Johnny Wilson | Quartersnacks

Corduroys & Cartiers

Daily News December 7th, 2015 · 3:37 pm · 3

Day zero and beyond ♥ TF @ 1: Ten Years of Quartersnacks available now.

HD video blog #16 from Johnny Wilson and friends.

Los Angeles-based video blog from Andrew (?!?!) Wilson?!?!

Bob Shirt’s ten-minute video interview with Joey Alvarez is earnest and informative. He runs through the history of little-known companies like C.R.E.A.M and Metropolitan, shares some Banks stories, and talks about Keith Harrison — whose twenty-year-old Seaport line predicted an entire sub-sect of L.E.S. park street style.

The Riverside Park resurgence is already in full swing.

New B-sides clip from the Report Potholes / In Crust We Trust squad. #jersey

Someone remixed all of Tiago’s [park] footage from the D.C. tour video, which includes what is more than likely the greatest switch pop shove it ever done in human history.

Here’s a promo for the Bailar video that includes Shredmaster Keith shredding around Soho. Video due out next month. Looks like a good time.

“People in smaller cities with abandoned ball/tennis courts seem like the have the more fun skating than anyone in Los Angeles or New York.” — Roc

On that same note…new one from the Sex Hippies squad in Western Mass.

I’m guessing you probably caught on to the new #streetlife-heavy F.A./Hockey clip? Pretty sure Ben K. is the first one to ever slide that rail off the eight-stair at CBS.

When the recent past isn’t as recent as you think: Bobby Worrest recaptured. Back 3 curb cut + backside 180 switch crook from Right Foot Forward is an all-time great.

Five trick fix from switch and nollie pop king, Brendan Carroll.

Thanksgiving at the Bushwick Blue Park…

Menace is back! …in enamel pin form.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: We’re big on assists at the Sports Desk. Sad this guy is spending the foreseeable future in playoff spot-chasing territory.

Quote of the Week: “If English was my first language, I’d be a famous comedian.” — Chuck MVP

Follow @quartersnacks

^^^Best sports rap song in who knows how long, but that’s a biased opinion from someone who discovered NBA basketball during peak Penny/Shaq Orlando era ;)

Eleven Down

Daily News November 30th, 2015 · 10:37 am · 4

Photo via The Green Diamond, which apparently still gets updated? Who knew.

The T.F. at 1: Ten Years of Quartersnacks book is now available from Supreme and Labor for $30 — or from the Powerhouse webstore direct. Other shops will have it Tuesday, December 8. Internationally soon. Also, we’re having a launch event at the Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo this Friday, December 4, from 7 to 9 P.M. Free booze, etc. 37 Main Street. F train to York Street. Come through ;)

Vincent’s Free remix is incredible.

This dude 5050ed around the entire hundred and eighty degree curve at the Marcus Garvery flatrails, or as Slicky Boy once called it, “Marvis Gardens” :)

Thrasher posted the full text and all the photos from T.J’s interview last month.

Rad new part from Eggs legend, Gavin Nolan. Yes, there’s Houston construction in it.

New Johnny Wilson HD video blog with a bunch of “Rack” extras.

New not Johnny Wilson HD video blog with a bunch of extras from pretty much the same people. Dude Owl’s Head is coming back in a big way! #trendwatch~~2015~~ 2016.

New Cell Jawn clip also featuring pretty much the same people, plus the 2nd best post-most-recent-incarceration Gucci Mane song after “Orange.”

Easy to forget that this era even happened — Bobby Puleo talks about his tenure over at Enjoi in part two of the “15 Years of Enjoi” series. Check after the 5 minute mark.

Boil the Ocean on how Josh Kasper’s willingness to embrace pro wrestling antics some twenty years ago is now being co-opted by some of skateboarding’s most beloved figureheads for headline-grabbing purposes.

Alex Olson, Jesse Alba and Chris Millic at L.E.S, down the block from Zhu’s.

Having a brand is the new being in a band. Challex Olson from Bianca Chandon / Call Me 917 has a new video interview over at VHS Mag.

New bro cam clip from the bro Gabe Tennen, who continues to maintain his longstanding allegiance to that awful Crowd Heights skatepark at Brower Park :)

Serious hangtime at 181. Also, the part of it under the overpass looks like a full crazy Euro spot if you take all the color out of the video.

I think 2015 might hold the new record for the number of skate premieres hosted by Sunshine. Transplants, the new one from Zach Moore, premieres on Thursday, December 10th, at 9 P.M. Flyer here. Teaser here.

The fat silver double rails at Grand Central / the spot formerly known as Burritoville have been turned into a four-flat-four-flat-four triple set that maybe Chris Pfanner could ollie once the barricades come down.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: …in tweet form.

Quote of the Week: “You have good credit man. Want a free iPad?” — AT&T Employee

Follow @quartersnacks

Almost done with 2015 :/ Year-end countdown, etc. begins this week xoxo.

