After reading the news about Marc Johnson’s death last night, it took an hour or two before I realized that the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” had quietly been looping in my head — kinda like the mental version of pocket-playing music on your phone’s speakers, until someone catches it and tells you. This is not coming from a massive Rollings Stones fan, but “Miss You” is my favorite Stones song. (No idea what second place would be.) 95% of that has to do with the fact that it is the song in my favorite Marc Johnson part.
Back in October, we asked QS visitors to choose their favorite video parts of the 2010s. If civilization and skateboarding were to end today, which five parts would you bury in a weather-and-nuclear-proof time capsule for post-apocalyptic earth dwellers to reference when they rediscover skate culture of these past ten years?
QS prides itself as being a destination for people who think a lot about skateboarding. Rather than poll a few close colleagues for their favorites, we felt we had a wide enough reverberation in the skate nerd universe to try and crowdsource a canon of the 2010s from anyone willing to sit down and think about it. I can emphatically say that in reviewing the mountain of ballots, everyone took their votes seriously — save maybe the guy who voted for five Micky Papa parts.
As we tallied the results, consistent trends in the count were apparent. Any fears about a recency bias went out the window; there’s only one part from 2019, and the average year of the top 25 is 2014. QS obviously has its own breed of skate nerd audience — this poll would look different if taken by Thrasher or Free — but I would bet that their lists wouldn’t be TOO far off from this one.
Presented without comment for the top 25-11, and then via a lot of favors from writer friends on the internet for the top 10: here are the 25 best video parts of the past ten years.
Anyone got the story or any info on this photo? Just a random Tumblr find.
It was a SLOW Monday morning of skateboard link data collection (there has yet to be any coherent #longform reflection on “BLESSED” to peruse), but then T.J. nollie flipped — actually, maybe just watch the part…”KILLER” is a full Tyshawn part filmed exclusively at T.F. West.
Office favorite, Krazy Frankie, has a new part out for Frog today, with guest tricks from the rest of the team and one of the best half cab flips in the biz ;)
It has been a truly remarkable year for Upstate New York videos. “Nonsense” is a new one from Taryn Ward, with some of the same guys that you’ll recognize from April’s “Steel” video.
Old man yells at cloud the Instagram “Explore” page (jk, jk…kind of) — Village Psychic interviewed Marc Johnson about what constitutes as a circus trick today.
Here’s Tyler Stier’s part from the Buffalo, N.Y-based Jeb video, which looks like it’s filmed in every place on the eastern seaboard between Buffalo and Miami.
With some 58,000+ signatures and proper organization, skateboarders have, at the very least, delayed the reconstruction of the legendary South Bank spot in London. The group behind the the preservation has applied to grant the space “village green” status, which protects historic places for sports and pasttimes. Meanwhile, the Small Banks are a rotting carcass of bricks, dust and heroin needles.
With Outdated behind us, Elijah Cole insisting that the Cathode video is coming out “next month” is the new Kevin Tierney insisting that J.P’s video is coming out “next month.” Anyway, new here’s a new promo for Cathode.
Chrome Ball has been going out with a bang by posting a new interview each day. Marc Johnson’s is likely the best of the bunch, and confirms some of the speculation that went around why certain people weren’t as prevalent in Pretty Sweet as we had hoped. Good to hear his “lost” Tilt Mode goof-around part from the Bag of Suck-era has been found, considering the somewhat goofy Man Down part is his best.
Quote of the Week: “I feel like people who drive Smart Cars do, like, smart-ass shit.” — E.J. upon seeing a Smart Car weave between two construction cones