Mark Suciu told the story of his backside 5050 @ CBS Thrasher cover that was shot while Salt Bae was taking a nap. When we dropped the Top 10 that coincided with the week that “Verso” came out, some people were like, “that’s a weird trick to choose for #1 from the part.” Sure, it’s not some spine contorting technical ledge skating, but motherfucker do you want to lock both of your trucks onto that skinny-ass rail a millisecond after you’ve ollied up a ledge? There’s also decades worth of piss and shit in the pit behind the rail. (It was the inspiration behind this Antonio Quote of the Week.)
It’s one of those “more words than videos” weeks :)
“But skateboarding’s worldview can often become so totalizing that commitment to it far into adulthood, past the age when it’s socially acceptable to ride around in a school bus smoking weed and listening to Slayer, can look like protracted adolescence. This is why skateboarding, for a large chunk of the country, will never fully outgrow its degenerate associations. And that’s fine.” It is notoriously difficult to produce a genuinely great piece of writing about skateboarding, but Noah Gallagher Shannon’s profile of Grant Taylor ticks all the boxes. Send it to your mom.
QS Sports Desk: More excited for the off-season, than we were for like, the entire second half of the postseason. And if you think Lebron is coming to the Knicks you need to move to Mars.
Quote of the Week: “Hell no I don’t watch soccer. A bunch of buddies kicking balls? I’m good.” — Meatball
QS is perpetually giving 90% of skate video editors a hard time for their uninspired marriage to Big L + and this idea that basically all rap still needs to sound like nineties rap (how boring does that sound tbh?), but we’ll throw you guys a bone here because there’s a substantial chance you haven’t heard this one before, and it’s really fun:
There are a multitude ways to be nostalgic. Some fondly tell yarns of the past, remembering the wild days of to-go margaritas being consumed in public, and bust-free, straight [fucking] ledges existing in lower Manhattan. Others spend their precious years on earth leaving comments about how Lil’ Wayne ruined hip-hop on YouTube videos. More and more skaters are winking at the past via fashion; outlets like Vintage Sponsor have made a name for themselves by trafficking in garms from skateboarding’s sartorial lineage. Our more talented colleagues time travel through tricks nobody is supposed to do anymore, via the darkslide, pressure flip or street grab’s increasing presence in modern videography.
A new form of loving past eras has recently began to take form. In the past nine months, the following events have occurred in New York:
1. Pyramid Ledges has been unknobbed for the first time since 2010, ending the longest drought the spot has experienced since the building first began skateblocking it in the early 2000s.