It Begins — Nike SB’s ‘QuickStrike’ Video by Will Miles & Johnny Wilson

Every month on QS is Antonio month, but this month is REALLY Antonio month.

As you may recall, in 2023, skateboarding collectively decided that its Oscars season — which had otherwise been reserved for October, November and December to mirror the final quarter of Thrasher‘s S.O.T.Y race — now begins in August. When writing about this new phenomenon for QS, Ian Browning imagined “a nineties skater version of the meme about how eating a bag of Takis would overwhelm and kill a child from the 19th century.”

In watching Will Miles and Johnny Wilson’s QuickStrike video for Nike SB — a proverbial “return to the streets” the day after the Olympics ended — it was tough not to hark back on that image.

Imagine a crew of four pimply teenagers in 1993, who had just picked up a copy of Girl’s Goldfish video from their suburban hometown skateshop. They push home as fast as they can, dodging the half-full cans of Yoo-hoo being hurled at them out of a 1990 Honda Civic full of jocks and their cheerleader girlfriends. They stumble inside, push the tape into the VCR, and somehow, QuickStrike plays instead.

What would happen?

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Favorite Spot with Stu Kirst on the Grey Wall

🔑 Interview, Intro & Edit by Farran Golding
📹 Footage courtesy of Johnny Wilson
📷 Photography by Paul Coots

Water Street and its peripheries in New York’s financial district, offer a handful of conventionally “good” skateboarding destinations. Head towards Battery Park and you may see someone giving security the slip at C-Benches or a visiting pro on a pilgrimage at Pyramid Ledges. However, between 2015 to 2020, one might have have found Stu Kirst atop a skinny, eight-feet high platform, sizing up a route obliquely hidden in plain sight.

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Trust Your Kickflip

Nolan Zangas’ photography book, So Far So Good, is now for sale online.

Greg Navarro’s follow-up to 2021’s Upper West Side Curb Club, which was filmed entirely at the Soldiers & Sailors Monument, will be The Central Park Flatground Club, a video entirely filmed within the confines of Central Park’s 842 acres — a place not exactly known for its abundance of skateable objects.

“It can be a delicate dance to do something you love for money. I’m sure I could have kept my career going for a while, and it was tempting to do that because I was making really good money, but I felt strongly I needed to do something else.” Jenkem interviewed known goat John Gardner about leaving his pro skateboarding career behind so he could focus on doing mental health counseling. Godspeed, John ❤️

“New York was the one where I was, like, ‘Holy shit, these are skate spots.'” Closer posted up Farran Golding’s interview with Nelly Morville from their last issue on their website.

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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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