Nice! So we made it two weeks without having to rally for a skate spot’s survival on a Monday Links post… This time, the spot is an ocean away, but in this media enterprise’s opinion, it’s the best spot in the world — even better than Tompkins when there are two boxes! Everyday Hybridity has the most current update on Prague’s Stalin Plaza being fenced off / condemned to renovation.
It’s all fun and games until Balenciaga actually does a renegade runway show at Blue Park next September.
A dear friend, “Zach from Crown Heights,” called into The Brian Lehrer Show’s episode about the “cost of climate resilience” to provide a T.F. anecdote to the ongoing battle with the East River Park renovation. The convo in question happens just after the 17-minute mark. Whole episode is worth listening to if you want some context as to how this whole issue came to be in the first place.
According to The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan’s Street Names and Their Origins, Allen Street gets its name from William Henry Allen, the youngest Navy captain in the War of 1812. (Our then-recent ex, Great Britain, was beefing with Napoleon while America stayed neutral. The U.S. was trying to send a flow box to France, and Britain felt some type of way about it. Like any bitter ex who sees someone else wearing your hoody after a messy break-up, they went to war.)
Legend has it that Allen was in the English Channel on the hunt for opposition, when he stumbled on a Portuguese cargo ship carrying wine. Him and the squad had a wild night with the haul, but unfortunately, got caught slipping by the British on the following day. Allen and his crew’s colossal hangover would be their last: British canons shot off his leg, and he would die on August 18, 1813.
There’s snow on the ground, and not a ton of links to recap from the past few days, but at least we get post-7 P.M. sunsets back on Sunday. Tiny victories.
Rest in Peace Dillon
New car and live with your parents, or move to New York and live in a basement apartment in Bushwick? Jesse Alba has a new interview / Day in the Life thing.
“For Heitor what’s funny is that we saw that he’d bought shit on the website so I hit him up and told him I could send him some clothes.” Like a brand? Looking for a sponsor? Buy their stuff (using your real name!) and maybe you’ll end up riding for them and getting your entire order refunded ;) Danny Brady has an interview over on Free about his current role as the Palace team manager.
Any Skate Perception alumni read QS? Ty Evans and some other camera nerds created a microphone that can be plugged into modern cameras to record sound that mimics the audio from the VX1000. 300 bucks and still only available for pre-order. (No, this isn’t a sponsored post. Just crazy that’s where skate video technology is at right now.)
No matter the decade, people are gonna keep ollieing off that slanted grey wall on Water Street. Geeked is a full-length video by Bernie Leonor that looks like it’s mostly filmed on a GoPro, all throughout the city.
This dude’s organs probably began to disintegrate as soon as he walked out, because I can’t imagine how bad the curse you get put under for stealing a cat from a bodega is. No wonder he returned it.
Not quite sure why the willy grind has been making a comeback as of late, but there’s a lot of good stuff in Brandon Gironda’s part via the Westchester County-based PFP5 video (ender is wild) + an accompanying Q & A with Mike Sassano about the long-running video series.
“When people are in public spaces or people are walking through public space…They conceive it as a kind of as a private property. Do you understand what I mean? So it’s like, ‘this is for this…Look there’s a bench here and it’s clearly meant for people who have shopped in that store to come here and eat this kind of fucking sandwich…’ They have a certain kind of possessive sense of everything.” — The always insightful Ocean Howell, with your #longread for the week via an interview about *shock* how skateboarders interact with public space in 2018.
We’re holding an editor’s meeting first thing this morning to see if it is possible to do a skateboard version of this New York mag article: “The Oral History of Four Loko in New York. A lot of cancelled following day sessions, and a lot of unnecessary nights in bookings coincided with this era writ large.
Two Brazilians came through and filmed his five minute shared New York part during that one magical week when the planters were moved away from the CBS Ledge. I know GX got all you psyched, but everyone please be careful filming in traffic, for the love of God.
“I didn’t really receive shit out of it other than 11-16 year-olds hating me. Now that they’re 23 and they finally meet me, they tell me I’m a nice guy.” Love Skate Mag has an interview with Lurker Lou.
……aaaaaannnnnddddd Jim Thiebaud — someone who has received death threats over board graphics — has some thoughts for the “leave politics out of skateboarding” crowd.
Interviewing skaters alongside their moms could actually be a good interview series idea.
Quote Tweet of the Week:
(On that note, you might want to check out Stefan Janoski’s stop motion short film, “God I Need A Girlfriend.”)
With it being high season for trips out to Rockaway (back up to 92 degrees tomorrow…) that include a pitstop at the charmingly bad beach 90th skatepark, it is worth pointing out that the park just got a bunch of new ramps. Unclear as to whether it is better now or before. Hopefully, before the world ends, both the bowl and mini ramp there will get replaced with cement versions of the exact same thing.
Gangcorp threw a BBQ and best trick contest at L.E.S. Park on July 4th. Here’s the recap video.
“Best of all, skateboarding’s independent streak means it fosters a healthily rebellious worldview — no small accomplishment as our society drifts toward bland authoritarianism. To be sure, there is money to be made in ignoring this drift, in remaining beholden to libertarian corporatism.” Hanson O’Haver’s “A Crime and a Pastime” piece looks at the underbelly of the skateboard business and its eerie house-of-cards-isms.
New London clip from the POP boys. That nosegrind revert / 3x flat tricks / switch nosegrind revert line reminds me of something that would’ve been in an old 411.
Some Canadians offer up one of the first entries to what will no doubt be an eventful “Summer Trip to New York” clip season. What % of people appearing in S.T.T.N.Y. clips do you think end up moving here? Thirty five? Eighty?
