Noooooooooo Juice

juice

No, not the Juiceman.

Soooo, we made a run of those Tompkins Square sweatshirts from earlier this fall as hoodys for Japan. There were a few leftovers that didn’t get promoed out, and you can scoop what remains in the webstore now. Hurry!

Unequivocally the worst rap song ever recorded.

The new Alltimers boards are chill.

SMLTalk came through with an abbreviated history of the plus-size skateboarder, though oddly left out second-and-third career arc Fred Gall. His Inhabitants section is sorta the epitome of heavy-set skateboarding, isn’t it?

We noticed earlier this year that Hungary might be the European-equivalent of New Jersey, at least from a skateboarding standpoint. Well, if you were into Toló, you’ll get a kick out of Fakopó, a new 27-minute video of Budapest-based crust.

Corey Rubin sighting in Johnny Wilson’s latest video blog!

Kalis is the best. Not only is he indifferent to the today’s prefered practice of ambidextrous pushing, he rejects the term “switch mongo” altogether. If Kalis and Gino aren’t learning to push with their opposite foot, why should you?

Halloween-themed skate clips all tend to blend together at this point, but this Muska-themed one via the Black Ninja is cool if you grew up on Fulfill the Dream.

New quick 4-5-6 clip from Bolts Hardware and Curt Daley #eggs.

Some old fashioned “Who is Jake Johnson going to ride for?”-speculation + thoughts on the modern skater’s newfound ability to sustain relevance without a board sponsor.

“I was told in 1996 by Frank Messman, the then CEO of World Industries, that the industry standard rate for a graphic topped out at 500 bucks. Nearly 20 years later it’s still that amount or less—even by half from what I’ve recently been heard from one manufacturer—which may make this the worst profession in which to try and earn a living.” Chris Nieratko interviews Sean Cliver about the unfortunate plight of making a living off skateboard graphics. (Ginko reissued Disposable, btw. When are we gonna see a reissue of the Evan Hecox book? $694 for a used copy is a bit out of budget.)

Ride has a cool history lesson on short-lived “cult” companies from the nineties e.g. American Dream, FIT, 60/40, Illumanti and a handful of others.

Josh Stewart uploaded a good quality version of the New York, Boston and Philly section from the original Static video on the occasion of the video’s fifteen-year anniversary. Tony Montgomery was really sick, huh?

Some ten-plus-year-old footage of Kalis, Sabback, Puleo, etc.

Something for the English majors: “There is something untranslatable about skating’s vocabulary, something not-quite-repeatable about a particular trick landed a certain way, like a poetic line clicking into place in that ineffable way lines sometimes do on first reading.”

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Steph.

Quote of the Week: “I’m not good anymore.” — Keith Denley

Not sure how long ago this happened, but recently found out that the Bridgeport ledges got knobbed. R.I.P. to the best ledge spot within a 70-mile radius of New York City that you actually had a chance of skating :(

Hungary is Apparently A Lot Like New Jersey

tolo

Without even having visited many of them, it’s easy to pinpoint most European countries’ contributions to the fabric of skateboarding: Spain and France are thinktanks of EuroTech™, England somehow produces incredible skateboarders despite miraculous climate and spot-related odds, Scandinavians are tall, love wet cement and routinely rewatch Eastern Exposure, as do Belgians and the Dutch (+ Youness…Weiger…), Italians are the byproducts of the best marble on earth, Germans are a hodgepodge of all the above, and everything east of Austria, whose skaters are benefactors of modern architecture’s greatest unintentional skatepark, is pretty much just Russia. Who knows what goes on there…

If there was some hypothetical secret level of New Jersey crust that gets unlocked when you do a trick on the biggest piece of shit that even Fred Gall backed down from, it probably looks like the spots in Toló, a new video out of Budapest. 1) These Hungarians definitely watch the same Quim Cardona parts before skating as the In Crust We Trust dudes. 2) Their entire video is built around 5050 / cool ollie / 180 / wallride-heavy trick repertoires, because these spots look way too harsh to attempt anything close to technical on. 3) They even embrace the “scum” title, much like a prominent Garden State media institution. Hungary = New Jersey of Europe, at least as far as skateboarding is concerned?

The word “raw” gets overused these days, but it’s hard to think of something as awesomely unrefined as this video.

The only real criticism is that they should have better timed the release of Toló alongside that two-week period when “normcore” was the internet’s buzzword, as this vid has the most fashion indifferent wardrobe supervision ever.