~Positivity is Sexy~

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Free beer to whoever disses it with a Tas Pappas tag. Photo via The Shady One

“One thing I realized once I started being in the world of Instagram was that people don’t let go of things. If something has emotionally affected somebody in some powerful way sometime in their life, that doesn’t fade. If anything, social media kind of fans the flame of that and almost reestablishes that emotional connection.” With so much discussion of social media and its pros/cons in any skate interview these days, it’s nice to hear that it actually does have a way of bringing about some greater good from one of the happiest people to ever ride a skateboard, Ray Barbee.

“With a skater like Jamal Williams, Ricky Oyola or even Pat Steiner, people aren’t pulling out the yardstick to measure how high they’re ollieing. It’s more the feelings people get by watching that person on a skateboard.” Also with a good bit of social media talk + skaters having an impact on people’s lives, Get Born Mag has a detailed interview with Josh Stewart. ~feelings~

Hotel Blue is the new board company from the LurkNYC camp, and Nick just dropped a nine-minute promo featuring the entire team over the weekend. Back smith backside flip on the Leonard Street ledge was wild.

Bobshirt has a 25-minute interview with Bill Strobeck detailing pretty much every last anecdote about the prime era of Alien Workshop + Habitat. Includes a special guest appearance from a former orange-beanied colleague halfway in ;)

Huf gave Jenkem a tour of some of the places he grew up skating in Manhattan.

Boil the Ocean on Anti-Hero’s persistence in an increasingly tense landscape of board brand longevity, and a potential Daan Van Der Linden S.O.T.Y. run.

Some warm-ups from Yaje Popson and friends at the L.E.S. Park.

Village Psychic has a content monopoly on anything having to do with the little guys keeping the romance in printed skate media alive. An interview with the minds behind Germany’s Solo mag.

Mushrooms to switch flip into a bowl + other debauchery from CPH Open.

Part two of The Bunt’s interview with Spencer Hamilton is now live.

Well, this is the first instance of someone skating in Polo shoes I can remember, which re-opens the hypothetical discussion of what the Ralph skate team would look like…

Quote of the Week: “Positivity is sexy. Creativity is even sexier.” — Andrew Wilson

Thank you for everything Gene Wilder.

A Sense of Seriousness…

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Emilio Cuilan’s DANY video is now available for purchase from TheDANYstore.com. Supreme and Labor also have copies for sale. The video features full parts from Shawn Powers, Genesis Evans, Jason Byoun, Adam Zhu and Yaje Popson, plus appearances from a whole lot of others. Minute teaser for the video can be found here.

Happy birthday Keith Denley.

There’s this video of Kenny Anderson and Vincent Alvarez skating Lenox Ledges (Antony Correa cameo!), and yes, Kenny footage is always a pleasure, but there’s only one bit of Lenox footage from the past week that anyone was talking about. Good lord.

Trife alumnus, Black Dave Willis, has a new part live on the Thrasher site entitled “NYBD.” Gap to front blunt on the out ledge across from World Trade is a wild one.

Can’t Ban the J.B. Man.

Tredje Akten is a rad 20-minute video by the homie Tao from the Malmö + Copenhagen scene. Features Ville, Hjalte, etc + a full Polar section at the end.

NY Skateboarding posted part one of apparently a three-part series of video interviews with Keith Hufnagel. This one talks about meeting Keenan Milton, the infamous Ryan Hickey house that housed all homeless skateboarders of the era, moving to San Francisco, skating Embarcadero, etc.

Gotta #respect a ten-minute Boston video that doesn’t hit Eggs once. Not easy. “Mean Streets Volume 2,” A.K.A. the LurkNYC boys go to Boston.

Two teasers for upcoming videos that should be a good time: Division from Politic Skateboards (#caddoalert), and Elan Vital from Studio Skateboards.

What Youth did a quick video interview with Challex Olson. He slipped on a sandwich.

Who’s going to lug this parking block to Tompkins T.F. West?

