Thank you to everyone for the kind feedback and words of support for this series (also shout out to the homie from Win Son the day after the boys won the title.) It means a lot that everyone is enjoying these because the first two the came out were the only two shut-out games that went down. [Spoiler? …maybe? But like, as someone pointed out with the last one, sometimes the runtimes themselves are spoilers.] All the rest are, to use a word used by one of the skaters in this episode, sword work.
For the past, idk, ten months maybe — Antonio Durao has been referring to everybody as “O.G.” It didn’t matter what your age was, you were O.G. The dude pulling up to Tompkins? “O.G.” The cashier at the store? “O.G!” An actual O.G? “O.G!!!” O.G. Anunoby? OMG.
Things come together in cosmic ways, because the name that he matched up with from the mystic Quartersnacks Knicks hat was the O.G: Dennis Busenitz.
Back in the fall, when a couple of Adidas heads were in town for the Long Ledge Jam, we had an idea to get a few of them and a few local-based friends to do a casual, multi-person game of S.K.A.T.E. over the Flushing grate flat gap. Here was a spot that you could run single clips over in your part maybe ~25 years ago, but in the ensuing quarter-century, pretty much every single flip trick imaginable had been done. It is probably up to par for some talented skaters to get competitive over. Unfortunately, due to a few logistical issues, it didn’t work out in the fall.
Last month, however, we made it happen. We got eight skaters to Flushing by noon! That was a miracle in and of itself.
📷 Photos by Greg Navarro
The urban legend goes something like: if you say “Fred Gall” in the mirror five times, ten years later, J.P. Blair drops a new video.
Met with some friends to watch the Knicks this past week — many of whom have fallen out of the habit of skateboarding regularly. They had asked what was going on this weekend, and I’d mention J.P. Blair is premiering a video, half-expecting them to maybe not have a sharp mental rolodex of skate videographer names. Everyone would say: “Outdated J.P. Blair!?”
Time certainly flies, but great indie videos endure to the point where people who aren’t on board much these days have fond memories of one of the 2010s’ best — just as much as people still very much in the skate trenches do.
Yesterday, he premiered What Did You Expect, a HD, Jersey-heavy full-length that is due to make its way online this week. (At least that’s what J.P. said.)
🏀 Knicks x Quartersnacks ’47 Brand hats available in our webstore 🏀
Johnny Cumaoglu with the first Small Banks clip heard around the world DMs + ok, so now we need a Shintaro Hongo one-spot part at the Brooklyn Banks, ASAP + @banks_at_six Small Banks reportage has begun 🧱 (“You wanna skate a curb in Central Park??? We’re going to the Banks, buddy! Six o’clock!”)
We are a long way from “cherry.” Last week coincided with two profiles of its stars and their grown-up lives: Christian Kerr profiled Tyshawn Jones for Hypebeast (“This is probably my last interview for a while. We’re going to let the skating talk. Then when the skating is done, they’ll ask for more interviews”) + Sage Elsesser was profiled by the High Snobiety magazine.
