The world isn’t off to the best start in 2020, so you’d be well advised to watch this uplifting video about two Afghan girls who moved to Berlin from a refugee camp, and completely fell in love with skateboarding there. Lovingly put together by our friends at Place.
“Back then it was all a blur.” Yo these Bobshirt interviews are all so special. The latest installment is with Rodney Torres and is loaded with nineties New York nostalgia and stories, e.g it pretty much mentions three decades worth of skate shops in the city, and harks back to a time when New York coverage was limited to a montage here and there every couple years in a bigger video. (Also #lol on this YouTube comment.)
The youth has good tre flips. “Practice” is a very rad homie video by Cesar Fuentes featuring a bunch of up and coming skaters from The Bronx.
“I took so much acid that I started riding l*ngb**rds.” The governor of New Jersey has a sharp memory and is endearing as could be in yet another Bobshirt longplayer classic. Tons of stories about S.F/Philly/New York in the nineties, his mom taking him to *the* Banks contest, and plenty of memories about some legendary names.
We live in a place we are often convinced is the center of the world, despite the fact we all fall victim to the same merry-go-round of spots, tricks, ideas, etc. “Steel” is an incredible ten-minute video by Adam Bos filmed throughout that vast state above — in zones that are closer to Toronto than Brooklyn — and feels more refreshing than a lot of what our center-of-the-universe selves have been releasing as of late. Also…do we do another “core” tour? ;)
No other skate crew has logged more hours on the always en vogue corner of Howard and Crosby Streets. “Mean Streets” volume eleven from LurkNYC is now live.
Listen the Skater You’d Be Most O.K. With Your Daughter Dating get slut-shamed by Cephas on the latest episode of The Bunt.
Happy ten year anniversary to skateboarding’s Library of Congress A.K.A. The Chrome Ball Incident. Chops celebrates a decade with an interview, tons of stories and some raw clips from World Industries’ earliest filmer, Socrates Leal.
Aaron Herrington reminds you that Diego Najera nollie flipped over Black Hubba, and then had the audacity to follow it up with a switch varial heelflip eight feet over the top of a picnic table. P.S. He nollie flipped over Black Hubba.
Gonz skates around downtown with a white spine ramp for Adidas and Krooked’s collab. They better have left all of those things at Tompkins…
Bummed we missed the House of Vans Calgary pop-up / Alltimers premiere, but also we got to host a legendary sporting event that weekend so it’s ok. BUT, if you’re the photo recap type, here you go.
Kurt Havens, the Academy Award winning filmmaker behind 2012’s Twomanji video, is back with another full-length VHS / Hi-8 / old camera (?) project entitled Ballhog. It’s pretty much a vintage-tinged Bronze B-cam video from the past couple years, and features iconic parts from Mark Humienik, Billy McFeely, and Josh Wilson.
Gang Corp, Frog, Humble, The Skate Kitchen, and Hardbody all have spreads in the new issue of Japan’s Eyescream mag. Probably won’t do you much good if you can’t read Japanese (the Google Translate camera feature is sick though), but still rad to see nonetheless. Shout out to everybody.
Oh, and Genny posted the raw photos from the Humble pages.
Damn, imagine wanting to skate the Veteran’s Memorial 12 that bad? ;) jk. Marco Kada covered a lot of ground across the city and outlying areas (who even remembers the last trick on the Jersey City Hamilton Park five block spot…Zered’s Vicious Cycle part?) for his rad “New York Nice Guy” part.
“You know he’d get his mental health check and go straight to Ralph and drop two grand on a fucking moleskin pair of trousers or something.” Some Monday motivation for anyone currently living on a couch in an apartment they don’t pay rent for: Freeinterviewed Lev Tanju about all the cool shit Palace has been doing in London these past couple years.
Can’t say the QS Rap Desk has actively been checking for new Wayne songs these past ~five years, so a bit “late” on this one (came out on Christmas), but wowwwowow.
There’s a fire remix video dropping on here tomorrow Wednesday ♥
Now that that’s out of the way, this is maybe the first Monday Links post ever where there are more links to articles (i.e. written words) than videos…
“After drilling his truck bolts back for a bigger nose and noselsliding ledges in the ’80s, Mark had one of the first noseslide photos on a rail (one where he’s actually sitting on it rather than just dinging it) as a sequence in his June 1990 Poweredge.” As per an indirect solicitation, Mackenzie Eisenhour enlisted Guy Mariano to chronicle how the modern noseslide was invented. As suspected, Mark Gonzales is responsible.
“As he flies through the air, he is caught between life and death, suspended in the void of nonexistence — the ultimate Kleinean motif.” Jamie Thomas’ “leap of faith” as a work of avant garde art juxtaposed against the art of Yves Klein. Yeah, fuck it, why not.
Vice has an interview with Jonathan Rentschler about documenting the final years of Love Park for his book, Love. QS review for it here. And you can should buy it here ;)
This is oddly…not bad? Deadspin (of all places) has a #longform article about the full history of Rodney Mullen V.S. Daewon Song — though idk about it “changing skateboarding forever.”
Boil the Ocean offers some thoughts on J. Scott Handsdown and Dan Pageau taking crowdsourcing via the skateboarding community to newfound heights. To be fair, they ain’t special — Meatball pioneered this concept when he tried to GoFundMe a ticket to Australia so he could tag along on a Hardies trip.
Can’t tell what happened with this and why it is only going online now — as it was supposed to come out, like, literally four or five years ago (maybe they just waited for angst to start trending again) — but Death Video is now online in full. Features much, much younger versions of Tyshawn, Kempsey, Troy, etc.
With the potential end of Muni looming in the future, this was fun to watch (although admittedly, it is nowhere near as good the Big Three of Philadelphia skate spots) — The guys from Municipal Skateboards filmed a montage exclusively at the Philadelphia Museum of Art a.k.a. the Rocky steps.
The B.Q.E. Lot is set to be renovated by the D.O.T. at the start of next year, and it’s going to look exactly like that shitty space around the Flatiron Building with sandpaper ground and random rocks everywhere. Can’t we just get a ledge?
“Does all this mean that New York is vanishing? Sure. But the deli wasn’t there forever, either. Vanishing is what New York does.” Roctakon’s brother wrote a rad thing about revisiting the Brooklyn delis that he had photographed back in 2008.
