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Tag: Monday Links

Crazy But It’s True

March 18th, 2019 · 3:33 am · 5 Comments

Photo via Giese

“Jake Phelps surely embodied worlds in decline: Old San Francisco, famously non-PC, MJ1s on his feet until whatever deadstock tap ran dry, proofing a decades-old print publication with a snarling discontent any seasoned editor would recognize and respect. An artifact arguing and cussing every day for a place in a world moving some other way.” Unfortunate to link their way two weeks in a row for obituary purposes, but Boil Ocean has a way with them words.

“Though I would sometimes cross the street to avoid him, I can remember so much of what he said to me.” Patrick O’Dell also wrote a thing about Phelps over on Vice.

And here is a re-link to Willy Staley’s California Sunday profile of Phelps that originally ran in 2016, A.K.A. what BTO labeled as “secular-press skate piece top five.” Would be *so* open to a conversation about what the other four are ;)

The new Gang Corp video, Black Business, is premiering this Friday, March 22, at 198 Allen Street at 7 P.M.

Someone mashed together five minutes of Hjalte Insta clips a nice remix ♥

Mike from Lottie’s takes five minutes to tell you what he’s pissed off about.

Munchies has a mini doc on the institution that has sustained New York skateboarding like none other throughout the 2010s — of course, we’re talking about 2 Bros. They also bring up a terrifying reality re: the ten-year leases that got signed at the start of the decade ending (e.g. when everyone was still reeling from the recession), and the dollar slice soon becoming a thing of the past.

“I think the mainstream American skateboarding culture is kidding itself. They’re really dismissive of emotions in a way that is hurting itself. It’s becoming more and more inline with traditional athleticism, but also what is acceptable as a skateboarder is so narrow – you have to be cool, not talk about your feelings.” If you’re one of those idiots like me who put off watching Minding the Gap for months, here’s another motivator: Skateism put their interview with director Bing Liu online. Yeah, you need to enter your card details, but a Hulu trial to watch it is free, and you can cancel the second you finish the movie — provided you’re not destroyed for the rest of the day.

Solo has a video profile of steez lord and Polar rider, Shin Sanbongi + Nick from Palomino took his legacy media expertise and wrote an introductory guide on Japanese indie zines and videos for the mag’s all-Japan issue. No Meatball interview?

TWS interviewed John Shanahan, though we all know A.V.E. had the best part in The DC Video.

Let’s just throw the interview loosies in one place… Frank 151 interviewed R.B. Umali (text), Enrique Lorenzo interviewed Dani Lebron (this one is audio, and yes, they have heavy accents, but their english is pretty perfect) + the Slam City Skates blog interviewed Colin Read (text.)

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Going to suspend our micro coverage of the NBA this week to acknowledge that the best feat of teamwork and athleticism of the past seven days was this guy getting a ~15-foot I-beam onto a New York City subway.

Quote of the Week: “Who the fuck is Andrew Wilson?” — Jake Phelps, flipping through a Skate Jawn

Take Off No Jet Lag

March 11th, 2019 · 4:20 am · 2 Comments

Photo via That’s A Crazy One

Ben “Actually, I Like Wearing Wack Gear” Blundell receives redemption after barely any clips in Courtesy. Go watch his “OJO” part over on Thrasher. Rest in Peace Dillon ♥

Boil the Ocean wrote the longform Transworld obituary.

Gotta hand it to Europe’s Most Productive Crew™ for consistently doing something that feels so natural and different than everything else out there, year after year — especially in a country without much of a skate industry. Also ~love~ the recurring role of dogs in their videos. “Nap Mint Nap Volume 4” is the latest from the Rios Crew. We really gotta make it out to Budapest, pretty much everyone says nothing but good things…

In hindsight, it’s pretty crazy that a peak shiny suit era Bad Boy song ever slipped into an Alien Workshop video, even for 45 seconds. And guess what! Twenty years later, we get the full [re]edit: Manolo remixed two decades of Kalis footage to the complete extended version of Black Rob’s “Whoa.” FWIW, that album has some sleeper gems.

Frog has a b-roll clip of some leftovers from their “Bossa Nova” video that went live a few weeks ago. Jesse also threw up a random 15-mintue B-roll edit on his YouTube.

“Pornography had already been done, and the skate/fetish graphic thing said all that needed to be said on the subject. Take away the black bag and the sticker about censorship, and you just have a dumb idea repeated endlessly. For nearly 3 decades.” Ted Barrow wrote a nice piece on the history of the black bag World Industries board, and everything that followed it over on Skateism.

The Slam City Skates blog did a profile on Skateboard Cafe, which already made one of 2019’s best videos.

Krak put together a trick history clip for the other famous grate gap ledge (which is def a few feet longer than the Flushing one, and has a curb before the backside for regular side) in the event you need to be reminded of how awful 75% of combo ledge skating looks. Leaving out the backside noseblunt is crazy tho…

Solange in a skate clip ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Def worth the watch from Peter Deigaard + Drew, Hugo, Ville, and all the Copenhagen boys, which will make you feel the summer even if you have no Danish travel plans :)

Caleb Yuan and Marcello Campanello skating around Penn Station and Soho for Canal.

“DOA RMX” is a video featuring some upstate dudes (pretty sure…), and has a random ass remix of Pat Washington footage from the early 2000s at the end, which is timely given Jamal Smith reminded us about his iconic Got Gold? part last week.

Sean Pablo is the latest guest on The Bunt, and Alex Olson is the latest guest on The Mission Statement Podcast.

Didn’t know this existed until Bill posted the T.J. one on IG, but these one-off skater action figures by Milk Saggers Studios are pretty rad.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Luka’s Hail Mary.

