Float Off the Earth in Designer

halloween

This one is pretty good too.

The QS webstore is now live with fall merch. There likely won’t be any restocks on any of this stuff, so grab it while you can. Thanks as always for the support. Also available from these fine shops, although it might not be available at some of the European retailers until later this week or next ♥♥♥

Cops are awesome. Not skating there for a while…

Maybe L.E.S. clip of the year. (Double-set contest clips don’t count.)

Ollie onto the top, TOP circle at Seward Park is insane.

I’d rather watch Gino push than get old.”

Even though the rumors have been going for years, the Love Park redesign looks like it’s becoming an increasing reality. It’s nice that they’re turning it into a grassy crack smoking campsite with a big toilet in the middle.

Remember Chad Knight? For whatever reason, decided to give his Shetler Show episode a chance. There are some interesting bits, namely having to do with the late nineties skate boom. People can call companies like Osiris “corny” in hindsight, but we’re still talking about them more than some of the “cool” stuff from when we were growing up. All the corny shit means a lot in life. Think about who’s song you’re more likely to hear at a party in 2015: 50 or Ja? Yo I miss Yung Berg.

The Meteoric Rise of the Palace Wayward Boys Choir.

Leo Gutman (2013 Q.S.S.O.T.Y. winner) sightings in this mostly New York iPhone clip.

Always hyped to see footage of Philly Santosuosso and New Orleans in general.

Just in time for winter: Ripped Laces on the resurgence of skating in Timberlands.

Dude, we, like, fully gave up on the Knicks after they traded picks for Bargnani and realized nothing will ever change. Being a bandwagon Warriors fan these past three years has turned out great. (Thanks for the plug.)

There’s no shortage of high praise on the Stretch and Bobbito documentary going around, but as an addendum to that, you should listen to the two-hour Juan Ep podcast with the two of them. They make a point of not spoiling anything in the film itself. Bobbito not knowing this was a Dogg Pound beat or the context of the song is the most hilariously east coast shit ever. That song was in a clip, btw ;)

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: The entire highlights video of Magic-Thunder from Friday. I witnessed a $50 bet go down this past week on Russell Westbrook being league MVP. He’ll probably finish top three, but it doesn’t matter because he’s actually the greatest basketball player in the history of skateboarding.

Quote of the Week: “Seeing clips of Justin Bieber skating makes me want to start skateboarding again.” — Thando

March Madness

cyrus UN

Photo by Zach Malfa-Kowalski.

Cyrus is on Polar, Ben K is on 3D, and Steve Nash retired.

Found this podcast piece about “defensive architecture” with Ocean Howell really interesting (he’s an architecture professor now.) His points about developers positioning skateparks in rundown areas so they give way to gentrification seem to make sense. (Check where on the map the new Jersey City skatepark will be.)

An interview with Chad Bowers, former Alien Workshop team manager and principal figurehead behind Mother Collective about working for and starting a skateboarding company in…Ohio. “They forgot about the fourth coast.”

Nieratko interviewed Bill Strobeck on the occasion of cherry’s one-year anniversary.

#MPC: 1) HD video blog #9 from Johnny Wilson. 2) Max Palmer, Andrew Wilson, John Choi from Dime, et al. with one of the better clips from the now defunct Coda warehouse. 3) Some Paych second angles via Paul Young.

New Hi-8 clip (oxymoron?) with all the Bronze dudes.

Slam has a quick photo feature with the bro Rob Mathieson from his time in New York.

Hey, these guys like Virtual Reality Bump as much as we do!

There are some hot moves in this Evan Dittig part for Underground Skate Shop.

SMLTalk looks back the the first-ever skate re-edit contest. What up Jeremy.

Dunno what the deal with this blurry and dark Leo Gutman re-edit is (art?), but it was a good reminder to revisit The Brodies part that earned him Q.S.S.O.T.Y honors in 2013.

