The Events That Defined New York City Skateboarding in 2011: 5-1

2011 is over in five hours. Here are the final five. Have fun tonight everyone.

Previous installments: #25-21, #20-16, #15-11, #10-6, The Best Video Part(s) of 2011, The Year in Rap.

5. The Rise of 12th & A Rap

As 12th & A’s stronghold on New York City skateboarding waned, it began to rise as an epicenter for New York City skateboard *rap*. With artists like ASAP Rocky, Odd Future, and Krayshawn getting deals off YouTube videos, the young skaters of 12th & A drew inspiration from their D.I.Y. attitude, and set out to make a name for themselves in perhaps the only professional world more overpopulated than pro skateboarding. Slicky Boy remixed Ice Cube and has been promising a mixtape all year. The Stoned Rollers took Lex Luger out of the trap and the strip clubs, and brought his trademark thump to the skate spot. And Black Dave, perhaps 12th & A rap’s greatest success story, is one-for-two with making it onto WorldStar with his videos.

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Shut Down Champs, Did the Fool in Prada

Today marks exactly five years since the release of The Inspiration, which is the second most important motivational masterpiece to come out during this website’s existence (first here.) In honor of this sacred date, above is the limited edition 1-of-10 Quartersnacks x The Inspiration custom griptape sheet. On a side note, the mixtape prelude to this album, had some serious bangers that QS will happily cut a thousand-dollar check for, provided they are CDQ versions without DJ Drama yelling nonsense all over them. If only Jeezy still made music like this…

Apparently, the school/park has began removing the “real” ledges from 12th & A, and threw out all the portable obstacles. One less place to skate during the day without getting kicked out. Great. R.I.P. 12th & A.

The Flipmode production house released a short, purple-tinged b-sides clip featuring their standard roster. Kids seem to really like Spaceghostpurp and lean references these days, huh.

If you started skateboarding around the time Photosynthesis came out, you’ve maybe wondered what happened to Pat Corcoran. Well, he dropped by a recent Chrome Ball post dedicated to him, and set the record and rumor-mongering straight with a detailed, yet completely punctuation-less comment.

Skateboard filmers who take themselves serious enough to make memes about filmer faux pas are probably the worst thing about skateboarding. We mix SD & HD, stretch SD, and chop it up to Rihanna & 2 Chainz, all in one clip.

The crew over at Seasons Skateshop in Albany uploaded a clip from deep in the archive of some of our homies. Wonderful soundtrack choice, and the only place online you’re going to see Ben Baptiste do a kickflip backside tailslide.

Strobeck clips tend to get re-blogged heavy, but in case you missed it, a remix of some older ones from the mid-to-late 2000s went up on YouTube yesterday.

Quote of the Week
Observant Gentleman: “Yeah, 2008 was a good summer.”
Alexander Mosley: “Of course it was a good summer, every summer is a good summer. You never hear anyone say ‘Yeah, that was a good winter.'”


Thanks to everyone who reposted our Best of 2011 Clip: Yaba Zoo, First Cut is the Cuttiest, Huckstep Life, Wheelbite, A-City-Crew, Handsome As Fuck, Trilogy Tapes, Humidity Skateshop, Waters & Army, Street Feed, Playboard, Network Skate, Dank Mag, Recordings of Boardings, Le Boom Blog, Grey Magazine, Hella Trill, Cream Mag, Domliebe, Throw Up the Horns, Le Site Du Skateboard, and 48 Blocks.

“I be poppin’ on my skateboard, tryin’ to learn a new trick”

Hella teaked one-foot backside tailslide over the grate, bro

“I be popping on my skateboard, trying to learn a new trick / I just fucked an Avatar, now I got a blue dick.” – Dwayne Carter

KCDC Skateshop teamed up with Complex magazine to bring you a list of the 25 best skateboard graphics of 2011. They had some glaring omissions, most notably Skate Mental’s “Creeping on a Set-Up” Bone Thugs homage, and our homie Jonah Miller’s “Stay Hungry” series for RAW New England. (RAW’s Cormega board is pretty cool too.)

Never saw this Flipmode-affiliated clip from 2009 before. Phil Rodriguez kills it, there’s footage from the UWS-favorite Soldiers and Sailors Monument, and proof that human beings actually skate(d) the original metal Rockaway Park, which, if you remember, got Hurricane Irene’d real bad.

NYSkateboarding linked up some photos by Yuri Shibuya last week. There are seven small galleries of New York-based stuff spanning from 1998 to 2008 over on YuriShibuya.com. The resolution on all of them unfortunately sucks. To make up for it, there’s a photo of Ted Barrow on there, switch crooking a Philly step on Hester Street. (Fun anecdote: We got kicked out of that spot in 2004 by a Chinese man wielding a butcher knife and haven’t been back since.)

Continuing along with the whole “IS VHS THE NEW SUPER-8?” thing

Just because you can do a hardflip late flip, doesn’t mean you should. Gross. (Ok, if you’re playing P.J. Ladd or P-Rod in S.K.A.T.E. for some reason, you can do a hardflip late flip.)

Here’s one for the economics majors specializing in broke skateboarder diets: Do dollar burgers serve as a legitimate threat to New York’s burgeoning dollar slice industry? With McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King all charging over $1 for burgers, and even dollar hot dogs quickly becoming a thing of the past, can this new trend sustain itself and expand into more skateboarder-heavy neighborhoods? (The one in question is on 39th, on the westside, and there are no spots nearby.)

Quote of the Week:

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Links for a Rainy Monday (Bulls in 6)

The upcoming week’s forecast looks pretty nice. Six straight days of rain. That shouldn’t stop you from skating though, especially if you’re unemployed, or your hours of employment are from 10 P.M. to 4 A.M.

The Flipmode affiliates have put together a four-minute throwaway clip to one of Big L’s more famously vulgar outings. “You know, they built you guys a skatepark so you wouldn’t skate here.”

A reel of Billy McFeely’s footage from the Caviar video, raw and without the music.

Torey Pudwill would be more exciting if he continued this trend of simple trick based, quick set-up lines on actual skate spots instead of kickflip back lip to back tailslide kickflip outs on ledges behind chain stores. With that being said, Plan B opting for the simpler, more stylish route on the promo makes us hope that the actual part would be more in that vein, and that’s certainly welcome.

Adam Abada’s journey through Europe on his skateboard. It’s not a journey from Milan to Minsk, but few have been so ambitious.

They can’t wait to start kicking you out of this thing. (Yes, it’s in midtown. And yes, it has been put in place of another former skate spot.)

This is so corny. (Has no relation to skateboarding.)

Quote of the Week:That ad [on Spring Street and Broadway] reminds me of the last time I did acid and why I will never do it again.” — Anonymous Degenerate

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