Link or Drown 2

(Colors.)

The week’s best piece of skate content: The New York Times with an illustrated story about Chico Brenes’ journey from asylum seeker fleeing Nicaragua, to pro skater, to the present day in his home country.

“I kind of consider 2000 to 2009-10 the dark ages of skating. It was just like, the filmer and photographer decided what a skater would skate. If you were good, you got shipped out to California and you would skate with people that would be like ‘You need to do this.’ Almost like there were requirements. ‘Do this handrail.'” Spot-finder extraordinaire, Dave Caddo, has an interview with Village Psychic about the rules of skating new spots, blown out spots, and unlocking spots.

Spent a month or three mulling about whether to write something about the three skate movies that came out in 2018 on here. Quite obviously, nothing on that end came to fruition, and this Paris Review piece on Minding the Gap is nine zillion times better than anything I could have written on what is, far and away, the best “skateboard movie” ever made. Get that free Hulu trial if you haven’t seen it yet.

i-D has a long feature commemorating Palace’s ten-year journey from a brand conceived in a dilapidated skate house by Southbank to what it is today: employer of Torey Goodall, Jamal Smith and Tico ♥

Slam City Skates has a long interview about the current status of the Long Live Southbank project, and it being on the cusp of reaching its massive fundraising goal to open up + reconstruct the closed-off portion of the spot.

LANDLINE” is a rad, mostly NJ-based mini video by Matt Hilzenrath.

Brad Cromer has an all New York part (with a couple Jersey clips) commemorating the release of his new Huf pro model.

Unclear if he’s been reading more women authors or not, but Mark Suciu has a bunch of New York clips in his new Thunder part. Pretty sure he’s the first one to get a clip at those year-old, two-second bust ledges by IBM, and that rock ollie in front of Corner Bistro is fucked.

Ciao is the latest all-New York video by Ricardo Napoli. Teaser here.

Here’s the preview for Virgin Blacktop, a documentary about a 1970s skate team based out of Nyack, New York.

Jahmal Williams is the latest guest on the Mission Statement podcast, and Joe Castrucci is the latest on The Bunt.

More post-“BLESSED” content: New Order Mag has a quick “Five Things” interview with Bill.

Stuff You’ve Probably Caught Already: Frog has a team montage over on Thrasher, Eli Reed has a part that is 70% filmed in New York and made this guy’s girlfriend think he died + Franky Villani and Jakes Hayes skate two or three city spots in their Duets section.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Trae Young with the magic trick.

Quote of the Week: “When two skaters have babies, a VX dies.” — Shawn Powers.

Legends of the Spa

Four years after the Parks Department sabotaged the best obstacle at New York’s most famous still-standing skate spot, it has returned with a vengeance. Photo via Kyota.

It seems like we traded our annual office tradition of late posts on the Monday during Fashion Week for late posts on the Monday after Glory Challenge. No seasoned QS reader expected an on-time update today though, let’s be honest ;)

Before we get started, let’s talk about perseverance in the face of adversity. No matter what skate trick got away from you, what job interview didn’t call you back, what crush blocked your number…there is always hope. Even if it’s four years, and four broken boards later — maybe you too, one day, will be the recipient of a celebratory “oooohhhhh yeaaaaaahhh” from Alexis Lacroix. It is all a matter of patience and dedication.

FYI: Most remaining stuff in our webstore is on sale.

I know Vice articles about skateboarding tend to get a bad rap on the comments here, but this one is actually pretty good! Zach Harris on the “trend” of skateboarders not treating their bodies like garbage cans anymore. (Save everyone who spent the last three days in Montreal, I imagine.)

And on that note: “Will skateboarding’s notoriously rapid generational churn soon spur a backlash against sober, thoughtful life choices, and bring about a new era of ‘hammer’ tricks, illegitimate children and unpaid debt?” …probably?

Zered has an interview with Juxtapoz mag about his Paper Skaters project.

Village Psychic interrogates Nick Boserio about whether or not skating street on 60mm wheels is “cheating.” Try and read it in his voice.

Noted sweatpants engineer and our good friend Jimmy Gorecki has a nearly two-hour interview on The Nine Club.

