City in Smoke

When you hear Lenox has the fire wifi…

Naquan Rollings dropped a quick edit of his crew’s first session down the Brooklyn Banks 9. There are some beautiful pieces of flip trick #form in there.

Not even a few hours after it finished, the YouTubers compiled all the stories and Insta posts of the footage from the Hardies x Supreme event at 12th and A this past Saturday. Features obviously Tyshawn, but also Karim Callender, Troy Gipson, and Who Kid in the dunk tank.

Aaron Herrington and Lurker Lou hit the Staten Island flatbar park and more in the latest installment of Village Psychic’s “Lurking With Lou” series.

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Who Da Neighbors

“That person next to you — whatever thing wrong you might have with them, it might be big or small — let that shit go. It doesn’t matter.” ♥♥♥

Long distance relationships are never easy, and to help soothe the heartache, Jesse Alba made a full surprise Nolan Benfield part with cameos from Cyrus ‘n them.

The full, 38-minute NY/NJ-based Sportsmanshit video is now live via Skate Jawn. A lot of “totally forgot about that spot”-reactions watching this one. Very fun, the whole way through :)

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Link or Drown 2

(Colors.)

The week’s best piece of skate content: The New York Times with an illustrated story about Chico Brenes’ journey from asylum seeker fleeing Nicaragua, to pro skater, to the present day in his home country.

“I kind of consider 2000 to 2009-10 the dark ages of skating. It was just like, the filmer and photographer decided what a skater would skate. If you were good, you got shipped out to California and you would skate with people that would be like ‘You need to do this.’ Almost like there were requirements. ‘Do this handrail.'” Spot-finder extraordinaire, Dave Caddo, has an interview with Village Psychic about the rules of skating new spots, blown out spots, and unlocking spots.

Spent a month or three mulling about whether to write something about the three skate movies that came out in 2018 on here. Quite obviously, nothing on that end came to fruition, and this Paris Review piece on Minding the Gap is nine zillion times better than anything I could have written on what is, far and away, the best “skateboard movie” ever made. Get that free Hulu trial if you haven’t seen it yet.

i-D has a long feature commemorating Palace’s ten-year journey from a brand conceived in a dilapidated skate house by Southbank to what it is today: employer of Torey Goodall, Jamal Smith and Tico ♥

Slam City Skates has a long interview about the current status of the Long Live Southbank project, and it being on the cusp of reaching its massive fundraising goal to open up + reconstruct the closed-off portion of the spot.

LANDLINE” is a rad, mostly NJ-based mini video by Matt Hilzenrath.

Brad Cromer has an all New York part (with a couple Jersey clips) commemorating the release of his new Huf pro model.

Unclear if he’s been reading more women authors or not, but Mark Suciu has a bunch of New York clips in his new Thunder part. Pretty sure he’s the first one to get a clip at those year-old, two-second bust ledges by IBM, and that rock ollie in front of Corner Bistro is fucked.

Ciao is the latest all-New York video by Ricardo Napoli. Teaser here.

Here’s the preview for Virgin Blacktop, a documentary about a 1970s skate team based out of Nyack, New York.

Jahmal Williams is the latest guest on the Mission Statement podcast, and Joe Castrucci is the latest on The Bunt.

More post-“BLESSED” content: New Order Mag has a quick “Five Things” interview with Bill.

Stuff You’ve Probably Caught Already: Frog has a team montage over on Thrasher, Eli Reed has a part that is 70% filmed in New York and made this guy’s girlfriend think he died + Franky Villani and Jakes Hayes skate two or three city spots in their Duets section.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Trae Young with the magic trick.

Quote of the Week: “When two skaters have babies, a VX dies.” — Shawn Powers.

Lost In Translation — The Alluring Difficulty of Skateboarding in Tokyo

Legos not Lagos

Tell another visitor the truth about street skating in Tokyo and the response is between an eye-roll and defensive denial.

The truth: Tokyo is [deep breath] …not that good for skateboarding.

Ok, wait! Don’t start yelling! Are there spots? Yeah, there are. Are there tons of incredible skaters from there? Yes, a lot. Is there a vibrant skate scene? Yes, yes, and yes. Does it have quite literally the friendliest, most amazing locals on earth? Good God, a million times yes. Tokyo has incredible skateboarding culture, but when you find yourself a tourist there, you soon realize this previously unfathomable truth: you’re more likely to come home with five expensive jackets you don’t actually need, rather than five tricks you’re happy with for a video.

This past October was one of those great groupthink travel moments where many diverging crews all happened to be in Tokyo at roughly the same time (a la that one January when literally every New York skater was in Barcelona at once.) As we’d cross paths with newcomers, the following interaction became commonplace.

“Have you guys been skating a bunch since you’ve been here?”

“Er, um, not really, no.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s um…kind of hard to skate here.”

Cue the “You guys are probably just hungover everyday,” or worse, the proverbial “We’re more ‘core’ than you” subtext that assures the denying party will have an easier time being productive in Tokyo than you have.

Until you run into them the next time, and they concede to reality.

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50 Shades of Bands

jamal muni

The QS webstore is restocked with new colors of the swim shorts, a couple new tees, and bags for summer Rockaway trips :) Thank you for the support ♥

Chris Jones’ Spirit Quest section is now playing over at Free. Really sick Soho noseslide opener, and generally some of the most creative (not in an annoying way obvs) + good-looking New York footage in recent memory. Perfect part.

Mehring put together a rad article about those couple of weeks that the Banks were open for The Skateboard Mag. See everyone there again in 2023 ;)

Every time Dustin Henry footage comes out, I remember that he’s my favorite skater that I’d be O.K. with my non-existent daughter dating. Jake Kuzyk uploaded “Savers,” his first clip since The Antisocial Video dropped last year, which features a bunch of those guys + Alltimers, Dime, etc. affiliates.

Would rather watch T.J. skate flat at T.F. than ________. That half cab flip was bomb.

Looks just like most skaters’ apartments in Chinatown, tbh.

Erik Ellington tries on some snakeskin Palace Chelsea boots with Jenkem.

There are some chill Rowan Zorilla clips in Genesis’ summer iPhone montage.

The Bunt talks to Eli Reed about how the hell he figured out to be good at skating that manual pad at the Boston Aquarium and what was up with the “Taking Care of Business” #musicsupervision in State of Mind. Is switch tre into the Courthouse still an N.B.D? P.S. Eli, that switch 5050 hubba in the Bronx is gone man.

Somehow missed this a week ago, but “Putnam Avenue” is a formidable entry into this year’s “Summer Trip to New York”-clip cycle, featuring a couple Euros.

Merchants of Ill in Montreal via Max Hull. See everyone tomorrow :) ♥

Boil the Ocean points you in the direction of Danny Garcia’s “All City roots” for the site’s annual summer video mixtape series.

Quote of the Week
Inquisitive Gentleman: “Who was the best skater at your wedding?”
Nick Boserio: “Me.”

Love it when a Migos song about buying expensive stuff for girls gets turned into an anthem about starting businesses and shit.

Sorry 4 da wait today, love you :)