Meet Me At The Mall — The Skateable History of Allen Street

According to The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan’s Street Names and Their Origins, Allen Street gets its name from William Henry Allen, the youngest Navy captain in the War of 1812. (Our then-recent ex, Great Britain, was beefing with Napoleon while America stayed neutral. The U.S. was trying to send a flow box to France, and Britain felt some type of way about it. Like any bitter ex who sees someone else wearing your hoody after a messy break-up, they went to war.)

Legend has it that Allen was in the English Channel on the hunt for opposition, when he stumbled on a Portuguese cargo ship carrying wine. Him and the squad had a wild night with the haul, but unfortunately, got caught slipping by the British on the following day. Allen and his crew’s colossal hangover would be their last: British canons shot off his leg, and he would die on August 18, 1813.

200 years later, L.E.S Skatepark was born.

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An Arm & a Leg & a Monday Link

Jesse Alba made a bro cam edit from a trip to London with Cyrus, Diego Todd + some cameos from the Atlantic Drift dudes.

Alex Olson explains why Mike Carroll is the best for eight minutes.

Naquan uploaded a five-minute “remix” of Gang Corp’s Black Business video, though it feels like a solid chunk of those clips weren’t in the original video.

A wider net for skate interviews this past week than the typical guys talking about their first sponsor type of thing — 1) The Wall Street Journal interviewed Beatrice Domond. There’s a pay-wall involved, but it seems like they let you rock on one free article. 2) “I just really like New York.” Elissa Steamer interviewed Alexis Sablone for Thrasher. 3) Skateism interviewed Forrest Kirby, in what I believe is his first interview since he publicly came out last year.

“Are we already in the Matrix?” Skate Jawn interviewed Jawn Gardner about astrology, the afterlife and time travel + they also have a quick one with Kyota that includes some rad photos.

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Spoilers

Thanks to everyone that picked up something from the webstore last week ♥ We caught up on shipping all of last week’s orders by Friday, so if you are worried something went awry, feel free to hit us up. Still some stuff left on there, and it’s supposed to almost hit 90 today, so perhaps you could use a new pair of shorts? ;)

DC, Skate Jawn and Village Psychic brought two pieces of plywood to Borough Hall, made a hip at the bottoms of the steps, and threw a skate jam last weekend. Has no one ollied the set yet?

Filed Under “It Would Be Nice If This Was 3-4x As Long” — Tom Knox and Jordan Trahan skate around London together, and Johnny put together an Insta-length compilation of Alex Olson loosies from the past several years.

Here’s an iPhone vid of Chris Milic, Nick Michel, and some other Frogs in S.F.

“But I look at it this way. If it makes us happy, it has value. If we love it, it is as real as that love. And with some love and happiness in our hearts, we might just solve climate change and cure cancer too.” Jenkem has a nice feature with Mackenzie Eisenhower that covers sixteen pieces of advice that he’d give after sixteen years of writing about skateboarding for a living. (#17: one of the greatest hacks to writing about skateboarding is not writing about skateboarding.)

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Take Off No Jet Lag

Photo via That’s A Crazy One

Ben “Actually, I Like Wearing Wack Gear” Blundell receives redemption after barely any clips in Courtesy. Go watch his “OJO” part over on Thrasher. Rest in Peace Dillon ♥

Boil the Ocean wrote the longform Transworld obituary.

Gotta hand it to Europe’s Most Productive Crew™ for consistently doing something that feels so natural and different than everything else out there, year after year — especially in a country without much of a skate industry. Also ~love~ the recurring role of dogs in their videos. “Nap Mint Nap Volume 4” is the latest from the Rios Crew. We really gotta make it out to Budapest, pretty much everyone says nothing but good things…

In hindsight, it’s pretty crazy that a peak shiny suit era Bad Boy song ever slipped into an Alien Workshop video, even for 45 seconds. And guess what! Twenty years later, we get the full [re]edit: Manolo remixed two decades of Kalis footage to the complete extended version of Black Rob’s “Whoa.” FWIW, that album has some sleeper gems.

Frog has a b-roll clip of some leftovers from their “Bossa Nova” video that went live a few weeks ago. Jesse also threw up a random 15-mintue B-roll edit on his YouTube.

