2018 feels like the first lllooonnnggg year in a while. Like, did the Cons video come out in 2016? But alas, we had to cuff up our macaroni denim before it went out of style, and recap just what the hell happened in this year that felt like three.
Past Editions: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010
All the stuff from the longest T.F. obstacle run in the spot’s history is gone, as of last week. Sometimes you need to cleanse your palette so new flavors can flourish, and we’re excited to see what sort of debris tumbles into Tompkins for 2019. (Still kind of curious about how they let us rock for AN. ENTIRE. SUMMER. — softball leagues and all — then finally decided to get rid of it in…November? Not complaining though.)
“Nevertheless, the same 2018 skateboarding memes exist in each city. Wherever you go there will be the body varial guy. Someone, eyes closed, will spin their board one handed above a precipice. It is now universally accepted that baggy pants give you the illusion of having more grace on a skateboard, you simply have to be very good to throw the right shapes in skinny jeans. There will always be a bottle tosser.” — LOVED this. Daryl Mersom offers up some observations on skateboarding via his travels in post-Soviet Eastern Europeans counties. We out to Estonia, and shout out to apple trees.
Watermelonism has a new clip up from a wallie jam at Parque Las Chimeneas A.K.A. Colombian J-Kwon, and Alex has a bunch of new gear up on his site, Watermelonism.com.
Good vibes, some wild tricks (that Battery Park City pop-over into the rock wall…), and a profound dedication to Three Up Three Down that even exceeds our own in Stephen Ostrowski’s wonderful “Ether” video.
“Someone told me you got into a fight with Wu-Tang a while back?” To follow-up the jump ramp story, Mackenzie uploaded the full audio of his ~15-year-old interview with Macaulay Culkin’s friend, Harold Hunter.
Skate Jawn interviewed Josh Stewart (yeah, I wish Keith skated more too…), and Josh Stewart interviewed Steve Brandi.
Mobster Children paid a visit to Jahmal Williams’ art studio.
Vice has a profile on Supreme on the eve of the “BLESSED” release. The video is due out this Friday btw.
Wasn’t expecting Theories to post a video that had 6ix9ine songs and crooked grind nollie front foot flips in it, but 2018 has been all about expanding your horizons, yaknow. “Legana” is a 20-minute video from a Peruvian skate crew that’s 50% filmed in New York.
Grey interviewed J.B. Gillet about his favorite plazas, and he made me want to get a coffee bean chain.
Boil the Ocean takes issue with Palace picking on Alien and Habitat circa 2018.
And on that note, The Atlantic has a wild article about why we’re all not hooking up enough. (There’s a SoundCloud embed on there that you can listen to in the event you don’t want to read a 10,000 word article about not having sex.)
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Looks like the whole Philly thing worked out for Jimmy Butler. Sheesh.
Quote of the Week:
— Slicky Boy
Recently went out for dinner in a place that had no real traces of being a skater-run establishment, but for whatever reason, they were playing Pretty Sweet. None of us had watched it in full since roughly around the time it came out. Two things became obvious: that we’re okay with not seeing it in full for another five years (…sorry), and that Kenny Anderson had fire footage in that video, which seemed to float under the radar during its initial release. The whole “it’s a *normal* Marc Johnson part!”- narrative kind of took the reigns when Pretty Sweet dropped, but Kenny really did have the best bits of the video as far as Girl’s 30-years+ riders at the time were concerned.
We were gassing up this Tennyson remix hard back when it first dropped, but you should give it a whirl if you haven’t in a while. It’s the best part from Pretty Sweet ;)
Young Chop[s] on the beat scan
New Jahmal Williams footage is an honor and a privilege. Him and Steve Brandi share a jazzy seven-minute section on the occasion of Hopps’ collaboration with Converse, composed by Static auteur, Josh Stewart. It’s one of those rare videos that you just watch with a smile on your face the whole time. And shout-out to Steve Brandi for his commitment to the iconic Paine Webber benches.
Also re: fountain of youth, the 39-year-old Dave Caddo has a sick New York part on Thrasher, which scours all the unturned crust the city has to offer.
“The rest of the boroughs, excluding Staten Island, have had so many regular Americans move into the neighborhoods, spreading the disease of uptight suburbanites. The average mainland American is just more concerned about the use of private and public property. Maybe I’m wrong, but I like my theory…The Bronx has Bronx hospitality, and I think the average person in the Bronx is more socially advanced.” Caddo also has an awesome follow-up interview on Thrasher that discusses the complacency of finding spots in New York, his favorite borough (guess), and more insight into his ability to film a part here full of fresh backdrops.
Canal has a full clip from the new spot out by Owl’s Head, which I guess is being called “The Salmon Spot.”
The New Yorker did a feature about this year’s trio of skateboard movies, and how they advance the current draw in Hollywood towards casting non-actors.
“But when I dropped in I was like, ‘Damn, why that ramp is moving?’ I thought I was on acid or something.” Harold Hunter retells the story behind his most famous slam.
Tombo and Richard Quintero run down the history of every Californian’s favorite place in New York to huck, D7. Fwiw I think Kerel was the first to ollie it, and btw, Antonio switch tre’d it (lol.)
The latest episode of the “Skate Muzik” podcast chronicles the #musicsupervision of the Static series with Josh Stewart.
