Seagulls & Arabian Burnouts

July 21st, 2014 · 9:06 am · 3 Comments

dollar slice

Thanks to inflation and skyrocketing cheese costs, hundreds of sixteen-year-olds are approaching death from starvation at the L.E.S. Park as you read this. R.I.P. New York Skateboarding 1993 — 2014. It was a fun 21 years :( Photo via @stillweii on Instagram.

Week late, yeah, and yes, “real hip-hop” music supervision is making the entire QS office want to only listen to Migos until the end of human history, but the new GX1000 clip is a New York montage of the year contender. It has everything: Jake, Aaron Herrington, lines in building lobbies, tricks on two-second bust spots, Brendan Carroll finding two new ways to skate Union Square, and near-death experiences.

FYI if you need to watch Jake’s Montreal wallride on loop…

“Nobody naturally skates like Dylan Rieder, not even Dylan Rieder.” With skateboarding’s renewed emphasis on post-land poses, Muckmouth put together a compilation of “Storks” A.K.A. one-foot rollaways. Yes, Gino is obviously the king. (They’re not completely extint…Ishod slips out of a chill switch one in this clip.)

New Anthony Correa footage at the ~20:30 mark of this Houston video.

Man, this incarnation of Girl and Chocolate was incredible — just thank the heavens that the jump-cut era of skate video editing got phased out by 2004. Have you tried watching The Reason lately? It’s seizure-inducing.

Lamenting the demise of slam sections in skate videos. Didn’t they just get renamed to “fail comps” and move to YouTube? …and what person 25+ needs more reasons to get discouraged from skateboarding? Parkour slams are way better anyway.

An indoor park clip that’s actually fun to watch! Last line is intense.

A teaser for Bleach, a new video by Paul Young, who made Nevermind. Features many Bronze 2.5 affiliates.

Skateboarders riding first class to the literary establishment’s innermost sanctums, plus some reviews of books pertinent to the act of riding a skateboard. “cherry” is apparently a work of literature? And David Foster Wallace is a narc.

Omg German engineering.

Steven Cales calls into the last episode of Skate Wise.

Quote of the Week: “Is bae a thot?” — Dave Dowd

Follow @quartersnacks

New PWBC news clip in a few hours ;)

Weekend Viewing: The Chocolate Tour 2000

June 27th, 2014 · 5:21 am · 9 Comments

chocolate tour 2000

These Tennyson Corporation remixes are turning into the skateboard version of posthumous 2Pac albums — it’s perfectly reasonable for us to pretend Girl/Chocolate 1.0 never disappeared each time they come out. We’re thus unable to fully fall in love with Cory Kennedy, no matter how much he may deserve our admiration, or even begin coming to terms with Raven, Stevie and those other immensely talented individuals who just don’t tug at our heartstrings the same way a color-blocked and tan khakied Carroll switch flip does. And good God, the Carroll switch flips in this video…

The latest ode to the best pair of companies to exist at the peak of their powers comes in the form of a B-sides video from the team as it constituted in The Chocolate Tour days. As good as that video is, you sorta wish the proliferation of DVDs in the 2000s coincided with skitless versions of skit-heavy videos — from The Chocolate Tour right down to Parental Advisory. The Tennyson version of the former is completely devoid of them, and is the best 12-minutes you could spend watching skateboarding this weekend. As with all of these Girl/Choc remixes, you’re stuck there wondering how so much of this could have been considered “outtakes” at the time.

Is there any skateboarder born before 1990 whose favorite skater isn’t Mike Carroll? And has this Tennyson guy been paid millions of dollars for his work yet? The Chocolate Tour 2000 has legitimately gotten more burn these past 24 hours than the official Four Star “Anthology” edit, which wasn’t too bad itself.

Previously: Kenny Anderson Pretty Sweet “Snack Pack” remix, Rick Howard “Super International Tour Zone” remix, Mike Carroll “Dog” Remix

P.S. All July 4th tees have been shipped. Have a good weekend.

Sorry For Not Realizing How Awesome This Was When It Actually Came Out – Volume 2: The Kenny Anderson Pretty Sweet Tennyson Corp. Remix

January 8th, 2014 · 1:04 pm · 27 Comments

tennyson

(Volume one being the late pass on Chrome Ball’s Daewon interview.)

2013 had the odd distinction of being the first year when Girl and Chocolate weren’t indisputably the best skateboard companies in existence. That is not to say they weren’t still many people’s favorites or not among the elite — just that for the decade-and-a-half prior, it was them, and then everything else in skating following suit. A variety of factors are responsible: decreasing #relevance of the company video, a booming interest in smaller companies, and many of those who grew up with Girl and Chocolate adjusting to their favorites fading behind the scenes.

