Big Brother Magazine | Quartersnacks

Film Review: Dumb — The Story of Big Brother Magazine

Features & Interviews May 10th, 2017 · 12:04 pm · 4

BIG-BROTHER

It is not easy to write about Patrick O’Dell’s film, Dumb: The Story Of Big Brother Magazine, and Shit: The Big Brother Book within one year of each other without sounding redundant. Even though it hasn’t published an issue in thirteen years, Big Brother holds a unshakeable stake in skateboarding’s collective heart. Thrasher bears perhaps the most recognizable skate brand on the planet, Skateboarder was the first-ever skateboard magazine, but no, more Big Brother, we need more.

Having covered everything from the cult of Cardiel to Menace throughout Epicly Later’d, O’Dell is the best person to sit across from anyone throwing heart eyes at a mammoth of skateboard lore. The linear story of the magazine is told through a series of new interviews, shoddy unseen footage that otherwise only had its audio transcribed, archived clips from newscasts (i.e. interviews with angry parents), and clips from Big Brother‘s video series.

An abridged history of Big Brother was told in the 2007 Steve Rocco documentary, The Man Who Souled the World. Rocco’s few appearances in Dumb cover the same ground as before, where he recounts the infamous story of why he started the mag in the first place. Unlike the Big Brother book, which apart from the epilogue, was narrated by Sean Cliver and Dave Carnie’s recollections, Dumb‘s interviews cover a wider spectrum of contributors to any and all Big Brother projects.

Trying to Get Off the Fall-Off List

Daily News June 20th, 2016 · 11:44 am · 1

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The QS Sports Desk didn’t have a horse in the playoff race, but it’s pretty obvious that this Cleveland title is both A) the closest New Jersey will ever come to winning a title thanks to Freehold’s J.R. Smithony, West Orange’s Kyrie Irvings, and the back-to-back Finals appearances New Jersey Nets’ Richard Jefferson, and B) the closest the New York Knicks will ever come to winning a title because we now live in a world where Timofey Mozgovonzsky and Iman Shumpert’s hair are NBA Champions. (It’s still fuck Dan Gilbert forever though.) Last night and Game 7 OKC-GSW were the two best basketball games of all time :) lol Melo.

ANYWAY, been pretty bad at updating lately, huh? Should be back to normal programming this week. Sremmlife 2 is delayed and we’re devastated.

Shout out to Sage and TJ for turning pro :)

Are there even people out there whose favorite skater isn’t Max Palmer? Unofficial Frog x 917 demo @ Tompkins via Genesis Evans.

Yaje has a new part out for Venture, where he brings the 2000s back super hard by ending it off with a trick over the Grant’s Tomb four-stair ledge instead one of the banked ledges. Shout out to Ja$onwear x infinity.

“I don’t think we ever really thought of who we were writing for, we did what we wanted to do and what we liked.” Yet another interview about the Big Brother book, but all of them have been pretty great and strangely echo a lot of what’s going on in skateboarding now. (QS review of Shit here btw.)

ON THAT SAME NOTE, you’ve no doubt heard plenty old #oldheads talking about how skating is in some circle (bro) and history repeating itself phase right now a la the post-Bones Brigade era, and while everything it discusses was before my time…thoroughly enjoyed this new Ron Chatman interview about his early career days. “I never did three flips because that was Jason’s shit. I never did impossibles or heelflips because Ed did them. You couldn’t do it better than that.”

Boil the Ocean tackles the growing conspiracy that big shoe companies are deliberately flooding the market with small skateboard brands to dilute the resonance of small shoe brands, or something along the lines of skateboarding’s version of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? I dunno man.

Transworld was feeling the Non Fiction 2k16 vibes, and picked up LurkNYC’s New York Times outtakes series for their website. Good God that backside flip…

Nice read about what it’s like be a sk8er and work as a professional architect.

Jersey Jersey Jersey… “Meadowlands Promo,” featuring QS favorite Nick Ferro.

“Crybaby,” a new one from the youth.

Here’s the New York-based raw footage from Justin Henry’s OPM part.

Quick interview with Jason Dill over at Place.

Samsung is doing a retrospective event on R.B. Umali’s work later today.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Pipe it up.

Quote of the Week: “The room was $140, but ended up being $500 because my girl picked up the walnuts.” — Carl Williams

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I mean, who doesn’t love a good vocal interpolation of a truck backing up? Decisions..