Crazy Ass Paterson Skaters uploaded a 12-minute-long raw footy log.

It is wild how much the spot selection in even a skate heaven like Barcelona managed to change over the course of a decade. Tombo uploaded some old footage from a trip out there in 2005 with Puleo, a young Brandon Westgate, and others.

The Traffic team talks about riding a bus from Washington to New York with a pantless man who thought he was the Road Runner, and other stories from when they were filming for their last video.

New York resident Mark Suciu has a longform interview with North.

Here’s a new iPhone edit from Kyota.

Quote of the Week: “Speaking French is 10% pronunciation and 90% attitude.” — Young Lady Giving Impromptu French Lessons at Glory Challenge

Fredo In The Cut That’s A Scary Sight

The fingerboardable history of Columbus Park, coming soon…(Via @bobbybils on IG)

Whoa have you ever seen Mark Suciu’s Photosynthesis part?

Now that that’s out of the way, this is maybe the first Monday Links post ever where there are more links to articles (i.e. written words) than videos…

“After drilling his truck bolts back for a bigger nose and noselsliding ledges in the ’80s, Mark had one of the first noseslide photos on a rail (one where he’s actually sitting on it rather than just dinging it) as a sequence in his June 1990 Poweredge.” As per an indirect solicitation, Mackenzie Eisenhour enlisted Guy Mariano to chronicle how the modern noseslide was invented. As suspected, Mark Gonzales is responsible.

“As he flies through the air, he is caught between life and death, suspended in the void of nonexistence — the ultimate Kleinean motif.” Jamie Thomas’ “leap of faith” as a work of avant garde art juxtaposed against the art of Yves Klein. Yeah, fuck it, why not.

Vice has an interview with Jonathan Rentschler about documenting the final years of Love Park for his book, Love. QS review for it here. And you can should buy it here ;)

This is oddly…not bad? Deadspin (of all places) has a #longform article about the full history of Rodney Mullen V.S. Daewon Song — though idk about it “changing skateboarding forever.”

If you’re wondering how many nights the five-minute line in Miles Silvas’ new Adidas commercial took, Monster Children has an interview with him about it. (Spoiler: 4.)

Boil the Ocean offers some thoughts on J. Scott Handsdown and Dan Pageau taking crowdsourcing via the skateboarding community to newfound heights. To be fair, they ain’t special — Meatball pioneered this concept when he tried to GoFundMe a ticket to Australia so he could tag along on a Hardies trip.

Dill gets nostalgic for eighty minutes in probably Bobshirt’s longest interview to date.

This is the funniest spot in New York right now.

Volume 7 of Elkin raw files via Theories. Ollieing an open newspaper box door in the middle of a line is some real shit huh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A thirteen-minute remix video of Wes Kremer and some DC friends from Mick Robbins.

Quick clip from Cooper at Owl’s Head Park.

The new Byrdgang video is premiering at China Chalet this Thursday. 8-11. Video plays at 9:30. 47 Broadway obvs. Flyer here.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week:Hello, police? Chris Paul is trying to beat me up.”

Quote of the Week:

Just Throwing Rocks

jr smith tweet

*We only care about J.R* *Not an official Cavs endoresement* *We only care about J.R*

Obvious first link: Three minutes of Rick Howard B-sides from the past ~five years.

The always brilliant Tennyson Corporation compiled all of Kalis and Stevie’s footage to appear in issues of 411 into fuzzy feeling remix video. Yo all those flip tricks, wow.

2016 Q.S.S.O.T.Y Daniel Kim London footage via “Regulate 005” from Jenkem.

Mark Humienik made a six-minute Hi8 (?) montage of the Bronze boys.

“Man, I’m just trying to live. I ain’t trying to pay no fucking dues. You only pay dues if you want something out of it. I’m not paying anything. I just want to be able to wake up and be able to go skateboard every day.” — An interview with Philly Santosuosso from Humidity Skateshop for Real’s Actions Realized fundraiser.

