Diego Najera, Brian Reid and Spencer Hamilton come together for the new Grand Collection edit. It passes as a blip in the edit itself, but everyone agrees that Brian Reid casually mannualing up the bank and over the barrier at the Front Street ledge makes zero sense in physics terms, right?
Still devastated after finding out that his Yeah Right! part was fake back in September. Never thought Takeshi 6ix9ine would be the one to ruin all of our childhoods…
Oh, and between all of that, backside big spins went from being a seldom used Welshian or Ellingtonian maneuver, to the lay-up of flatground tricks. Every single bump-to-bar ollie, wallie over something, or trash can line of the past five years has been proceeded by a backside bigspin on flat. If you spent sixty minutes watching skate footage released between 2012-2018, at least one of those minutes will have been spent watching people confirm to you that yes, they can backside bigspin on flat.
In 2018, most skaters who have cameras pointed at them have began to feel confident that the general public believes in their flatground backside bigspin, 360 flip, or backside bigspin capabilities.
But now — there’s a loneliness. It feels empty when you end a line. The pressure is there. You have to squeeze another trick out. But what?
Apart from Kevin Tierney’s love affair with the switchlaser heel, the most re-blogged flat trick in Tumblr history never caught on. When the entire northeast spent the better part of the decade attempting a white whale of a stylish varial flip, such a complicated maneuver is understandably out of reach.
Diego and Tyshawn are leading everyone else in 2018 for tricks that leave phone screens and comment sections, and actually enter conversation between IRL humans.
“Midtown to us was really just like 5 blocks though. Like 50th Street to 54th Street on 6th Avenue.” Village Psychic catches up with R.B. Umali for some stories about skating Astor, Pyramid Ledges, Union, Courthouse Drop, Flushing, etc.
Tufty showed up and surprised us in Paris on our first day, then we didn’t see him for the rest of our trip because he was doing grown man shit, like waking up before 1 P.M. to go skate spots before they get too crowded.
TWS also uploaded 411 issue #2, which features a Tom Penny “Wheels of Fortune” section filmed exclusively at the skatepark that Palace’s winter pop-up park, Mwadlands, was based on. Fwiw, 411 creator, Josh Friedberg, said that the Penny section was one of his favorites ever from the video mag’s run.
Staletape is a 28-minute long Philly scene video by Joe Ostrowski.
“Whereas Torey Pudwill’s arm motions often hit the red while balancing on history’s most drawn-out backside smith grinds and backside tailslides, Magnus Bordewick’s flapping generally coincides with rocketing pop and crater-making impacts.” Boil the Ocean re: the state of arm movements in skateboarding and Magnus’ new part.
“Popwave” made me want to go skate not-so-good skate spots with all my friends.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Donovan Mitchell should be fun to watch for like, the next decade-and-a-half? Who does everyone have for Sixers-Celtics?
Quote of the Week 11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “What’s the best trick you can do?” Adult Skateboarder at Le Dome: “Pop shove it.” 11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “…you’re kidding me, right?”
This is the first semi-late Monday Links post since we vowed to swear off them in honor of the queen’s 30th birthday. BUT — in our defense, the entire office is a bit lagged from traveling back to New York yesterday. We don’t deserve a Gucci polo, but at least it’s not going up at like 4 P.M. ♥
Though it was not the firestorm that followed our original M.N.M.F.T.B. post — no doubt one of this website’s most controversial moments — in 2014, we caught a bit of heat for denouncing some unknown child filming his Grizzly Grip sponsor me tape for waxing the top portion of Three Up Three Down.
We were called regressive. We were told that such rhetoric ran contrary to skateboarding’s “there’s no rules!” rule. We were bullies for imposing our worldview on this coveted piece of Tribeca land. We were labeled cowards for harking back to a time when a simple trick up / trick down was “enough” for the spot.
Everyone knows that nostalgia for a fairytale version of a greater past is in the first chapter of the authoritarian handbook, and here at the QS office, we like to think of ourselves as free spirits.
People make mistakes. People change. We come here today to ask for your forgiveness. We apologize not for saying that a forty-foot-long lipslide to tailslide across Three Up Three Down would look stupid, but for side-eyeing our much more talented colleagues for enjoying a #lowimpact spot that we tried to keep for ourselves.
Three Up Three Down belongs to anyone who cares to enjoy it. Bring your Shake Junt wax and your Grizzly Grip. Put angle iron on the side. Wax the top if you want — the last thing you want to be is some guy on the line to get into heaven, talking about how your only regret in life was not powersliding across the entire top surface of Three Up Three Down because some skateboard blog told you not to.
(Obviously you’d be going to hell if you did that.)
In extension of this olive branch, we’d like to commend the Primitive team for their work at our favorite skate spot. Though it has fallen out of the coverage circuit on QS as of late, you’re maybe a bit tired of seeing Meatball kickflip up it and tre flip down it for the third year in a row. Shout out to whoever is showing P-Rod’s friends around.
