Midtown | Quartersnacks

Goodbye, Friend: A Eulogy For Indoor Ten

Daily News February 6th, 2015 · 5:02 am · 18

Though Indoor Ten has been under construction for over a year, the MTA recently revealed the new entrance to the F train on 42nd Street. It does not look like the much beloved midtown institution will remain with us.

It was 2002. Flip’s Sorry video had just come out. When there was a finite number of skate videos, every nuance became etched in your pre-adolescent brain. You spent time with videos, memorized them, and mimicked them. It wasn’t only the tricks the pros did, or the occasional impression of “Fred’s gay outfit.” Something as mundane as an indoor set of stairs became something to aspire to. Sorry had a few sets of [presumably foreign] indoor stairs.

Two years earlier, Brian Wenning and Anthony Pappalardo revolutionized the way we saw big, fancy steel trashcans — not the wire ones, but ones like they had at Love. Pushing a can against a ledge taller than it validated skating a gap that wasn’t a gap.

And so, the Beer Bar green can gap was born: a five-foot tall ledge with a four-and-a-half foot tall can after it. All you had to do is not go slow, roll off the end, take the impact, and you’d make it. Beer Bar became the new hub for thirteen-year-old skateboarders in New York City. Learned a new trick? “Try it over the can.” There was only one can that mattered.

A Bunch of Dumb Big Pictures & No Numbers

Daily News January 26th, 2015 · 6:05 am · 5

After much deliberation, the Nosesliders Guild of America has awarded Hjatle Halberg its “Noseslider of the Year” award based on recent output. This is an unprecedented event, as no foreigner has ever won the coveted title. Photo above by Mike O’Meally.

Studies in Flat — Daniel Lebron.

It seems that Frozen in Carbonite’s hyper-nerdery and far-fetched non sequiturs aren’t translating to Ride Channel commenters, because this was great, at least for fans of the blog: An analysis of the parallels between the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry and current day Boston-New York skateboarding. (Boston is 200+ miles from New York btw.)

Part one of NY Skateboarding’s joint interview with Gino and Dill is live.

A lot of familiar faces and hot moves in Debut, a new video featuring the youth.

A boom-bapified remix of peak era Wu-Welsh via Hit You Off Management. That five-trick line at Pier 7 is the absolute best.

Anthony Pappalardo, early Alien days. Shot by Tim Anderson.

“Ugggh, I have such a weakness for cute skateboarders.” We have such a weakness for any Ant Banks #musicsupervision in skate videos.

The VX is dead volume seven via Johnny Wilson et al.

Seeing Michael Mackrodt skate in real life is genuinely one of the most impressive things you could ever witness in skateboarding. His consistency and quick footedness is absurd (personal top 3 most impressive IRL pros.) The next best thing is seeing him skate on video, via this new all-lines part filmed out in the Parisian suburbs. (He also had a New York “Fishing Lines” part in 2010, in case you didn’t know.)

Despite all its frustrations, midtown is still the funnest.

Quick montage from the crew at Matériel Supply.

Got a kick out of this: “Fear City,” a mid-seventies pamphlet covertly distributed to tourists by NYPD unions at odds with the mayor (sound familiar?)

In case you only go on skate websites…you’ll be paying $2.75 to ride the train and $116.50 for an unlimited starting March 22nd.

Until Travis Porter fulfills recent promises of bringing the “fun” back to music, Rae Sremmeueurururd is the Rap Desk’s fill-in vote for “funnest” rap group of the moment:

[Late] Spot Updates: 1) Not many people caught onto this spot, but it had a short lifespan. 2) Those round flatbars on 22nd and Fifth near the Flatiron Building are gone. 3) The two-second bust Marriott Banks are also gone.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: What else? Klay Thompson went 13-of-13 from the field (nine of which were contested three-pointers) against the Sacramento Kings earlier this week, in what was an utter video game of a single quarter. He now holds the record for most points in a NBA quarter with 37. The Golden State Warriors will be at Madison Square Garden on Saturday :)

Quote of the Week: “Oh Fifty Shades of Grey, I want to read that when the movie comes out.” — E.J.

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Good luck with the snow these next two days. The National Weather Service is predicting we may get up to two feet in the city :( Dust those ‘Lo boots off.

Farewell, Rolls-Royce Ledges

Daily News May 29th, 2014 · 1:20 pm · 5

(A.K.A. Wachovia or Wells Fargo to you younger guys.) Another view here.

The 49th Street side of the building is under construction, and it looks like the 50th Street side and the long manual pad facing Madison Avenue will be soon. There are some crummy mock-ups on the front of the building that show what lays ahead. It might contain a marble ledge over steps (that’ll inevitably be a bust.) The adjacent Driveway Ledges spot has also been under construction for years, so maybe that will yield something cool :) Thanks to Gerry for the tip.

