Kyota Umeki | Quartersnacks

‘iPhone Mixtape’ by The Star Team

Daily News June 28th, 2022 · 12:52 pm · 2

When’s the last time you saw a crispy pair of I-Paths in a new skate video?

‘iPhone Mixtape’ is Kyota Umeki and the Star Team’s follow-up to last winter’s “iPod video” (another piece of 2000s technology somehow being outlived at large by the VX1000.) It is a kaleidoscopic bro cam video of the first half of 2022 via the Homies Network dudes and their extended family as they kick around every possible corner of lower Manhattan — with Tompkins and the recently re-instated Green Man statue as the anchor-points.

#TRENDWATCH2022: The City Is Covered In Eggs

Daily News June 2nd, 2022 · 12:00 am · 8

Nobody is mistaking today as any sort of golden age for public space. The “granite cathedrals” that Village Psychic wrote about are at the mercy of time and preservationists, and for our particular case, whether some crusty building manager wants to knob them.

Live long enough and cultivate an interest or two outside of skateboarding, and you can begin to separate your skate-brain from your other-brain. That other brain doesn’t need to go to design school to deduce that the new Love Park sucks, or something as insignificant as that corner of Spring and Sixth is a fucking horrendous place to invite the public to spend their time in.

‘Vacation’ By the Star Team

Video & Remixes February 9th, 2022 · 3:25 pm · 2

It was hard not to pine for the “before time” while watching this — when the QS office was blessed with opportunities to do regular Japan trips…

‘Vacation’ by the Star Team is a showcase of all that the Star Team and Kyota Umeki have been up to since filming an entire video on an iPod this past past fall. Crew trips to L.A. are practically a rite of passage for any tight-knit crew entering adulthood, and this one includes a handful of the Homies Network dudes making their way out west to skate New Yorkers’ favorite L.A. spot: the Sand Gaps. You also get to vicariously experience visiting Japan via Kyota’s Japanese passport (us regular U.S. passport holders are still barred from entry), alongside the crew from Prov Skateshop — which has a supernatural ability to have new east coast skate brands in stock before most east coast shops even do.

Kyota also has a bunch of new Star Team merch up on his website ⛓

‘The iPod Video’ By the Star Team

Video & Remixes December 6th, 2021 · 12:00 pm · 4

People react to the mention of an iPod the same way they do to — idk, a cassette player now?

The first nod to Kyota Umeki’s video work on QS was when he filmed an entire video on a Nintendo 3DS back in 2017. And now, he siphoned a summer and fall’s worth of skating through a fourth generation iPod touch — the first one to ever include a video camera, released in 2010 — with a fisheye glued onto it.

The iPod Video features a roster of Tompkins locals that you will recognize from Homies 2, and commercials for The Star Team’s new drop of jeans, sneakers (?!), and headphones (?!?!?!) Anyone who still has the energy to debate VX v.s. HD should probably just dig up their old iPod from the LiveMixtapes era, and get a glue gun ;)

Check The Star Team’s new product here.

The 2021 Quartersnacks Year in Review: 25-16

Features & Interviews December 1st, 2021 · 12:01 am · 4

It is December. Can you believe it? The year that began with you suggesting to a friend, “Hey do you want to go to an outdoor dining shack in 18-degree weather with snow on the ground to have a beer because if I stay inside my apartment any longer I’m going to claw my own eyes out,” and that friend going “Sure!” is coming to a close.

As we do every year, thus begins our [mostly] scene-specific Top 25 countdown of things that defined the past twelveish months.