Da Fam On Da Gram

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Photo via Brian Kelley

If you need some motivation to help you power through the week, Khaled has a new Breakfast Club interview. He’s been meditating, swimming, and is considering flying.

This was awesome: Jim Hodgson uploaded a “lost” German Nieves part from 1997. Great watch, especially considering there aren’t a ton of all New York-based full parts from back then. R.I.P. Hoboken Ledges favorite skater’s part from Life is Goodie is now online. Buy a DVD copy of the video here.

The two guys who skated from Boston to New York are skating somewhere far again.

It’s gotta be amazing to live in a place that closes down a legendary skate spot (that’s utilized by absolutely no one else), promises to build a skatepark in exchange, and somehow doesn’t completely fuck it up. That place has something like ~20% unemployment for people under 25 and also feels like a Groundhog’s Day-esque vortex after a while, but hey man, you can sk8.

Greg Hunt broke down how terrible the process of clearing music rights for skate videos is. Yo but you don’t gotta clear that shit for the Gram tho.

Brian Anderson and Mark Gonzales made a downtown to midtown bro cam clip.

Zoo is reissuing Matt Reason’s Keys deck. All the proceeds go to Matt’s family.

Boom game next level down in Virginia.

Another YouTube compilation from a classic skate spot! Real life.

Phil Rodriguez in slow motion at the Forrest Hills park.

Is pontificating on Koston skateboarding’s version of pontificating on Kobe?

A bunch of the Bronze dudes + Rich Homie Quan + San Francisco.

Confused because a) why is Vogue covering skate products? and b) how dare they snub Alex Olson from Bianca Chandon?

Shorty’s made it outside, past the walls.

$82,000 Snacks.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Courtside angle of Rose’s Game 3 winner. Glad to see the dude doing what he was doing when he was the youngest MVP in league history. Rooting for him, but that series is probably going to seven games…

Quote of the Week: “In all honesty, Daniel Lutheran had my favorite part.” — Pryce Holmes

Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan aren’t making music together anymore but he’s making music with Jamie xx? These rappers, man :(

An Inconvenient Truth

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It is time that we, as free-thinking adults, own up to an inconvenient truth: The Storm is history’s greatest work of nonfiction. It might not be a sexy or popular opinion, but our most exalted skateboard heroes continue to steal from this much-maligned VHS tape for inspiration while no one is looking.

Dave Mayhew pre-dated the impossible’s modern redevelopment by a decade.

Chris Dobstaff pre-dated Fully Flared standardizing confusing tech tricks by eight.

Josh Kasper pre-dated Alex Olson inevitably doing an ollie over a DJ for a V Man fall fashion week spread by fifteen!

Anyone with half-a-brain knows there are some suppressed team meeting notes that considered the idea of a Plan B paintball trip to film male bonding filler clips for True.

And now, the Gonz — the Gonz! — is paying homage to the one and only Tyrone Olson in a new Four-Star clip without giving proper credit to the man himself.

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Enough is enough. Why is it cool for the Gonz to do it, while the bro Tyrone continues to be ostracized from the conversation? Why should Mark bask in all the Tumblr reblog glory, while we sit there pretending like he didn’t watch The Storm late at night when everyone was asleep, and got inspired to bring a jump ramp to the rail?

And don’t say “Cuz he’s the Gonz.” Nah man, the Gonz is a Storm fan on the low, just like me and you ;)

Osiris shoes are boss, everybody.

We Never Hungover

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Quartersnacks colorway Alltimers Lambo cruisers now available at Supreme NY. They have tees, too. Webstore is still cracking, but we’re sold out of cruisers.

Skateboard tricks are sorta just stupid now.

Diamond Days #76. This one is fairly street.

New Ishod and Seaport 5.1-heavy video blog from Johnny Wilson and friends.

Blonde Reider is pretty sick. 99% sure he’s the first one to skate the second level of the Columbus Circle statue ledge from flat. Someone good should noseslide it.

You probably caught the Puleo and Wenning sections from In Absentia, but you might’ve missed the more under-the-radar parts from Rodney Torres, who has always been a bit ahead of his time, especially by east coast standards, and Andy Bautista, which contains tons of Logic #6 B-sides. R.I.P. Hoboken Ledges.

“This is a bad example, but you know like in Dodgeball, when the evil team comes out and they’ve got the best uniform, and everyone else has mixed shirts? I like that look.” Complex has a rather detailed interview with Lev Tanju.

DC Shoes is five years late on trying to merge the scene with the board. Who on their team is even partyboy-enough (in the #nyfw sense of the word) to legitimately be the face behind that shoe? Is Nyjah poised for a more fashionable rebrand?

