Photo by Greg Navarro 📷
Thanks to everyone who grabbed something off the webstore sale last week. Should be caught up on shipping by end of today 📦💨
The NPR Story on the A.V.E. bench spills a bit of the secret on how the bench got to Richmond, Virginia at the end, straight from…the Temple University police. Bravo to skateboarders, for always figuring it out. If you aren’t already aware, @ave_bench on Instagram has been tracking the world tour at every turn.
A grainy Jeff Pang via That’s A Crazy One
Seems like the skateboard world has still collectively been regrouping since Glory Challenge Weekend? Or everyone just went out to Paris for fashion week? Because it’s been slow as shit out there for any #interesting #skate #content.
If we were exiled from New York, we’d probably have the easiest time relocating to Paris (similar distractions/fashionability/volume of “Summer Trip To” clips), so just to practice: 1) Thierry Gormit has a sick new part over on Free with a Lucas @ Republique cameo. Who is gonna be the first one to do a trick into the East River though? 2) Swedish slappy poets, Poetic Collective, make the obligatory “Summer Trip to Paris” edit. 3) Skate Jawn has a Remy Tav interview. Big year for footage at the Louvre. 4) Le Dome is a go again. Shout to Rick Owens for the tip.
Looks like Tony Hawk is an avid QS #TRENDWATCH reader.
This half New York / half Tampa Sam Bellipanni part has some cool Columbus Park tricks, and lines at the Banks are always nice to see.
This Ricta commercial filmed around New York never misses a chance to remind you that you’re watching a wheel company commercial. Also, only one of those spots could be considered “crusty.” *Queue up this classic 12th & A quote*
“Skaters in Cars Looking At Spots” is just called “Skaters in Cars” now. The new one is with Louie Lopez. We should steal this concept but have it focus exclusively on claimers. “Didn’t you say you were going to nollie back heel those steps but can’t do those on flat?”
A 19-year-old who just happens to be the best native skateboarder from New York City opened his own Caribbean-American restaurant in The Bronx. Congrats, T.J!
Need more Glory Challenge content? Probably not, but Village Psychic interviewed everyone waiting outside two weeks ago about who they thought would win the World Championship Game of S.K.A.T.E.
“Team Nightwork” via Kyota’s iPhone.
Basketball player and wallie noseblunt extraordinaire, Justin Henry, is the latest guest on The Bunt.
Jeff Ihaza re: Lil’ Wayne being hip-hop’s best skater, though I think Rich the Kid would wash him in S-K-A-T-E.
Quote of the Week
Gentleman Who Was Almost Maced By Montreal Police: “There was just a riot outside the bar.”
Charles Rivard: “Yeah, the city just does that to promote drinking.”
Kinda like this loosie from the winter and “Back From The 80s” more than anything on The Carter V.
New York skateboarding has a storied infatuation with nothingness. We’ve all been taken to a new spot by our friends, only to greet it with a “…this?” upon arrival. Our most famous street spot is an empty square — a blank canvas for the debris that the city creates. Objects get grinded on, marked up, and discarded. We return to nothing until the next pallet, old television set or traffic cone tumbles into our lives.
These empty spaces are accessible — 9th and A, 12th and A, Houston and Sixth — we all pass by them dozens of times each week. It is natural that we get sucked into their orbit rather than risk a kick-out somewhere in the Financial District. But there is another notoriously spot-deprived space that has been popping up in clips with greater frequency: Frederick Law Olmsted’s masterwork of civil engineering, Central Park.
The one kinda spot in Central Park hasn’t been waxed since before construction began on the Freedom Tower, and like, who skates The Flats anymore? Yet skaters are forgoing more skate-friendly rock spots in exchange for unchartered rocks, seeking out the one reasonable handrail in a 843 acre grassy abyss, and sessioning something as mundane as a wooden road divider — all inside a place famous in skateboarding for the mere fact that it has nothing to skate.
Are we subconsciously planning refuge because we’ve been confronted with a future where the Parks Department succeeds in figuring out how to knob T.F. spots? Do we just need green spaces and trees more than we think? Will the lower rungs of ledge skating’s diminishing middle class find itself embracing The Central Park Curb™ as an actual spot, and not just where Ted Barrow reminds us that he can back tail very well? And does anyone realize that nobody skates what’s actually probably definitely the best spot in Central Park — that kinda downhill set of three smooth threes at the bottom of the Reservoir?
Late start today innit. All remaining QS hats in the webstore are $15 btw ♥
“When I don’t skate I get stoked when I skate.” Same.
The Parks Department sessions Central Park for All City Showdown. Comedy aside, there’s something admirable about filming an entire montage in a place well known for having next to nothing to skate. There are those three sets of three on a hill at the south entrance of the reservoir that would actually look great on film though…
Muckmouth’s rant on ETN — essentially Pay-Per-View for skating — is one of the funnier pieces of skateboard writing in recent memory, but the most quotable lines are a bit too risqué for the #SFW environment of a Monday QS post :)
The Tennyson Corp just keeps reelin’ in the hits. The latest is a mix of J.B. and Caesar Singh’s 411 footage. Is the fact that J.B. is European the only reason why he’s often forgotten on First Team Prodigious Nineties Street Skaters lists? Yes? Though so.
Kalis is one of the rare pros whose interviews always feel different and new, even though he’s covered the same tried and true subjects before. He’s got two out this week, both on the occasion of his first trip to London…one with Kingpin about a vindictive $117,000 tax bill from the city of Philadelphia, and another with Slam City Skates with some good bits about the homogenization of 360 flips.
Chima was a bit more unhinged than a lot of guests on the season finale of The Bunt. Requests for next season: Kalis (duh), Zered, Forrest, Jake, Smolik, Muska.
Politic put Danny Renaud’s part from Division, their most recent video, up online. You can find Caddo’s part here, in case you missed it ;)
Russian Bob uploaded nine minutes of raw Gavin Nolan footage.
Might be a tough sell to some of our curmudgeonous colleugues, but Ripped Laces is contending that Reebok is skateboarding’s favorite “unofficial” skate shoe.
Even if it’s basically a lookbook, Leo footage is Leo footage.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Kristaps’ block in a game that resulted in the first Nets home win in sixteen games. Yeah, I just had this one on in the background last night. No, I didn’t watch it for more than 15 seconds at a time.
Quote of the Week: “Toughen up dude, have a piña colada.” — David Dowd
That Parks Department clip reminded me of the time Ja$onwear noseslid the entire 10-flat-10-flat-10 “hubba” at the 6th Avenue entrance of Central Park, so here’s the 2003 masterpiece as a digitally remastered 2017 Criterion Collection GIF.
