#TeamSweatpants

Germany doing cool things with skateboarding is becoming a common theme on QS.

The FTC Book blog has been posting snippets / mini-interviews with various people in the lead up to the book’s release this fall. Huf on his song in Penal Code 100A, Aaron Meza on filming for Finally…

A clip of the Palace and Polar jam in Leeds this past weekend, featuring Danny Brady, Pontus Alv, Benny Fairfax, and…Shawn Powers.

An interview with Manolo, the guy who painstakingly re-dubs sounds and researches the depths of skate video history for all those “Best of” tribute mixtape clips.

Iron Claw Skates with a disco-tuned Daniel Stone in New York mini-part and a trip to Baltimore. The fact that people are editing 4:3 iPhone fisheye footage alongside VX1 clips furthers the equivalency theory. Also, VX1000s are just stupid.

In anticipation of his first work of erotic skate fiction, Roctakon started a Tumblr for his musings. RT if you want to read so the publishers know…

Elijah Cole’s standalone part in Cathode, in which he does a 10/10 hardflip on flat.

Some historic reading for your afternoon: The story of Nimbus skates, the New York company that existed between Shut and Zoo York, and Zoo co-founder, Eli Gesner on skateboarding in New York in the eighties and nineties for Dazed Digital’s 1993 series. (Though this is the far better Gesner-written article on the same subject.)

This was uploaded in 2010, but has been re-making the rounds on Tumblr for the past week: Skateboarding in Brooklyn, circa 1989.

The second teaser for Colin Read’s video, Tengu, which will be premiering later this month.

Spot Updates: 1) The final remodeled version of Bubble Banks = Two two-up-two-down manual pads, and some wooden benches that are going to get knobbed, but that you could still ollie over. 2) One of the few spots in lower Manhattan that you had a chance of not getting kicked out of is, in the best case scenario, not going to be skateable for a long time.

Quote of the Week
Inquisitive Gentleman: “How are you doing?”
Torey Goodall: “Good. Pretty bad.”

Weird, 2:16 P.M. is also the best time to show up at the T.F.

#TBT: Follow Ryan Gee on Instagram

huf back 180

How did the Ryan Hickey photo from Monday’s post manage to evade even the most resourceful scanner-based skateboard websites? Because it never appeared anywhere significant (Police Informer or Chrome Ball would’ve caught it by now) prior to Ryan Gee’s recent barrage of unseen 35mm scans from the nineties. Everything he’s been posting is east coast-centric, with a lot of Gino, Oyola and other favorites.

Say what you will about instant gratification eroding the staying power of media consumed online, but it’s likely that some of these photographer’s B-sides would’ve never seen the light of day without Instagram. (Flickr never really popped off with skateboarders.) Gee has been posting two or three each day and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. It is pretty much the only non-@badgalriri account that is an absolute must-follow. Turns out Instagram is great for things besides lonely girls with unique lighting techniques (♥♥♥), and making you feel like you’re missing out on stuff that probably sucks (omg #fomo follow me plz thx.) Now, if only Reda and Dimitry Elyashkevich started posting some of their archives…

Follow him via @ryangee_photo.

gino four

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Scanner File: Huf, Pang, Ponte, Steve R., Jones Keefe

Once The Chrome Ball Incident came around and monopolized the scanner-based skate site game, posts of old magazine scans became somewhat unnecessary. That’s why there hasn’t been one since November 2010. But after watching those R.B. Umali “Shoot All Skaters” episodes, it’s hard not to get nostalgic for more nineties east coast images, so we dug into a stack of old magazines to look for things that the internet’s leading skate magazine scanners have yet to unearth. Special thanks goes to Alex Dymond, as he donated the stack of mags depicted above, which included an October 1998 copy of The Source (ATCQ break-up issue.)

The following five interviews are from Fridge, which was an occasionally free magazine from the late-nineties. Its content was maybe 40% skateboarding (often east coast-centric), 20% snowboarding, 35% music, and 5% other stuff. It’s amazing that just ten years ago, people actually put money into *printing* magazines based on somewhat inconsistent interests. There was somehow an audience for a magazine that would interview Keith Hufnagel and Larry Holmes, provide a guide to shitty craft beers and snowboard boots, and review Less Than Jake, Björk and M.O.P. albums alongside one another all in the same issue (which, by the way, literally had a clown on the cover.) Nowadays, if you want to talk about, say, skateboarding, the Knicks, Atlanta rap, a concrete baseball diamond in the East Village, and a bunch of rich girl hangouts on the westside of Manhattan in one place, you pay $10 for a domain name and start a website.

