📝 Intro + Interview by Greg Navarro
📷 Photography by Greg Navarro, Thomas Goldman & Cooper Qua
Cooper Qua is from Albany, New York and is the youngest team rider on Quasi Skateboards. His debut video part for the company is in their latest video, Hard Reset. I sat down with Cooper at Tompkins to chat about the future of Quasi and to hear about his dream of becoming a pro skateboarder as a teenager from Upstate New York.
Photo via @whatisnewyork
The Say You Swear podcast interviewed Naquan Rollings — one of the most prolific videographers today — with guest commentary from Father Bop throughout.
“You’re a smart person. Smart people get uncomfortable couches.” Village Psychic posted up part two of Lurker Lou and Mark Suciu’s journey through lesser-known Bronx spots.
Time On Our Hands is a full-length New York video from Abi Teixeira featuring many familiar faces, great make-you-wanna-skate-with-your-friends vibes, and some good tunes. Decent bit of Brianna Delaney footage, too :)
Krooked’s “Don’t Stop Featuring Una Farrar” dropped just as the Thrasher staff clocked out of the office last Friday. Basically an Una part + cameos from the rest of the team, Frank Gerwer bringing tre shuvs back, and the first official bits of Andrew Wilson footy in a Krooked project :)
Jenkem has an interview with Trung Nguyen, the architect behind last year’s most talked-about trick, and Big Parody.
“We are sad. People can say we are overreacting and that this spot will likely be liberated, but there is a gross feeling seeing the city prioritize something like this.” Village Psychic made a tribute to their local curb on the occasion of… the city knobbing a curb — appropriately titled, “Sadman Plaza.”
The QS office favorite Rios Crew out of Budapest just dropped a new video, entitled Uccsó. They’re as atmospheric and third-eye-open with the spots as ever, but it’s the filming that truly took on a new dimension in this one.
Ollie in front of Supreme by Max Wheeler. No, a different Supreme. Photo by Bobby Murphy.
The scope of skateboard travel got way smaller this past year-and-a-half. Connecticut — that lil’ big state that is basically just outside The Bronx — posed an interesting case study. Following the thaw-out from the most depressing winter of our lifetimes, our first trip out of New York was to CT. We came armed with inspiration from “Your Big Cheesecake,” a March 2021 Connecticut video that was blurbed about on here in the winter, and originally found on Skate Jawn. In it, you find a vast network of cutty, underseen spots sitting in small cities that are all a shorter drive away than Philadelphia. It wasn’t until just recently that our brains were forced to understand that maybe there was some skateboard escape nearby that wasn’t one we have been to dozens of times before. The rewatchability of “Your Big Cheesecake” definitely helped hammer that point home.
T.F. Global. Photo via Claudio Majorana’s book, Head of the Lion.
Is there a compilation of board flip challenge fails yet, or are we going to have to assign that grueling job to an intern?
Looks like the solid barrage of upstate New York videos is gonna keep rolling in 2019 (see #5.) The Seasons guys have a new ten-minute video on Thrasher entitled “Albany 2.5” with tons of Empire State Plaza footage, and a mini S.F. section at the end.
Wasn’t really sure what to expect from this upon click, and it thankfully ended up being smiles the whole way through ♥ Here’s a good seven minutes of Fred Gall iPhone footage at some D.I.Y. spot and a bunch of typical New Jersey crust.
ICYMI: Cooper Winterson unlocks another dimension of ConEdison Banks in his Skating Is Easy part.
Had a bunch of “wait, that spot’s been gone for years” thoughts watching this, and then realized it’s more of a remix than a new part. Either way! Any B.A. is good B.A., and Grant Yansura was nice enough to pull together a bunch of his [mainly New York] footage from SB Chronicles 3 and onward for a new-old “Slappy Seconds” edit, which includes a handful of unseen clips.
Theories is doing another “Underground Skater of the Year” thing this year, and we’re writing in a ballot for Jawn Gardner.
“Oh, you were just skateboarding? That’s weird. You can leave.” Solo has an interview with John Shanahan, and Skate Jawn has a lil’ feature on his photos.
Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Tim O’Connor posted up an unreleased episode of his podcast with Ricky Oyola, and Steve Brandi has a “Skater’s Favorite Skater” TWS vid where he talks about how Ricky influenced him over the years.
Not a lot of content like this going live on the skateboard internet in the age of Instagram Stories: the Village Psychic dudes drove from Minnesota to Memphis to escape the cold and did a long[ish]form blog post with photos about their journey.
One of those “I’m not really sure wtf this is about” Boil the Ocean posts: something about testing for weed and the Olympics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Forever love that double noseslide line. Or any double noseslide line, for that matter. Matt Velez uploaded three minutes of Mark Wetzel raw files to his YouTube.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Gotta be that Kyrie v.s. Iggy highlight — no, wait. J.R. Smith’s hat. Yeah, J.R. Smith’s hat is the play of the week.
Quote of the Week: “OVO is the new RDS.” — Torey Goodall
