Knobs get conquered in a number of ways. Beyond the obvious — actually being de-knobbed — two things happen to render them obsolete.
One, is that skateboarding evolves. The cliché goes something like: “without struggle, there is no progress.” When spots are knobbed, our most able-bodied athletes see an invitation to have quicker feet and longer ollies. This can be seen via people skating past the knobs at Pyramid Ledges, and between the knobs at Verizon Banks — though it will take a generation of people thinking Tiago is “normal” before the re-knobbed Veterans manny pad gets unlocked again. (Its first post-knob unlocking occured under the supervision of Anthony Pappalardo in the 1870s, A.K.A. in Fully Flared.)
Option two is playing the long game. You wait for weather, rust and general wear-n’-tear to do their things.
Not quite sure why the willy grind has been making a comeback as of late, but there’s a lot of good stuff in Brandon Gironda’s part via the Westchester County-based PFP5 video (ender is wild) + an accompanying Q & A with Mike Sassano about the long-running video series.
“When people are in public spaces or people are walking through public space…They conceive it as a kind of as a private property. Do you understand what I mean? So it’s like, ‘this is for this…Look there’s a bench here and it’s clearly meant for people who have shopped in that store to come here and eat this kind of fucking sandwich…’ They have a certain kind of possessive sense of everything.” — The always insightful Ocean Howell, with your #longread for the week via an interview about *shock* how skateboarders interact with public space in 2018.
We’re holding an editor’s meeting first thing this morning to see if it is possible to do a skateboard version of this New York mag article: “The Oral History of Four Loko in New York. A lot of cancelled following day sessions, and a lot of unnecessary nights in bookings coincided with this era writ large.
Two Brazilians came through and filmed his five minute shared New York part during that one magical week when the planters were moved away from the CBS Ledge. I know GX got all you psyched, but everyone please be careful filming in traffic, for the love of God.
“I didn’t really receive shit out of it other than 11-16 year-olds hating me. Now that they’re 23 and they finally meet me, they tell me I’m a nice guy.” Love Skate Mag has an interview with Lurker Lou.
……aaaaaannnnnddddd Jim Thiebaud — someone who has received death threats over board graphics — has some thoughts for the “leave politics out of skateboarding” crowd.
Interviewing skaters alongside their moms could actually be a good interview series idea.
Quote Tweet of the Week:
(On that note, you might want to check out Stefan Janoski’s stop motion short film, “God I Need A Girlfriend.”)
