An August To Remember — How August 2023 Became A Landmark Month In Skate Video History

📝 Words by Ian Browning
📷 Headline Photo by Morgan Rindengan Courtesy of HUF

If you count everything in the Thrasher Junk Drawer, ten full-length videos, plus another handful of solo parts and edits came out in August 2023. We’ve come to expect that sort of programming when marketing teams try to get a thumb on the scale during the S.O.T.Y. race, but the end of summer has traditionally been a much less productive time of year for skateboarding.

At least until this year.

Lakai’s Bubble, Pass~Port’s “Trinket,” and Johnny’s Vid all came out in the same week. Palace’s Beta Blockers and WKND’s Rumble Pack came out on the same day, creating a nineties skater version of the meme about how eating a bag of Takis would overwhelm and kill a child from the 19th century.

What are the chances? How did it happen? And did anybody realize what was coming down the pipeline? I called a handful of skaters and filmers who worked on the projects that were released that month to find out why it was so stacked, and how it felt to navigate the spotlight.

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The Good Times of Yesterday, Today — Pangea Jeans & John Shanahan’s ‘ROADRAGE’ Video

The old proverb goes something like, “Yeah, now well, the thing about the old days is… they the old days.”

Yet for all the handwringing that gets done about things changing and spots disappearing, there sure are a lot of remaining markers of the old days for nostalgia exercises. Take for instance “ROADRAGE,” the new edit from John Shanahan’s Pangea Jeans imprint, filmed on the same camera they probably filmed Real’s Non Fiction video on in 1996. In it, you’ll find the Battery Park three-stair that Gino nollie back heeled in The Chocolate Tour (with a Las Nueve Vidas De Paco-looking nollie backside flip floating down it.) The Greenwich Street windowsill ledges where Harold Hunter did the sweaty backside heelflip at! Tricks at the upper portion of Pyramid Ledges! The L.A. Department of Water and Power Building! The past is — at a bare minimum — thriving.

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Innit — Palace’s ‘Beta Blockers’ Video

Was under the impression that Beta Blockers would be A Small Palace Video — maybe because it’s August and the skate media mental calendar often saves the year’s blockbuster releases for the holidays — but no, Beta Blockers is A Big Palace Video spanning the whole team, and at a Palasonic-equivalent runtime. In August! What a world.

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City of Scaffolds

“The pop guys are good looking and the drop guys are weird looking.” Lurker Lou and Aaron Herrington head out to Staten Island to skate “anything besides ABC Ledges” in the latest installment of Village Psychic’s “Lurking With Lou” series.

It takes Shaggy nearly 100 blocks to spend $100 in the latest installment of Skate Jawn‘s “$100 Chill” feature, which spans from World Trade to the Upper West Side. If you’ve always wondered what goes on inside the mind of skateboarding’s most prolific letter-writer, this is a nice intro ☺️

“In response to an art-making AI, the only comforting thing is, who cares? Art has never been about being proficient and skilled at making images with mediums. It’s always been about the time and the place and the person behind it and the story, and a computer doesn’t have any of that.” Jenkem spoke to Alexis Sablone about AI art, secret societies and invisibility cloaks.

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Switch Tre Noseblunt

Nearly 20 years to the day that Koston 360 flip noseblunted the rail that would cap off Girl’s Yeah Right! video (yes, Yeah Right! turns 20 this month), Antonio did it switch on the famous Houston, TX rail. Swipe to the second slide.

We’re on sale baby! 🛍 All leftover QS goods are on sale in the webstore. Thanks for your support, as always.

Brandon Johnson A.K.A. @nolimitbrod on IG has a new part out full of tech surprises, entirely filmed in New York.

“I’m scared of stray hairs and rats.” New York Mag‘s Cut publication did a quick Q & A with Alexis Sablone on the occasion of the Candy Courts Park obstacles opening up in Montclair, NJ. (QS #spotcheck here, ICYMI.)

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