This past holiday season, we were blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with one of the most elusive fashion houses on earth. No, it was not Chanel or Celine, but another opulent, French-speaking office: Classic Griptape.
99.3% of Classic’s profits get funneled back towards research into how to stay ahead of the competition in continuing to produce The World’s Best Griptape™, but the remaining .7% of our collaborative profits were spent on a team retreat to Puerto Rico.
There is always an endearing quality to skate crews that stick together into adulthood — navigating work, family, and all the hurdles life throws in the way of linking up to watch your friend try a wallride behind a dumpster on a Saturday morning in December.
Decade is the third video from the Be Easy crew out of Sherman, Connecticut (about an hour and 45 minute drive from New York for our friends from foreign lands), concocted while the crew was reminiscing over old tapes from the VX days. The video was filmed over the past six months and dispersed with MiniDV memories celebrating a decade since their earliest projects filmed as a collective.
We’ve talked about it on here before, but it almost feels like your average New York-based crew is more likely to drive two hours to Philly for a day trip than just over the Westchester border to skate Connecticut. Videos like Decade (or 2021 favorite “Your Big Cheesecake“) do a great job of showcasing the vibrant homegrown scenes that exist in those smaller cities — places that have historically produced skaters as wide-ranging as Alexis Sablone to Brian Anderson to Jim Greco. Shout out to Alexis and Trevor Thompson’s new shop, Plush, in New Haven, where Decade premiered, too. (Somehow the first CT shop to carry QS goods!)
To celebrate the launch of the Alltimers x Vans Zahba shoe, Justin Stout (of Rascal video fame) whipped together this quick L.A. trip edit of Stafhon Boca, Coles Bailey and Zach Baker — shot between the bomb cyclone in the northeast and the gnarly January rain out in California. (The shoe itself feels like a legit version of the Vans Air Force Ones that anybody who visits Japan for the first time absolutely loses their shit over. Something for the cup sole heads.)
Also heard that John Choi was on some of these sessions, but that footage is being kept top secret until the time is right ❤️
For the third winter in a row, we are proud to present the latest from Milan’s Rat Ratz crew.
What started as an endearing glimpse of the next generation of skaters coming up at Milano Centrale, quickly grew into something much bigger — the last Rat Ratz project is sitting at something like 800k+ YouTube views right now. (Not that it’s ever only about numbers, but that many eyes on a 15-minute homie edit without any help from big-name pros is incredible.)
Their latest finds them growing into their expanding powers on a skateboard — one-upping themselves at the spots that have remained staples throughout all their projects, and weaving in some travel as well — while truly shining at the train plaza that brought us all together in the first place.
Video, Interview & Intro by Farran Golding
Headline Photo by Tyler Cichy
The shared output of Dick Rizzo and Paul Young is cine-literature — one with touch points and tributes surrounding many of what we could call “heritage” east coast texts.
We touched on exactly that in regards to the pair’s Hi8 Half Cab project for Vans last summer. However, we took the investigation further, digging through the tapes and speaking to both Richie and Paul about the nuance, folklore, cellar doors and sessions with Uncle Freddy that underwrite their ode to what came before.