Police Informer Blogspot R.I.P. Shout to the Skate.ly ad archive. All images are enlargeable.

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Where were you during the poncho craze of ’84?

Nothing happens in August. There are even guides on how to look busy at work in August. The same applies for skate media. You’ll have to pardon some of the inclusions if they are not of the “breaking news” variety…

…and if you need something to do, please consult this MegaUpload link. It’s a 650MB .mpg file containing the first three FTC videos. Completely forgot that “Best Rap Song Ever” shortlist contender, “I Am I Be” has been used in a skate part before. (Quick links to relevant FTC New York sections: “Live From New York,” “Family Affair,” some guy named Keith Hufnagel.)

Vote for NJ Skateshop in Vans and Spitfire’s D.I.Y. spot/shop video contest. They’re the only east coast shop up there. And it’s the first skate video to channel narrative motifs from The Sopranos.

NYU: 0, Skateboarding: 1. Now a few more of those need to come off… (Related: Stop applying to NYU, and stop supporting hate crimes.)

Sick video of some Green Diamond affiliates doing noteworthy slappy crooked grinds and performing under-used maneuvers like frontside noseslides to fakie. “This is mad white…but also sick.” — Roctakon.

Eli Reed looking for a manual pad in New York in hopes of retaining his Manny Mania title. Best thing to be on The Berrics since the Mike Vallely Battle Commander.

Web comment of the Year, via the Hella Clips page for the official DQM/Girl/Lakai demo video.

Nolan Lee skating a sketchy-looking handicap ramp rail.

R.I.P. éS Footwear. Though not as heavily romanticized as the Koston 1s and 2s, the 3s were big in New York back in 2001-2002. In further influence, Menik Mati was pretty much the Jaws of skate videos, in that it provided the blueprint for blockbuster skate video productions for over ten years, a format that is only now beginning to wane. Here is Boil the Ocean on that same subject (#25.)

Quote of the Week:
45-Year-Old Man: “Aren’t you too old to be skateboarding?
22-Year-Old Josh Velez: “Aren’t you too old to be wearing shants? There are pants and there are shorts. Pick one.

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The best video of 2010. We’ll even go out on a limb and say it is better than the Dylan Gravis video. It’s impossible to tally the amount of times the phrase “Have you seen the new Ciara video?” was used to start a conversation this past spring.

On to skateboarding…

Brian Kelley interviewed Keith Hufnagel on his blog about relocating to Los Angeles from San Francisco, skating with Ryan Hickey, and a variety of other topics. He doesn’t seem as eager to showcase his storytelling abilities as some of his peers from the nineties are, but still, it’s a Huf interview, so you should read it anyway.

Upon seeing this kid, Christian Willis, skate in real life last week, everyone agreed that it is probably in our best interests to quit skateboarding and gear energy towards alcohol and other depressants. As if that wasn’t enough, this (now viral) video of a six-year-old destroying the Venice Beach Skatepark is only fuel to the emotional burden that coincides with sucking at skateboarding. However, if you’re into the “optimism” thing, you could look at both of those videos as motivational pieces.

Heelbruise Clothing & Chrome Ball Incident collaboration tee shirt, celebrating the rich history of the VHS tape, for all those with dusty shoeboxes of videos tucked away in a basement somewhere.

As you probably know, Billy Rohan, Vans, and the Maloof Brothers gave away a bunch of free skate gear at 12th & A this past Saturday. Taji conducted an interview with Billy about the generous giveaway on the Full Bleed blog to give some background on this high-end, respectable version of a product toss.

While initially skeptical about the Donovan Strain “Murk Avenue” videos, it’s hard to deny that they’re actually kind of brilliant. The latest one gives some sound advice on how the concept of a “front” can be applied to your modern day financial circumstances.

G. Dep confesses to a seventeen-year-old cold case murder and is facing life in jail. The follow-up interview to the confession has him saying that he didn’t know the guy actually died. See what happens when you do drugs? Child of the Ghetto is still on the lower-tier of regional New York classics, and “Let’s Get It” still knocks though. Watch Puffy scrounge together a G. Dep jail album in light of the insanity.

There is going to be a handful of updates this week to accommodate for last week’s general lack of content. Be sure to follow Quartersnacks on Twitter to stay on top of things making their way to the site. Facebook works too.