Sanguine Paradise

July 15th, 2019 · 1:00 am · 5 Comments

→ 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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What It Do Babbyyyy

July 8th, 2019 · 1:20 am · 3 Comments

Photo via the tumbleweeds. Tumblr in 2019 is like that one ledge spot that was popping five years ago. Everyone used to meet there, get clips there, get stuck there. Now it’s chunked up, the bevel got as round as Blubba, and it sorta just sits there. Maybe a group of guys in their 30s will skate it for 20 minutes before they go to the bar. Maybe a pair of kids in #curated thrift store finds visiting from out of town will film each other do two-trick lines for their trip edit on it. The solitary man who shows up after work once every two weeks to ensure that he hasn’t lost his back tails is always a fixture. But sometimes, all three of those end up there together, and it’s fun — not fun like the old days, but enough to remind you that they existed ;)

NBC visited Tompkins to speak with Zhu and Yaje about how much that square of asphalt means to the community. Please sign the petition to preserve Tompkins Square courts as an asphalt space, if you have yet to do so.

The Canal boys have a new video coming out this fall :)

Medium has an awesome feature with Justin Bohl, a guy who has been the go-to tour guide for skate teams visiting Detroit over the past eight years. He put together a twenty-minute video entitled Mint, which features a bunch of behind the scenes footage of all the traveling skaters who have come through the city as it became sought-after skate trip destination in the 2010s.

“Ultra” from Chris Burt is up there with the Bos brothers’ “Wide Open” for 2019’s best videos outside of the Thrasher/Insta content spiral. It’s a Minnesota video with three parts, mostly filmed in the suburbs, yet somehow feels all the right ways different than a lot of the other stuff you’ve watched this past week. Ender part from Frog’s Pat Gallaher.

The New York Times has a quick profile of Alexis Sablone.

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Free Agency

July 1st, 2019 · 1:11 am · 9 Comments

You may have heard that the city approved plans to cover Tompkins with synthetic turf after a hearing this past May. There is very sparse information about this, outside of the Tompkins courts being outlined with a rectangle in a PDF. Several friends with, um, knowledge of how to navigate these things have begun to reach out for more info, as groundbreaking looks like it is set to begin this winter. Anyone with insight into how this could be debated and compromised with Parks, even after it has been approved, please feel free to share what you know. We’ll try our best to keep you updated as well.

“My project in Malmö felt unreal. Imagine that happening in New York. I wouldn’t even know where to start.” Hmm, on that note… MIT Masters degree holder, Alexis Sablone, has been heavy on the interview circuit lately, and everyone is happy about it. Alexis for president of skateboarding :)

Josh Kalis re-did the ender that capped a video part he filmed at age 23… at 43 ♥

Go Skate Day videos aren’t exactly the first things that get clicked on around here — unless they’re from the Sabotage dudes, who, rather than running the whole “this is the one day I refuse to skate” thing that contrarian “core” guys do, went out and got nine minutes worth of Philly footage in 24 hours. (Yo, where is that mini windowsill ledge? Figure it’s Center City somewhere and sucks IRL, but that thing looks super fun.)

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One Link At A Time

June 24th, 2019 · 1:33 am · No Comments

Congrats again Bob LaSalle on the pro model basketball. Photo via Antosh.

“Day in the Life” videos warrant a cursory skimming through at best, but this one with Jawn Gardner skating around Long Beach and making friends with everyone kicking him out of spots could have gone on for twice as long :)

You’ve probably caught this one already — but Go Skate Day in Bogota, Colombia was insane. Hope everyone is ok.

Philly from Humidity, Tyler Tufty, and Keith (!) Denley (!!) all have cool clips in this Nike SB wear test montage from Minneapolis a few weeks back.

People are still flying down that hill from the Long Island Expressway by Queens Mall, huh? Iconic 2008 spot. OMW is a twenty-minute video by Angel Delgado that Skate Jawn posted up last week. Features a bunch of familiar faces.

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An Arm & a Leg & a Monday Link

June 17th, 2019 · 1:30 am · 3 Comments

Jesse Alba made a bro cam edit from a trip to London with Cyrus, Diego Todd + some cameos from the Atlantic Drift dudes.

Alex Olson explains why Mike Carroll is the best for eight minutes.

Naquan uploaded a five-minute “remix” of Gang Corp’s Black Business video, though it feels like a solid chunk of those clips weren’t in the original video.

A wider net for skate interviews this past week than the typical guys talking about their first sponsor type of thing — 1) The Wall Street Journal interviewed Beatrice Domond. There’s a pay-wall involved, but it seems like they let you rock on one free article. 2) “I just really like New York.” Elissa Steamer interviewed Alexis Sablone for Thrasher. 3) Skateism interviewed Forrest Kirby, in what I believe is his first interview since he publicly came out last year.

“Are we already in the Matrix?” Skate Jawn interviewed Jawn Gardner about astrology, the afterlife and time travel + they also have a quick one with Kyota that includes some rad photos.

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