Let’s get it going — a review of the year when it rained every single weekend in the summer.
Without further ado, here is the minutiae, the laughter, the tears, the triumphs and defeats that defined the year 2023 in New York skateboarding.
Tag: John Shanahan
9 iPhones, 2 HPXs, 1 VX, 0 Clips
The bros. New QS goods available in U.S. shops now. International sooner than soon. Our webstore relaunches this Friday, November 3 @ noon E.S.T. 📷 by Jason Lecras.
Jersey legend Ron Deily has a new part out for NJ Skateshop and Square Up Skateboards, full of NJ crust + an emphatic stomp on a switch front blunt in The Bronx.
“In general not being so hard on yourself is a big one. It can get dark, you gotta love yourself, all the cliche shit is kinda true.” Music talk, the origin of Late Nite Stars + more in Skate Jawn‘s interview with Alan Bell, available in both video and written form :) Run back Mr. Bell’s “ab” part after you’re done with the interview.
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.
Avec the Homie
John Shanahan starts a line by rolling off the amphitheater at the Citi Field benches, props a tile up to the second level of the CBS benches, and kickflips off the grate side over the Crosby Street bump-to-bar in his latest DC part, in case you haven’t caught it yet.
Everybody’s unloading their fakie 5-0 flip out clips at Big Screen now that the spot’s knobbed 😔 Jasper Stieve and Neema Joorabchi come through with a new one for Free, featuring watery gap to grinds and exemplary frontside heelflip form.
“I think it’s safe to say that the range for a proper ledge height in a skate park setting should be between 13 1/2 and 14 1/4 inches.” Dave Caddo went around the city measuring the dimensions of some of its most oft-skated ledges, from the 12-inch-high Reggaeton fence ledge or the 19-inch-high Flushing Meadows Park Ledges. He compiled his findings over on his Substack, Skait Brane.
Future Nostalgia — John Shanahan’s ‘Pocket Dial’ Part
What’s a random soundbyte from a skate video that you and/or your friends have an allegiance to?
For a decent part of the QS office, it’s the “N.Y. kid!” that Mike Wright drops after backside 180ing off a ledge attached to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and into E. 51st Street from 2001’s E.S.T. 2 — immortalized here in a 16-year-old YouTube upload. I think Thando said it after landing a switch back heel down a three stair in an edit from a while back. (Pretty sure that soundbyte was in a Bronze edit too?)
Seeing John Shanahan nollie 180 that very same gap — which honestly maybe hasn’t appeared in a video for 20 years — right in front of a cop’s face sent that very same echo through the mind. That ledge, that angle, that Armani Exchange across the street… iconic.