Wheeler Antabanez and Fred Gall’s three-part feature on finding and skating a bank of the roof of an abandoned theater in downtown Newark, New Jersey is incredible. It has everything from urban archeology (the theater closed in 1968 and has largely sat untouched besides by graffiti writers since), to skateboarding to a dash of the paranormal. Absolutely loved every second of it and pined for a time when internet content wasn’t all optimized for shortform social media.
Following Filming, the video essay YouTube channel that brought you the dive into the history of the Element flatbar, has a new one that tracks down 75 skate tricks named after the people who invented them. Yes, he acknowledges a lot of them are obsolete, but an incredibly fun and well-researched piece.
ITCH magazine has a behind-the-scenes look of Victor Campillo and the Marseille boys’ trip to New York a lil’ under a year ago, which resulted in the “CRABI” edit. The comp of Val’s museum back 3’s at the end is downright hypnotic. Kinda wish every trip edit came with a B.T.S. like this.
Baltimore’s Vu Skateshop has a sick photo feature + video for Skate Jawn about skating the desolate-in-the-winter beach town of Ocean City, Maryland (which happens to also contain the oldest-running municipal skatepark in the U.S.) We ❤️ seaside crust.
Cooper Winterson has a quick check-in edit from the Utica Avenue D.I.Y.
Conor Dougherty was on the Mostly Skateboarding podcast to talk about his New York Times piece on L.A’s Costco Curbs.
“If you want people to care about your collaboration, about your team of skateboarders, and their skateboarding, the easiest way to do that is to simply give them a reason. By drawing a genuinely cool throughline from product to promotional video to IRL obstacle, they’ve done that. Just look at Nguyen repeat his magic on home court.” Simple Magic wrote about the Late Nite Stars crew’s T.F. obstacle and video.
Spot Updates 📍 — Shout out to the DOT (or whoever) for finally using their fuckin’ heads. They took some leftover hunks of cement from a seawall construction project in Staten Island, and turned them into some irregularly shaped benches and tables in the West Village, behind NYU. They happen to make a pretty nice skate spot.
Loosies Corner 🚬 — A collection of Jim Grecco clips, 1995-2005.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week 🏀 — Anunoby over Wemby.
🏀 “Nights like this communicate to the people in our care that we’re not the judge or jury.” The Guardian wrote about watching Game 1 of the NBA Finals. In Rikers Island.
🏀 FWIW, the fellas’ interview with Ginobli was beautiful. And why not: here is Ginobli ending the Big 3 Miami era in one play at 37 years old, for old times’ sake.
🏀 BTW, you could hear the cheers from the Game 2 win across the river in New Jersey.
🏀 And yeah, the guy who ran on the court to take the selfie during Game 1 is banned from every NBA arena for life.
Quote of the Week 🗣
E.J: “I’m about to drive to Tompkins.”
Inquisitve Gentleman: “You just skating Tompkins today or on a mission?”
E.J: “I’m always on mission when I’m skating.”