Back to School Special: The Rebirth of the Pace Ledge

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In the early 2000s, a trick on the Pace Ledge was a watershed moment for any child’s skate career. We’d pass it every weekend — dreaming of a noseslide if we were regular or a 5050 if we were goofy for the hammers section of whoever’s bad video filmed on a Canon GL1 with a Kenko fisheye. That is, until it was dismantled by bike pegs and rendered unskateable thanks to a six-inch-wide chunk at the ledge’s most opportune starting point. Little kid dreams were crushed (we even removed it from the spots page!), and by then, everyone was eyeing tricks into the Verizon Banks anyway, or just generally better at skating.

With the vapor of early-2000s nostalgia from February fashion week still running thick, today we are reminded of the magic that a bit of Bondo could do. After filling in the aforementioned cavity, the Pace Ledge is ripe for skateboard tricks for the first time since the George W. Bush administration. Now, this brings about the age old question for nitpicky filmer types: has the ABD scroll been erased after a dormant decade?

With short term memory growing shorter thanks to G-Pens, do we accept Challex’s or the Vickie Report’s tailslide as existing in a world where J-John the Don didn’t already do it switch and German? Do we disregard Todd Jordan’s back tail that went down during the much-maligned Mixtape 2 era? (Can’t find the photo but it’s ~out there~) Will an early-2000s nostalgist perform a noseslide bigspin on the ledge this #nyfw, disregarding Brian Brown’s contribution to the ledge’s storied history?

Actually none of this probably matters because Antonio switch frontside 5050ed a ledge that is nine times higher than the Pace Ledge like five blocks away ;)

Eleven Years Later! The E.S.T. 5 New York Section

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You probably have to be of a certain age to appreciate the necessary bits of impending nostalgia, BUT in the early 2000s, the footage hierarchy went something like: 1) board + shoe company videos, 2) every other company video + video magazines, 3) the internet. E.S.T. was an east coast video magazine produced by Zoo York that never lived past four issues (QS ran an appreciation post of it six years ago in real years, 600 years ago in internet years.) It occupied a middle ground between the videos that hoarded footage for three years and Metrospective/OfficialNewYork.

Since then, the kid who did the hook on “Bling Bling” said he was the best rapper alive and a bunch of shit changed. NBDs filmed on an iPhone became fair game for public consumption five seconds after they were landed, and the internet evolved into a daily vomitorium of skate footage. HOWEVER, the final remnant of a footage hierarchy appears to be that things filmed on a Samsung phone are on that video magazine tier…in a non-video magazine age. So R.B. just dropped this edit filmed on the cellular device that only Matt Perez otherwise uses, and it feels like a decade-late follow-up to our beloved E.S.T.. From the bleep-boop stock music, to the jump cuts, to fun footage that still isn’t *quite* worth saving for a sponsor, to a commendable disregard of outer borough spots, to an editing vibe that’s been supplanted by #PFW runway close-ups and #skatevideohouse — every last bit of it is wonderfully nostalgic for a specific era in New York skating without having to like, play dress-up with the skater or scour YouTube for Beatminerz B-sides.

Surprisingly #onbrand to our current era re-piqued interest in early-2000s nostalgia — yet also modern in that I guess it uses the cellular device? ;)

OH, AND somebody finally used “Stick Talk” for a clip — a song that should’ve been used three Tiago Lemos parts ago.

NYFW Wrap-Up — #Trendwatch2016 Early Report

acne studios shoelace belt

With many unseasonably warm days this winter, we were already able to see some of 2016’s #trending formations. And with a seasonably bitter cold #NYFW, we were able to sit there with hungover stares and contemplate it all. Keep in mind that the to-be-mentioned hungover contemplations may seem awfully dated by the time of the Polar video’s stateside premiere in March. Our most impressionable and yearning-for-inspiration L.E.S. colleagues will inevitably be Bloby-fied come April.

Lo-Def 5050 Combos

For many of us, 180s and shove-its into and out of 5050 grinds were our earliest flirtations with combining tricks. As our palettes became more refined and our skateboarding matured in accordance with the times, these were inevitably phased out and thrown into the pile known as “little kid tricks.” That pile, by nature, sits there and stagnates — unless of course you ran out of tricks to try in S.K.A.T.E. and need a sex change to give the dude a letter, or the even rarer occasion that skateboarding collectively chooses to to re-embrace a little kid staple like the varial flip.

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