Another Day Above Ground

Photo via Tao

“Because I’m not trying to compete with the kids in Cali grinding 32 stairs. That’s not me. I’m at Pulaski Park, man.” Chrome Ball interviewed Bobby Worrest about the past and present.

We all spent a lot of last week collectively fawning over Bobby being in his 30s and having not the slightest semblance of misstep, but Dani Lebron is like… 42 or 43, and dropped a fucked up part on Thrasher last Friday, right around the time everyone would’ve been clocking out for the weekend.

You likely caught it already, but the Bos brothers are consistently putting out some of the best New York videos going today. “Wide Open” is Joshua Bos’ going pro part (trash can headliner from last week’s Top 10.) And watch “Steel” again, just because ;)

Two favorites get the skateboard fantasy sports treatment from kind strangers: Someone made an E.T. b-sides remix, and someone unrelated made an Antonio b-sides remix.

Crazy Ass Paterson Skaters have a new video out + Shorty’s may be gone, but Skate Jawn recently posted up a small feature on a new D.I.Y. spot that’s been sprouting up in an old Psterson, NJ gun mill, which they skate a bit in the C.A.P.S. video.

Occasional solitary man, Brad Cromer, uploaded another compilation of IG story footage from New York. Loved the jacket zipped / hoody up clip at Columbus Circle, though don’t want to experience that for like, another ten months.

Not sure if any of us are buying Kirian Stone’s case for a re-assessment of willy grinds in the skateboard lexicon, but his Skating Is Easy part is now online.

“Mr. Phelps had been at Potrero del Sol the day before he died and had run into Mr. Brenes there. Mr. Brenes recalled asking him how he was doing and Mr. Phelps replying, ‘Another day above ground is a good day, Chico.'” Willy Staley wrote Phelps’ obituary for The New York Times.

More #mainstreammedia skate coverage: Noah Johnson wrote Jason Dill profile for GQ.

“There are no strangers when those horn blasts sound, only you and a crowd of people who have suddenly become your closest friends.” The New Yorker has a nice piece on ten years of “Swag Surfing,” which coincidentally may have been the only song not from the past two years played at the Gang Corp premiere :)

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Shout out to the brodie Dirk for passing Wilt for #6 in all-time scoring. 2011 Dallas Mavs 4ever ♥

Quote of the Week: “Before Tinder, there was Enid’s.” — Chopped Cheese

The whole “people are just waiting for you to make a mistake”-thing he talks about made me think about how people on the street think of skateboarding. Never understood the logic of the first and only thing you ask someone on a skateboard being about injuries or getting hurt. Actually, a ton of the shit he says made me think of skateboarding.

Snow Day Links

There’s snow on the ground, and not a ton of links to recap from the past few days, but at least we get post-7 P.M. sunsets back on Sunday. Tiny victories.

Rest in Peace Dillon

New car and live with your parents, or move to New York and live in a basement apartment in Bushwick? Jesse Alba has a new interview / Day in the Life thing.

“For Heitor what’s funny is that we saw that he’d bought shit on the website so I hit him up and told him I could send him some clothes.” Like a brand? Looking for a sponsor? Buy their stuff (using your real name!) and maybe you’ll end up riding for them and getting your entire order refunded ;) Danny Brady has an interview over on Free about his current role as the Palace team manager.

Always stoked to see footage of this dude (he has the best line of 2019 thus far, based on QS office chalkboard rankings…), but didn’t really know much about him until now: Korahn Gayle is the latest guest on The Bunt.

Any Skate Perception alumni read QS? Ty Evans and some other camera nerds created a microphone that can be plugged into modern cameras to record sound that mimics the audio from the VX1000. 300 bucks and still only available for pre-order. (No, this isn’t a sponsored post. Just crazy that’s where skate video technology is at right now.)

Kyota went to L.A. for the first time, and spent his days at skateparks, and his nights downtown.

Monster Children has a photo feature with Brad Cromer skating around New York.