Damn, so if the 2015 #trendwatch was backside 360ing out of 5050s, is the 2017 #trendwatch doing that no comply backside 360 where your foot doesn’t touch the ground out of 5050s? Who can even keep up man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“The resulting photos are personal and gorgeous, using LOVE as a subject to tell its own, final chapter and representing the parable of American urbanism: nothing lasts forever.” Adam Abada re: Jonathan Rentschler’s book on the final years of Love Park.

Someone made an Antonio-only mix of the previous Numbers clip.

Haven’t listened to either yet tbh, because I’m typing this with no headphones from a cafe where the coffee tastes like ramen, but here’s the latest episode of The Bunt with Mark Suciu, and an episode of Thrasher radio with Gonz. You know what to expect ;)

“It seems that defensive architecture, even as it becomes commonplace and increasingly surrounds us, still goes under most people’s radar, which makes the problem all the more insidious.” Village Psychic has a cool interview about using sculpture to raise awareness about how public space is becoming less public.

Boil the Ocean post for those who don’t read Boil the Ocean posts: “In Lieu of Some Longwinded and Semi-Coherent Blog Post, Here’s a Bunch of Justin Henry Tricks.”

Four minutes of Sremmlife B-sides from Mick Robbins.

So happy that Gunplay and Mozzy found each other

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: As everyone mentally shifts from “Wow, the Warriors are going 16-0 in the postseason” to “wow, maybe this is going seven!” — allow us to revisit the complete 2016 timeline of J.R. Smith partying shirtless from Vegas to Cleveland. We thought this shit was going four last year too.

Quote of the Week: “Just wait until I fucking tell the habibis back in New York that they sold me half a chicken with no sauce.” — Josh Velez re: Copenhagen Halal food

Heard it’s finally summer back home ♥ :)

And the summer reminds me of Fetty Wap :( Miss you bro.

Already August

boards

Photo via Troy

Sometimes you gotta get up and laugh it off, you know? (That girl rips btw.)

Anyone wondering when the stuff that was at T.F. on Friday will reappear, follow N.Y. Ramp Co. on Instagram for alerts. Supposedly at Tompkins once a week.

Shout out to Adidas for acknowledging that Columbus Circle is the last remaining true “plaza” in New York with their plaza-loving Suciu part. (Flushing is not a plaza spot…it takes fifteen minutes to skate to the nearest store, among other things.)

A fan remix of some reigning Q.S.S.O.T.Y. Max Palmer video blog footage.

Yo, everyone needs to get better at looking out for cars when your boy is skating some spot that leads out into the street. In the immortal words of Rob Campbell: “It might be funny when you get hit by a car, but not when you get run over by one.”

Good for a laugh: a #listicle of the worst skateparks ever built.

Maybe it’s because we’re biased on this side of the country and they’ve been running way more east coast stuff as of late, but tough to disagree that Transworld issues have somehow gotten better as they have slimmed down and print has taken a backseat to online. Skateboard Story has a good interview with Mike Fitzgerald, TWS‘ director of sales, about keeping a three-decade-old skate magazine afloat in 2015.

Life lessons learned from The Hot Chocolate Tour via SMLTalk. Ayo for yayo.

This was basically like Inside the Skater’s Studio with Donny Barley.

#girl #power. “I just like to kickflip over stuff.”

Joe Cups uploaded a bonus montage from the 2004 Lurkers 2 video to his YouTube page. R.I.P. old back of Union Square. R.I.P. Pepsi Ledge. R.I.P. to the really good metal ledge with bad ground on Duane and Hudson Streets. (He also uploaded a better quality version of Lurkers 2 itself.)

The olds v.s. the youngs — chapter 95,746: “ironic” skateboarding edition a.k.a. how these ten seconds of Seymour Skinner will never not be relevant.

Every trick done down Clipper in seven minutes.

Colin Sussingham is having a show at 2nd Nature in Bushwick on Friday. $1 prints :)

The New Yorker is really into skateboarding these days.

Big last week for New Jersey. Shout out to Paterson.

Quote of the Week: “Do you know where I can get Xanax? …or any other drugs? …is that VX? I used to skate.” — Soho Lurker

Please @ me once someone does a trick into this. Thanks ;)