Time Capsule | Quartersnacks

Where Were You The Day Smolik Was At BAM?

Time Capsule January 24th, 2012 · 2:32 pm · 3

How sick would it be to have a custom “New York” version of the Shorty’s wave logo on a tee? In another life, would Shorty’s be Max B’s favorite skate company due to the wave imagery? After all, he did shout out San Diego at the end of this song.

The history department at Frozen in Carbonite came through, yet again, by bringing to everyone’s attention this seldom-seen gem from the 1998 Church of Skatan video, Wild in the Streets. It features the Fulfill the Dream-era Shorty’s team riding around the east coast in a van containing a young Giovanni Reda, stopping off at the Hackettstown skatepark, Boston, and Philly, presumably in the days of heightened Love Park/City Hall police presence, as the section is all FDR and Burnt Cat footage. The New York ender is the best part though. Aaron Snyder was the only one with any New York footage in Fulfill, right? Smolik remedies that fact by destroying Pyramid Ledges with some tricks that would still hold up today. No real surprises there, he’s ahead of his time, blah, blah, blah…

It’s easy to imagine the day Smolik was at BAM as the nineties equivalent of the day Waka Flocka came to 12th & A. We’re all still kicking ourselves in the teeth for missing it…

Before There Was Autumn…

Time Capsule January 11th, 2012 · 3:32 pm · 11

Last summer, we wrongly attributed the “Golden Age of the T.F.” title to the period that coincided with Lurkers 2. The “Golden Age of the T.F.” came two years earlier, between the fall of 2001 (when the T.F. was born), and the summer of 2003 (when the World Industries box was there), with its absolute pinnacle being the manual pad, one-sided box, yellow rail, and black rail days. Yes, there was a time when there were FOUR obstacles at the T.F. Over the last five years, the act of returning the box to the shop a mere half-a-block away became immensely unpopular — just imagine that at the onset of the 2000s, people would lug four obstacles all the way from 13th Street to the park.

A large portion of the people you see at the T.F. in 2012 either did not skate, or did not yet move to New York when ABC was around (sadly, the people picking up skateboards and moving here for college now missed out on both the Autumn and ABC eras.) This video should bring you up to speed the time when Tompkins was fortified by Scott Schwartz’s excellent carpentry skills. It’s a much better representation of the era than that awful and horribly-aged Alphabet City video. With all due respect to Autumn, ABC might have been the superior governing body for Tompkins (please consult this clip for a glimpse of key moments from Autumn’s reign.) Everything is left to the history books now.

It is actually perfect that the second part is edited to Ms. Jade, as she, and other Timbaland side projects like Tweet (of “Oops Oh My” and “Call Me” fame) were massive favorites on the ABC shop speakers. Shout to NY Skateboarding for discovering this one.

‘Best sneakers worn in a skate photo’

Time Capsule January 4th, 2012 · 11:45 am

“Best sneakers worn in a skate photo. Bar hop in Jordan 4s. Billy Rohan used to wear them too, but his were fake.” — Matt Mooney

All the Menace Epicly Later’d episodes are sick, especially the Fabian Alomar one, but it would’ve been great to get a full Steven Cales episode. Read his 48 Blocks interview instead.

The story behind that was that I was at a bar and Monica Lewinsky was there. They used to have stars in there – it was in New York. From skating and going out since I was little, I had friends in the party world that would run the doors and we would just walk in. It was cool cause they wouldn’t let your average person up in there even though I’m average. Anyway, I was with Peter Bici that day and he had a camera. I happened to have beef with this kid that was in this party, right. I was sitting next to this girl, her name was Cameran Manheim – she was in The Practice. That was Monica Lewinsky’s friend, they were together. So, I go and sit down next to them and Peter snaps the photo. So that’s how that photo came out. After that I got up cause the guy I had trouble with came to me and we just started fighting. We shut that place down, everybody was running out – I was fighting and then all my other friends were fighting too. They put it in the Daily News, “Monica Lewinsky Bar Room Brawl!” E TV and all that shit was there the next day interviewing people. I was scared because I was on parole. I didn’t want to go to the media and be like “hey this was because of me.” Anyway, Peter gave me the photo and I shopped that motherfucker around. I went to Russell Simmons – he had a magazine, their pay was too low so I was like “nah I’m out of here.” I flew to Cali and went to Keenan’s house and was skating with Gino and all them. I went to the National Enquirer. First I went to Star Magazine, but their pay was kind of cheap – so I was like “nah, I’m going to the National Enquirer, last one.” Their pay was all right you know, so I just sold the picture, got the check, and was happy!

The Most Underrated Skater in the Game

Time Capsule December 22nd, 2011 · 12:26 pm · 11

“…but everybody wanna ~~use my slang~~ do my tricks…”

Transworld put their “30 Most Influential Skaters” cover story online this week, and it reaffirmed that Peter Smolik is essentially skateboarding’s E-40 in terms of unheralded influence. Whether or not he is self-aware as 40, or cares enough, is besides the point, but you can re-apply nearly everything said in this song to Smolik’s legacy. The only tough part would be figuring out who skateboarding’s equivalent of Mystikal is for the “They left us out the top 40, me and Mystikal” part.

Smolik was ten years ahead of the game with everything that has happened in skating since Fully Flared came out. Though his influence had to trickle down and be filtered through horrors like Tactical Manual, Manual Labor, and a bunch of parts in Logic issues from dudes doing nollie front tail 270s who you never heard from again, it came full circle to inspire probably everyone in the new Sk8Mafia video.

It’s possible that the editors at Transworld never forgave Smolik for inventing an anti-sag pant and shoe combo in the late-90s. It’s also possible that they have a loose understanding of what the word “influence” means, because we all know Smolik’s influence is in every kid that has done a slide-shove-it-slide combo (there are five in every video circa 2011), or decided to learn back tail big flips before kickflip back tails. Not sure who in the 30 you’d take off, but his “influence” is definitely more widespread than at least one person on there. (There’s obviously a small overlap between Daewon, who is on there, and Smolik, but Daewon is his own genre of skateboarding.)

Play them classics!

The Jake Johnson Files – Part 3

Time Capsule November 18th, 2011 · 10:05 am · 9

Ok, so, there’s no interview this week. Does the interview actually exist? Yes, it does. Will it be up next week? Probably, but you’ve heard that one before. Like last time, it was 65 degrees for half of this week, and web content creation took a backseat to enjoying what was the best weather New York will have until March 2012. Things still had to be edited, followed up on, etc., and that takes time. To quote a popular rapper that we don’t particularly even like for the second time this week, “Sorry 4 the wait.” (Don’t click that last link. That mixtape is pure garbage.)

As a consolation prize, here is a gallery of photos taken by the homie Zach Malfa-Kowalski from roughly the same time period as those two clips we posted earlier in the month, with some shots even dating back to the Chapman / Short Ends days. No, we couldn’t break into Brengar’s house or bribe him with cigarettes to release any potentially unseen footage that may be buried in a stack of dusty DV tapes from 2008. Big thanks to Zach for sharing these with us.