Austin Holcomb has an all-New York part from the Challers video playing over on TWS.

New video blog edit from Extra Crispy, pretty much a go-to resource for anything that goes on at L.E.S. Park.

Always fun to see people take New York skate filmmaking in a direction beyond just straight up skate clips. “{SLING]” is a short film directed by M.Fig.

No matter the decade, people are gonna keep ollieing off that slanted grey wall on Water Street. Geeked is a full-length video by Bernie Leonor that looks like it’s mostly filmed on a GoPro, all throughout the city.

This dude’s organs probably began to disintegrate as soon as he walked out, because I can’t imagine how bad the curse you get put under for stealing a cat from a bodega is. No wonder he returned it.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: D. Wade with maybe the wildest buzzer beater of the season, at home, and at his final career game against the Warriors.

Quote of the Week: “Heelies were so sick.” — Troy Silwell

Link or Drown 2

(Colors.)

The week’s best piece of skate content: The New York Times with an illustrated story about Chico Brenes’ journey from asylum seeker fleeing Nicaragua, to pro skater, to the present day in his home country.

“I kind of consider 2000 to 2009-10 the dark ages of skating. It was just like, the filmer and photographer decided what a skater would skate. If you were good, you got shipped out to California and you would skate with people that would be like ‘You need to do this.’ Almost like there were requirements. ‘Do this handrail.'” Spot-finder extraordinaire, Dave Caddo, has an interview with Village Psychic about the rules of skating new spots, blown out spots, and unlocking spots.

Spent a month or three mulling about whether to write something about the three skate movies that came out in 2018 on here. Quite obviously, nothing on that end came to fruition, and this Paris Review piece on Minding the Gap is nine zillion times better than anything I could have written on what is, far and away, the best “skateboard movie” ever made. Get that free Hulu trial if you haven’t seen it yet.

i-D has a long feature commemorating Palace’s ten-year journey from a brand conceived in a dilapidated skate house by Southbank to what it is today: employer of Torey Goodall, Jamal Smith and Tico ♥

Slam City Skates has a long interview about the current status of the Long Live Southbank project, and it being on the cusp of reaching its massive fundraising goal to open up + reconstruct the closed-off portion of the spot.

LANDLINE” is a rad, mostly NJ-based mini video by Matt Hilzenrath.

Brad Cromer has an all New York part (with a couple Jersey clips) commemorating the release of his new Huf pro model.

Unclear if he’s been reading more women authors or not, but Mark Suciu has a bunch of New York clips in his new Thunder part. Pretty sure he’s the first one to get a clip at those year-old, two-second bust ledges by IBM, and that rock ollie in front of Corner Bistro is fucked.

Ciao is the latest all-New York video by Ricardo Napoli. Teaser here.

Here’s the preview for Virgin Blacktop, a documentary about a 1970s skate team based out of Nyack, New York.

Jahmal Williams is the latest guest on the Mission Statement podcast, and Joe Castrucci is the latest on The Bunt.

More post-“BLESSED” content: New Order Mag has a quick “Five Things” interview with Bill.

Stuff You’ve Probably Caught Already: Frog has a team montage over on Thrasher, Eli Reed has a part that is 70% filmed in New York and made this guy’s girlfriend think he died + Franky Villani and Jakes Hayes skate two or three city spots in their Duets section.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Trae Young with the magic trick.

Quote of the Week: “When two skaters have babies, a VX dies.” — Shawn Powers.

Deep Rich Sepia Tone

Via Hopps on IG

We have a small run of new hoodies, and we found a box of the old “Vacation” tees in the warehouse. Everything is over in the shop.

Someone mashed up five minutes of Tyshawn loosies and b-sides.

Brad Cromer skates New York with the enthusiasm of someone who hasn’t been burned out by seven thousand consecutive weekends of “where do we skate?” / “that spot sucks” conversations. Also, that kickflip back smith at Man Ledges was ~beautiful~.

