‘B-Team Documentary’ by Classic Griptape

October 30th, 2020 · 1:15 pm

Making it through 2020 with a morsel of mental health in tact has required all of us to look for silver linings. For most, this meant reconnecting with those we may have fallen out of touch with, due to the hectic pace of pre-COVID life. For the Classic Grip office, it meant rekindling the flame with a childhood flatbar, taking it on a cross-country journey, and giving it the best summer of its life with a ragtag team of Canadian heart-throbs in tow (who you will recognize from Alltimers, Dime et al. edits.)

“B-Team Documentary” is a modern road film masterpiece — an Easy Rider for the the coronavirus age, Thelma & Louise if Louise was a 10-inch-high flat bar bought from a Canadian Tire, or simply Paris, Texas on a skateboard ♥

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‘All Part Of The Show’ — The Politics of Pants in Skateboarding

October 29th, 2020 · 1:00 am · 24 Comments

Intro + Interviews by Frozen in Carbonite
Top Collage by Requiem For A Screen
Illustrations by Charles Rivard

Pants, as an article of clothing and a philosophical entity, dominate the skate zeitgeist. They consume the daily banter on #skatetwitter, inspired an Instagram account dedicated to IDing them, and have the potential to become the most controversial item of one’s kit. Pants factions line up like the gangs at the beginning of The Warriors — Dickies disciples, nineties enthusiasts, Polar people, and so on.

So began our quest to investigate — not so much the what of pants — but the why. To accomplish this goal, we interviewed four skaters over a generational spectrum and asked the same set of questions.

As we stitched together the interviews, one common thread stood out: Like everything else in 2020, one’s choice of pants is a political act.

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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 · 5 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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