Quartersnacks

Weekend Viewing: Ronnie Bertino in Second Hand Smoke

Time Capsule June 6th, 2014 · 5:50 am · 9

ronnie bertino

What did you think this @ 3:28 was a homage to?

In Alex Olson’s “Five Favorite Parts,” he mentions how Video Days was a “myth” growing up. It was the video all the older dudes would rave about, but it’s not like you could go to the skate shop and buy a copy eight years after it came out.

Questionable was the other “myth” video from that time. Like any kid who loved Rodney Mullen because of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the Rodney V.S. Daewon videos — judging skateboarding based on how many times the board flips — you’d hear about all the crazy shit he did in Questionable. Rodney’s 540 flip was one of the first three-second skateboard clips you could find on the internet in the nineties. But again, it’s not like you could easily find the full video. You had to get creative.

My first eBay purchase ever was a $19.99 Buy-It-Now listing for “ALL 4 PLAN B VIDEOS VHS L@@K.” The item arrived three weeks late, and “All 4 Plan B videos” meant that they were dubbed onto one tape in chronological order. Rodney’s triple kickflips and the real version of the San Francisco level from THPS2 were cool when you’re a tween, but in the YouTube-ized society of today, the only part from any of those four videos that gets routinely revisited is Ronnie Bertino’s. (Yeah yeah, Jeremy Wray obvs has the best part in the video.)

Run, Skate, Chill, Run, Skate, Chill

Video June 4th, 2014 · 9:12 am · 6

kalis stevie sixth sense

“I think it’s kinda fun when the cops come.”

For two dudes who probably don’t get a chance to skate with each other like they used to, Kalis and Stevie remain inseparable in mind. While filming Parental Advisory, Kalis was probably at J. Kwon or in Chicago while Stevie was in Barcelona or Shenzhen, but seeing one on a skateboard is still synonymous with the other. It might be due to a childhood spent burning a hole through their respective sections in The Sixth Sense, The Reason, and Anthology after 1,000 viewings. Try finding someone that doesn’t know the “big ledges, little ledges” bit by heart. It’s the highlight from dozens of cheesy Transworld voiceovers — well, that and “Some handrails? Oh shit.”

Though they don’t skate a single spot together here, we mashed them together with some inspiration drawn from the aforementioned classic videos. No telling when either of them is going to have another section out, but a small, shared part in whatever the next DGK project is would be nice ;)

Alternate YouTube Link

135th & Riverside

Daily News June 3rd, 2014 · 2:50 pm · 9

Click to enlarge. Original post here.

We don’t often run posts of a single photo, but in a year with a lot of remarkable New York-set photographs already (Mehring’s shot of Olson on Water Street, Atiba’s Dylan Reider cover shot, and Keith Morrison’s stolen shot of Austyn Gillette all come to mind), John Shanahan’s diptych of James Juckett stands out in particular.

Located at 135th and Riverside, this stoned-lined pathway leads you to 12th Avenue under the Riverside Drive Viaduct. There isn’t much to skate here, but for such a photogenic location, it’s surprising it hasn’t popped up in even a lifestyle-y skate photo until now. Your Tumblr dashboard won’t tell you two things about the spot: 1) Both the runway to the first set and the space after it are downhill. The guy had half a second before he hit the wallride. 2) The brownish spot on the ground between the two sets has to be one of the most urinated-on pieces of public space in New York City — we’re talking decades of piss that probably couldn’t be cleansed if you threw a bucket of bleach on it. The dude literally risked a staph infection for this awesome pair of photos.

On some full movie nerd shit: This stairway’s scenic qualities have been put to use for quite a while now. It appeared at the end of the 1948 film Force of Evil, which was one of the first movies to have a sizable chunk of its photography done on the actual street in New York, as opposed to a set. Martin Scorsese has been geeking out over it for pretty much the duration of his career.

Great work from skater James Juckett and photographer John Shanahan.

Shout Out Capone-N-Noreaga

Daily News June 2nd, 2014 · 5:05 am · 2

mariah subway

“Yoooooooo, I heard she lives off the Kosciusko J.” “Yeah, I think I saw her at Five Leaves once.” ♥

Alien Workshop’s forgotten legacy: Ass shot 360 flips.

Y’all lucky Marcus McBride isn’t ten years younger!

The clearly Bronze-inspired Bev video is a fun watch. Troy’s part is sick, and Kasper’s ender at the 23rd Street hospital is something that footage can’t really do justice to.

Video blog #210 from the Beef Patty crew and NY Times #8 from the LurkNYC crew.

