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.
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.
This year had a particular way of ensuring that few things that came before it could ever look or feel quite the same again. The world of The Homies Video — released just a year-and-a-half ago — is a foreign place compared to the one we now all inhabit. Yet Homies 2 plays like a matured continuation of the first project. There’s a comfort to the video’s energy; despite all of 2020’s turmoil, people on skateboards everywhere found silver linings and reasons to laugh with their friends as if it were any other year.
Like the man says after watching Seven roll away from a pop shove down the twelve at World Trade: “I’m so happy for my friend.” What are skate videos but longform reasons to feel the vicarious rush of others’ feats? ;)
Video by Kei Tsuruta. Features full parts from Coles Bailey and Kyota Umeki, both of whom also had sections in Jolie Rouge just a few months back. The rest is montages that include the entire Homies Network extended family.
It’s a perfect, heartwarming ending to what has been an overwhelmingly eventful Skateboard Oscars Season ™. Happy New Year everyone ♥
Bronze’s Christmas mix will warm your heart and make you smile ♥ Maybe the funniest one yet. Shout out Lindsey Robertson’s Bagels. It was a good run.
Notable snow content is as follows, choose your player: Kyota Umeki, MITCH, Alexis Lacroix.
This final stretch of the year has typically meant there was some sort of QS winter getaway in the cards after New Year’s, but you know… pandemic, etc. Instead, let’s travel ~*VIRTUALLY*~ with these recent features… 1) Skate spots in the Swiss alps with Irregular, 2) The Cuban skate scene with Skateism, 3) Marble relics of the Soviet Union with Free.
Alexis Sablone has a two-hour (!) interview with The Bunt, along with a new one over on Monster Children.
Nik Stain by Paul Coots, who has a couple shots from John’s Vid over on his Instagram.
Patrick Kikongo, creator of The Black List, has a public service announcement to keep in mind while you’re doing any skate-related holiday shopping.
“I think you’re the first person to actually own up to drunk claims in one of these interviews.” Joey Pepper talks drunk claims and everything in-between for his new Chromeball interview.
Really know nothing about this edit, but enjoyed it a lot — maybe because editing a pandemic-era skate video to “World Hold On” is funny and perfect. “TFTI” is a fourteen-minute homie edit by Reilly Schlitt that looks like it was largely filmed during lockdown days, as all the Stroud, etc. footy is from when none of the courts had hoops. If you don’t have that whistle stuck in your head after hearing that song…idk, one day you will have to answer to the children of the sky ;)
