Find The Texture — An Interview With Eze Martinez & Emilio Dufour

📝 Intro + Interview by Zach Baker
📷 Photography by Hardbody

Skateboarding, socially, is like weed. If you come across anyone in the world who …uses it, that should be intersection-enough to amenably hang out, at least for an hour or two. I’d wager a buck that, as the two [idiotic] activities have become more accepted into the mainstream, the chances of happening onto a deeper connection than that, i.e. beyond rolling around/rolling up, have slimmed.

Meeting and getting to know Eze Martinez and Emilio Dufour has been refreshing. It’s satisfying to know that this thing still has the power to forge real friendships between disparate strangers. While yes, our initial get-to-know-you banter involved such topics as ABDs and the psychosis of rolling up switch to The Sombrero, I think we’ve found other mutual interests to latch onto, and have found that we three share similar worldviews, whatever the hell that even means at this point.

It was exciting to see them do some of the stuff from “Never Enuff III” in person, and all the more thrilling to see what I hadn’t in the final product. Skating in New York is awesome, but let’s face it: it has never been harder to do something memorable on a skateboard in this town, let alone on a trip, in a couple of months, in one summer. I think these guys and E.J. made something lasting; a thing worth remark. Now I’m glad that a few more people get a chance to get to know my sick ass Rio de la Plata homies.

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‘NEVER ENUFF III’ — Eze Martinez & Emilio Dufour For Hardbody Video

We first met Eze and Emilio on our “Argentina For Nothing” trip back in 2023, when they showed us around Buenos Aires. (Eze is from Argentina, Emilio is from neighboring Uruguay, just across the Río de la Plata.)

Both had been on our radar before, with Eze being the younger brother of a S.O.T.Y. winner who skates in a diametrically opposite way, and Emilio even having had a Top 10 #1 before, via him and his crew’s 2022 Montevideo scene video, MAL CIUDADANO.

And both have been busy since that trip: Eze’s L.A.-set Pepper part from last year rules, and Emilio just had a Free part x interview combo go live earlier this month.

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‘Where Were You When I Was [Pop] Shoving In The Sleeveless?’

Thanks to everyone who grabbed something from the webstore ❤️ Should be caught up on shipping orders soon. Available at skateshops worldwide now.

Everyone who has logged years skating Tompkins has an immediate answer to “what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen walking into the Tompkins bathroom?” Let’s see if the $5 million they put into renovating it keeps it from becoming the tenth ring of hell again. Now open!

“Yeah, I think that when you show everything, it allows more people in. There are people I know who don’t skate who have watched this and for them it’s like a hero’s journey or something: You’re watching someone go through something, and you can maybe sympathize with me, or maybe think I’m insane, but you get that I’m trying really hard to do something. You don’t need to understand the context for the tricks to get that.” The menswear SubStack, Blackbird Skyplane, got the elusive Bobby DeKeyzer on the horn for an interview about his new part.

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Safest Place in the World

We made this tee in the nascent days of QS merch, commemorating the 2003 blackout, which happened exactly 20 years ago, today. That August 14th, everyone was packed inside Tompkins for one of those classic T.F. sessions where it felt like everyone who mattered was within that fence. It took us about an hour or so to realize the power had gone out. Only two years removed from 9/11, everybody’s mind raced to the worst hypothetical conclusions imaginable. To ease everyone’s anxiety, Billy Rohan reminded us that “Tompkins is actually the safest place in the world right now.” He was right.

Devin Sweat has a name tailor-made for R&B stardom. But instead of singing loverman ballads and waiting for a Drake feature, he has a really sick new part for Labor filmed entirely in New York. Love the elusive City College benches clip.

The brains at Always Do What You Should Do collaborated with Noah on some gear, and released a New York trip edit / Three Up Three Down pilgrimage to celebrate the capsule.

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