The World Famous Lenox Ledges

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Artwork by Mark Hall-Patch

New York does not have a bustling natural ledge spot that breeds a culture a la, say #eggsreport. Our most prized and documented hangouts are abysses of nothingness: Tompkins, T.F. West, some wood lodged against a stack of ten road plates. To skate a ledge, you need to either pray that the Big Screen Park guardians are off their watch, or take the train up to 110th.

You can like a spot for all it may have to skate, its good ground or its uncharacteristicly low bust. You truly fall in love with a spot when it has a living culture of locals, lurkers and transients. Lenox might not be anywhere near the breed of open plaza from the nineties that you hear older pros pontificating about, but it’s the best we got. Five ledges, a curb, brick ground that Shane O’Neill famously hated, a special sect of skaters who you’ll never see downtown, ruffians, philosophers, Ruff Ryder affiliates, and a revolving door of enthusiastic little kids who pick up skating for a few months that maybe-sometimes turn to years.

We love it here, and have loved it since the spot looked like this. Thank you Lenox.

Previously: Lenox Brunch, 2010 Lenox Tribute

Our Lenox Ledges tee, along with the rest of our spring drop will be available in the webstore at midnight [EST], Monday May 9th. Available in shops now. European shops next week. Small preview of the merch below. Have a good one.

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It’s Our Holiday, and They Wanna Take It Away

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Some fucking balls, badmouthing America. Especially now.”

You should re-watch Nik Stain’s Bruns part just because.

There are some Photosynthesis-era outtakes plus one-pants-leg-pulled-up extras from Andy Bautista’s INFMS part in the latest installment of In Absentia C-roll.

New part from Lurker Lou for Prizefighter, which features a ton of chill avant-garde noseslide maneuvers. Slappy Flushing is up there for N.S.O.T.Y. honors.

For anyone keeping track of WATTBA #musicsupervision… Free’s Lucien Clarke + “I’m The Plug” compilation part is great, and the new Cell Jawn video features a sslloowweedd rendition of “Plastic Bag” + an emphasized Conor Prunty flick. FYI your “Summer Trip To N.Y.” clip prob isn’t good enough to waste “Scholarships” on ;)

Was wondering when footage on that abandoned BMW at Lenox Ledges would begin to surface. Surprised that thing wasn’t the most popular spot in New York this summer.

Green Zine has a detailed and rather biographical interview with James from Labor.

Interviewing young skaters without ~a decade’s worth of coverage is a tough assignment, especially if you’re trying to avoid asking the same shit you asked the last young skater (“Soooo, like Instagram and Street League? So crazy right?”). The source shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but Chromeball pretty much did an under-25 skater interview as best as you could possibly do it with Ishod Wair.

The guy behind Fakie Hill Bomb, one of my favorite skate sites with words on it, wrote a piece about knobs and other prohibitive architecture for The Guardian.

Boil the Ocean re: Love Park, Sabotage 4, and the discontinuation of Actavis. Here you were thinking it was a drought

The body varial has had a bit of a resurgence in recent years, and there’s still a raging battle in ballcourts throughout the city for someone to do it over a vertical can (sans bump.) SMLTalk stops to contend that the best has already happened for said trick.

Ever want to glo up at the skatepark before? (You gotta.)

Village Psychic interviewed Mehring about his new book, Skate the World.

The Theories guys give an #authenticportrait of what skating in [north] Brooklyn is like.

When I was a little girl in Poland, we all had ponies.

QS Sports Desk: Can’t wait for the season to start man.

Quote of the Week: “Do you think Johnny’s complete disregard for anyone’s feelings is the real source of MPC’s productivity?” — Nick Boserio

Three weeks late on “Thotline Bling” :(

4 P.M. Links :(

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UNIS.

Manolo’s “20 Years of Chocolate” remix will bring a tear to your eye.

Still one of the craziest things ever done on a skateboard. Dude was too futuristic.

“Tyshawn Jones is really getting some air! Now I hope that he and others of his ilk are billed for the damage they cause to the steps and walls of monuments and public areas around the city.” TJ got a photo in the Times this past weekend. Some commenters were upset. We should ban everything except walking. That’d be cool.

SMLTalk has been doing some hard-hitting investigative journalism as of late. First, they use Kevin Bradley’s bump-to-bar grab from “cherry” as a springboard to assess the history of acceptable grabs on street, and though it went online a few weeks ago, this piece on the demise of the pop shove-it is also worth your consideration.

Boil the Ocean on Stativ IV and the future of full-length videos.

Some Bronze B-sides. ICYMI: Jenkem interviewed Peter about dark corners of the internet last week. (Here’s another interview with him and Pat from last fall.)

Quick Acapulco Gold clip with a 2013 Q.S.O.T.Y. Leo Gutman sighting.

