Where In The World Is Tommy Cuilan?

Huf on West Broadway (the summer before 9/11) by Gerhard Stochl, via Science Versus Life.

A video profile of Jahmal Williams for Juxtapoz magazine.

There are tried-and-true tales of crust synonymous with New Jersey, Philly, Ohio and the greater midwest — but for some reason, as the eastern seaboard begins transitioning into seafood shacks and Ivy League schools, a lot of that narrative gets lost, despite the fact that spots in places like Connecticut are every bit as rugged as those of its crustaceous neighbors. “Your Big Cheesecake” is a 14-minute video out of Connecticut by Dave Sullivan that is well-worth your time, and full of spots that you haven’t grown tired of seeing ♥ It really ramps up a few octaves at the end …that nollie at Trinity in particular, wow.

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Only Slimes

Photo by Daniel Weiss

Alltimers got hacked!

“Summer Trip to New York” season has obviously been affected by COVID travel bans, yet it has not full-on stopped skate travel into the city. It’s a really interesting time to visit New York, and videos from right now will stand out a lot down the line. Can’t tell where these dudes are from, but enjoyed every bit of “Pull Up,” a new nine-minute trip edit from Juan Reyna. (They got the memo that Times Square is fun right now.)

“The one thing that has stuck out in my mind from early on was that clip of you backflipping off the Love Park sign after that contest. What the hell were you thinking?” Josh Stewart interviewed the forever inspirational Jahmal Williams for Germany’s Solo magazine.

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56 Nights In Quarantine & They Was All Crazy

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 :)

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Link or Drown 2

(Colors.)

The week’s best piece of skate content: The New York Times with an illustrated story about Chico Brenes’ journey from asylum seeker fleeing Nicaragua, to pro skater, to the present day in his home country.

“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 ♥

Slam City Skates has a long interview about the current status of the Long Live Southbank project, and it being on the cusp of reaching its massive fundraising goal to open up + reconstruct the closed-off portion of the spot.

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.

Here’s the preview for Virgin Blacktop, a documentary about a 1970s skate team based out of Nyack, New York.

Jahmal Williams is the latest guest on the Mission Statement podcast, and Joe Castrucci is the latest on The Bunt.

More post-“BLESSED” content: New Order Mag has a quick “Five Things” interview with Bill.

Stuff You’ve Probably Caught Already: Frog has a team montage over on Thrasher, Eli Reed has a part that is 70% filmed in New York and made this guy’s girlfriend think he died + Franky Villani and Jakes Hayes skate two or three city spots in their Duets section.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Trae Young with the magic trick.

Quote of the Week: “When two skaters have babies, a VX dies.” — Shawn Powers.

All Good Things Must…

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 ;)