Kyota Umeki | Quartersnacks

‘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.

Homies Network Presents: Coles & Kyota

Video & Remixes September 23rd, 2021 · 12:00 am · 4

Anyone who has been a fan of Coles, Kyota, Kei and their crew since the days when they were filming on a Nintendo 3DS has enjoyed watching them all grow into their skateboard powers in month-to-month leaps. We’re nine months removed from the below-freezing outdoor premiere of Homies 2, and the three of them are back with a new one, already leaps ahead of the last.

Midtown 4Ever — Tanner Diamond’s ‘OTIS’ Video

Daily News March 15th, 2021 · 12:58 pm · 3

The bountiful approaches to riding a skateboard in New York — from digging for an untapped morsel of crust and rub-bricking it, to never leaving Blue Park — will ebb and flow in popularity as time wears on. A few laid off security guards or a mere propped tile are capable of creating a sea change in the culture.

But through all those changes, there has been one constant, and that’s midtown footage. Dig as far back as the 1980s, and you’ll see people skating down that very same 47th Street hill beside the FedEx building that the dudes in Tanner Diamond‘s great new “OTIS” montage are.