“Pornography had already been done, and the skate/fetish graphic thing said all that needed to be said on the subject. Take away the black bag and the sticker about censorship, and you just have a dumb idea repeated endlessly. For nearly 3 decades.” Ted Barrow wrote a nice piece on the history of the black bag World Industries board, and everything that followed it over on Skateism.

The Slam City Skates blog did a profile on Skateboard Cafe, which already made one of 2019’s best videos.

Krak put together a trick history clip for the other famous grate gap ledge (which is def a few feet longer than the Flushing one, and has a curb before the backside for regular side) in the event you need to be reminded of how awful 75% of combo ledge skating looks. Leaving out the backside noseblunt is crazy tho…

Solange in a skate clip ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Def worth the watch from Peter Deigaard + Drew, Hugo, Ville, and all the Copenhagen boys, which will make you feel the summer even if you have no Danish travel plans :)

Caleb Yuan and Marcello Campanello skating around Penn Station and Soho for Canal.

DOA RMX” is a video featuring some upstate dudes (pretty sure…), and has a random ass remix of Pat Washington footage from the early 2000s at the end, which is timely given Jamal Smith reminded us about his iconic Got Gold? part last week.

Sean Pablo is the latest guest on The Bunt, and Alex Olson is the latest guest on The Mission Statement Podcast.

Didn’t know this existed until Bill posted the T.J. one on IG, but these one-off skater action figures by Milk Saggers Studios are pretty rad.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Luka’s Hail Mary.

Quote of the Week
Inquisitive Gentleman: “E.T, who were your favorite skaters growing up?”
Etienne Gagne: “Umm… Ryan Sheckler and Hugo [Balek].”

Realized the other day that Tao’s “KBH MIXEN” video is the 2018 video that still gets the most revisitation in 2019. Felt Ville’s section deserved it’s own upload :)

What A Time What A Year

Photo via @inkwellcommons

Thanks to everyone who supported the QS for Nike SB collaboration, and all of you who came out to the first annual Quartersnacks Cup on Saturday. We have some pairs left in the webstore, though you’ll have better luck on sizes if you’re going for a navy pair ;) Use the code “MONDAYLINKS” to reward yourself for reading the words on this website, and get free U.S. shipping on the shoes until midnight tonight E.S.T. Everything else you gotta cover the shipping on though.

We uploaded the IG story of the contest as a placeholder. Official recap coming soon.

Max Palmer went pro + Aidan Mackey went pro.

“Drifting toward the childhood and the feminine. It’s not always about masculinity, and drinking, and fucking skater guys…Everybody has that inner child or feminine side. It’s cool to embrace that.” Shout out Genny, Conor and Humble. The Fader did a rad feature on their operation that reads different than much of the “small skate brand” stories you see out there. Show them some love.

Surprised that lines through the entire block aren’t more of a thing in footage from Big Screen Plaza. Bret Gregory’s Hombre Hardware part is a good time.

“Just liking something doesn’t support it.” Love Skate Mag did a series of interviews about why all the best skateboard magazines end up going out of print.

Chris Mulhern uploaded another teaser for his upcoming Love Park documentary, 15th & JFK. His comments also seem to indicate that it may end up being a series. “I won’t be able to tell this story in two hours or less, which was my original plan.”

Here’s the winter 2013 edition of Jeremy Elkin’s raw tapes. That double-set pole jam spot Aaron skates at the start is insane. The legend Alex Mosley tried to clear the entire double-set off it ♥ ♥ ♥

75 degrees on Saturday, and none of you scored a Missed Connection? So disappointed in everyone.

Interesting time capsule: Scenes from the DNA Distribution (Alien & Habitat) catalog, circa 2005. I think Waste still has a bunch of the Aesthetics catalogs — been meaning to scan them for like…the past five years.

Want another time capsule? TWS uploaded the first-ever issue of 411.

The moral of the story in this sorta bad / sorta borderline still readable Wall Street Journal article about skate pilgrimages to China is: stop snitching.

Free has an interview with Gustav Tonnesen, perennial #QSTOP10 fave.

Attn: All SVA & Pratt sculpture majors. Jenkem has a chill feature about the world’s most high-con D.I.Y. spot.

Hate it or love it, The Bunt’s new one is with Jamie Thomas.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Let’s give it to the end of Celtics-Bucks Q4.

Quote of the Week: “Could I do the fried shrimp…just with some toast?” — Kevin Tierney’s Diner Order (fyi, the waiter refused to serve him fried shrimp and toast.)