Even though he is quite obviously the entire QS office’s favorite skateboarder, it should be noted that Lucas’ slappy back smith IG vid was not the first known documentation of said maneuver on social media. This guy did it for the Vine back in January.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Nice to see J.R. Smith excelling in a city with minimal nightlife. Imagine him on the Thunder? He might become MVP.

Quote of the Week: “Tribeca is like the Equinox of skateparks.” — Connor Champion

DJ Mustard For #SOTY

leo gutman kickflip

2013 Q.S.S.O.T.Y, Leo Gutman – Flip kick. Photo by Mike Heikkila.

Hjalte Halberg with the noseslide of the year.

Johnny went HD. VX is [officially] dead. It was all good just a week ago.

The full story of how the Santa Monica Courthouse became a legal skate spot. Small banks restoration one day? Or does that make *too much* sense to ever happen?

Village Psychic has a #listicle of the ten best switch backside flips A.K.A. what Reynolds may or may not have once referred to as “the hardest trick.” It might be less of “the hardest trick” and more of the hardest trick to do well i.e. not have it horrendously barrel roll one inch off the ground to a standstill landing, thus discouraging anyone from publicly trying to get better at it.

Dudes in San Jose love khaki cargo shorts.

Rory Milanes is turning pro in 2020 when the Palace video comes out.

Enough with dudes skating in suits for videos filmed with fancy cameras. That shit was maybe cool once, and even that’s pushing it. With that being said, it is cool that Arto Saari got a pass to skate inside the Helsinki airport. You can file that under things that will never ever ever ever ever happen in the U.S.

The inventor of the tornado spin is still a leading quarterpipe innovator in 2014.

Somebody ollied the bump-to-bar at Wavy’s. (Not the best angle though.) He also grinded the Philly step before it. We might’ve had conversations about how Luis hypothetically wouldn’t even ollie that thing. We’re dumb.

Got to respect these guys for A) Basing ~75% of their “Summer Trip to New York” clip at the T.F. and South 5th monument plaza / proverbial Williamsburg T.F. and B) Not skating a single ledge over a foot in height throughout it.

Japan’s Rua Magazine has a video interview segment with Jahmal Williams from when he was out there for the Static IV premiere.

Billy Waldman is building an ark out of solar panels.

Quote of the Week
Observant Gentleman: “I wish I was fat so I could skate pools well.”
Alexander Mosley: “Fat people skate transition better, but there’s a lot you can do that they can’t. You’re not gonna see a fat person doing backside 180 nosegrinds.”

That Brooklyn Lockwood spot is allegedly harder to skate than actual Lockwood?

4 P.M. Links :(

unis

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?

Out of Office Reply / Holiday Season

paris

Photo via Pryce Holmes for National Geographic

Faced with the brutal difficulty of skateboarding in the United States and all its sue-happy rules, we wound up back in Europe for the second time in one month. Between the ~four weeks spent here this summer, we’ve still only been kicked out of one spot, and that was via a knife-weilding hash dealer in Copenhagen. It’s become a recurring theme on the site, but America sucks for skateboarding.

August will inevitably be a stacked month around here for a variety reasons, so we’re taking summer “holiday” now. If you ordered anything that remains in the webstore over the past week-and-a-half, it should ship early next week at the absolute latest. Maybe expect to see a content update squeezed in before the week is out?

On the slim chance that you missed it (came out a few hours after Monday Links went live), Eli has an awesome new welcome part out for Organika, with a Quim cameo at the start (as promised!) His lavish fashion sense from his first part is a lot to live up to though :) Labor also has a quick new video with its three shop riders, one of whom is reigning QSSOTY, Leo Gutman.

Back on Monday for good. Or Friday for temp.

Also, anyone asking for a Sinner re-edit (there are a lot of you) — think for a second — how would the weed-bandana guy who does switch drop-ins into double-kinked ditches NOT skate to three dubstep songs? The part is absolutely perfect as it is.