If you have notsigned the petition to keep synthetic turf off of the Tompkins Square Parks court, but have the (*begin Stephen A. Smith voice*) AUDACITY to log onto QS — we are going to come to your house, break your refrigerator, and then fucking bring it to Tompkins.
It’s one of those rare weeks when the links gravitate towards the written word and not videos. Good time to load up Instapaper if you have a flight or long bus-ride ;)
No idea how this is floating under the radar… Muckmouth basically has an oral history of New Deal skateboards, in which they caught up with all (?) of the original riders as a specified addendum to the “where are they now” things that they were doing a few years back.
The New York Times has a story about the awful situation with the security guard and the GX crew at Black Rock, and how it has opened the conversation about about how we all interact with security. (Everyone just leave. Come back or don’t, but just leave.)
“The Dogtown phenomenon, billed in the doc as ‘the birth of the now,’ has since become a cottage industry.” This is a cool longform profile of Craig Stecyk that traces back on a lot of the “ethos” that skateboarding adopted from California surfers and quickly found itself commodified.
“‘You had all these planners and architects in the 1950s and 60s saying cities need these grand, celebratory spaces — and they really didn’t.’ But apparently skaters did.” Curbed has an awesome feature about how some odious, post-WWII federal legislation ultimately lead to the creation of the sorts of public plazas that would prove to be the breeding ground of modern skateboarding.
“That might be a trick that’s been done, but it’s done differently…and with different pants on.” Vice has a video profile of Breezy and Una about growing up being two of the few girls skating in Vancouver.
The Finnish guys who made the Hard Water video that went live on the Free site last week actually also put together a trip to New York edit that we only now caught onto. Love a vacation edit when the trees are bare + everyone is still in hoodies, though I’m sure it’s warmer than Helsinki. Also impressed by their cobblestone deterrent that keeps your board from rattling down into Sutton Place traffic.
Maybe it goes through a vigorous off-screen sanitizing process — but one’s bed seems like a bad place to sort through street debris. Anyway, here is an eight-minute glimpse into the life of Bobby Puleo.
In literal shock that the Bos brothers — who have been making those great upstate New York videos — aren’t even American. They live in Canada! And drive into New York state all the time to film for their projects! Incredible. Anyway, TWS has an interview that we wish we did with Adam Bos about the process behind his video series, which has yielded some of the most rewatchableand unique projects going today. They also have the raw footy from Bos’ last one, “Wide Open.”
Bottom Shelf is a new full-length from Dylan Holderness and Evan Pacheco that’s about 60% New York / 40% L.A. footage, and definitely worth a Monday morning coffee watch. Probably the first footage of that barrier that’s been on Delancey for the past ~year? Hard to convey in footage, but that thing is basically sloped uphill…
Cooper Winterson made a lil’ Borough Hall x Grand Street Courts x Williamsburg Monument bro cam video entitled “Shidiot.”
Gino pushing! …via a two-minute video profile thing for his brand, Poets.
“Certainly the success of Kaarikoirat suggests that, rather than expensive, large-scale developments in the city centre like casinos and skyscrapers, it is micro-initiatives that offer smaller cities the best chance of catalysing a vibrant urban fabric and preventing brain drain.” The Guardian has an optimistic story about a D.I.Y. park in Finland’s third-largest city, which helped jolt some energy into the region’s youth culture.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: These playoffs have kinda been…okay? Or have the past few years been that way because we all basically know how it’s going to end. Kyrie with a magic trick, just because.
Chrystie NYC’s first full-length video, Chapter One in now live on Thrasher. Features an ender part from Aaron Herrington, a bunch of footage of that dude Kuae Cosa who’s been popping up in Cons edits, the up-close angle of the other way ollie at the Crosby Street Vespa Bump… and that ride-on grind at LaGuardia High School is insane.
“The guys in the video don’t give a fuck about the American industry anymore. We were also all listening to a lot of Tupac at the time and getting kicked out of spots in Cali, then jumping into the van and blasting that Tupac song kind of cemented it.” Ok then. Free has a full retrospective on one of the seminal skate video imports of the 2000s, Lordz’ They Don’t Give A Fuck About Us (and answers the question we were asking a lot back in 2013: what happened to William Phan?
Steve Mastorelli made a rad Silvester Eduardo remix. Actually missed a bunch of this footage before. Syracuse nollie flip was sick.
These Bunt episodes are getting pretty long. Kerry Getz is the latest guest. Love a level-headed, smart former pro. Shame that the angry, “everyone screwed me over” curmudgeon types tend to get all the attention though.
Copenhagen and Malmö still got Paris beat on the whole “skateable obstacles integrated in public spaces but not exactly skateparks”-thing, but yeah! What they said! But for New York! Would trade like 3-4 New York skateparks for just that little red plaza on the side street in Berlin.
Quote of the Week Charles Rivard: “He skates like he’s on coke, and parties like he’s on weed.” Rob Harris: “More like he skates like he wishes he had friends.”
And so, the prolonged afterlife of a full-length video released in 2018 comes to its close: the final “B-sides” clip.
No Idea was the video that earned Etienne a Gucci polo. These are the bits that didn’t — in fact, they didn’t even earn anyone a Ralph Lauren polo. B-sides are the U.S. Polo Assassins polo of the golf shirt hierarchy, and these are the ones that took place on various filming trips to Boston, that time E.T. got stuck in Spain for ten months, and Canada. Alltimers for Adidas available in skate shops now.
