Photo by @sciencecock, who also has a story about what may have been the last session at the Brooklyn Banks before the pandemic took hold of the city, and construction began to dismantle the bricks. There’s currently a petition to try and save the spot. If you have any memories of the Banks, please post them on social and tag @nyc_dot #nycdot #savebrooklynbanks so they understand this is not just some random underpass, but a landmark to tons of people who have pilgrimaged to New York for it. Also FYI: This space has nothing to do with the Parks Department, so leave them out of it :)
“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.
Quote of the Week: “When two skaters have babies, a VX dies.” — Shawn Powers. Congrats to Matt Mooney on the birth of his daughter, and congrats to Derick Z. and his lady as well ♥
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.
“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.
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.
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.)
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 ;)
Pretty much any group of skaters that has passed this spot these past ~20 years has stopped and debated whether it was possible or not. I remember somebody pointing out that if Brandon Westgate hadn’t done it yet (he definitely would’ve known about it), then maybe it was impossible. We even posed the rhetorical “how long until” on Twitter two years ago (that photo does the size of it zero justice, btw.) Really glad T.J. was the one to get it. The fact that an ollie is on the cover should tell you all you need to know about how crazy this is. (Well, that and the fact that it’s broad daylight in midtown Manhattan should color the narrative a bit, too.) Assuming everyone will be onboard the #TJSOTY train when that Supreme video drops, so yeah. Photo by Jared Sherbert.
Remember that Weed Maps clip we admitted to being a bit of a guilty pleasure on here last winter? Well, here’s the less jittery version of the same clip that features Jaws skating New York.
After getting shamed for not putting the new OG.2000 video (the dudes who made the “Mariah” video last year and um, ollied onto a Ferrari) in #QSTOP10 contention a week ago, we finally got around to watching it, and yeah, it got way less shine than it deserved on the skate internet. Tons of incredible Euro skating from names that will likely be unknown to you — though I’m sure some #trend-weary curmudgeons will find issue with something. These two tricks in Paris are fucked.
Brian Anderson is the latest guest on Lee Smith’s podcast. The interview is damn near two hours long. Maybe these could benefit from Soundcloud or Podcast links? Or did we miss that?
Looks like SML Talk is updating their site again. Here’s a listicle of 17 “beautiful” moments in skate video history. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and quite frankly, Jason Byoun’s Astor Place line from Life is Goodiegot robbed.
It’s no video blog, but Johnny went to Argentina to film the SB team a year ago, and made his own clip of the trip just now. Can’t wait for Beef Patty 2.
Back when Crailtap was a daily visit and the skateboard internet was a smaller place, they used to post these random digi cam tidbits (pre-iPhone obvs) on their site. Someone compiled all of them, 2003-2005.
The building got tired of replacing the rail in front of the out ledge at FedEx and just… knobbed the ledge instead.
Shout to Cosme Studio for coming through on a slightly higher quality digital copy of Continuum. These are maybe only 10-15% better quality than the ones that have been on YouTube for ages, but hey, slow motion is better than… Also we’ve certainly pontificated about it in the past, but wow was Jerry Fowler’s skateboarding ahead of its time. Jahmal’s is obvs timeless, but you knew that :)
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.
“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.
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)_/¯
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.
