Belated 2016 dive find 🌴 what a time
Nice to meet you, he’s an artist.
Hans Klein gave Skate Jawn the backstory to Khaw Wangkaji’s tre flip into the escalator bank at the World Trade Center, which was #1 on the final Top 10 of last year. So crazy that enough time passes where it’s just regular “you can’t skate here” security to new generations of skaters. Angry dudes holding machine guns used to kick you out for skating around the building before, never mind the inside.
Much closed-door (and open-door!) discourse has been made about how evasive skateboard productivity can be to outsiders in Japan. Not that there haven’t been countless incredible Japan edits starring foreigners — but there is always an expectation v.s. reality thing to new arrivals. Navigating busts and crowds is a more algorithmic endeavor there than in other premier skate destinations, hence a palpable difference in how otherworldly the homegrown videos from Japanese locals feel.
The first Back To The Banks contest since the big banks reopened, and the first in ~seventeen~ years, is going down this Saturday at 1 P.M. until 5:30. $10k in prizes, five obstacle zones. Presented by Wip Energy, Labor, Tenant, Spitfire & Grand. Flyer here.
It is actually crazy how contemporary Jason Byoun’s skating from ten-ish years ago looks in 2025. Nick Von Werssowetz A.K.A. Lurk NYC uploaded a seven-minute A-roll remix of all the clips he filmed of Jason from 2013 to 2018. Not sure whose S.O.T.Y. from 2013 – 2018 we’re handing to Jason, but it’s gotta be someone’s. (For further viewing from the era: Jason’s Life Is Goodie part is blessed too …except he doesn’t say that anymore because it means “b less.”)
Cannot imagine that many people have the ten-year anniversary of a random web video pinned on their calendar, but it should be pointed out that the Johnny Wilson x Nike SB “CORE” edit celebrates its tenth birthday this week. “CORE” was a watershed moment around the hallways of the QS office. The brand that sponsored Ishod, P-Rod and Koston corralled a bunch of early-20-somethings shredding New York and uploading it to a filmer’s video page, added in a young Pulaski legend undergoing a career renaissance, a Danish ledge lord, an Australian with a beautiful voice, and a teenager who had already switch flipped over Blubba — and sent them on a low-stakes, one-van trial trip through Upstate New York. (Fun fact: did you know that on paper for the powers that be, the trip was billed as a Nike SB Apparel trip?)
The resulting pilot video was a success, and the subsequent projects that built on this formula became a focal point of the QS newsroom in the ensuing decade.
But perhaps most important — as we sit here ten years later — is that everyone featured in that video, particularly the nucleus bound by those Johnny Wilson Vimeo uploads is doing …great.
Such is the human condition, is it not? • 📷 via @solojazz
Anyone try skating the new Battery Park yet? Prob a bit crowded…
It’s funny when the knob that they skate-block a spot with becomes an apparatus for tricks like a fakie inward heel switch fifty front 180 out — pretty much ramping up the level of technicality possible on a spot more than if they had just left it alone. All that and more in Ben Patrick’s fakie-forward Coda Skateboards part, released via our friends at Village Psychic.
“It’s a certain type of punishment to have to watch a video you worked really hard on over and over and over… it’s gnarly. I’m only two premieres in, and I’m already losing my mind a little bit.” Simple Magic spoke to Ryan Lay about the Sci-Fi Fantasy premiere tour, and the return [?] of touring skate moments in general.