“There’s so much bullshit in that fuckin’ thing.” Bobshirt interviews Aaron Meza for an hour and twenty minutes to find out what parts of FTC videos are lifted from Scorsese and Godard. (Also kinda crazy how pretty much anybody in the “content business” has been inspired by the Ego Trip Rap Lists book.)

And editing an artsy clip to movie quotes from probably the most quoted New York movie in existence is a bit too, um, on the nose, but footage of Appleyard skating the city was a nice surprise.

Mike Munzenrider explores the trajectory of how skating in shorts became an industry standard practice.

“Born of those spastic curb cauldrons in the early 1990s, the crooked grind to backside lipslide lay low for a certain number of Earth years until Bastien Salabanzi donked one down a semi-legit handrail in Sorry, drawing immediate reprisals in the shallow backwaters of the early message-board days and inspiring several other related atrocities over the years to come. It was a time of war, girth and widespread musical pirating.” Can’t say I was too worried about the crooked grind to back lip feeling it its been neglected these past ~15 years, but Boil the Ocean felt otherwise.

The perpetually making-clips-that-look-like-no-one-else’s collective of Russia’s Absurd Skateboards went to the seaside city of Sochi in the offseason to search for spots.

Skate camps, self celebrations, and reeaallyy long manuals — Chromeball runs down a history of nineties skate video clichés for TWS.

Of course Tompkins is on a list of the the 69 best places in New York, for better or worse.

Posed another hypothetical “how long until” over on the ol’ Twitter now that T.J. got the 33rd Street subway station ollie out of the way: how long until / is it actually possible for someone to ollie the eight-flat-eight at the Met?

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: About due time we got Luca on here.

Quote of the Week
Observant Gentleman: “I think you’re not supposed to order seafood on Sundays or something.”
Jesse Alba: “Yeah, you’re not supposed to skate on private property either, and here we are.”

Stumbled on this two-hour mix of New York jams that appeared on DJ Screw mixtapes, which made me never want to listen to some of these songs at regular speed ever again. The Rakim one is insane, and never would have thought that Tribe screwed would sound so good.

Last Tango In Tompkins

Anyone got the story or any info on this photo? Just a random Tumblr find.

It was a SLOW Monday morning of skateboard link data collection (there has yet to be any coherent #longform reflection on “BLESSED” to peruse), but then T.J. nollie flipped — actually, maybe just watch the part…”KILLER” is a full Tyshawn part filmed exclusively at T.F. West.

Office favorite, Krazy Frankie, has a new part out for Frog today, with guest tricks from the rest of the team and one of the best half cab flips in the biz ;)

Someone went and put together a remix video of French steez lord, Stephane Larance. It’s reassuring that we’re not the only mega nerds spending precious hours on earth making remix videos of skaters mostly known from early-2000s European wheel company videos.

It has been a truly remarkable year for Upstate New York videos. “Nonsense” is a new one from Taryn Ward, with some of the same guys that you’ll recognize from April’s “Steel” video.

Old man yells at cloud the Instagram “Explore” page (jk, jk…kind of) — Village Psychic interviewed Marc Johnson about what constitutes as a circus trick today.

New Brad Cromer Instagram compilation, with a good bit of New York clips.

Here’s Tyler Stier’s part from the Buffalo, N.Y-based Jeb video, which looks like it’s filmed in every place on the eastern seaboard between Buffalo and Miami.

On the slim chance that you missed it, T-Funk became the second person to successfully make it down the T.J. / “cherry” rail at One Police Plaza, and we’re here for any and all participants in a Yorkian backside 180 nosegrind resurgence.

After shading him on Friday, I happened to stumble upon this clip of this elusive “Clay Kreiner” and it’s actually pretty beast.

NJ Skateshop is throwing a contest at the Jersey City rink spot this Sunday, December 2.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Young talent Jamal Crawford has a bright future ahead of him in the NBA.

Quote of the Week
E.J: “Damn, you know who’s back?”
Inquisitive Gentleman: “Who?”
E.J:Sierra Fellers.”

Happy birthday Pryce Holmes! ♥