Right now, the most Insta-famous street spot in New York is a Williamsburg basketball court with a couple plastic benches.
Prior to this spring — with the exception of a few loose video appearances — they’ve just been sitting there.
“Are those plastic?” A group of young men would observe, and keep skating onward to the Monument, onward to Reggaeton Ledges, onward to see if anything new and interesting had been built on the waterfront.
“There’s a whole city out there! Why waste time on recycled plastic?!”
“aight bet.” is a check-in from Hardbody with a few loose ends filmed since the DANY video came out two long summers ago. Filmed around the city, and featuring Joseph Delgado, Chachi, Shawn Powers, Javaris Williams, Yaje Popson, Jason Byoun, Kevin Tierney, Genesis Evans, and Adam Zhu. Filmed and edited by Emilio Cuilan.
Stay tuned for something special soon ♥
In the meantime, Hardbody goods are available on Hardbody.nyc, and at CHCM Shop (2 Bond Street, quite literally across the street from the gap.)
Thanks to everyone who supported the QS for Nike SB collaboration, and all of you who came out to the first annual Quartersnacks Cup on Saturday. We have some pairs left in the webstore, though you’ll have better luck on sizes if you’re going for a navy pair ;) Use the code “MONDAYLINKS” to reward yourself for reading the words on this website, and get free U.S. shipping on the shoes until midnight tonight E.S.T. Everything else you gotta cover the shipping on though.
“Drifting toward the childhood and the feminine. It’s not always about masculinity, and drinking, and fucking skater guys…Everybody has that inner child or feminine side. It’s cool to embrace that.” Shout out Genny, Conor and Humble. The Faderdid a rad feature on their operation that reads different than much of the “small skate brand” stories you see out there. Show them some love.
Surprised that lines through the entire block aren’t more of a thing in footage from Big Screen Plaza. Bret Gregory’s Hombre Hardware part is a good time.
Chris Mulhern uploaded another teaser for his upcoming Love Park documentary, 15th & JFK. His comments also seem to indicate that it may end up being a series. “I won’t be able to tell this story in two hours or less, which was my original plan.”
The moral of the story in this sorta bad / sorta borderline still readable Wall Street Journal article about skate pilgrimages to China is: stop snitching.
Quote of the Week: “Could I do the fried shrimp…just with some toast?” — Kevin Tierney’s Diner Order (fyi, the waiter refused to serve him fried shrimp and toast.)
“Kevin Tierney wouldn’t shut up about how he was going to switch laser flip the Le Dome double set even though it had already been done 15 years ago.” Solo has an appropriate article about the Bronze crew’s most recent trip to Paris.
What the fuck: “You have to take a blood and piss test to skate [the indoor park] so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most locals skip that option.” Medium skate mag has a short feature about how people manage to skate in Russia during the winter.
Village Physic interviewed Reda about the rules of being a skate photographer in the social media age. (Unsolicited link to Reda’s Bobshirt interview because it’s the best.)
There have been a fewof these over the past couple years, but Vice has a feature about skateboards’ three-decade avoidance of inflation. I have a feeling that if we keep writing these things it’s gonna be some “be careful what you wish for”-shit and we’re going to walk into a shop and boom, $85 for a deck with grip. Thanks everyone!!!
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Everything fun in the NBA last week mostly happened off the court, so let’s get weird and give play of the week to the most complicated way of preventing a ball from going out of bounds ever.
Quote of the Week C.J: “How long is fashion week?” Fashionable Gentleman: “A week.”
Ricky Oyola, godfather of the east coast “filming a line via just skating random shit on the street”-practice, once expounded on his peak skateboard dream: doing a line through Philadelphia’s then-standing City Hall, into the street, up into the Municipal Services building, back down the stairs, across the street, into Love Park, through Love Park, and end at Wawa.
The closest he got on record was a line from the end of City Hall, through the intersection, and into Love Park in Eastern Exposure 2, but it did establish a lingering precedent for connecting spots. Apart from Ricky and that Joey O’Brien Sabotage 4 line where he starts at Love and ends up in the garage beneath it, spot connecting does not have a rich history in Philadelphia.
Or anywhere, really — because doing a line from one spot, through the street, and to another, is fucking hard. There are variables (people, traffic, pebbles, maybe two sets of security, acts of God), and a pressing anxiety of missing the final trick in an already-long line, which gets amplified by the fact that fifteen other things went right up until that point. As you will soon learn, spot connecting is something most people do for the sake of doing it. In the majority of cases, they stick to their safe tricks.
Like Philadelphia, New York is a dense and layered city. Many of its streets are narrow, and depending on where you are, three or four spots could be across from one another. New York never had a “Big Three,” but it does have three different types of benches on four different street corners, and over the years, skateboarders here have kept their third eyes open and far-sighted.