The QS Transition Facilities Tour — Part 3

Features & Interviews November 27th, 2015 · 3:04 am · 6

Photo by Zach Baker

[Part one here, part two here]

When celebrating the virtues of skate-friendly cities like Copenhagen, it’s important to remember that they didn’t become that way by accident. A place like Denmark may not have the vehement sue-happy culture we do, but there’s still a long process to build a utopia. People with college degrees and sophisticated understandings of architecture, city planning, etc. — who also happen to skateboard — fought for that shit. Many cities are slowly starting to recognize skateboarding as something more productive than spraypainting on a wall or pissing in a corner. Now the next step is figuring the subtleties out. “Maybe a blind-built pre-fab park isn’t the best idea…”

When presented with a chance to do something permanent with the locals in Providence, it didn’t make sense for it to be an exclusive keyholder type of project. It also didn’t make sense to add on to an existing skatepark; they have a whole community already doing a good job at keeping that flame lit.

Filmed by Dan Mcgrath and Johnny Wilson.

Adrian Hall Park, across the street from the Trinity Repertory Theater in downtown Providence, has been a stop for skaters since the early nineties. It has a platform to do tricks off, some steps, and a curb — not a great spot, but enough to keep interest when you get the boot out of everywhere else downtown and are willing to settle on skating anything, insofar as you don’t get hassled. Beyond the skaters, there usually isn’t a whole lot going on in the park. It’s not scenic, as it’s on a side street next to a parking garage: a perfect place to drink a brown-bagged beer or take a nap on some cardboard if you don’t have anywhere to be that night. It was also a solid candidate to be turned into something more than just a barren stone park.

The QS Transition Facilities Tour — Part 2

Features & Interviews November 25th, 2015 · 11:31 am · 1

Photo by Pad Dowd

One of the byproducts of New England’s tightly-knit park scene is that it created a generation of locals who are resourceful and good with their hands. There’s not always a park being built, but if you look hard enough, there’s always an opportunity for a one-off in a forgotten crevice of the city. These will range from the equivalent of what we know in New York as works of “Jerry Duty,” to micro spots that stuff one-tenth of a skatepark into a cleared out corner behind an industrial zone.

A lot of these spots aren’t under some main bridge, or in a well-traversed warehouse district, e.g. how the B.Q.E. spot is a fully public D.I.Y. creation. Maybe a guy knows a guy who knows a guy, and he’ll give skaters free reign over a hidden patch of land to the side of his building before he figures out just what the hell he’s going to do with it. The results become a bowl corner next to a factory’s crumbling smokestack, or a wavy spine concoction built over an out-of-commission gas pipe that even National Grid doesn’t know the deal with. Barring a few anomalies, the northeast isn’t equipped for long lasting full-fledged D.I.Y. skateparks like more spacious parts of the country are. People have been living on top of each other for hundreds of years here; spots like these are left to make do with the leftover crumbs of the city.

Filmed by Johnny Wilson & Max Palmer. Alternate YouTube Link.

The most insane example involved a thirty-minute drive from downtown Providence, until you pull up to a dilapidated building in a neighborhood that has nothing but liquor stores. If you’ve seen that movie Prisoners, it’s basically like that building where Hugh Jackman takes the guy to torture him.

The QS Transition Facilities Tour — Part 1

Features & Interviews November 24th, 2015 · 9:46 am · 5

Photo by Zach Baker

It is no secret that we spend an inordinate amount of time in caged in, flat spaces. And it is no secret — as much as we may try to glamorize it — that it gets old after a while. With open road season in the northeast coming to a close, we hit I-95 one last time this fall. Except rather than going to surefire crutches like Eggs or Pulaski, we aimed for something a little different, and a little less…flat. We loaded up the three or five people in the crew adequately versed in skating transition for an atypical QS journey. We went to concrete skateparks, and ended up leaving something permanent behind us in the end (more on that later.)

The concrete skatepark is a relatively new phenomenon in New York. Sure, Owl’s Head has been there for a decade-and-a-half, but the recent surge in parks popping up everywhere is only ~five years old. It also came after we spent much of the 2000s languishing in pre-fab purgatory. Even then, if you heard some of the stories from people tasked with negotiating the skaters’ side in building a park, you’d want to strangle yourself with the red tape. We have one of the three largest city economies in the world; the level of bureaucracy that comes with each one we’re fortunate enough to have is unparalleled. Hopefully, the stadium-lit volleyball courts out on Tribeca piers have an easier time getting built…

Filmed by Johnny Wilson & Max Palmer. Alternate YouTube link.

New England embraced outdoor and public concrete parks long before we did. That’s mostly due to two people: Sloppy Sam, who founded Breaking Ground Skateparks, and Jeff Paprocki, who now owns Paprocki Concrete & Masonry. Both of them navigated the laws and public works departments that vary between every New England town to create much of the vast network of parks that exists up there today. Once you stop by Frank Pepe’s in New Haven and make it into the eastern half of Connecticut, it’s possible to spend the day hitting three or four unique parks, all thanks to these dudes. They aren’t “D.I.Y.” creations in the grey understanding that we have of that phrase, but it’s obvious they wouldn’t exist without the saintly proactive efforts of a few individuals. “It’s all about knowing the right person to talk to.” And also having the right crew around you.