By most estimations of what a “good” spot is — this place sucked. Chunky ledges that never grinded in their entire history, choppy ground, and a horrible eight stair aren’t the best things midtown has to offer. However, the spot was an anomaly in the neighborhood because it wasn’t a colossal bust. This means that more hours were clocked here than other midtown destinations over the years, simply because it was a last resort before conceding defeat for the night. Only the (also defunct) 45th & Lex Wendy’s can lay claim to logging more skater hours this past decade-and-a-half.

The spot is also notable because Geo Moya maintained a career-long allegiance to skating the awful eight stair here. The landing was into a hill going the wrong way, and that hill was made out of the worst ground ever. Moya’s three lines from Jay Maldonado’s La Luz video remain the only examples of someone refusing to acknowledge how genuinely bad this set was. Add that to Moya’s list of underheralded accomplishments, along with the Times Square 20-stair noseslide, the switch front nose over the Flushing grate in ~2000, and pioneer status as the first known person to attempt the “cherry” ender rail ♥

When was the last non-“Banned From T.V” time you were reminded of Nature’s existence? “Ultimate High” still goes.

Party Heart

Daily News January 9th, 2012 · 8:50 am · 7

There’s one bodega in the world with a QS board hanging in it, and it belongs to Wavy Mike. Much respect. Photo by TeamWorks NYC.

Boil The Ocean rightfully pointed out the insanity of the major skateboard-related headlines from the first week of the year — “Andy Roy Attempts To ‘Choke Out’ DMX Live Onstage” (even though it obviously wasn’t a choke out), “Jereme Rogers Arrested Following Nude, PCP-Fueled Hotel Rampage,” and “Brian Wenning Quits Selfish Skateboards Via Jereme Rogers Diss Track” (featuring a rapper with the same name as the Green Diamond video.) Looks like it’ll be a good year.

Who’s the genius responsible for this abomination of concrete work? Way to ruin one of the best ledges at the spot. Lurker Lou recomended the offender serve Jerry Duty: “The act of riding with Mraz, and looking out while he creates masterpieces.”

A lot more people would be filming New York subway clips if our subway stations looked anything like Sweden’s. Those high Scandinavian taxes really seem to go a long way.

It’s always fun to watch someone skate Los Angeles like it’s an east coast city.

An interview with Bill Pierce that discusses the “Busenitz of British music,” among other things. Also, Stripes is a great movie (and on Netflix Instant.) It’s kinda what we all imagined Miles’ military career to be like.

If you want a high-quality .mov version of Missing Persons, which was definitely one the better NYC-based web videos from 2011, you can download it here.

Rob Campbell has an ad in the new issue of Transworld.

Spot Updates: 1) The black marble spot from last week’s post is already knobbed, which isn’t the least bit surprising. The entire time we were eyeing it, we assumed they’d knob it before even taking down the construction blockades. 2) Whenever the Museum of Natural History’s front plaza opens back up (it has been blocked off for restoration since summer 2010), it’s going to have some decent (by New York standards) handrails in front.

Quote of the Week: “There are two guys in front of Tompkins with a sign that says ‘Free Advice.’ Brengar should sit down next to them with a sign that says ‘More Free Advice.'” — Bill Strobeck

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Ball Forever > Rich Forever. “Party Heart” is a jam though. After all, it does say “featuring 2 Chainz” on it. Someone in the YouTube comments said “All this needed was OutKast” and they are 900% correct.

Links for a Rainy Monday (Bulls in 6)

Daily News May 16th, 2011 · 11:30 am · 13

The upcoming week’s forecast looks pretty nice. Six straight days of rain. That shouldn’t stop you from skating though, especially if you’re unemployed, or your hours of employment are from 10 P.M. to 4 A.M.

The Flipmode affiliates have put together a four-minute throwaway clip to one of Big L’s more famously vulgar outings. “You know, they built you guys a skatepark so you wouldn’t skate here.”

A reel of Billy McFeely’s footage from the Caviar video, raw and without the music.

Torey Pudwill would be more exciting if he continued this trend of simple trick based, quick set-up lines on actual skate spots instead of kickflip back lip to back tailslide kickflip outs on ledges behind chain stores. With that being said, Plan B opting for the simpler, more stylish route on the promo makes us hope that the actual part would be more in that vein, and that’s certainly welcome.

Adam Abada’s journey through Europe on his skateboard. It’s not a journey from Milan to Minsk, but few have been so ambitious.

They can’t wait to start kicking you out of this thing. (Yes, it’s in midtown. And yes, it has been put in place of another former skate spot.)

This is so corny. (Has no relation to skateboarding.)

Quote of the Week: “That ad [on Spring Street and Broadway] reminds me of the last time I did acid and why I will never do it again.” — Anonymous Degenerate

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