You Can’t Move With Me in This Digital Space

mlk

It might seem odd recommending a profile of Harry Belafonte on Martin Luther King Jr. day, but the final third of the piece details the relationship between the two of them. It is one of the coolest profiles you’ll ever read. “When the song was over, Belafonte held up a black doctor’s bag and dumped $70,000 in small bills on a table.”

Harsh Euro Barge laid the groundwork for today’s generation of mid-twenty-somethings to be at terms with electronic music by the time they exited adolescence and found #the #party. SMLTalk on the Godfather II of tour videos.

Some more HD footage and cool kickflips from the Paych dudes via Merchants of Ill.

Colin Sussingham has a lot of great photos from the filming of Horny over on The Local Weather. For those who don’t know, that double-kink boardslide at the Federal Building is quite literally a three second bust and a potential arrest risk.

The Homie put together a shady clip of all his iPhone footage from the summer.

Gino provides some commentary on his Yeah Right! part.

Gershon Mosley a.k.a. the sweatiest skater of all-time just dropped a new part!

A.V.E. in New York on the new cover of Thrasher.

There’s a really cool fakie (?) ollie in the teaser for Duzzed, the upcoming video from 2nd Nature. P.S. Here’s a quick new clip from the 2nd Nature park

Akira Mowatt cruising around Los Angeles for Skate Sauce.

Joseph Delgado cruising around everywhere for Humidity Skateshop.

Elijah Cole cruising around uptown for Mighty Healthy.

The St. Vincent’s / 7th Avenue bank has been reduced to rubble and memories.

R.I.P. ASAP Yams. Here are a bunch of the mixes from the RNT days.

QS Rap Desk: 1) Despite never summoning his services for either studio album, Future sounds really good over Zaytoven’s keyboard. 2) Mustard got sick of all your dumb memes about his beats sounding the same, so now he’s making weird Beyonce trap remixes :( great… 3) Travie “back,” through Rae Srmmurmurmrmrmrd is doing Travis Porter better than Travis Porter themselves these days. 4) Funkmaster Flex is a national treasure.

2 Chainz v.s. Nancy Grace is not the new Cam v.s. Billy O’Reilly, contrary to what others may insist. Cam won because he beat Bill at his own game, whereas Tity Boy made the mistake of thinking he was speaking to someone interested in having an actual debate. Someone please make a supercut of her saying “2 Chainz” though.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Andrew Wiggins is slowly turning into the Andrew Wiggins everyone thought he’d be.

Quote of the Week: “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war, that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.” — King

Your website is trash. © Funkmaster Flex.

Wishy Washy

yaje-jd

Smoking is lame, but this photo is cool. Via Jersey Dave. Dave is also selling photo tees over on his website, so give him some money if you’re feeling generous today.

If you need some skate spot pornography to cheer you up on this rainy day, Kingpin ran a listicle of the “Top 25” skate plazas in the world. FWIW, Bercy is gone and Republiqué (see 1:33) took its place, and Para-lel is unfortunately on its way out soon. The #stalinplaza tag on IG is also a great way to kill a half-hour fantasizing.

Also, how could you forget about Eggs? The northeast’s last great ledge spot / plaza north of the Beltway.

Shorty’s Guilty is sorta the Caligula of skate videos.

This seems like an occasionally horrific endeavor: Two dudes snuck into an abandoned psych ward out in New York state…so they could skate inside it.

Here’s an an A.V.E. Gardner line and an A.V.E. interview.

It’s really cool to see Jerry Fowler still at it. His 411 Profile and tricks in the Rhythm industry section rank as some of the most frequent 411 revisitations, and even Strobeck admitted that he was the catalyst behind the backside nosegrind pop out’s development, which Pappalardo and Wenning later popularized among New Jerseyians in baggy jeans and DC Lynxes. Simply seeing the dude do a noseslide is sick. You can catch other parts from Orchard’s Stone Soup video here.

A wood pallet up to the never-functional water fountain at T.F. may be the most desperate Tompkins obstacle of 2014, but then, we are reminded of this.

Jerome Campbell likely locked up “360 Flip of the Year” honors earlier this fall, but Al Davis might’ve just snagged the switch title.

Slam City Skates has a cool feature about his five favorite photographs, which acts as a springboard for some stories behind the scenes of the past few Static videos.

Not a whole lot of subtlety going on in the Chocolate Epicly Later’d finale.

Five years later, still #relevant in this fashion game. Available for consulting, etc.

FYI: Mentioned this on Twitter, but all of you privy to riding the occasional “loose” Citi bike you may stumble upon — be careful. Got stopped for “running a red light,” only to have the cops run a serial number check to verify that it wasn’t stolen. Was completely random, and not in a sketchy zone at all. Be careful.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: J.R. Smith’s face after Trey Burke hit that game winner is priceless, especially since he hit the most J.R. Smith-esque game winner of the season, not by J.R. Smith, who hasn’t hit any game winners.

Quote of the Week: “I dead-ass saw him slap some dude dumb bigger than him.” — Andre Page

Friendly reminder that the best trick ever done down the Flushing six-stair manual pad wasn’t even a manual trick. New Jersey’s finest, 1999ish:

The Week in Dill & AVE Rumors

the week in dill and ave rumors

It’s ironic that skaters — even if they typically swear against “organized” sports and all their constraints — so openly embrace free agency speculation. Skaters all think they’re artists and shit, but really, are no better than the dude on some message board who knew a guy that knew a guy who swore Lebron was coming to the Knicks in 2010. And that’s what this has turned into: skateboarding’s version of summer 2010 NBA free agency, except add a few years and subtract the fact that Chris Bosh couldn’t Instagram screenshots of texts he got from ‘Bron and Wade back then. If you let the internet tell it, every Alien rider, half the Habitat roster and Alex Olson’s contracts all expire this summer.

Since skaters are mad #core, skateboarding does not benefit from organized sport conveniences, which enable something like a Slap trade machine to calculate data based on existing contracts. We’re left with two guys quitting their longtime team, and a sloshy downpour of rumors regarding semi-related skaters. You don’t know that Dylan Reider is, say hypothetically a free agent in 2014. You just assume he’s leaving because you know a guy who knows a guy and it “makes total sense.” It’d be so much better if teams could sign-and-trade him for Alex Olson and a second round draft pick. Fantasy skateboarding teams!

Rumors, especially at a time like this, can be tough to navigate. This is why we sent our army of statistician interns mulling through the Slap message board to compile a convenient graph of all current speculation, organized by the extent to which it has been speculated on. Pie chart percentages are in no way correlated to actual likelihood. These range from distinct possibilities to obvious trolling (e.g. three British companies somehow found their way into the rumor mill, so…) Feel free to start some more rumors in the comments.

rumorz

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

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