It has been a quietly monumental week for New York City skate footage, at least from a historical perspective. While the Skate NYC Apple Juice documentary is quickly working its way over 5,000 YouTube views, several lesser-exposed video clips have been released to accompany it, and they might be even more precious than the doc itself. I have no clue who “skinnypoo” is on Youtube, but he just uploaded a fifteen-minute gem of raw, late-eighties New York footage featuring Harold Hunter, Hamilton Harris, Jamal Simmons, Ryan Hickey, and even Steven Cales, all in their teen years. We’re talking people who already have sparse video appearances throughout their regular skate careers, let alone footage of them skating Tompkins in 1989.
These videos, along with the documentary from earlier in the week, have quickly managed to fill in the aforementioned late-eighties/downtown gap that the Deathbowl doc glossed over. It’s amazing how there is barely any Banks footage throughout the videos, yet plenty of Midtown, World Trade Center, and Tompkins stuff, not to mention a few cutty East Village spots, including the (now blocked-off) manual pad in front of P.S. 19 on First and 11th, and the two-stair curb next to the NYU dorms on 9th Street between Third and Second. You can go two decades hearing about an era of skating that was barely documented outside of a few iconic Shut or Harold Hunter photos, and then out of the blue, someone unloads thirty minutes of never-before-seen footage. The stuff that turns up on YouTube is absolutely amazing…
feels great when clips don’t leave me asking for a re-edit
i don’t re edit i reload. feel my spray. free biggaveli. r.i.p harold
youtube linked me to nakel smith from odd future
SHUT lied to me wen dey said dey were da only skaters in Nu’york/
This is why the Internet exists. Academic collaboration be damned..
hi, my name is Luis Rodriguez.
i used to work at skate nyc in the 80’s and 90’s…all of the guys in those videos were friends of mine…we skated often…we hung out even when not skating.
im glad to see you guys enjoying the videos. they have motivated me to start skating again. iam 39 years old now. even with all the great things that have happened to me in my life skateboarding is and always will be foremost and the greatest.
happy skateboarding.
Luis Rodriguez
http://www.youtube.com/skinnypoo
Da Shit Is Tight.
Yo, NYC dovned it right fo eva.