The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2023 — QS Readers Poll Results

🎨 Illustration by Cosme Studio
📊 Ballot Count by 4Ply Magazine

The results are in: a time-capsule of 2023 skateboarding, as voted by QS readers. Some old favorites have returned to the rankings, and some new ones have emerged.

And yes, it should be stated, perhaps louder than in other years, that year-end rankings are an imperfect artform. Miles Silvas’ “City To City” part that would eventually land him Thrasher‘s S.O.T.Y. trophy premiered a few hours before voting for the QS Readers Poll closed (that didn’t stop him from getting some votes in those final moments though.) Yuto dropped his April part three days after voting closed. But we are committed to the belief that nobody wants to talk about 2023 after Christmas. And for a year when it felt like Skateboard Oscars Season™ began in August, we had to make the call. All those parts that missed the cutoff will be eligible for next year’s voting, same as years past.

If you are just joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers from December 4th to December 8th. If you’re interested in the methodology, 4PLY broke down how we tally the votes

More »

Needed This! — Jeff Cecere’s ‘This Is A Window’ Video Is Now Live

Just as Mind How You Go served as a soothing reprieve from Skateboard Oscars Season™ last December, Jeff Cecere‘s This Is A Window is the comfort-viewing we all need right now. Still got a queue of S.O.T.Y. contender parts since the last Top 10 got filed, but this was an immediate click and watch-through-the-whole-way experience. (Raise your hand if there are any 4-5 minute parts from the past few months that still took two sittings to get through ✋)

Jeff & co. are in that proverbial “window” (sorry, too easy), where each video compounds in quality from the last one. Both the skating and the craftsmanship behind the video are already somehow greater than they were in the already-great Mind How You Go. It’s a phenomenon we all witnessed while watching sequential videos from Bronze, Johnny & co. and the Duplex dudes over the years — which makes it all the more fitting that pretty much all of them come together under one umbrella in this one.

More »

An August To Remember — How August 2023 Became A Landmark Month In Skate Video History

📝 Words by Ian Browning
📷 Headline Photo by Morgan Rindengan Courtesy of HUF

If you count everything in the Thrasher Junk Drawer, ten full-length videos, plus another handful of solo parts and edits came out in August 2023. We’ve come to expect that sort of programming when marketing teams try to get a thumb on the scale during the S.O.T.Y. race, but the end of summer has traditionally been a much less productive time of year for skateboarding.

At least until this year.

Lakai’s Bubble, Pass~Port’s “Trinket,” and Johnny’s Vid all came out in the same week. Palace’s Beta Blockers and WKND’s Rumble Pack came out on the same day, creating a nineties skater version of the meme about how eating a bag of Takis would overwhelm and kill a child from the 19th century.

What are the chances? How did it happen? And did anybody realize what was coming down the pipeline? I called a handful of skaters and filmers who worked on the projects that were released that month to find out why it was so stacked, and how it felt to navigate the spotlight.

More »

A Watershed Moment For Fare Evasion

Thanks to everyone who grabbed something from the webstore this weekend ❤️ ICYMI: we’re reloaded with fall / holiday QS goods on there. Available at U.S. + Canada + Australia + Japan shops now. Europe + U.K. + Korea this week. 📷 via Prov Tokyo.

Zach Sayles’ incredible Veil video is now online in full.

Carlisle Aikens is the latest subject of Hypebeast’s “Diaries” video series, which is a half-interview / half-day-in-the-life type of thing.

More »