This is what skateboarding in Alaska looks like.

The landing for that first 360 flip is literally cobblestones.

The Gonz doesn’t like Brooklyn, and Kevin Lowry cruising around non name brand New York spots is a fun watch. (Do any NBA fans find it confusing that there is a Canadian skateboarder named Kevin Lowry, and a basketball player on a Canadian team named Kyle Lowry? Or is this only a problem in the QS office?)

VHS Mag has a new interview with the first or second best skater from New Jersey, Quim Cardona.

“Best duo since Outkast” might be a hyperbole, but who really cares.

Quote of the Week: “We wanted to send PLG [Pierre-Luc Gagnon] some Dime gear, and asked him what size he was. He goes, ‘I’ll take larges for skating, and mediums for the club.'” — Antoine Asselin

How long is that new T.F. box going to stick around? How long until there’s a 24-hour police patrol at that new concreted spot downtown? Sorry for so many questions today. We are feeling very #existential.

Linkz N Hood Chek

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B.C.C.B.G.Ps: Boot Camp Click Background Props. Photo by Brendan Carroll.

Never saw this before: The story behind the famous photo of Gonz at Alcatraz. If “music is fifty-percent of the video part,” then the spot is fifty-percent of the photo.

R.I.P. Drop-In Skatepark. Thanks for the memories.

As a follow-up to Friday’s William Phan post, here are two random GoPro clips found floating around on Vimeo. Nothing too exciting, but some display of the aforementioned flip trick abilities. Re-edit eventually?

Noted Park Slope rib spot, Pork Slope, put together a cruiser video with In4mation. Go skate the nearby pop-over ledge, and then enjoy some ribs and a beer.

Three Up Three Down (the New York version) is the chillest.

An incredible story about battling to skateboard in Buffalo and battling brain cancer.

Boil the Ocean continues with the common “skate industry = high school” analogy to explain how the ex-Blueprint rider offshoot and the actual Blueprint 2.0 reboot is like a broken up couple showing up to prom with new dates. Or something.

In light of Google Video’s demise, Peter re-uploaded Flipmode 3: The First Flipmode Video to YouTube. Enjoy a wonderful look back at the finest NY-based little kid video of its time, and the second best film of 2006. Free Billy Lynch.

Wait, so Mike Carroll and Lee Smith wear all the clothes at DQM before they get put on the rack? Weird.

Spot Updates: 1) Thanks to some awful asphalt work on behalf of the Parks Department, the entire T.F. is now covered in small pebbles due to one crack they filled in. It does however, now have a metal-less wallie box. 2) The city approved the construction of an AIDS memorial on the triangle at 7th Avenue and 12th Street / where the St. Vincent’s Bank is. Get your tricks in while you can. At least they’re not turning the triangle into a Duane Reade or another all-glass high-rise…

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Dirk’s game winner against the Bulls. Can you guys please make the playoffs instead of the Lakers? Thanks.

Quote of the Week: “Yo this dude is dressed like he just saw Fight Club.” — T-Bird

This Vine thing seems like a lot of work, but we’re on there now.

Jordan at 50: Skateboarding Edition

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Anybody who follows professional sports knows that February is a deadzone. NFL is over, ESPN pretends to care about MLB spring training, 80% of the NBA is in a mid-season slump, and hockey is hockey. So in 2013, sports media decided to fill up February programming slots by giving the most ubiquitous athlete in the history of sports even more attention because of his 50th birthday. There may one day be a better player than Jordan, but there probably won’t be one with better marketing and merchandising. (See: Any Kobe shoe.) If you have been alive for over a decade, you’ve likely owned something with a Jumpman on it; Lebron could fulfill his promise of eight championships, and still wouldn’t make it to that level.

Jordan’s career had been as much about championships as sneakers and advertising. M.J. will forever be “the greatest,” because he existed at a moment when an athlete could revolutionize a sport to a point that his personal brand influences something as distant as skateboarding.

The shoe parallels are obvious: Anybody who saw the Bones Brigade documentary (it’s on Netflix Instant, by the way) remembered that the Dunk/Jordan 1 was a skater favorite long before skate boutiques got SB accounts. The Caballero (before it got cut down to the Half Cab) had a bit of Jordan DNA in its design. The brand would even become indirectly responsible for the unfortunate air bubble craze of the late nineties.

February is a deadzone for skate content too, so here is a look back at some of the skaters who have most visibly been inspired by Jordan, sometimes beyond mere footwear.

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