Apologies for this being a bit late. We spent all of yesterday looking for the only dry spot in New York. Past installments here: #s 25-21, #s 20-16.
15. R.I.P. to an Empire, the Water Street McDonald’s Closes
For every great skate spot, there is an accompanying fast food restaurant: the Burger King down the street from the Banks, the McDonald’s up the hill from Pulaski, the Wawa by Love, or the In-N-Out across from Hollywood High.
Water Street was once the most heavily treaded road of lower Manhattan skateboarders; Pappalardo and Wenning’s days of going to Burritoville near Pyramid Ledges to sustain on free nachos are well known. But that place closed. The aforementioned Burger King is now a high end grocery store. The nearby Wendy’s was turned into a tourist center. And this past year, the final remaining destination for hungry, poor skateboarders, shut its doors. Skating on Water Street isn’t irrelevant just because all of the spots are knobbed — but because everyone except the top 1% of skateboarders (those with an above minimum-wage income any income whatsoever, who can afford a Chipotle burrito) have effectively been priced out, right down to food options.
14. We Were All Sorta Wrong About There Never Being a Pappalardo Comeback
When the Pretty Sweet trailer came out with nothing but a Pops bail in it, assuming you’d never see him really skate again seemed like a safe bet. The video came out, and he had eight seconds of footage in the bonus features. You’d think people on message boards would find another skater to blindly assume was on the verge of a comeback year after year. To everyone’s surprise, Pappalardo spent the year posting Instagram pictures of himself…skating. Insofar as you’re willing to adapt your definition of a comeback to the social media age, he was back. Though maybe not a I.G.S.O.T.Y. candidate in terms of what he puts out there, still seeing the dude back on a board was a pleasant development.
13. Skating Union Square Becomes Relevant Again
It started with Alex Olson’s lipslide in Pretty Sweet, continued with the Beef Patty dudes’ footage logs, and is now apparent in the latest batch of winter videos. For the first time since the renovation that sent ravers scattering for underage girls elsewhere, skateboarding at Union Square is fashionable again. Whether or not the Union-loyal goths and runaways feel slighted by skateboarders’ fair weatherness towards Union will be one of 2014’s pivotal questions.
12. Some Kid Does This:
How utterly insane is it, that some kid boardslid the five-flat-nine rail at Sunset Park — a trick that would not look out of place in a Leo Romero or David Gonzales part — in the RAIN, and it was casually tossed into a “Summer Trip to New York” montage? If that’s not an indicator of how good the average non-pro, sk8 4 fun kid is nowadays, what is?
11. Dime Points the Mirror At Us
Rather than being a Shawn Powers, Magenta, or even QS parody (it wasn’t edited to Future and we’ve never used Super 8 “Old NY” stock footage before, so that might be a stretch), this clip was the 50 Cent to the “Summer Trip to New York” clip’s Ja Rule. Or maybe it is the Blazing Saddles of “Summer Trip to New York” clips? Regardless, if you watch enough of those clips, this is how they truly start to look after a while. Leave it to French Canadians, of all people, to figure out the most visually poetic way of getting that point across.
Speaking of which, we won’t be doing a statistical analysis this year, but here’s this…
Bonus Mini 5 — Best “Summer Trip to New York Clips of 2013:
Beyond – New York
Chris Milic and Friends in NYC
Juicy Elbows NYC_2
Snack NYC
Fancy Lad NYC 2013 Edit
Dimestore ruined my life
eric reidl shoulda been soty
figured you assholes would be up in arms about how snack skateboards stole your name
also enjoying the more gif friendly version of the site
C’mon snack y’all know ghost set the union rail off in jps video
FREE GHOST
5 flat 9 is Erick Winkowski, you guys find the video but still put “some kid”. WACK
^sup erick
@ daygo, calm down, being “some kid” is not really a diss in this case.
and Yeah, glaring omission, ghost definitely laid is down on that front board, i wish there was a second angle of that one
JP can there be a raw footage edit with more of the roll up on that one?
thanks gawd
Epicly Later’d – Eric Riedl
Thanks for linking our video and keep up the nice work. FYI to “…” Snack Skateboards been operating since ’07 and nobody stole names from anybody so don’t trip
WTF I wanted to be analyzed, I made a trip to NYC specfically to make it on the QS summer montage review!
pops only skates garbage
matt mooney sucks sooooo bad!