Those qualified to speak on the matter said Pretty Sweet was about the guys who never had Girl/Chocolate parts. Malto and Vincent Alvarez had been on for deep, and the video featured their first real parts, so it made sense. The thing that didn’t make sense is why Kenny Anderson, a dude who also never really had a full Chocolate section either, got relegated to shared part status. (Even though Hot Chocolate is great and has all the hallmarks of a “real” part, it’s still tempting to think of it as “Oh, that was a tour video.”) Lord knows Pretty Sweet was already long enough, but a “Kenny and Friends” part felt like an odd concession, especially given skateboarding’s current infatuation with handsomeness ;) ♥

Beyond being an antidote to anyone going through first and second generation Girl withdrawal, last year’s barrage of Tennyson remixes also remedied a lot of known issues with Pretty Sweet. They made a Kenny Anderson part, for one. (Plus they used an Al Green song straight out of the companies’ 1993-1999 “maybe” music supervision pile. Made it feel more Mouse than Pretty Sweet.) Snack Pack somehow got lost in the shuffle. Better late than never. Watch the full thing here. Follow the Tennyson Vimeo page, too.

A-list skateboard companies outsourcing reedits from fans is becoming less and less taboo. Is it really that unreasonable for Girl to mail this guy two hard drives of raw footage, a box of boards, and a few racks to re-edit Pretty Sweet in its entirety a la what DGK did earlier this week?

Onto more important matters…Who has recent history’s cooler post-trick turnaround maneuver: Kenny Anderson or Busenitz?

Keep Reading »

Nothing Links the Same

September 23rd, 2013 · 5:05 am · 9 Comments

set up

The 2013 edition of Frozen in Carbonite’s always great song of the summer + best video parts of the summer wrap up is now live. It tackles important topics like Mark Appleyard’s longevity, French Montana’s lack of figurative language, and Javier Sarmiento’s fashion choices. Notable omissions to the songs include “Versace,” “No New Friends,” “Type of Way,” “Fine China,” “Get Lucky” (“the Lone Ranger of summer songs” i.e. force fed garbage), and “I Hit It First,” the S.O.T.S. that sadly never was. You can check the 2012 edition here and the 2011 one here.

Joseph Delgado has a solid three-minute video checkout on the Transworld site. The Flushing extension tricks are awesome. (How has “Party and Bullshit” been used for like five skate parts, but nobody thought to use the Lord Finesse version?)

Download Black Dave’s new mixtape, Black Bart.

It has been on the horizon for quite some time, but it looks like the Astor Place renovation is close to becoming an unfortunate reality :(

A few summers ago, there was a kid who would always be at Lenox Ledges trying no comply impossible to frontside 5050s. Never saw him land it (or lock in), but this guy might have him beat either way.

Some dudes put together a historic mini documentary about Milano Centrale, the most famous skate spot in Italy. If given the choice right now, would you rather go to Milan or Prague for a ledge skating trip?

Thrasher uploaded some raw footage of Wade Speyer, Phil Shao and others skating around Manhattan with Bici, Gangemi and the Keefe brothers in the mid-nineties.

Mountain Dew seems committed to monopolizing the skateboard-related #listicle game, and taking a bit of Complex’s marketshare along with it. They have a new one that breaks down the history of Girl and Chocolate in a convenient form for those intimidated by seeing multiple paragraphs on the same page.

Speaking of #listicles, here’s one that makes the case for New Jersey contributing more to skateboarding than any other non-Californian state. Dave Filchak’s name is oddly missing from it though.

Check out volume four of Billy Rohan’s bro cam series, “Illumignarly.”

Database Volume 2 is a cool, largely Jersey City-based mini video.

If you’re pro, you should pro skate this thing before its gone.

QS Sports Desk: Can’t wait to watch D. Rose play again this season.

Quote of the Week: “You sold your Xbox for weed.”

Follow @quartersnacks

Thanks to everyone who linked our End of Summer clip: Recordings of Boardings, Grey Skate Mag, Monster Skate Mag, Caught in the Crossfire, NY Skateboarding, Skate Everyday, The Palamino Club, and anyone else. Also big thanks to everyone in the YouTube comments who informed us that Rich Homie Quan is “not real hip-hop.” We’ll re-edit it to KRS-One or something.

20 Years of Girl: The Ben Sanchez Tribute Post

August 22nd, 2013 · 8:10 am · 19 Comments

benolliechrome

Before anything: Manolo’s Tapes went live with an incredible retrospective of all the Girl and Chocolate videos yesterday. We can talk about Keenan’s switch flip, or how ahead of its time each Koston part was, or all the crazy stuff Marc Johnson has done, but let’s talk about some real shit…Ben Sanchez.

A longtime personal favorite Chrome Ball post is the dual tribute to Ben “Burger Boy” Sanchez and Shamil Randle. For a pair of twenty-year-old companies, very few of their riders have been afforded the ability to fade into obscurity like those two, and nostalgic reminders of less prominent names are among the greatest joys of The Chrome Ball Incident.

If Richard Mulder, Mike York, Chico Brenes were the seventh, eighth and ninth guys off the bench, then Ben Sanchez was something like the twelfth. Not to sound like a broken record, but the era when Girl and Chocolate were a batch of the best skaters alive surrounded by dudes who were more style than pushing the envelope is the one we most frequently put on a pedestal. Those guys helped the videos feel more like skate videos, and less like blockbusters. Koston and Guy were there to show you how good skateboarding could possibly be. Mike York got you hyped to try some pretzel spin noseslide combo that inevitably ends with a tic-tac. Ben Sanchez, on the other hand, was the guy who made you remember, “Damn, I haven’t done a half cab noseslide in a while.”

Keep Reading »