Shout Out Capone-N-Noreaga

Daily News June 2nd, 2014 · 5:05 am · 2

mariah subway

“Yoooooooo, I heard she lives off the Kosciusko J.” “Yeah, I think I saw her at Five Leaves once.” ♥

Alien Workshop’s forgotten legacy: Ass shot 360 flips.

Y’all lucky Marcus McBride isn’t ten years younger!

The clearly Bronze-inspired Bev video is a fun watch. Troy’s part is sick, and Kasper’s ender at the 23rd Street hospital is something that footage can’t really do justice to.

Video blog #210 from the Beef Patty crew and NY Times #8 from the LurkNYC crew.

If you’ve seen one skateboarder’s “Day in the Life” clip, you’ve seen them all — EXCEPT only one has footage of Daniel Lebron skating flat in it.

Muckmouth tracked down Peter Bici, Ryan Hickey and even Henry Sanchez (who was the only glaring omission from the FTC book…he’s not very talkative here though) for their endless “Where are they now?” series.

New all-Southbank “Sission” clip from the PWBC. Not as good #musicsupervision as the last installment, but there are some rad Chewy Canon lines there.

Kennedy Cantrell’s part in the Dallas-based Burnt Out video solid. He goes over a moat mid-line. Full vid here. His part is at the 28-minute mark; haven’t had a chance to watch the full video yet. “They hatin’ on us ‘cuz we out here!”

Dylan Goldberger / James has a new part out for Coda Skateboards. Is that part he had in the Prizefighter video two years ago still online? Can’t find it anywhere.

The Tumblrverse scanned Big Brother’s 1999 article about fashion and skateboarding, which explains the origin of the Bob shirt, among other things. To all you other skateboard media institutions: Dibs on a 2014 remake.

The Spectacle Theater (S 3rd Street in Williamsburg) will be playing Memory Screen on June 10th at 8 P.M. Chris Carter and Duane Pitre will be in attendance, and will hold a Q & A after the video.

This is what came of the Murray Hill spot mentioned in a post from a few weeks ago.

They’re making a documentary about Kids. On one hand, you’d like to wish that everyone would stop mining one of the most easily mineable relics of nineties nostalgia and focus elsewhere (Huf Epicly Later’d!), but on the other hand, last year’s Narratively article about the making of the film was better than the movie itself. A 90-minute version of that would probably be awesome.

New York is still sketchy if you look hard enough.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Kawhi Leonard is the Sports Desk’s new favorite non-German player over 6’3. Spurs in six?

Quote of the Week
Tufty: “We need to get beers.”
Waste: “There are 18 back at the house.”
Tufty: “That’s not enough.”
R.I.P. to the S 2nd and Havemeyer Social Club.

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The new Twitter sucks. Who’s going to Future tomorrow?

#TBT: Big Brother Mag Is Back…on Instagram

Time Capsule May 8th, 2014 · 5:21 am · 2

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Print lives on! …via Instagram.

If you need a new follow on the Gram, someone not affiliated with the magazine started a Big Brother fan account: @bigbrotherskateboardmagazine.

Though this is the sort of thing that is probably better-suited for Tumblr, as Instagram sizing issues will render most type unreadable, it’s a nice 612 x 612 reminder of that magazine’s brilliance. There was talk of the entire archive being made available on the Jackass site some years back, but that never happened. (What’s up with troves of nineties skateboarding nostalgia having so many false starts in the digital era? Skateboarder even went under before their plans of making the whole 411 collection available on their site gained any momentum.) The Jackass site became Dickhouse.tv, and while there isn’t anything remotely close to a full archive on there, you can find plenty of good bits relating back to the mag under the “Big Brother” tag on their blog.

People will compare stuff to Big Brother today, but should probably stop. It’s a product specific to another time, and that’s why it’s special. That mag or anything like it could never exist today — even on the internet — without alienating pretty much all potential advertisers and skateboarders they could cover i.e. we got shit for the blatantly tongue-in-cheek Mind Field remix…could you imagine the backlash at some of the insanity that those dudes pulled if it took place in today’s #skateboard #industry?

Stuff We’ve Scanned Before: The Black Issue, The Yellow Issue, Billy Rohan interview from the “Hated & Misunderstood” issue, Danny Supa interview