Tokyo Report — Kenta Okamoto’s ‘PEACE N LOVE4’ Video

Last month’s all-Tokyo Yuto part (already platinum!) put a bright light on one of the most hidden-in-plain-sight skateboard secrets: that skating in one of the world’s greatest skate cities is profoundly hard. (It’s kinda like when your crew does its first-ever L.A. trip and realizes the place isn’t one perfect schoolyard after another, like the videos had lead you to believe.)

Despite the odds stacked against street skating in Japan’s capital, the place continues to produce incredible skaters and videos. And today, we’re happy to present Kenta Okamoto‘s Peace N Love4, the latest in a series of largely nocturnal Tokyo videos that him and his crew have been putting out since 2020.

More »

Weekend Viewing — ‘BUG Overseas’ from the BUG Crew Out of Hamburg, Germany

The BUG crew out of Hamburg, Germany first came onto our radar via our friends at Place mag out in Berlin, when we co-presented their Get Bug video a year ago.

Their latest is Bug Overseas, which finds them beginning in their home of Hamburg, then making it out to Berlin, Rotterdam and New York for the obligatory pilgrimage to our city’s most sacred site: Mambo Bar.

More »

Reporting From the World’s Greatest Skate Spot — SID’s ‘STA’ Video

Five years ago, after returning from a trip to Prague, we reported that Stalin Plaza — by our estimations — is probably the greatest skate spot in the world. In the time since, we’re still confident in that superlative, and many friends who have gone on to make the pilgrimage themselves have echoed our review.

The SID crew out of Prague came onto our radar for the complete opposite reason. When we had been in the Czech capital, the locals that we crossed paths with tended to say “there’s spots …if you have a car” regarding places to skate beyond the plaza that looms over the city’s scene. SID’s August 2021 “Prager” edit was the first Prague video we recall that featured footage in the region from everywhere but Stalin Plaza (besides the ender.)

More »

Favorite Spot With Lucien Clarke on Victoria Benches

Although good ledge spots are hardly synonymous with British skateboarding, it’s a surprising reality that they were missing from even the country’s capital until the turn of the millennium. Such was the landscape of London until, in the late 1990s, heaven was discovered in an unassuming patch of greenery just down the road from Victoria Station. Jacob Sawyer’s wonderful “Ode To Victoria Benches” story for Slam City Skates pinpoints the spot as having been discovered somewhere around 1997. The Blueprint Skateboards team and friends would go on to localize it, with the benches appearing in Waiting For The World, Headcleaner, and First Broadcast.

More »

Monday Viewing — Sexhippies’ ‘Sexwax’ Video

“Sexwax” is the latest video from Sexhippies and Orchard Skateshop videographer, Ted Purtell. Filmed in New York, Albany, and Springfield, Massachusetts, it’s the follow-up to this past winter’s inaugural “Hi” video with a small parts’ worth of footage from Eddie and Jojo Vargas + appearances from Cooper Qua, Zac Gavin, Jasper Dohrs, Carlos Kanter and Colby Strong. Fence scrapes seem to be on the rise (that ender spot is some shit you’d expect from a video out the northern U.K. crust), and there’s a tre in there worthy of the pantheon of emphatically rotated Photosynthesis tre’s.

And if you’re just joining and wondering “wtf is Sexhippies?” — Village Psychic got the backstory a few months ago re: the origins of the brand and how the crew came together.

More »