Let’s get our most sacred annual tradition underway: running down the minutiae, tricks, laughs, spots, and bathroom renovations that defined the year in New York skateboarding.
Tag: Chinatown Banks
Itchy For Society
Someone was like, “Do y’all still have that hat?!” It’s on the webstore, buddy ✅
Pero Šimić has a sick new two-minute part for Obey by Naquan Rollings, which consists of all New York clips. That ollie onto the board-width ledge was some Lennie Kirk shit, and the pillar rides at the Banks are a new dimension.
“The sheer audacity of plunking a switch backside noseblunt down the Brooklyn Banks nine-stair rail in the middle of an edit has previously been discussed.” Boil the Ocean goes through the potential 2025 S.O.T.Y. contenders. When’s the last time a vert skater was the frontrunner?
Sexhippies new video, which is a dive into the scene in western Massachusetts and a bit beyond, just went live. “Earth Mafia” has a fire opening part from Eddie Vargas Jr., appearances from Andrew Wilson, Cooper Qua, Zac Gavin and many other familiar faces.
#spotcheck
Never a dull moment.
World Touring Still Pouring
You know how our twisted reality had to adopt the widespread use of “not The Onion” because real-life gradually surpassed parody? Sometimes it feels like these 2020s skate spots are experiencing the same thing, only relative to their resemblance to a Brother Merle illustration. You really gotta hand it to skateboarders for continuing try to and make the Chinatown Banks “work” for 20+ years.
Still got some loose holiday deals on the webstore 🛍
Max B is coming home November 9, 2025 🌊
“What is this fucking website called? ‘Quartersnacks’? We don’t have time for this.” Farran Golding spoke to Ian Browning for the first episode of the Skate Bylines Podcast, about his 2022 profile of the L.E.S. Skatepark for QS, on the occasion of the park’s tenth birthday.
“Main Character” is a tightly-knit upstate crew video, filmed largely around the Rochester, New York zone. Shout out to to all our people who have warrants from Cornell campus police.
Zander Mitchell and Jake Todd made a new part for Theories’ urethane imprint, Dialtone Wheels. Tons of Philly footy, a lil’ bit of New York. Those Museum lines are nuts.
Shit To Sugar — A History of Trying to Make New York’s Chinatown Banks ‘Work’
The China Banks are some of skateboarding’s most hallowed ground. From being a pivotal filming location for Powell Peralta’s The Search For Animal Chin, to the site of Joe Valdez’s tricks that earned him a devoted cult twenty years after the fact, to the host of numerous NBDs, magazine covers, and even 2018 video part enders — there are few street spots in skateboarding that have been able to endure FOUR DECADES of continued innovation and history.
…but those are San Francisco’s China Banks.
New York‘s China Banks are perfect three-foot-high quarterpipe transitions, which are ideal for a city that didn’t begin getting a surge in actual skatepark transitions until the 2010s. They have gaps between them, a hip, and are the perfect size for anyone looking to have fun learning a transition trick on a natural quarterpipe. The only catch is, of course, that they are made out of perhaps the only surface less conducive to skateboarding than fire or water: cobblestones.
So why have our Chinatown Banks, constructed out of some of the worst possible material for skateboarding, endured as a kinda-sorta-maybe-could-be spot for the past ~twenty years?
You know those friends who always find themselves in “project” relationships, where they try to see the best in the person despite countless red flags, and drain themselves trying to “fix” their significant other? That’s New York skateboarding’s relationship with the China Banks — I mean, have you seen the garbage we skate? We look at bad spots through rose colored glasses, thinking they’re mere steps away from perfection. We’re co-dependent on these bad spots; the plain trick on the bad spot just means so much more than if it’s a hard trick on a recycled plastic bench in a parking lot. Maybe if we approach them just the right way, and apply just the right tweaks to them, the Chinatown Banks will love us back.
Unfortunate for us, things don’t always work out as optimistically as we hope.