One Step Above Garbage

curbz

They painted the curbs here yellow, and now it’s the second or third best spot in the city that you don’t get kicked out of. Paint more stuff yellow.

Can’t remember the last time a montage got me as psyched as “Faces,” the new one from Ben Chadourne, featuring the Blobys, Bobby Worrest, Hjalte, etc. These videos have a remarkable way of making Paris look like the funnest place in the world (which it probably is), even in the winter. The Rod Stewart is also perfect.

“As tennis’ stars age, will aping skateboarding provide an elixir of youthful advertising audiences or will tennis’ wealthy overlords catch onto the notion that a sizable bulk of pro shoes and contract dollars are tied up in veteran pros whose salad grinding days of filming feature length video parts may lie years in the past?” — Boil the Ocean re: skateboarding’s current infatuation with tennis. Frozen in Carbonite also tackled this subject four years ago following Gino’s Mcenroe commercial et al.

Kingpin interviewed Nick Von Werssowetz about his new company, Hotel Blue and the evolution of LurkNYC. Part 3 of Lurk’s “Mean Streets” series is also now live.

The Bunt has a tell-all interview with Darren Harper. Daniel Kim is my fave skater too.

Whoa is this the first wear test video to feature the Le Bain hot tub? Is that even the Le Bain hot tub? Ripped Laces x Canal Wheels give the Brad Cromer Huf pro model a try.

Given that 2016 marks the twenty-year anniversary of everything from Welcome to Hell, to E.E. 3 to Mouse, SMLTalk has a retrospective of all the seminal 1996 videos in two parts. Also kinda hard to disagree that Tincan Folklore was a precursor to a lot of the shit going on in videos today, even moreso than its exalted predecessor.

After the demise of Love, the Sabotage boys took a southern trip hitting a string of the few remaining plazas left in the U.S: Pulaski, Raleigh Courthouse, Legislative (safe to say this is probably the best spot in the country at this point?), Blackbox, etc.

The 917 team dropped a midwest tour video in anticipation of their Nike collab.

“Pure Moods” is a new half New York / half S.F. montage from Waylon Bone.

NY Skateboarding posted part three of their Huf interview, which discusses the rebirth of Metropolitan Wheels, the Marc Johnson v.s. Choc beef, etc.

Um, Ghetto Child Wheels is making a comeback, with almost the same team. And the god Peter Smolik already left the rebooted Menace before the reboot even got to booting in order pursue his own skateboard business venture. Godspeed to the god.

Quote of the Week
Pryce Holmes: “I probably spend $30,000 a year on booze.”
Ben Blundell: “I’ve never made over ten.”

Icons of the Pop Shove-It

shuv

Upon hearing that we replayed a ~♥fabulous♥~ pop shove it 5x in one clip earlier this spring, the Shove-It Gods pointed us in the direction of what can surely hold a place on the ever-rotating merry-go-round that is this website’s contention for third greatest line ever done (after Carroll at the Library™ and Quim doing those two frontside 5050s.)

Yesterday, noted sweatpant clothier, Jimmy Gorecki, #rp-ed another Jimmy’s skateboard moves from two decades past. Jimmy Chung, of 411 #19 Fairman’s Industry Section fame, has been posting raw IG clips from his brief mid nineties run that mostly existed in Fairman’s shop videos. One included this absolute gem of a pop shove-it, an equally ravishing backside flip, and a sexy switch manual that looks better than you ever thought a mere switch manual could look on a foot-high ledge.

A video posted by @llmantisll on

YouTube wormhole ensued, leading to all three of the aforementioned Fairman’s videos, the best of which is the third, from 1995.

1) Yo nobody not named Jahmal will ever look that cool opening a part with a backside 5050 on a #regular #ass ledge.
2) Dude predicted the precise hallmarks of the 90s vintage revival to a T. If you told me he was styling parts and not the @vintagesponsor guy, I’d believe you.
3) Has anyone ever made the full 360 around the Love fountain for a line? Figure it happened in a Sabotage video, but can’t recall in particular.
4) As my good friend Mike the Dad pointed out, how many *great* feebles on round bars outside of Matt Reason really exist? It’s a stock trick that rarely excels beyond, just like, grinding really long. The one he ends his part off with is a non-Reason exception. Must be da capris.

Look Alive

astor

Photo via Matt Weber

Love Park is still skateable!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, somebody unearthed this good bit of footage from a 1994 Love Park contest featuring Huf, Ricky Oyola, Matt Reason, Fred Gall, Andy Stone, etc. Remember when contests just involved jump ramps?! “Yeeaahhhh.”

An interview with Dick Rizzo and Josh Wilson, two prominent figures keeping the rich tradition of New Jersey skateboarding strong in 2016.

Dave Carnie was always everyone’s favorite Big Brother writer, and has probably written more enjoyable words about skateboarding than anyone else out there. Kingpin published the most detailed interview anyone involved with the publicity blitz surrounding Shit has given, with none other than…Dave Carnie. “You know how when you go to an abandoned house and you just start breaking shit and throwing rocks at windows because you can? That’s pretty much what we were doing.”

Better Skate Than Never put all the Lucas Puig #deepcuts in one place.

Genesis Evans & Jason Byoun skating around Tribeca. DANY video soon.

Someone combined all the outtake clips from Bill Strobeck’s IG for a single vid.

Quick minute-long clip from Cooper Park via Johnny Wilson and co.

“Fifteen years since Rob Welsh nearly single-handedly rescued the noseslide from that doomed scrap pile of tricks too basic for blocks and too ‘Muska’ for handrails, a new era beckons in which legs weary from four presidential terms’ worth of pop-outs are offered respite…” — Boil the Ocean on noseslide shove-its and the rise of “dad tricks.”

