Fireworks

June 22nd, 2020 · 12:00 am · 4 Comments

Tompkins is back, Nik Stain is pro. Happy summer. Photo via Caleb.

“Ahh the banks at the Jamaican embassy… Iconic spot, great spot, fun spot. Quick bust of a spot though… so the fact that you guys have a little group with a campfire going…”

Someone made a twenty-minute super cut of Tyshawn footage.

“I will do anything for skateboarding. This episode can save lives, it creates communities. It’s the closest thing to music, and the coolest thing about music is that there’s no place on earth where it doesn’t exist.” Skateism has an interview with Buddy and Rick about making the LGBTQ+ episode of Love Letters to Skateboarding. There is also a supplementary “Love Note” with Cher Strauberry and Barker Barrett about how to be a better ally.

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Alltimers’ ‘Bounce’ Video

May 5th, 2020 · 1:00 pm

Just as Warren Buffett off-loaded his shares in airlines given the foreseeable future of travel, skate companies have began doing the same with their stockades of footage from pre-COVID19 trips. Any clips from far-off lands coming out once we hit the dog days of the pandemic are bound to be dated by default — like, anyone who switched their pants game up in quarantine is gonna have a tough time convincing the skateboarding public that their Euro footage wearing last year’s silhouettes is current ;)

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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About MACBA But Were Afraid To Ask — An Interview with @macbalife

February 5th, 2020 · 12:00 am · 3 Comments

Intro & Interview by Frozen in Carbonite
Illustrations by Charles Rivard

Way back when in the #90s, pay phones functioned as communication hubs for the Great American Skate Plaza. At my old local, Shafer Court, you could call the pay phone and, nine times out of ten, a gentleman would answer “Shafer Court” — as if it were a place of business! — and tell you if anyone was skating, who was skating, and such. The pay phone across the street from Pulaski and the one (if I recall correctly) by the Embarcadero Carl’s Jr. — same shit. These phones, working in conjunction with pagers, served as communication nodes for the culture.

Of course, as cellular phone technology evolved, this quaint element of skateboarding fell by the wayside. That is, until the advent of Instagram. Specifically, skaters started using this mad futuristic technology to A) document their scene, and B) provide skate nerds the world over with access to a culture that they would have otherwise envisioned solely in the Theatre of the Mind.

@Macbalife is one of the leaders in this field (at press time: 292k followers). We sat down with its creator to gain some insight into one of the most notorious spots on Planet Earth.

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Real Skate Boy Don’t Know How To Work a Spot App

November 18th, 2019 · 12:00 am · 2 Comments

Via Charles Rivard, PhD.

Boil the Ocean offers up some reflections on Knowing Mixtape Volume 2, as does Canada’s King ~~Shit~~ magazine. Agree that “every single clip is extraordinary in some way.” Three-and-a-half years of filming for a 17-minute video has a way of doing that — even the bails they put in there stand out in a very particular way that other videos can’t pull off. Also! Tiago for S.O.T.Y. every year until they give it to him.

This upload is from August, but only catching it now: “Fasuad” is a fun homie video by Marc Pascua. It’s all filmed around the city with some cameos from Mark Suciu, Frankie Spears, et al., and edited to a song that they would play at the healing crystal and plants store by T.F.

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Best Trick For a Louie Belt Recap

October 17th, 2019 · 12:14 am · 2 Comments

Illustration by Charles Rivard

It is a scientifically proven fact that you come back from a skate trip 38% stupider than when you left. And out of all the stupid things that we have brought home from a skate trip, a year-late / ironic / moronic (…I truly don’t know anymore) infatuation with “Sicko Mode” has to be among the stupidest souvenirs that we have ever given our loved ones upon return.

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