Our friends at Theories gave us a heads up that there will be a 10-year anniversary screening of Colin Read’s seminal Spirit Quest video this thursday, November 12th @ Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn, just a few blocks from Borough Hall.
Tag: Colin Read
Skate Smarter Not Faster
Central Park 📷 via Troy Stilwell
New York residents: You can find your pollsite here if you have not voted yet 🗳 If you live somewhere else, you can find your pollsite here.
“It’s not, ‘I don’t know man, I was just skating.’ That answer drives me nuts.” Our correspondent Farran Golding recently launched what he dubs as the skate-version of Longform.org: Skate Bylines. It is a new platform that aggregates and features works of skateboard journalism, rather than focusing 98% on video, like many of us do. Skate Bylines also creates unique pieces of its own, with the first feature being an interview with Chops from Chromeball about his interview process with history’s most legendary skaters. Also, R.I.P. Longform, but long live Longreads. Haven’t gotten on a flight without loading up the reading list with Longreads links in 10+ years. 🫡
Some Dump on Seigel Street
Kevin Rodrigues by Alex Pires • 2016
Another Tompkins Construction Date Change: The park is now being closed off for renovations and re-asphalting on Monday, October 2nd, exactly one week from today. (And the deli across the street isn’t even a deli anymore, as of a few days ago: they got rid of the entire counter for a mini smoke shop. No more sandwiches, grill or smoothies. End of an era.)
“Mainstream skateboarding finally caught on to the fact that when you’re driving to the spot, you’re passing all this other stuff that’s so much more interesting. Stuff people can skate more creatively. And you can make a far more interesting skate video by focusing on that.” New Zealand’s Manual magazine caught up with Josh Stewart to talk about putting himself through another Static video.
“BURNT” is the latest montage by Christian Kerr, featuring the continued evolution of Gabe Tennen’s tech-lord career arc, and the return of the Duane Reade benches.
The Last Time The City Shut Down — An Oral History of Skateboarding In New York Right After Hurricane Sandy
Photo by Pep Kim
New York has quite literally never felt like it does right now in this quarantined liminal space that we are in. The level of quiet in Manhattan at 8 P.M. is incomparable to even the deadest, coldest Sunday night in a residential zone. Obviously, there’s a reason for this, in that we all must do our part to minimize human contact so that COVID-19 can be contained, hospitals can maintain a semblance of functionality, and we can begin to burrow out of this chapter. Mobbing to skate midtown and being a responsible member of society are clearly at odds right now.
However, the current state of the city did bring up memories of a different disruptive event: Hurricane Sandy.
The Best Skateboard Videos of the 2010s — QS Reader Survey Results
Illustration by Cosme Studio
This was the decade that the full-length skate video was supposed to die. We began the 2010s with everyone insisting that Stay Gold would be the last full-length skate video. Then, Pretty Sweet was supposed to be the last full-length video. Some people thought that Static IV would be it — the end, no more full-lengths after that. But I feel like I heard someone say Josh was working on something new a couple months back? Idk.
The experience might’ve changed. We’re not huddling around a skate house’s TV covered in stickers to watch a DVD bought from a shop anymore (if this past weekend is any indication, it’s more like AirPlaying a leaked .mp4 file via a link obtained from a guy who knows a guy), but the experience of viewing a fully realized skate video with your friends for the first, second or twentieth time is still sacred.
Just as we asked for your votes for the five best video parts, we did the same for the five best full-lengths: if you could choose the five videos that defined the 2010s, what would they be? The results were a bit more surprising than the parts tally in some ways, given that it felt like independent, regional and newer, small brand videos dominated the decade, yet Big Shoe Brands™ and Girl + Chocolate still made their way into the list. The top-heaviness of some companies or collectives was less of a surprise, in that certain creators loomed large over the 2010s.
Like the installment before it, this list is sans comment for 20-11, and then via favors from writer friends for the top ten: here are the twenty best skate videos of the past ten years.