This is tasteless and insane, but you can visualize every scenario of this hypothetical Seinfeld script that imagines the characters’ lives in the week after 9/11.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Who cares about Melo’s Olympic postgame interview, Russell Westbrook’s “Now I Do What I Want” video is singlehandedly the most inspirational sports moment of 2016, and the only promotional material the NBA needs for the 2016-2017 season. #MVP.

Quote of the Week: “I’m so glad I didn’t go to double town China set.” — John Choi

Started the past week worth of mornings with this, and it worked out pretty well :)

Scandinavian Summer

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#spotcheck?

Posted remotely in Copenhagen for the week, where it already fast-forwarded to everyone needing a hoody and jacket at night. Here are eighteen seconds of Hjalte warm-ups filmed a hundred feet from where this post is being typed.

Holy switch inward heelflip. Two minutes of largely unreleased Keenan footage.

America: Where seemingly sane “adults” argue about the placement of a trash can + yoga/skate hybrids and LurkNYC showing #OGRESPECT in volume eighteen of their always entertaining “New York Times” throwaways series.

Here’s a five-minute recap on the Keenan Forever skate jam at T.F. West last week.

Shout out to this mid-2000s B.A. footage that Joey Digital posted last week.

Sweet Sixteen” is a chill New York montage via Evan Pacheco and Harry Bergenfield.

The many frustrations of skating Allen Street, summed up in 43 seconds. Ugh.

Recently started a dedicated shoebox for all the zines scattered around my apartment. Pretty sure they’ll still be around when IG is covered in pixely cobwebs and every Snapchat story expires. Kingpin has a nice lil’ round-up of what’s popping in the zine scene, and Village Psychic interviewed the mind behind Boston’s Blessed mag.

#TRENDWATCH2016: Hoboken Skatepark? Mini ramps??? New iPhone clip from Genesis from Hoboken, Blue Park, and the new McCarren.

Boil the Ocean re: Tokyo 2020 hypnotizing chickens. QS is an Olympic rant free zone.

Bruns 1 icon, Nik Stain’s short-n-sweet Bruns 2 part is now online.

New York is the new Cali. An interview with Clem from Recordings of Boardings.

With skate premieres officially becoming an unwelcome cultural even at Sunshine theater this past spring, have we found the new capital of illicit beers and big-screen skate video screenings?! Omg. The SVA theater will be hosting the premiere of Colin Read’s new video this Saturday, which features parts from Quim Cardona, Vincent Touzery, Chris Jones, and rumor has it, DANIEL KIM footage. Jenkem did an interview about Colin’s purportedly last video as well.

Quote of the Week:

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[Unsolicited link to “Bando Lingo,” just in case…]

Summer League

keenan koston guy

Hmmm…whose “board” is that?

Tell your friends you love them.

The State V.S. Radric Davis & Lucas Puig. Literally the greatest.

“What do you want to hear about: money, guns or drugs?” Chromeball has been killing it with the nineties New Yorker interviews lately. The one with Vinny Ponte from today is incredible and is really going to make you want to party, and the Steven Cales one from last week is as comprehensive of a story on him as you’re gonna get. Hear there’s another one in line with a personal hero of the QS office…

Did you know that Dustin Hoffman’s “I’m walking here!” bit from Midnight Cowboy was completely improvised? “Mean Streets” is a new LurkNYC montage series for the Transworld website. Great looking 360 flip in there.

Surprisingly enjoyed the hell out of this. A 25-minute interview with Josh Kasper. Yes, he does talk about ollieing the DJ. Osiris really was the best man. It was the definitive creative force between skateboarding’s closest counterpart to rap’s shiny suit era. My lifegoals are to produce a documentary on Osiris and own a Paine Webber bench.

Sometimes it’s just great to watch a feel-good “Summer Trip to NY” clip, yaknow?

Bill Strobeck uploaded four minutes worth of extras from the Supreme Paris video.

A new video blog from Johnny Wilson and friends + a new iPhone clip from Johnny Wilson and friends + a new Cafe Creme interview with Johnny Wilson where he talks about his friends. Shout out to Conor’s back noseblunt. Logan have you filmed anything for your part yet?