Quote of the Week
Inquisitive Gentleman: “E.T, who were your favorite skaters growing up?”
Etienne Gagne: “Umm… Ryan Sheckler and Hugo [Balek].”

Realized the other day that Tao’s “KBH MIXEN” video is the 2018 video that still gets the most revisitation in 2019. Felt Ville’s section deserved it’s own upload :)

Snow Day Links

March 4th, 2019 · 3:33 am · 1 Comment

There’s snow on the ground, and not a ton of links to recap from the past few days, but at least we get post-7 P.M. sunsets back on Sunday. Tiny victories.

Rest in Peace Dillon

New car and live with your parents, or move to New York and live in a basement apartment in Bushwick? Jesse Alba has a new interview / Day in the Life thing.

“For Heitor what’s funny is that we saw that he’d bought shit on the website so I hit him up and told him I could send him some clothes.” Like a brand? Looking for a sponsor? Buy their stuff (using your real name!) and maybe you’ll end up riding for them and getting your entire order refunded ;) Danny Brady has an interview over on Free about his current role as the Palace team manager.

Always stoked to see footage of this dude (he has the best line of 2019 thus far, based on QS office chalkboard rankings…), but didn’t really know much about him until now: Korahn Gayle is the latest guest on The Bunt.

Any Skate Perception alumni read QS? Ty Evans and some other camera nerds created a microphone that can be plugged into modern cameras to record sound that mimics the audio from the VX1000. 300 bucks and still only available for pre-order. (No, this isn’t a sponsored post. Just crazy that’s where skate video technology is at right now.)

Kyota went to L.A. for the first time, and spent his days at skateparks, and his nights downtown.

Monster Children has a photo feature with Brad Cromer skating around New York.

Austin Holcomb has an all-New York part from the Challers video playing over on TWS.

New video blog edit from Extra Crispy, pretty much a go-to resource for anything that goes on at L.E.S. Park.

Always fun to see people take New York skate filmmaking in a direction beyond just straight up skate clips. “{SLING]” is a short film directed by M.Fig.

No matter the decade, people are gonna keep ollieing off that slanted grey wall on Water Street. Geeked is a full-length video by Bernie Leonor that looks like it’s mostly filmed on a GoPro, all throughout the city.

This dude’s organs probably began to disintegrate as soon as he walked out, because I can’t imagine how bad the curse you get put under for stealing a cat from a bodega is. No wonder he returned it.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: D. Wade with maybe the wildest buzzer beater of the season, at home, and at his final career game against the Warriors.

Quote of the Week: “Heelies were so sick.” — Troy Silwell

Link or Drown 2

February 25th, 2019 · 11:28 am · 3 Comments

(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. Congrats to Matt Mooney on the birth of his daughter, and congrats to Derick Z. and his lady as well ♥

‘Yo Can You Venmo Me For The Wax?’

February 18th, 2019 · 2:44 am · 7 Comments

Gotta diversify your portfolio in 2019. Photo via John Cruz.

Skateboard Story interviewed Dew Stacks about Gang Corp.

Doubtful that anybody hasn’t watched it through at least once by now — Sour Solution II is fucking insane. Their first video was nuts, but they entered some new dimension of spots and sorcery with this one. Also, this video makes the whole “Barcelona footage is boring”-thing that people have been saying as of late just seem stupid. Then again, these ten guys are maybe the only ten guys who can skate the spots they skate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“Play – Part 2” is an iPhone video by Mateo deJesus featuring Marcello + a few of the Canal dudes, and really makes you happy to remember there’s this thing called summer that happens eventually. Can’t remember the last time anyone had footage from 3030 Park since they half-remodeled it either.

Clusterfuck is a new NY/NJ/Philly full-length from Chris Benino (who made the Cleardata vid from a few months back.) Features a lot of new faces, plus they skate handrails while it’s snowing. Give it a whirl ;)

Read the headline, started laughing: Juicy J is the Josh Kalis of rap music.

Some boys from Finland put together a pretty nice “Summer Trip to New York” edit, and even made it all the way up to Yonkers :) Really here for this surge of Madonna #musicsupervision.

“Jay-Z saw the edit and was cool with it.” German fashion magazine, 032c interviewed Bill about “BLESSED” and everything else.

Two adults talking about adult skate shit… Chico Brenes chats with Tommy Guerrero about falling in love with skateboarding again, skating old school shapes, deciding to leave Chocolate, etc.

Blondey “Shorts in the Winter” McCoy and Shawn Powers build on the growing practice of skating the Banks’ exterior in “Serenity Now,” a shared part for Bronze. Shawn also has a quick video profile thing with …Manhattan Portage. (Honestly never registered the brand name of those red woven label bags until now. Content at work!)

Late to mention here, and it is more symbolic than anything, but Enid’s will be closing down at the end of March. It was the final North Brooklyn Barmuda Triangle institution still standing (Enid’s x No Name x Matchless), which aborted many day-after skate sessions before they even got started throughout the late-2000s and early-2010s. Its throne is now drunkenly held by the Bushwick Barmuda Triangle consisting of Carmelo’s x Birdy’s x Three Diamond Door. Shout out to that time Pryce and Waste held an Enid’s Christmas raffle with a chance to win a TV, and Marty won because he spent more on drinks than the TV itself costs ♥

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Steph to Giannis at All-Star, though who the hell paid any attention to the All-Star Game when you had the Sour video?

Quote of the Week
Antonio Durao: “Yo! They’re selling hoodies for a dollar!”
Inquisitive Gentleman: “You gonna buy one?”
Antonio Durao: “…no.”