Switch Bone Tail

Photo via DREWWWWWW

Destroyed skater jeans. Pre-order now. $1,290. And here we were fretting about having raised the price of QS tees by $2 ☺️

“Forced into the wilderness for years first by cords, then by Dickies, Carharts and assorted chinos, jeans now are the stuff of kingdom-making and eternal glory.” And on that very same note, Boil the Oceans offers some analysis on how jeans have climbed to become the north star of the skateboard industry.

Leo Heinert + crew blitzed Black Hubba and threw a big contest on it a week ago. Flipping into a crook on that thing is nuts.

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… And Then There Was X

“Took this at the corner of 3rd Street and 2nd Avenue almost eight years ago to the day. DMX was stopped at the intersection waiting for a red light. I nervously fumbled to get my phone out, framed him up, snapped one off and gave him a nod. He smiled, nodded back and told me to buy his record. The light turned green and he was off… R.I.P.” — Keith Denley, 4.14.13 / NY, NY

Not often that you see such an expanding brain take on skating the Courthouse Drop :)

The Skate Media™ loves Hungary’s Rios Crew. They’ve kept it interesting and evolving for so long. Just take it from Live’s lovely write-up on Mátyás Ricsi’s new Rios part, or the corresponding Grey interview with him about it. Budapest and Marseilles — that’s the post-pandemic travel wishlist, and that has everything to do with watching random skate edits on the internet ♥

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Sketchy Month

Johnny Wilson, who once commandeered the mid-2010s’ most seminal Vimeo account, has been dabbling with YouTube uploads. The most recent is a compilation of Max Palmer frontside noseslides that he has filmed yielding a portrait of one man’s journey to contort a single skate trick to the most perverse lengths imaginable.

“The best part about going pro when your 30, is you have 3 years to get a job at one of the big corporations before you turn into a contest announcer.” Can’t remember the last time someone going pro made people so happy. Congrats again to Jamal ♥

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Deep Rich Sepia Tone

Via Hopps on IG

We have a small run of new hoodies, and we found a box of the old “Vacation” tees in the warehouse. Everything is over in the shop.

Someone mashed up five minutes of Tyshawn loosies and b-sides.

Brad Cromer skates New York with the enthusiasm of someone who hasn’t been burned out by seven thousand consecutive weekends of “where do we skate?” / “that spot sucks” conversations. Also, that kickflip back smith at Man Ledges was ~beautiful~.

“There’s so much bullshit in that fuckin’ thing.” Bobshirt interviews Aaron Meza for an hour and twenty minutes to find out what parts of FTC videos are lifted from Scorsese and Godard. (Also kinda crazy how pretty much anybody in the “content business” has been inspired by the Ego Trip Rap Lists book.)

And editing an artsy clip to movie quotes from probably the most quoted New York movie in existence is a bit too, um, on the nose, but footage of Appleyard skating the city was a nice surprise.

Mike Munzenrider explores the trajectory of how skating in shorts became an industry standard practice.

“Born of those spastic curb cauldrons in the early 1990s, the crooked grind to backside lipslide lay low for a certain number of Earth years until Bastien Salabanzi donked one down a semi-legit handrail in Sorry, drawing immediate reprisals in the shallow backwaters of the early message-board days and inspiring several other related atrocities over the years to come. It was a time of war, girth and widespread musical pirating.” Can’t say I was too worried about the crooked grind to back lip feeling it its been neglected these past ~15 years, but Boil the Ocean felt otherwise.

The perpetually making-clips-that-look-like-no-one-else’s collective of Russia’s Absurd Skateboards went to the seaside city of Sochi in the offseason to search for spots.

Skate camps, self celebrations, and reeaallyy long manuals — Chromeball runs down a history of nineties skate video clichés for TWS.

Of course Tompkins is on a list of the the 69 best places in New York, for better or worse.

Posed another hypothetical “how long until” over on the ol’ Twitter now that T.J. got the 33rd Street subway station ollie out of the way: how long until / is it actually possible for someone to ollie the eight-flat-eight at the Met?

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: About due time we got Luca on here.

Quote of the Week
Observant Gentleman: “I think you’re not supposed to order seafood on Sundays or something.”
Jesse Alba: “Yeah, you’re not supposed to skate on private property either, and here we are.”

Stumbled on this two-hour mix of New York jams that appeared on DJ Screw mixtapes, which made me never want to listen to some of these songs at regular speed ever again. The Rakim one is insane, and never would have thought that Tribe screwed would sound so good.

December is a Sketchy Month™

A. Vega by M. Heikkila at B. Nine

“tis the season…for skating Seagram because the security window’s view of the ledges is obstructed by giant Christmas trees :)

Someone ollied that Vespa bump-to-bar that T.J. did in “BLESSED”the other way.

“People always ask me about that day, but honestly, it was truly terrifying…Like, what better thing to do than go skate around? Sure, it’s kind of a frivolous thing to do under those circumstances, but at the same time, that’s the point.” Chromeball talks Mike O’Meally about skating in New York on September 12, 2001 + gets the stories on a bunch of his photos, many of which were shot while living in the city.

New York magazine’s food site, Grub Street, did a feature on Tyshawn’s restaurant in the Bronx. #TJSOTY.

Watermelonism has a fun edit up from an old QS trip to Medellin, an immensely underrated skate destination. Alex is also offering 25% off all the stuff in the Watermelonism webstore for QS readers if you use the promo code “Quartersnacks” in the next 24 hours ♥

“As designer and architect, everyone always asked if I wanted to design skateparks, but I was always kinda annoyed by that question. I love skating skateparks, they’re fun, but I never thought about that.” Solo has a sick interview with ant colony aficionado, Alexis Sablone. Fully wanna try the walnut thing next time I see some ants…

Filed under “videos you wish were longer than the minute-long Instagram limit” — Bronze posted some extras from It’s Time, and 917 posted a quick edit of assorted loosies on IG as well.

“Some seen, some unseen.” Five minutes from NJ Scum’s DV tape archive.

Boil the Ocean offers up a review of “BLESSED” + some thoughts on “a new gilded age for skate videos.”

Yonnie Cruz and Vincent Alvarez share a cruisey half New York / half L.A. part for Theories’ collaboration with Lakai.

Marc Suciu, Franky Spears + Silas Baxter Neal have a new road trip edit, which starts in New York at the maybe now haunted Citi Field Benches

Maybe the best part uploaded from the Buffalo-based Jeb video so far: Justin Grzechowiak’s section is a nice reminder that upstate New York should probably be on par with Boston, D.C., et al. as a get-out-of-the-city destination for us all, but I’m sure upstaters would prefer it staying the way it is hehe.

Here is Philly and New York-heavy friends section from the Clusterfuck video.

Skate Jawn built a short-lived box over the stones at Blue Park back at the start of the summer, and just now got around to posting some of the footage from the contest they threw on it.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: James Harden, Defensive Player of the Year. Who woulda thought ;)

Quote of the Week: “Mark Suciu shouldn’t be in S.O.T.Y. contention until he reads more women authors.” — Shrimp C

I’m sure there’s like a twenty-page Slap thread about it, but Matt Rodriguez was really on one in preceding a lot of the shit that would become popular practice in 2014-2018, especially for a lot of office favorites. (Maybe the same could be said about that entire 2005 I-Path video in general.)