in recent years. Community Board 3 announced a plan that would remove the dugouts, add more benches, a drinking fountain, a [non-rubber] walking loop (e.g. it’s only painted on the ground), and of course, new asphalt. All of this is slated to be complete by fall 2023.
How the asphalt cures and whether it’s that shit that turns soft in the summer is anyone’s guess, but for our purposes, an important piece of information practically flew under the radar: they’re finally ending permitted sports, putting an end to decades of skater v.s. softballer warfare.
2. Tyshawn’s Subway Gap Tricks
What’s better than kickflipping over a live MTA subway track and keeping it under wraps until it lands on a Thrasher cover? Probably going back three nights in a row to backside flip it after your three parts for the year already dropped. The speed with which the initial trick was one-upped practically lead certain people into being misled that a New York City subway track “isn’t that big.” Lol.
As we did with the last time Tyshawn won S.O.T.Y., there’s really no need for a Q.S.S.O.T.Y. this year. We’re with Thrasher on this one.
1. The Bench Goes South
How do you write about this without veering into “skaters r so different!”-isms…
It might be impossible.
But it’s so lovingly fucking idiotic that a guy abducted a bench from an Orange County courthouse when George W. Bush was president, skated it in a famous part that burned it into the brains of multiple generations of skateboarders, lost it, replicated it, found another one, then dropped it off at the most famous flatground spot in a city ~3,000 miles away — and that’s only half the story, and not even the funniest part of it.
Late this past summer, Harry Bergenfield and co. kidnapped the bench from Tompkins, brought it to Philadelphia‘s most famous flatground spot, landed it on the news, had IT stolen by groundskeepers, who then were then jedi mind tricked by a group of enterprising Virginians into forfeiting it, brought it to the south, and it continued down I-95 to land in the Peach State.
According to Google Maps, this innocuous 300 pound hunk of metal travelled 3,710 miles. If that isn’t a testament to the brilliant moron magic of skateboarders, what is?