It is no secret that we are living in a ripe age for misinformation. Though as of last week, when the most startling photos of the construction under the Brooklyn Bridge made the rounds, the publicly available facts about the fate of the Brooklyn Banks remain unchanged.
Unless of course, you want to believe that:
Photo by @sciencecock, who also has a story about what may have been the last session at the Brooklyn Banks before the pandemic took hold of the city, and construction began to dismantle the bricks. There’s currently a petition to try and save the spot. If you have any memories of the Banks, please post them on social and tag @nyc_dot #nycdot #savebrooklynbanks so they understand this is not just some random underpass, but a landmark to tons of people who have pilgrimaged to New York for it. Also FYI: This space has nothing to do with the Parks Department, so leave them out of it :)
No clue where this goes, but the bricks at the Big Banks have been torn up. This recent PDF says that the current round of construction is set to restore the arches underneath the bridge for the next few years.
Someone under the moniker “Froggery Jones” has been uploading anywhere from four-to-fourty second slices of any and all Brooklyn Banks footage on YouTube.
These go back to the 80s, and are not exclusively clips from R.B. Umali’s videos or old 411s; whoever Mr. Jones is, he’s digging deep. For example, nobody we’ve asked (ok, didn’t try that hard) has any idea where the footage of Quim and Mike Cardona below is from or what video that Peter Bici line was in. EDIT: Those are from R.B’s Instagram, but weren’t in Revisited 1 or 2.
I know I’ve seen that Mike Carroll frontside flip somewhere, same with the Rick Howard tre, but it was definitely with music, and even so, hard to put a finger on exactly where it was. (Literally spent 45 minutes researching which FTC video it was until admitting defeat. Well aware that the answer is going to end up being so obvious.)
“But as long as your board is selling, no one has any problem with short video parts.” — Rest in Peace, Gabriel Rodriguez. Some of the most iconic arm steez in the history of skateboarding (not sure if anyone threw them ‘bows quite as stylishly as Gabriel did on a rollaway.)
Sign + share the petition to keep synthetic turf off the Tompkins flat.
Antosh‘s “Elbow Room” edit for a new board brand called Deed is really, really fucking good. Never would have thought a nose manual on pretty much the entire length of the main bank at Verizon would’ve been do-able, and that ender at Big Screen is nuts. Features solid appearances from all the Canadian sweethearts you know and love.
Don’t think there has ever been a skate interview that just got right into it quite the way Fred Gall’s Chromeball one did. Really wish the best for Fred, and skateboarding is lucky to have such an honest, open person in its ranks of legends. The Governor of New Jersey.
