Earth, Wind, Water, Content

Karim by Atiba 📷

Pocket set out to capture the endless good vibes that emenate when you’re kicking it with Karim Callender for their “Followed” series. Yeah, they succeeded ❤️

“I don’t want to be the first skateboarder to skate the ramp and the first skateboarder to break the museum.” Alexis Sablone spoke to the New Yorker about being the first person to ever skate inside the Guggenheim for her Converse pro model commercial.

The Lookback Library got ahold of Gino Iannucci to talk about his two magazine covers — both switch flips and both from 2004. (How the hell has Gino only had two covers? Especially coming from the era where there were four or five magazines?!)

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The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2021 — QS Readers Poll Results

Illustration by Cosme Studio
Ballot Count by 4Ply Magazine

The votes are in, the ballots are tallied, the blurbs by writer friends from the internet are written, and our annual exercise of trying to combat content fatigue and fried attention spans is live.

For anybody uninitiated: back in 2019, we asked QS visitors for the five parts and videos from the 2010s that they would bury in a capsule under the earth for future inhabitants to reference once all other evidence of skateboarding had been erased. In 2020, we adapted this concept to encapsulate one year. And here we are in 2021, with the results of the same excerise.

No commentary for the full-lengths or 20-11 ranked parts. Special thank you to all the writers that took the time to share some words about their favorites. (Lol that the order for the 4-1 writers is the same this year as last. Total coincidence.) Major shout out to Pete at 4Ply Magazine for compiling all the data.

If you are just joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers from November 29th to December 3rd.

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The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2020 — QS Readers Poll Results

Illustration by Cosme Studio
Ballot Tally Assist by 4Ply Magazine

One of the biggest cliches is discussing just *how much* skate content there is. Everything is available at once, and keeping track of it for one viewing — let alone multiple — is hard.

Last year’s decade poll aimed at a snapshot of skateboarding in a ten-year span, as it grew exponentially into the content waterfall it is today. It was very fun to do, but perhaps easier in that with ten years to reflect on, it was apparent what loomed large over tricks, styles and trends. We brought it back for a single year to try and form a canon at a time when so much of the conversation is geared around things moving too fast for a consensus.

Yes, you’ll notice an inherent recency bias here, and year-end content is obviously an imperfect art — the poll closed on December 4, which is before John’s Vid and Third Shift came out online, two projects that definitely would’ve ranked if eligible. (Honestly, John’s Vid might’ve ended up being #1 or #2 given the readership of this website.)

So here it is. No commentary for the full-lengths this round. Full-length skate videos capture a zeitgeist, and sometimes, it takes a while for those effects to truly make themselves known.

Shout out to all the writer friends from the internet who helped with write-ups, and extra major shout out to the team at 4Ply Magazine for the help on tallying the ballots.

And if you’re joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers during the first week of December, with voting ending on the 4th.

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Chapstick Season

The obstacle purge at T.F. West rebounded quick!

With Hollywood hobbled by the pandemic, Jawn Gardner came through with the life-affirming motion picture event that we needed as we head towards the holidays ♥

Zooted” is a New York video by Stephán Lewis with appearances from Brandon Scott, Jiro Platt, Yaje Popson and a bunch of other people you’ll recognize from skating around downtown.

The Village Psychic dudes spend the lockdown months creating Village Archive, an early stab at a Wikipedia or an IMDB of skateboard footwear. (Man, have skaters been responsible for designing some awful shoes.) Kinda inspired to think up some ideas similar to this one now…

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