Meet Me At The Mall — The Skateable History of Allen Street

According to The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan’s Street Names and Their Origins, Allen Street gets its name from William Henry Allen, the youngest Navy captain in the War of 1812. (Our then-recent ex, Great Britain, was beefing with Napoleon while America stayed neutral. The U.S. was trying to send a flow box to France, and Britain felt some type of way about it. Like any bitter ex who sees someone else wearing your hoody after a messy break-up, they went to war.)

Legend has it that Allen was in the English Channel on the hunt for opposition, when he stumbled on a Portuguese cargo ship carrying wine. Him and the squad had a wild night with the haul, but unfortunately, got caught slipping by the British on the following day. Allen and his crew’s colossal hangover would be their last: British canons shot off his leg, and he would die on August 18, 1813.

200 years later, L.E.S Skatepark was born.

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Sanguine Paradise

Please sign the petition to show your support for keeping the asphalt at the Tompkins Square Park courts. This space is as sacred to skateboarding and the East Village as the Rucker or the West 4th Street courts are to basketball. It would be a massive loss to the youth and cultural fabric of the neighborhood if they were covered with synthetic turf. We are a few hundred shy of 25,000 (!!!) signatures, so please please please share the petition with your friends, and on your respective social channels.

After many years of captivity, the Zipper Ledge is finally free and dressed with a fresh, yellow paintjob, as first reported by @mini_spots. (Don’t ask for pin! That’s like asking where the Empire State Building is!) If only the park starts opening the gate at Yellow Rail, then the entire Morningside little kid skate scene circa 2003 will be in full revival.

Jesse Alba is the latest guest on The Bunt, and really happy that he no longer lives at 51 Eldert Street.

…aanndd Max Palmer is half the man he used to be in Jesse’s new #longform iPhone edit.

One of the hardest things about interviewing skateboarders is not asking the same ten things that the last few interviews they did asked. It’s special and rare when you get someone for their first one. Caleb Barnett did his first ever interview with the Slam City Skates blog.

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Christmas in March — New Nik Stain Part + New Johnny Wilson Clip

Wasn’t expecting this waking up on a late-winter Tuesday morning: the first mostly-New York Johnny Wilson Vimeo upload since “Sup World” back in 2016 + Nik Stain doing Bruns levels of charging through the rickety back remnants of the CBS ledges like it’s Love Park or some shit.

Features a bunch of people you probably haven’t seen much from since the 917 video, which should get you stoked for the upcoming …917 video.

Live From the Exito

This place is a good time.

♥ A heartwarming story about a New York skate shop owner, a New York surf shop owner, Paris, and Mike Carroll doing a backside 5050 ♥

We rant about seeing the same spots in Big Skate City™ trip edits like anyone else, but just the right mix of people skating them, and all of a sudden, none of the nitpicky skate criticism matters anymore. Really wish this Insta edit of Max Palmer, Remy Tav and Sylvain Tognelli skating go-to spots in Paris was 4x as long. (Also funny how 2/3 of the people in it don’t even have Instagrams.)

And on that note, Victor Campillo’s ender for his Quota part is the first bit of recent République footage to really stick to the memory. (Starting to notice a trend when New York news is slow…we just post a bunch of Paris stuff. Can’t wait to get this satellite office popping.)

It had a brief run on the TWS site, but “Crop Circles Volume 1” is now online in full, and is one of the best post-Love Park / Philly survivalist videos yet.

“A typical day was waking up at 6:30 A.M., breakfast, heading to the construction site, working till 10-11 P.M., and having a late night crew that stayed up to 3 A.M. on some days.” Monster Children has the story about how a small crew with minimal resources built the first-ever skatepark in Angola in just 28 days.

“Did skateboarder’s hopes for a professional minimum salary level die along with Rob Dyrdek’s dreams for a skaters’ union? Does there exist a ‘rough cut’ of Nike’s commercial in which Kyrie Irving clowns Eric Koston for not having a video game character in the last 10 years’ worth of THPS titles? Is this commercial ripe for parody by the remaining aggressive inline rollerbladers, except where they’re barging Lance Mountain’s backyard pool?”

Theories has the results from their Underground S.O.T.Y. poll.

Antonio x his famous L.J. via this past December.

TWS put up Antonio’s tricks from Duets, which includes maybe the first-ever clip shot from the inside of a trash can? We’d add it to our ever-growing thread of trash-themed skate memes, but it almost becomes low-hanging fruit at that point…

BETTY FORD” is a phone edit from Giovany Reyes featuring some boys traveling the world and skating everything from the best spot on the planet to the worst spot on the planet.

Pretty pointless to link a video with 100k+ YouTube views on here, but it’s been slow and it’s winter. Franky Villani has some New York clips in the middle of his Dickies part.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: We don’t often showcase dramatic dunks on here (or 2019 Warriors highlights, for that matter), but that Demarcus Cousins dunk was straight out of the 1990s NBA. And we’ve honestly been far too exhausted with any and all developments pertaining to the basketball team who plays on 33rd and 7th this past half-decade to have any solid opinion about the Porzingis trade. It’s just all too tiring. We have shit to do.

Quote of the Week: “The vegan girl at the vegan restaurant was having a vegan crisis about her vegan Super Bowl party.” — Alex Mosley