Boil the Ocean kicked off its annual “Summer Mixtape” series with one of my five favorite parts of all-time. Best #musicsupervision ever pretty much :)

Could this news be more shocking than Kevin Durant’s switch to the Golden State Warriors? Peter Smolik has parted ways with the Sk8Mafia in exchange for a spot on the rebooted Menace team. Yeah, they rebooted Menace.

The rideaway at the Wall Street gap is fucked now.

QS Sports Desk: What a weekend! Although it was a day before the world got turned upside down with the KD news + Tim Duncan retirement, this has been my favorite bit of free agency coverage. And remember, The Mavs won the title the first year of the Miami Big 3 ;) Enough with all this “this makes the league boring!” shit. Also, this GQ eulogy for the KD+Russ era is quite great.

Quote of the Week:

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Our good friend Roctakon recently dropped this mix of current day hits + dancehall classics + other stuff with Formerly Erock. Just in time for summer and BBQ season :) Pretty sure it’s his first time doing a mix since the QS-fave, NPBS mix.

Thanks to everyone who came out to China Chalet on Saturday. The smoke took a good seven days off all of our lives. DANY DVDs later this summer.

Trying to Get Off the Fall-Off List

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The QS Sports Desk didn’t have a horse in the playoff race, but it’s pretty obvious that this Cleveland title is both A) the closest New Jersey will ever come to winning a title thanks to Freehold’s J.R. Smithony, West Orange’s Kyrie Irvings, and the back-to-back Finals appearances New Jersey Nets’ Richard Jefferson, and B) the closest the New York Knicks will ever come to winning a title because we now live in a world where Timofey Mozgovonzsky and Iman Shumpert’s hair are NBA Champions. (It’s still fuck Dan Gilbert forever though.) Last night and Game 7 OKC-GSW were the two best basketball games of all time :) lol Melo.

ANYWAY, been pretty bad at updating lately, huh? Should be back to normal programming this week. Sremmlife 2 is delayed and we’re devastated.

Shout out to Sage and TJ for turning pro :)

Are there even people out there whose favorite skater isn’t Max Palmer? Unofficial Frog x 917 demo @ Tompkins via Genesis Evans.

Yaje has a new part out for Venture, where he brings the 2000s back super hard by ending it off with a trick over the Grant’s Tomb four-stair ledge instead one of the banked ledges. Shout out to Ja$onwear x infinity.

“I don’t think we ever really thought of who we were writing for, we did what we wanted to do and what we liked.” Yet another interview about the Big Brother book, but all of them have been pretty great and strangely echo a lot of what’s going on in skateboarding now. (QS review of Shit here btw.)

ON THAT SAME NOTE, you’ve no doubt heard plenty old #oldheads talking about how skating is in some circle (bro) and history repeating itself phase right now a la the post-Bones Brigade era, and while everything it discusses was before my time…thoroughly enjoyed this new Ron Chatman interview about his early career days. “I never did three flips because that was Jason’s shit. I never did impossibles or heelflips because Ed did them. You couldn’t do it better than that.”

Boil the Ocean tackles the growing conspiracy that big shoe companies are deliberately flooding the market with small skateboard brands to dilute the resonance of small shoe brands, or something along the lines of skateboarding’s version of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? I dunno man.

Transworld was feeling the Non Fiction 2k16 vibes, and picked up LurkNYC’s New York Times outtakes series for their website. Good God that backside flip…

Nice read about what it’s like be a sk8er and work as a professional architect.

Jersey Jersey Jersey… “Meadowlands Promo,” featuring QS favorite Nick Ferro.

“Crybaby,” a new one from the youth.

Here’s the New York-based raw footage from Justin Henry’s OPM part.

Quick interview with Jason Dill over at Place.

Samsung is doing a retrospective event on R.B. Umali’s work later today.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Pipe it up.

Quote of the Week: “The room was $140, but ended up being $500 because my girl picked up the walnuts.” — Carl Williams

I mean, who doesn’t love a good vocal interpolation of a truck backing up? Decisions..