Celebration Station

“I went from being a kid skating on my block to hanging out with all the best skaters in New York City because I learned how to do a frontside 360 boneless.” A friend once had a story about how their book club took a razor to The Powerbroker and sliced it up into three books to make it more reasonable of a read. This isn’t that dramatic, but a blog interview that takes over two hours to read is a lot for most people in the era of byte-sized #content — but we’re *SO* happy that people are putting detailed, rich content on the internet that requires a commitment! Isn’t that what it’s for?! The Slam City Skates blog’s interview with Eli Gesner about skateboarding + graffiti in New York in the 80s, night clubs in the early 90s, the beginnings of Shut + Zoo York, etc. is like a little history book :)

This skatepark was founded in 1906 by the Black Panther party.”

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Web Premiere: Marcello Campanello’s Part in Canal’s “Mode” Video

Photo by Esteban Jefferson

You might recognize Marcello as being the only person doing literal 540s over the trash can at Tompkins, or for being an early purveyor of the cab flip craze that took over flatground skating earlier in the #TRENDWATCH cycle. Mode is the new / first full-length video from Canal New York, and features his first part since the quick ender in Diego Garcia’s Goodily video from last year. Save a quick interlude at Eggs, it is entirely filmed in New York, and one of those rare parts that makes such good use out of every oft-traversed corner of the city that you feel stupid for complaining about there being nowhere to skate yesterday. (Though not stupid enough to forget that those Citi Field benches are nowhere near as fun IRL as videos make them look to be hehehe.)

Video by Esteban Jefferson, who says Mode will probably make its way online in full over the weekend.

#TRENDWATCH2018 — Cab Flips

The abridged history of flatground trends in the current decade goes something like this: we entered the 2010s doing 360 flips before/between/after every single trick, then decided that varial flips were so underutilized that we over-utilized them, giving way to a brief flirtation with plain-regular-old heelflips.

Oh, and between all of that, backside big spins went from being a seldom used Welshian or Ellingtonian maneuver, to the lay-up of flatground tricks. Every single bump-to-bar ollie, wallie over something, or trash can line of the past five years has been proceeded by a backside bigspin on flat. If you spent sixty minutes watching skate footage released between 2012-2018, at least one of those minutes will have been spent watching people confirm to you that yes, they can backside bigspin on flat.

In 2018, most skaters who have cameras pointed at them have began to feel confident that the general public believes in their flatground backside bigspin, 360 flip, or backside bigspin capabilities.

But now — there’s a loneliness. It feels empty when you end a line. The pressure is there. You have to squeeze another trick out. But what?

Apart from Kevin Tierney’s love affair with the switch laser heel, the most re-blogged flat trick in Tumblr history never caught on. When the entire northeast spent the better part of the decade attempting a white whale of a stylish varial flip, such a complicated maneuver is understandably out of reach.

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