On Friday, September 18, as a welcome to the Red Bull Origins event at the Brooklyn Banks on Saturday, QS hosted a photo show featuring the ongoing history at the Brooklyn Banks, with photos by Ben Colen, Mike Heikkila, Keith Denley, Quinn Batley, Mark Custer and Greg Navarro — including a prologue from the 90s with imagery by Gunars Elmuts, Giovanni Reda and Atiba Jefferson.
📹 Video by Adam Abada
Back in 2021, when we did part two of the oral history behind all the skate photos featuring the Twin Towers, we got Atiba on the horn to talk through a few shots from ~1997. In doing the digging for those, he happened to uncover a small cache of unscanned New York photos he forgot about because they didn’t feel like much at the time, but obviously took on new meaning as the years went by and the world changed.
In the midst of Atiba’s monthslong media tour promoting his latest Vans collection, we visited him at his office to see just what else he had in the stash from New York. For a guy who got started working in skateboarding in San Diego in 1995, headed into what can only be described as a “golden age” for print media, we wanted to know what he saw, shot, and remembered from this city that was generally only a novelty in an era dominated by the west coast.
“Eden told me the benches cost the city about $1,000 apiece. It takes a skateboarder to know that you don’t need a big, expensive park to make skaters happy.” Willy Staley (our friend who wrote Tyshawn’s NYT profile and the incredible post-lockdown deep dive on The Sopranos enduring through the generations) penned a full feature for The New York Times Magazine about how the Love Park granite wound up in Malmo, Sweden. The king is just a dude.
Somehow missed this a lil’ while back, but it seems like others did too: “timeout” is a three-minute New York montage by Jake Durham with appearances from Nelly Morville, Mathias Rostein, Matt Militano + others.
The first Back To The Banks contest since the big banks reopened, and the first in ~seventeen~ years, is going down this Saturday at 1 P.M. until 5:30. $10k in prizes, five obstacle zones. Presented by Wip Energy, Labor, Tenant, Spitfire & Grand. Flyer here.
It is actually crazy how contemporary Jason Byoun’s skating from ten-ish years ago looks in 2025. Nick Von Werssowetz A.K.A. Lurk NYC uploaded a seven-minute A-roll remix of all the clips he filmed of Jason from 2013 to 2018. Not sure whose S.O.T.Y. from 2013 – 2018 we’re handing to Jason, but it’s gotta be someone’s. (For further viewing from the era: Jason’s Life Is Goodie part is blessed too …except he doesn’t say that anymore because it means “b less.”)
Kebab 📷 Photo via Nik Stain
Wooooo!!! We’re back baby! East Village dollar slice joint is back to selling 99 cent slices! Woooooooo! Siri, play “Dreams and Nightmares!”
On the opposite end of the Tompkins food pyramid: The Avenue A Juicy Lucy, which rivals perhaps only Hawa on East Broadway for highest volume of acai bowls sold to skateboarders, is shutting down due to vandalism at that location :(
“The wood goes from Canada to China, then back to America to the warehouse, from there to the distribution in Europe and then to the shops. And every player in between, including distributors, wants to earn something from the board.” Solo has an interesting deep dive on something so obvious, yet so elusive: how are skateboards really made?
There’s literally one New York trick in the Australia x NZ team New Balance video that dropped on Friday, and it’s a 10/10 impossible over the uphill bump-to-bar outside the Montrose L, which, up until recently, was a quintessential “if only it weren’t uphill…”-spot. Apparently, skateboarding has evolved past caring.
