72 Hours in San Juan

haha

“There are three lanes for driving in Puerto Rico: Slow, stoned and drunk.”

Going to San Juan for skateboard-related reasons isn’t exactly new. Mainland skateboard companies have been going there for years. However, it does seem that Puerto Rico trips have been occurring with greater frequency for northeasterners recently. Miami, the go-to northeastern getaway for someone uninterested in a L.A. trip, has been getting more blown out and tougher to skate. Unless you’re packing ten dudes in a van and driving 1,200 miles, travel to P.R. is not much different: an extra 45 minutes on a plane and roughly the same ticket price. As a result, you get to be on an island with warmer water, newer spots, fewer distractions, and best of all, you’re not in Florida.

Alexander Mosley & friends. Guest tricks from Billy Rohan, Ferni & Alberto. Alternate YouTube link.

San Juan is not very foreign. Everyone speaks English, your phone is going to work without any add-ons, there are Wal-Marts everywhere, and they use American currency. “Miami but tighter” became a common description throughout the trip. (That’s only pertinent to the skateboard-concerning side of things. Miami is far better for a variety of other extracurricular endeavors.)

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Merry Christmas

merry christmas

With each passing year, it gets tougher to not acknowledge that Gucci Mane has three Christmas songs on the low, especially after straining cheesy Christmas music for the past nine clips. (Yeah, this is somehow the ninth one.) But even if the #musicsupervision department is backlogged due to not having utilized “Used 2” and “Paranoid” yet, maybe one clip a year that isn’t partial to drum machines is okay…

This somehow ended up being the most daylight-heavy Christmas clip of the nine, due to November and December being unseasonably brick. To make up for it, there was one miracle day when we didn’t get kicked out of World Trade, as evidenced by maybe a fifth of this clip being filmed there. Win some, lose some. Merry Christmas.

Features Brendan Carroll, Keith Denley, Lurker Lou, Tyler Tufty, Zered Bassett, Dave Caddo, Sweet Waste, Elijah Cole, Tony Durao, Calen Knauf, Josh Velez, Andre Page, Alexander Mosley and Connor Champion.

Thanks to Joe Cups, Andre Page and Rob Harris for contributing footage.

Alternate YouTube Link

Past Christmas clips: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

Other Christmas Gifts: It’s mostly at skateparks, but there’s 50 seconds of new Gino footage out and an awesome mini doc about the governor of New Jersey, Fred Gall.

Don’t Look Like That: End of Summer 2013

dre roof 360 flip

We’re three weeks past our Labor Day deadline for End of Summer clips, Dre is back to wearing colors besides white, and we’ve been experiencing some 50-degree mornings, so this is more like a Start of Fall clip.

The past summer was weird. Our research of recent visitor trends revealed a massive increase of Brooklyn readers, so we were advised to up the wallie and wallride count in this video by a whopping 80%. In fact, Josh Velez took it upon himself to enter the wallie arc of his career some seven years earlier than he initially anticipated to remedy this disconnect between the site’s content and its readers/viewers. Also, there are an inordinate amount of Jersey Shore spots in this clip to add to the weirdness.

Features Zered Bassett, Atlanta Shane, Haffa, Galen Dekemper, John Diaz, Ron Deily, Josh Velez, Pryce Holmes, Elijah Cole, Lui Elliot, Kadeem Walters, Ritch Homie Swain, Torey Goodall, Shawn Powers, Andre Page, Matthew Perez, Lurker Lou, Brendan Carroll, Tyler Tufty, Quim Cardona, Gavin Nolan, Paul Tucci, and Alexander Mosley.

Have a good weekend.

Alternate YouTube Link

Previous “End of Summer” Editions: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006

Some Type of Links

watermelons ss crook

Watermelons Switch Crook via Clark Hassler’s Instagram

Preview: Quartersnacks x Trukfit. Also is “Vine with a fisheye the new VX1000?”

A day at Flushing alongside Dipset’s 2002 Rap City freestyle.

Frozen in Carbonite reviews some books while drawing parallels to skating and stuff. “One could say that skaters born between 1972 and 1975 (Markovich, etc.) got screwed because they were too young to get in on that eighties money, yet too old to get in on the late 90s shoe/board sale boom.”

The Tennyson remixes continue. This time, it’s a Chocolate mini video with re-edited parts from Kenny Anderson, Chris Roberts, Gino and Richard Mulder.

Some guys from Beyond Skate Shop out in Finland came to New York and put together a cool montage.

A bunch of clips from New Yorkers below drinking age being productive: 1) Spring Intermission by Michael Elijah, which has a Rob C cameo 2) iPhone montage via Kasper. 3) Death Video Throwaways Vol. 7. 4) Tribeca montage via the Dunions.

Street League re-imagined on a curb.

The crew behind the In Crust We Trust video takes a trip up to Montreal.

Ishod does a huge backside flip in bright swim trunks, then crashes into a tree.

Tony Hawk’s first skateboard is now in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Anyone who kicked you out of a spot this past weekend is an asshole.

Palace eBay Watch: My dad bought a 1989 Toyota Corolla in 2003 for $300 and it ran for a good sixteen months.

Spot Updates: 1) There are two [likely temporary] small manual pads at the former Bubble Banks right now. Get some wheelies in while you can, because they’ll probably build stuff on top or around them. 2) There’s a doghouse / spine ramp thing at the BQE spot now.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Danny Green breaks Jesus Shuttlesworth’s record for most three-point shots made in a NBA Finals with 23.

Quote of the Week:

microsoft fucked up

How awful is the title of that new Jay-Z album? Not that there is any interest in the album around here either way, but the title is so particularly bad that it had to be mentioned. Either way, thanks for the memories.

Merry Christmas

east 73rd st

Merry Christmas everybody. Here’s our annual mostly midtown / Christmas light footage / non-rap clip. Comes complete with two backpack lines and more tricks on three/four stair handrails than ever before. “I done seen everything today!”

In case you guys didn’t know, during annual Christmas music research for this clip, the fact that the Ying Yang Twins have a Christmas album came to light. Needless to say, it’s incredible. At least for the first minute or so. (Here’s another good one.)

Features: Alexander Mosley, Black Dave A.K.A. Black Santa, Tyshawn Jones, TJ’s homie (sorry for not getting your name), Gavin Nolan, Eli Reed, Josh Velez, Ritch Swain, Roctakon, Pad Dowd, Ty Lyons, Tyler Tufty, Dustin Eggeling, Keith Denley, Sweet Waste, Pryce Holmes, Pat Edge, Torey Goodall, Brendan Carroll, Matthew Mooney, Jack Sabback, Kevin Tierney, Brian Clarke, and Andre Page.

Contributing filmers: Joe Bressler, Jeff Ricker, Andre Page, Josh Velez. Thank you.

Alternate YouTube Link. Just an FYI for mobile users: YouTube will *not* play the video on iPhones, etc. because of third party content (i.e. uncleared music.) It should, however, work on Vimeo. YouTube poorly words their disable notice by making it seem like the uploader is preventing it for mobile playback as opposed to the company who owns the music.

This is the eighth one. In case you haven’t been keeping up, here are some relevant links to past Christmas clips: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.