Let’s get this most-venerated of QS recap traditions wrapped up.
Top 10 of 2024 + Readers Poll results on the way.
5. Tre Flip For The Timeline
The medium is the message — or something like that.
We’re all accustomed to the fact that Tyshawn Jones is a one-man overton window re: what is possible on a skateboard. Cans, subway tracks, other shit …these were all things that were ollied and 180’d 99.9% of the until the Tyshawn began.
But a dude throwing a tre flip over a gap that he kickflipped for his bestseller Thrasher cover during his S.O.T.Y. run — on the …timeline?
In an age where Instagram is the bane of every team manager’s existence, with A-roll too-often ending up on the timeline, no skater has mastered social strategy, while still leaving the people knowing that the best is still locked away in the vault.
4. Recording The Ride
It is tough to imagine, especially if you’re of a certain age, but New York was once a novelty within skateboarding’s collective consciousness. Big videos didn’t even begin premiering here with regularity until the 2010s.
The idea that skateboard videos of a quarter-century past could carry a museum exhibit in a place dedicated to celebrating the history of motion pictures — some 3,000 miles from the seat of the skate industry (and film industry, for that matter) is quite revelatory of how far we’ve come.
3. The OD Premiere
No matter how much you swear off social media, your life is still governed by it.
There is the old adage about how all journalism is local. All skate companies are local, too.
Hardbody has posted zero times on Instagram. But pull up to a spot in New York, you see a sea of Hardbody boards.
The premiere? Slammed. They posted zero times to promote it. People were throwing their hats at the screen for the only P. Tricky clip in the whole thing.
New York is probably one of the easiest skate scenes to experience from the comfort of your couch hundreds of miles away, but that’s never reflective of what’s actually going down in the real world.
…which brings us to…
2. Antonio
It feels almost belittling to do our silly Q.S.S.O.T.Y. and give it to Antonio because he’s incredible enough for the big platform to be the one to hand him those reigns. Q.S.S.O.T.Y. is, however, celebratory of the incredible skaters who also organically skate with Keith. But this is also somebody who switch frontside flipped the Flushing big six eleven years ago.
This year, the dude went *up* the CBS ledge and down into the pit.
He smithed and wallrid at the same exact time, for a skate-version of the “is the dress gold and white or black and blue”-conundrum.
He won the F.A. invitational game of S.K.A.T.E., dropped two parts in a month, and broke the windshield of an “unbreakable” C*bertr*ck with one lil’ switch frontside flip, as a treat.
…all while looking like he’s just fucking around. It was impossible to skate around New York in 2024, and not hear about some crazy Antonio shit.
1. The Tompkins Ground Goes HD
In the fifteen years (lord…) that we have been doing these things, 25% of the number-ones have been about Tompkins. But yo, this was a truly watershred year for Tompkins.
They haven’t re-done the ground since the early-goddamn-90s. Like, the year 2Pac dropped his first album.
And this year, we got the initial high of “whoa! New Tompkins asphalt!” only for the spot to close again.
“We’re painting it,” the signs said.
Shit!
It was more than a 50% shot that they’d fuck it up. 12th & A got fucked up with the bad sealant, so why not Tompkins?
But remember: the O.G, Tompkins ground outside of the painted baseball diamond was sandpaper.
They did it, and they did it *better!*
L.E.S. Park is pretty mellow these days.
Less people asked you to meet at Cooper or Blue this year.
Shit got so good, the pizza went back down to a dollar on the block. Tompkins literally solved inflation.
It’s obvious, but it’s not wrong. It was Tompkins’ year.