Alex Pires Archives - Quartersnacks

New Futures and Distortions in Time — The Mechanics of Skate Magazine Covers

Features & Interviews May 19th, 2026 · 12:00 am · 2

🔑 Introduction, Interviews & Collages by Farran Golding
📷 Headline Composition: Román González by Alex Pires for Free Skate Mag, Momiji Nishiya by Allan Carvalho for Mess Skate Mag, Corey Bittle by Tyler Storm Brady for Skate Jawn, Alexis Sablone for Golden Hour and Brad Cromer for PLANK by Matt Price

Walking around chairs wrapped in merlot fabric, the waiters of L’Entracte Brasserie in Paris went about their morning shift, placing silverware and wine glasses, unfazed by the camera flashes of photographer Alex Pires.

The restaurant faces the Palais Garnier Opera House, a building that is almost two centuries old, and as iconic as other Parisian landmarks such as Notre-Dame and Sacré-Coeur. Outside the opera house, an image of the Palais Garnier’s façade was depicted on a temporary wall, producing an illusion the French call “trompe-l’œil.” It directed visitors to entrances above and below a stairway. Two hours before the venue opened at around 7 A.M. on a damp, December 2024 day, Román González threw himself into the temporary façade of the Palais, clinging onto a frontside wallride down the stairs.

JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE!

Daily News February 16th, 2026 · 12:00 am

Hjalte. Jarmers. 2025 • 📷 Photo via Alex Pires

Golden Hour is a great, 19-minute New York scene video by Perry Scardigno, featuring a ton of “where is that spot?!” clips — assuming you can even think about skate spots right now. (Jk, K Bridge is a go at least.) Also has a sick Ricki Twohill part at the end.

“My dog was the one that originally found my cancer four years ago — she kept trying hit me in the nuts while we were playing and hit me really fucking good.” Ian Browning’s great “Rules of Skateboarding” series has formally moved from Village Psychic to Skate Bylines, and the newest installment is with TJ Rogers about the rules of publicly sharing personal things with fans of your skateboarding.

“I kind of want to skate for a brand because it’s like, ‘Okay, she has good clips!'” Free has an interview with Stella Aiha on the occasion of the new part that she dropped with Eetu Lilja.

Five Favorite Parts With Casper Brooker

Features & Interviews July 20th, 2022 · 12:00 am · 6

Headline Photo by Alex Pires
Intro + Interview by Farran Golding

Even before jumping on the “Five Favorite Parts” call, it’s tempting to draw connections between an interviewee’s list of inspirations and their most recent body of work.

Such was the case here, in (possibly) our most contemporary part-forward installment. However, from the straightforward aggression, mining of a certain locale for new routes, to the preference for monochromatic fits, there’s a little bit of all of these favorites found in Casper Brooker’s latest video part.

Majorca For Nothing in Print

Daily News June 23rd, 2022 · 11:29 am

Travel writing around here has been sparse since the pandemic, but our friends at Free Skate Mag posted up the full trip article + Alex Pires’ photos from our Majorca excursion on their website. (It appeared in the most recent print issue.)

This one was special because it was the first time many of us had traveled outside the U.S. since the before time, and we were blessed with the fact that it didn’t rain the entire trip, nobody got injured, we barely got kicked out of any spots, and the craziest trick of the entire trip (Nick’s 5050 on the blue wave spot, which we actually did keep getting kicked out of) was at the last stop of the last day.

Read the full thing on Free and discover if San Miguel is truly stinkin’, or continue on for the iPhone bonus beats.

Deeper Understanding — An Interview With Charlie Birch

Features & Interviews February 11th, 2020 · 12:00 am · 3

Interview by Farran Golding
Collages by Requiem For A Screen
Original Photos by Marimo Ohyama & Alex Pires

It seems like just the other day that Palace was a small U.K. brand buzzing with montages filmed on VHS tapes, and P.W.B.C. news segments aimed at a skate industry still coming to grips with how to use the internet. In the ensuing decade of successes, it has remained unshakably English in its vision — even the fact that Jamal Smith is the only American to turn pro for the brand rings of a certain “foreigners appreciating your homeland in a better way than you do”-type thing.

To the American eye, Palace rose to prominence in that void left by Blueprint at the onset of the 2010s. In the time since, the world of U.K. skateboarding feels like it became closer intertwined to our own. This of course is thanks to Palace, yes, but also because of things like Isle’s unanimously adored “Atlantic Drift” series, the Yardsale videos, Free becoming one of the best alternate channels for skate media, and the inspiring success of the Long Live Southbank campaign.

With little context for how the U.K. scene actually operates, we asked Farran Golding — the man behind many of the deep-dive features on the Slam City Skates blog — to interview Charlie Birch, Palace’s newest teamrider, who we don’t know all that much about on this side of the Atlantic ;)