If you’ve seen one skateboarder’s “Day in the Life” clip, you’ve seen them all — EXCEPT only one has footage of Daniel Lebron skating flat in it.

Muckmouth tracked down Peter Bici, Ryan Hickey and even Henry Sanchez (who was the only glaring omission from the FTC book…he’s not very talkative here though) for their endless “Where are they now?” series.

New all-Southbank “Sission” clip from the PWBC. Not as good #musicsupervision as the last installment, but there are some rad Chewy Canon lines there.

Kennedy Cantrell’s part in the Dallas-based Burnt Out video solid. He goes over a moat mid-line. Full vid here. His part is at the 28-minute mark; haven’t had a chance to watch the full video yet. “They hatin’ on us ‘cuz we out here!”

Dylan Goldberger / James has a new part out for Coda Skateboards. Is that part he had in the Prizefighter video two years ago still online? Can’t find it anywhere.

The Tumblrverse scanned Big Brother’s 1999 article about fashion and skateboarding, which explains the origin of the Bob shirt, among other things. To all you other skateboard media institutions: Dibs on a 2014 remake.

The Spectacle Theater (S 3rd Street in Williamsburg) will be playing Memory Screen on June 10th at 8 P.M. Chris Carter and Duane Pitre will be in attendance, and will hold a Q & A after the video.

This is what came of the Murray Hill spot mentioned in a post from a few weeks ago.

They’re making a documentary about Kids. On one hand, you’d like to wish that everyone would stop mining one of the most easily mineable relics of nineties nostalgia and focus elsewhere (Huf Epicly Later’d!), but on the other hand, last year’s Narratively article about the making of the film was better than the movie itself. A 90-minute version of that would probably be awesome.

New York is still sketchy if you look hard enough.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Kawhi Leonard is the Sports Desk’s new favorite non-German player over 6’3. Spurs in six?

Quote of the Week
Tufty: “We need to get beers.”
Waste: “There are 18 back at the house.”
Tufty: “That’s not enough.”
R.I.P. to the S 2nd and Havemeyer Social Club.

Follow @quartersnacks

The new Twitter sucks. Who’s going to Future tomorrow?

Why Doesn’t OVO Just Buy Alien Workshop?

Daily News May 30th, 2014 · 5:02 am · 14

♬ Alien Workshop…if you let me in, here’s what I’ll do: I’ll take care of you… ♬

In Josh Kalis’ Epicly Later’d, Rob Dyrdek observes that despite Alien’s origins as an artsy company that forever changed skate video production with Memory Screen, it was still a collective of kids who loved hip-hop. “A product of the nineties,” he says. Knowing this, it’s tough to figure why Dyrdek, as brief C.E.O, further infused art (by way of Warhol, Haring et al’s estates) into the capsizing Workshop — particularly when its downfall came after ~~a decade-long focus on guitar strumming tortured artist skaters~~ not listening to rap, like, ever.

Do you think a single Alien Workshop employee listened to a rap song after Kalis’ Photosynthesis part was completed? Could hip-hop have saved AWS?

America has changed. Cities have gotten safer, so rap has changed, too. There’s no longer a need for the wooden bat with screws drilled through it that Lennie Kirk yanked out of Wu-Tang lyrics and brought to life. Rap’s reigning king is Canadian. And emotional. And soft. All of these things could comfortably be adapted into the “tortured artist skateboarder” archetype while still preserving 2014 hip-hop aesthetics.

ovo-owl-1

What is the “Take Care” video but an Alien Workshop montage with a bigger budget and a blonde-haired Rihanna rather than a lustrous Dylan Reider? Frozen in Carbonite even wrote a treatment that would update Alien Workshop’s subtle hip-hopisms into the 2010s alongside its artsier inclinations, but naturally, we cannot all expect to be such forward thinkers. And what better way to relive the glory days of Don Pendleton’s art direction than by pairing it with OVO’s similar fondness for owls?

It turns out that Alien’s parent company (the one that pulled the plug on the company as of two weeks ago) is traded on the Toronto stock exchange — this is all coming together a bit TOO perfectly…

The Los Angeles Clippers are reportedly going for $2 billion. Drake may be a half-dozen new age Bar Mitzvah anthems away from such a purchase, but a storied skateboard company with all the right pieces for an urban rebrand isn’t the worst (worst!) acquisition he could make right now, especially with the parent company trading at a measly 12¢ a share in his native Canadian dollar.

Rather than sending our #attermswithdrake interns to mull through the Slap message board for another pie chart of rumors, we had them whip up some quick ways to remix Alien’s most iconic designs with images of its (hopefully) next C.E.O.

mindcontrol3