Real celebrates 25 years of having Huf on the team with a remix of all his past parts + an interview with some new footage of him cruising around Lower Manhattan.
This is one of those videos where you think the editing is going to mellow out after the intro, but then it just stays that way for the whole time. “Lentiicular” is a montage from Carhatt-WIP, and features Roman Gonzales, Andrew Wilson, Chris Milic, et al.
“As the human attention span shrinks to rival the goldfish’s, ’tis it better, in pursuit of longevity and countercultural heft, to regularly shed teamriders every few years or hold to the original foundation of dudes as long as can be?” Boil the Ocean takes a ponder over Element and Girl’s new videos.
This is like when Kevin Durant signed with the Warriors, except Tiago Lemos might actually be better at skateboarding than Durant is at basketball, if that’s imaginable.
“Critter” is a nine-minute video of an American road trip featuring a bunch of Pass~Port guys, and has an ender section in New York.
Can’t tell where this “Mud Monsters” mini vid is based out of, and can only pick out a few Chicago and New York spots, but going to guess Texas (?) because it’s maybe the first time I heard Z-Ro in a skate clip, but also have no idea what any Texas skate spots look like, but also also also it’s a fun watch regardless ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: D. Rose, D. Rose, D. Rose, D. Rose.
Quote of the Week: “Oh shit! I gotta watch Corey Duffel’s new part.” — Adam Zhu, morning after Halloween
Calling all nerds / hoarders: Does anyone know if there’s an existing copy of the DNA Continuum DVD left on earth? Sources say that the video as a whole is whatever, but it would be nice to update the internet’s only existing copy of Jahmal’s part from the 240p upload on YouTube that is probably older than Kader.
The Quasi video is now online.
“What’s the story behind Harold’s ‘Cheer Up, Bagel’ remark?” We finally learn the origin of the greatest sound byte in skate video history (“sometimes I wanna live and sometimes I wanna die” is runner-up) via Chrome Ball’s new interview with Dan Wolfe.
“The production numbers were so large that when I was on a solo trip to Korea tasked with moving production from one factory to the next, during a business dinner at a 5 star restaurant with the factory owner, I was told through a translator that, ‘The factory owner would like to inform you, that he can kill a man in this country and their body will never be found so you might want to change your decisions too.’” — Anthony “The Writer” Pappalardo tracks down the history behind the Osiris D3 with its designer.
Though he let up on the gas a bit since he got robbed for S.O.T.Y. by the third #big #rail #skater to get it in the past three years, Village Psychic offers up a mid-year remix video of Tiago’s stray bits of coverage to emerge these past seven months.
Jahmal Williams’ favorite skateboarder is Ray Barbee ♥
Kyota remixed his part from Bot Video 2. Watch the full video here.
Rory Milanes = the new Chad Muska, and Thrasher posted their Palace in Hawaii article and photos online.
“Think of this magazine as a platform for you — yes, you! — to showcase what it is you do for skateboarding. Wherever you are. Whoever you are. Because as you’ll see here, skateboarding can really be anything you want it to be. It’s just a fucking toy after all.” Vice has an interview with the creators of Skateism, a magazine focused on nontraditional and underrepresented corners of the skateboard universe.
J.B. Gillett returns to San Francisco and Embarcadero for the first time since moving there all the way from France at the age of sixteen.
Jenkem runs down the history of Blubba with R.B. Umali and Steve R.
Hot take: midtown night footage looks better than 99% of cellar door footage.
Skate Muzik interviewed Mike Gigliotti from Lottie’s Skateshop in their latest episode.
You most likely caught it already, but Tao put together a southwest U.S. edit with Cyrus, Max, et al. for Nike SB, and I’ve had that Sunday night at Sway song stuck in my head all week.
Quote of the Week: “If it starts snowing tomorrow, I’m not even mad. Summer 18 has to end, g.” — Will Marshall
In an age of tuning out pre-roll commercials before skate parts, this line and song are still burned in everyone’s brain — it’s The Chocolate Commercial™, after all. The word “timeless” gets thrown around a lot, but it is hard to imagine this ever looking dated.
Ricky Oyola, godfather of the east coast “filming a line via just skating random shit on the street”-practice, once expounded on his peak skateboard dream: doing a line through Philadelphia’s then-standing City Hall, into the street, up into the Municipal Services building, back down the stairs, across the street, into Love Park, through Love Park, and end at Wawa.
The closest he got on record was a line from the end of City Hall, through the intersection, and into Love Park in Eastern Exposure 2, but it did establish a lingering precedent for connecting spots. Apart from Ricky and that Joey O’Brien Sabotage 4 line where he starts at Love and ends up in the garage beneath it, spot connecting does not have a rich history in Philadelphia.
Or anywhere, really — because doing a line from one spot, through the street, and to another, is fucking hard. There are variables (people, traffic, pebbles, maybe two sets of security, acts of God), and a pressing anxiety of missing the final trick in an already-long line, which gets amplified by the fact that fifteen other things went right up until that point. As you will soon learn, spot connecting is something most people do for the sake of doing it. In the majority of cases, they stick to their safe tricks.
Like Philadelphia, New York is a dense and layered city. Many of its streets are narrow, and depending on where you are, three or four spots could be across from one another. New York never had a “Big Three,” but it does have three different types of benches on four different street corners, and over the years, skateboarders here have kept their third eyes open and far-sighted.
