Alien Workshop | Quartersnacks

OMG THE BAND IS BREAKING UP!!!!!!!!!111

Daily News May 1st, 2013 · 5:45 pm · 28

dill ave off alien

(This is the mandatory “Dill & AVE Are Off Alien Workshop” skate site post)

Much of the QS office fell out of love with Alien Workshop in the twelve-year (and counting) drought of no Black Rob music supervision or new hires of skaters in sweatpants. Despite our toughest efforts of rekindling the flame that was initially lit by 7.4 Kalis decks and a time when capri cargoes were acceptable attire for hip-hop white guys, the magic has been gone for quite some time. And now, with a shocking resignation, the final pieces of a bygone era have severed official ties, leaving us with no straws of remaining nostalgia to grasp.

Though the Slap board will crash due to today’s news, and the Boil the Ocean guy may be writing a thinkpiece with big words on the subject, it’d probably be wrong to assume either of these guys are destined for anywhere but their own venture. Given the current state of the skate industry, where an unsponsored 21-year-old is considered over the hill and damaged goods, it is unlikely that a legacy name is going to leave an almost two-decade-long sponsor situation for another company in the few remaining years of his career. So please keep that in mind when contributing to the Great Slap Crash of 2013 with statements like “I could tottallllly see Dill on Krooked” and stuff.

Otherwise, Alien will be fine as long as the best skater alive is still on their roster. He’s just not the best person to have a conversation about rap with.

“Highwaters will be at half mast tomorrow.” — Street Piracy

Based on a 25-Cent Story

Daily News August 13th, 2012 · 8:49 am · 5

Four-word Review of Based on a T.R.U. Story: Pluto is way better.

While on the topic of 2 Chainz, there is another round of Death Video throwaways edited to his insistence of starting a riot.

The next thing you should watch today is Manolo’s “Best of” Jovontae Turner mixtape. It puts particular emphasis on the proper form of a 360 flip, and is edited to a RBL Posse song closely associated with one of the more infamous PWBC episodes.

Even when Alien Workshop riders are presented outside the context of an Alien Workshop clip, they are contractually obligated to have their skating surrounded by video “art.” A minute of new Jake Johnson footage for Brick Harbor, plus mandatory shots of lightbulbs, smoke, sparklers, etc. (Our editing department is currently re-editing all of Jake’s recent footage to 50 Cent as a sequel to this.)

The Chrome Ball Incident has a sick Zered Bassett post up.

There is an upcoming skate video named after the (better) Chief Keef song that doesn’t have an annoying Kanye remix. 3Hunna is a video by the Endless Grind crew out of North Carolina. Features a new Connor Champion part.

We missed this month-old early entry to the “Summer Trip to New York” clip cycle. The residents surrounding a certain park on 8th Avenue sure do have a lot of “real” issues to worry about. Apparently, you deserve to go to prison for skateboarding.

Some kids from Jersey threw together a pretty cool 19-minute mini video filmed in New York and outlying areas. Shout out to everyone who takes a NJ Transit train to skate Manhattan every day. NJ Transit suucckks.

Black Dave is opening up for Juicy J at an event in Brooklyn this Thursday.

2012 is weird, man. Dylan Rieder, ASAP Rocky, Zoe Kravitz and other people in the September issue of Vogue. Looks like Rieder settled for Alexander Wang as a fashion sponsor instead of joining Alex Olson on Chanel.

Is poetry the new VHS?

Well, now we know the answer to last November’s question about whether or not dollar burgers could steal some marketshare from New York’s dollar slice industry. A resounding “NO.” Hopefully, no one went in there to try it out.

Quote of the Week: “Slappying curbs is like talking to girls, you just have to press up on them a bit.” — Andre Page

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Got a cruiser re-stock in. Tees this week. Both available online (in store?) soon.

Apparently, Josh Kalis isn’t that good at 360 flips…

Daily News July 12th, 2012 · 9:16 am · 9

(Can you believe there was a point in time when Alien Workshop ads referenced Black Rob songs?)

Tre flips took me so long to get down. I must’ve tried those things for over 2 years before I even landed one. But I wanted to learn them so bad. I think that’s why I ended up getting so much respect for that trick is because I really had to work at them. The funny thing is that I’m not even all that good at them. I’ll go to a skatepark and watch kids do 50 in a row. I don’t have them anywhere close to that. If I do 10 of them, I’ll probably make five of them but have to tic-tac out because I didn’t get all the way around. Three of them I won’t make at all and I might have two that I stomp pretty good. But I’m not that consistent at them… I just get lucky with a good one every now and then.

The Chrome Ball Incident has a new interview with Josh Kalis. It touches on whether or not he actually liked Dinosaur Jr. during his Alien Workshop tenure, the influence of Embarcadero, how southern California school yards are harder to skate than most expect, Lennie Kirk, the switch back tail down Hubba Hideout, the Transworld Golden Gate Bridge cover, Stevie having a full part in the DGK video (!!!), Bieber rocking DGK, the two…no wait…the three…no wait…the four worst trends in street skating these past ten years (no mention of “yo flips”), etc. An all around great read.

Previously: Kalis on his Photosynthesis part, “The Love Park Story” (documentary), QS interview with Kalis from November 2010. And then there’s this…

4 DA TUMBLRZ: “HELL NAW HOE YOU KNOW THEY POLO” — .GIF EDITION

IT IS NO LONGER NINETEEN-NINETY-NINE…

Time Capsule November 17th, 2011 · 3:35 pm · 4

“The reason why I used that song is because that was another thing going on in my life. These dudes in Philly were holding themselves back, and they weren’t just having fun skating, and they were bitter and all that. I was like ‘Fuck you, man.’ This song was my ‘Fuck you’ to them.”

“I remember this line, I definitely could’ve re-filmed the last trick, but I was like ‘Fuck it.'”

Late on this, but watch it if you already haven’t. It unfortunately does not address the Black Rob switch up, which was epic, and the sort of thing Alien would never ever ever ever do again. Alien when it was still sort of hood in a weird way > Alien 2011.

“Whoa” still goes hard in da club 11 years later.

It’d be sick if they did one for Stevie in The Reason or Chocolate Tour.

Philadelphia C. 1996

Time Capsule April 6th, 2011 · 11:26 am · 14

Rob Pluhowski never occupied the “He changed my life and/or wardrobe” status that Anthony Pappalardo and Brian Wenning enjoy after years of elusiveness (which is of course, camouflaged by devout fans spending unhealthy amounts of time promising a comeback on various message boards.) However, he was still a crucial, style-centric chunk to the whole period that has come to be defined as “the Photosynthesis era.”

Several days ago, he uploaded the closest thing we have to a Revisited volume for the city of Philadelphia and the many individuals who gyrated around it as it rose to become a huge skate city in the mid-to-late nineties. The clip includes a handful of Sixth Sense makes and outtakes, and footage from several crucial years that preceded all things related to Alien Workshop and Habitat becoming massive parts your life if you happened to start skating in Philly, Jersey or New York between 1998 and 2002. Pluhowski doesn’t spend much time skating these days, as he is a family man (some of this is touched upon in Pappalardo’s “Epicly Later’d” series), but a big thank you goes to him for going out of his way to bring something like this to the surface.