This “Steep Banks” account on YouTube started uploading a lot of Long Island-based gems from the nineties: Frank Gerwer in midtown circa 1997 and R.I.P. Burritoville and Broadway Bump, two of the greatest lil’ kid spots in New York skateboarding history.

Well, a summer montage to “We Dem Boyz” was pretty inevitable.

Columbus Circle is fun.

A look at the current breed of skate videos coming out of Philadelphia.

Wasn’t expecting to link a video of a guy on Jart today, but some of the stuff in this Fran Molina part is undeniably insane. He destroys MACBA without even hitting the ledges much, and skates sorta like a Euro Torey Pudwill. (Who, by the way, was recently discovered to be maybe the third Jewish pro skateboarder ever. Time to amend this post.)

Uhh…Young Thug was on The Tonight Show.

Quote of the Week: “Yo you know what’s fact? Most pretty girls have bigass foreheads.” — Overheard at Lenox Ledges

Sorry for the slow start to the week. Cool stuff soon?

Silver Linings Spotbook

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“Phi kappa Psi House off the chain Trippy!” — @money5000

Don’t forget — Black Dave is opening up for the one and only Mistah Don’t Play A.K.A. Project Pat at Santos Party House tomorrow night (Tuesday, February 26.) Doors open at 8 P.M. 96 Lafayette Street. Tickets are $20 at the door, $15 in advance. Dave also has a mixtape and music video Kids remake out too.

Vice has a new interview with Josh Kalis. He’s a Yaje Popson fan.

Fresh off a sighting in Sabotage 3 (at Love Park, nonetheless), Brian Wenning also appears in latest Habitat-heavy NJ Scum montage.

Every part should be so lucky as to receive a RI-MIX. It’s two months old, but we somehow just found out about it via Recordings of Boardings: Massimo Cavedoni re-edited to the Instagram genius, Badgalriri. Also, if you ever feel overwhelmed by the daily onslaught of Hella Clips and Skatevideosite, Recordings of Boardings is a great slower-paced alternative.

The Harlem Shake made it to Lenox Ledges. No, not the one from the G. Dep video.

Some wonderful person mashed up 40 minutes worth of bonus footage from the Girl and Chocolate tour videos of the past ten years to make a sick B-sides tribute mix. Has anybody called it “Better than Pretty Sweet” yet?

More good stuff out of Pittsburgh: Scumco & Sons rider, Dan Peindl’s part in Yunker.

Check the latest Skate Jawn montage with a perhaps first-ever line outside of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

R.B. Umali talks about filming for early issues of 411, the Houston skate scene in the nineties, and Lennie Kirk’s “ignorant” tattoo.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week:You trying to get the pipe?”

Quote of the Week:You trying to get the pipe?”

P.S. When the previous Bronze video reaches 56,000 views, the new Bronze video will be released. Refresh its YouTube page 100 times a day.

We Blowing Up To the Moon, Shout Out To the Goons

Christmas = The only time you can skate the Seagram Building. Go for it.

How was your weekend? Did you see anyone wearing JNCOs?

This is a great news. Big congratulations to Rob Campbell and best wishes for his future role as the director of skateboarding for Open Road.

Joseph Delgado’s part from the Poisonous Products video is now on YouTube. All lines, and some Lil’ Kim on the soundtrack. Good to see Queens locals still skating actual Flushing and not just the Maloof Park. (While on the topic: has anyone skated to “Drugs” before? It’s easy to forget that Lil’ Kim somehow ended up getting one of the greatest rap beats of all time. These dudes did it way more justice though.)

Here is a teaser for Shark Shit, a (very) low-def video featuring Loose Trucks Max and the rest of the Brooklyn homies.

Stupid Slap Message Board Thread #588,684,693: “Most hipster skate parts?” Humorously enough, they post Brett Nelson’s Rich Mahogany part, then go on to say Brett Land’s part is more “hipster”-ish. Then, the topic diverges into how Cardiel’s Sight Unseen part isn’t as good as everyone says it is…

If you ever skate Tompkins, you’ll recognize a handful of people with parts in this 21-minute iPhone video from John Kim.

The goal of QS is to eventually transition from a skateboard website into a chain of strip club skateparks throughout the south. We have fifty-page business plans and everything, but it looks like DGK’s “Playground” park beat us to it. Back to square one.

In the spirit of the season, check out our post from last year about Jahmal Williams’ loosely Christmas-related video part from the early 2000s.

Spot Updates: 1) You may have noticed that some bandits cut off the rail at FedEx a few weeks ago. Well, it’s back. 2) Similar story…some bandits unknobbed the Dag 10-stair ledge, a tree fell on it, scaffolding blocked it off, and now it’s knobbed again. 3) There’s a food truck at Lenox now. Interesting that it takes a food truck to exemplify how oblivious people are to getting in the way of skateboard-related pursuits.


TM103 drops tomorrow. It actually exceeded expectations, which weren’t that high. “Ballin’” and the Neyo song are pure garbage though.

Slim Dunkin R.I.P.