An interview (+ new clip) with the crew behind Canal Wheels.

Yo Darkstar x Harley Davidson is fire.

Just in time for summer: Sremmlife 2 available June 24.

Spot Updates: 1) You likely stopped caring four years ago, but the Banks won’t re-open until November at the earliest. 2) You likely never cared unless you’re Austyn Gillette, but that bump to wall on Lafayette and Howard is a wrap.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Something still feels off with the east being more exciting than the west for the first time since the “Lebron has no rings”-era, except everyone knows that Spurs-GSW are the real “Finals” in as much as Lakers-Kings in 2002 were the real Finals. Hopefully no poisoned room service. Wasn’t an eventful first weekend though, but Jamal Crawford still ripping is kinda like J.B. Gillett still ripping. Understated, underrated and classic.

Quote of the Week: “Ever since I moved to New York I got worse at skating and better at drinking.” — Jesse Alba

Get well soon Weiss.

Kicked Out the Tiki Bar

moe

Webstore orders from last week were caught up on by Friday afternoon. If you’re in the U.S. and don’t receive your goods by the end of this week, feel free to get in touch for tracking info. Hats are sold out, hoodys are still available :) Thank you everyone for the support.

Shout out to all the free thinkers who are thinking outside the box.

“The stories I wrote were shit, it turned out. I hate to spoil the ending, but it’s true: skateboarding really is super fucking difficult to write about. How am I supposed to fix that?” — “Skateboarding in Fiction: A Brief History in Failure,” a smile-inducing article on the daunting task of writing fiction about the act of skateboarding.

“‘People always call me an asshole,’ he said over the dull roar of our wheels as I caught up to him. ‘That’s because I don’t stop.’ As if to punctuate his point, he ran the next red light. I watched from the limit line as a truck driver slammed on the brakes.”

There are a handful of Bloby Instagram compilations out there, but this new one of Vincent Touzery is the best Bloby IG comp out there #skatevideohouse.

An interview with Brian Panebianco about the final days of Love. They’re still skating.

Andrew Wilson, Loose Trucks Max, Nik Stain, and Mitch from Philly all went out to Los Angeles and came back with an extended edition of Cell Jawn.

Volume 15 of LurkNYC “New York Times” B-sides. VHS cam + some midtown spots that are seldom skated in our modern era give this one some extra nostalgic vibes.

Here’s an artsy New York edit from Antosh and the Club Gear dudes who came through with one of the better “Summer Trip To…” clips in recent memory last fall.

A new mostly Rhode Island / some New York video from the Mood NYC crew: booM.

An interview / podcast with Roxanne Oldham, the music supervisor on “cherry.”

Before Slap was the behemoth of skate gossip that it is today, it was…a magazine?

Three straight ledges in a row from the nineties, and not only talking about them but also remaking them fifteen years later. Meanwhile, there aren’t two consecutive ledges within a two-mile radius of the QS office…

Aaannnddd here’s a five-year-old skating Chelsea Park.

QS Sports Desk: During some very bleak years — actually, they’re all pretty bleak — David Lee provided Knick fans with a flicker of hope. He’ll always hold a special place in our hearts, just like Kristaps will once Dolan decides to trade him in hopes of signing Paul George in three years or some shit. Glad to see the bro finally get his ring.

Quote of the Week: “I didn’t know I was beast until I varial flipped a trash can.” — Genesis Evans

I listen through this a dozen times once it starts getting warm every spring.

Skate the Ledges

love

Brian Panebianco’s Instagram has been the go-to for all end of Love coverage. Respect to anyone who made it down there to skate in single-degree temperatures.

Damn.

You likely caught it already, but Yaje went on a tear for his welcome part to the resuscitated AWS. (Yes, he’s still alive.) Malfa also posted all the photos from Yaje’s interview in this month’s TWS, although you’ll have to grab the issue for the text.

Pretty much all Morningside Heights + Harlem spots in this Mikey Perdomo remix part by Bluecouch NY, which is refreshing to see. Surprised more people don’t try barging a lot of the stuff on the Columbia campus beyond the bank-to-ledge. Ollie over the wall at Morningside School was a pretty wild and unexpected one too ;)

Flo is skating the Le Dome Hubba again. [Previously]

Said it before, but Tom Knox’s Vase section is probably the most re-watched video part around here since Reider’s Gravis comeback. For those just getting up to speed, Sidewalk gave a complete rundown of his video part history. (A notable early-30s nosegrind technician recently told me he preferred the 11th Hour part, so…) Thrasher also just went live with all his Vase extras and raw files. We’d remix it, but nothing on the new Boosie goes well with British skateboarding.

Bobshirt has a fifteen-minute video interview with Long Island legend and owner-of-a-famous-nose, Frank Gerwer. They talk about board graphics, Wallenburg, first trips to the Banks, etc. FYI: The Number Nine part he mentions can be found here. It has a good bit of cool early-90s midtown footage.

Raw footage reel via Matt Velez, Diamond Days #86 via Rob Harris (where’s the party for #100?), and another extended All City Showdown edit via Tony Choy-Sutton.

Village Psychic with a timely article on maintaining private skateparks on the east coast during the winter. I still never forgave whoever stole the plastic benches from the Fairway on 125th Street to put in that Red Bull park on N. 11th circa 2004.

Boil the Ocean re: skating’s willingness to re-embrace its wandering prodigals.

Oh no, is jump cut editing a la The Reason coming back? :/

Another preview of the Big Brother book. Labor had copies as of a few days ago. Not sure if they still do.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Russell Westbrook’s All-Star Game entrance. Also, to anyone talking about Carmelo trade rumors — stop. Just stop.

Quote of the Week: “Bernie Sanders is gonna win off memes.” — Martin Davis

Thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday.