“‘You had all these planners and architects in the 1950s and 60s saying cities need these grand, celebratory spaces — and they really didn’t.’ But apparently skaters did.” Curbed has an awesome feature about how some odious, post-WWII federal legislation ultimately lead to the creation of the sorts of public plazas that would prove to be the breeding ground of modern skateboarding.
“That might be a trick that’s been done, but it’s done differently…and with different pants on.” Vice has a video profile of Breezy and Una about growing up being two of the few girls skating in Vancouver.
The Finnish guys who made the Hard Water video that went live on the Free site last week actually also put together a trip to New York edit that we only now caught onto. Love a vacation edit when the trees are bare + everyone is still in hoodies, though I’m sure it’s warmer than Helsinki. Also impressed by their cobblestone deterrent that keeps your board from rattling down into Sutton Place traffic.
Maybe it goes through a vigorous off-screen sanitizing process — but one’s bed seems like a bad place to sort through street debris. Anyway, here is an eight-minute glimpse into the life of Bobby Puleo.
“I kind of consider 2000 to 2009-10 the dark ages of skating. It was just like, the filmer and photographer decided what a skater would skate. If you were good, you got shipped out to California and you would skate with people that would be like ‘You need to do this.’ Almost like there were requirements. ‘Do this handrail.'” Spot-finder extraordinaire, Dave Caddo, has an interview with Village Psychic about the rules of skating new spots, blown out spots, and unlocking spots.
Spent a month or three mulling about whether to write something about the three skate movies that came out in 2018 on here. Quite obviously, nothing on that end came to fruition, and this Paris Review piece on Minding the Gap is nine zillion times better than anything I could have written on what is, far and away, the best “skateboard movie” ever made. Get that free Hulu trial if you haven’t seen it yet.
i-D has a long feature commemorating Palace’s ten-year journey from a brand conceived in a dilapidated skate house by Southbank to what it is today: employer of Torey Goodall, Jamal Smith and Tico ♥
“LANDLINE” is a rad, mostly NJ-based mini video by Matt Hilzenrath.
Brad Cromer has an all New York part (with a couple Jersey clips) commemorating the release of his new Huf pro model.
Unclear if he’s been reading more women authors or not, but Mark Suciu has a bunch of New York clips in his new Thunder part. Pretty sure he’s the first one to get a clip at those year-old, two-second bust ledges by IBM, and that rock ollie in front of Corner Bistro is fucked.
Ciao is the latest all-New York video by Ricardo Napoli. Teaser here.
The past week has been BRUTAL for rounding up content pertinent to the interests of our office. Everyone kinda needs it to be warm again — I don’t think a single piece of non-Instagram footage from New York emerged in the last seven days besides Dick Rizzo’s switch front shove over the can wearing a Hardbody hoody in the Huf video…
That and Young Jeezy, this website’s longtime spiritual guide, announced that he will be retiring. Though he taught us all we need to know to continue on this journey of life long ago, we can’t deny the melancholy feeling that fell over our staff last week.
As they countdown to whenever their video is supposed to be proven real, Quasi has a photo feature over on Heaps Chat from a filming trip down in Miami.
“You already know about that Dirty Ghetto Kids Skateboards but we talking about that Alltimers Skateboards thing.” Wish this video was 5x as long, but Tyler Warren made a wrap-up video of the most recent Alltimers trip down to — you guessed it — Miami.
“As the ‘#MeToo’ movement claims celebrity scalps and forces industries from media to politics into uncomfortable self-examinations, the increasingly upward-mobile skateboarding biz might ponder its own richly checkerboarded past.” Boil the Ocean examines what happens when people come forward about enigmatic, storied skateboarders get revealed to be jocks in today’s contentious climate.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: While the majority of Americans tuned into 60 Minutes yesterday to watch an interview with a lady of the night about her time spent with an orange man, afterwards, there was a segment that told the story of Giannis Antnteteoektekompo that will melt your heart and make you happy.
Quote of the Week: “Today, I started thinking about how much money I’ve spent on caesar salads in my life” — Pryce Holmes
Emilio Cuilan’s DANY video is now available for purchase from TheDANYstore.com. Supreme and Labor also have copies for sale. The video features full parts from Shawn Powers, Genesis Evans, Jason Byoun, Adam Zhu and Yaje Popson, plus appearances from a whole lot of others. Minute teaser for the video can be found here.
There’s this video of Kenny Anderson and Vincent Alvarez skating Lenox Ledges (Antony Correa cameo!), and yes, Kenny footage is always a pleasure, but there’s only one bit of Lenox footage from the past week that anyone was talking about. Good lord.
Trife alumnus, Black Dave Willis, has a new part live on the Thrasher site entitled “NYBD.” Gap to front blunt on the out ledge across from World Trade is a wild one.
Tredje Akten is a rad 20-minute video by the homie Tao from the Malmö + Copenhagen scene. Features Ville, Hjalte, etc + a full Polar section at the end.
NY Skateboarding posted part one of apparently a three-part series of video interviews with Keith Hufnagel. This one talks about meeting Keenan Milton, the infamous Ryan Hickey house that housed all homeless skateboarders of the era, moving to San Francisco, skating Embarcadero, etc.
Gotta #respect a ten-minute Boston video that doesn’t hit Eggs once. Not easy. “Mean Streets Volume 2,” A.K.A. the LurkNYC boys go to Boston.
This is tasteless and insane, but you can visualize every scenario of this hypothetical Seinfeld script that imagines the characters’ lives in the week after 9/11.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Who cares about Melo’s Olympic postgame interview, Russell Westbrook’s “Now I Do What I Want” video is singlehandedly the most inspirational sports moment of 2016, and the only promotional material the NBA needs for the 2016-2017 season. #MVP.
Quote of the Week: “I’m so glad I didn’t go to double town China set.” — John Choi
“In fact, they feel it was exploitative, that Clark capitalized on the brilliance of the crew while failing to capture the true beauty of their world. They weren’t as sex crazed as the film portrays them, for one. More important, in Kids, it seems all the boys want is to fuck the girls, but in real life, the girls weren’t sexual conquests. The boys and girls ran neck and neck and were best friends.” Ok, so lately been wondering about the origins of the photos from @thatsacrazyone on Instagram, which has tons of early and mid nineties stuff around Astor, Washington Square and the Banks + some same faces from Out & About, etc. (This Loki photo is the coolest a slappy crook on a six-inch curb will ever look.) Turns out its for an upcoming book of the same name, whose website hasn’t been updated in a year-and-a-half, but apparently is still coming out as per this feature in August’s issue of Vice. Really looking forward to this one :)
You probably already saw this: Austyn’s TWS cover footage and Brad Cromer front blunting a Seaport bench in Huf’s new NYC edit.
This is six-years-old and has nothing to do with skateboarding, but I read it on the plane twice. “If journalism’s more vital traditions of investigating corruption and synthesizing complex topics are going to be restored, it will never be at the expense of the personal, the sexual, the venal, or the sensational, but rather through mastering the kind of storytelling that understands that none of those things exists in a vacuum.”
Quote of the Week: “They make MTV music that I want to listen to.” — Pryce Holmes’ Sremmlife 2 review
