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

Dear Winter

Bad (obvious?) news out of the way first: Sadly continuing our recent bad habit of no Christmas clip for the year. Blame it on the weather, blame it on life, blame it on Instagram. Rest of the Year in Review countdown up shortly today, and still got a “Best of 2018” montage to upload ♥

Monster Children has a photo feature by Ben Colen with a bunch of shots from Supreme’s “BLESSED” video. Looking at those two Sage photos side-by-side is a nice visual cue.

Boil the Ocean began its annual countdown of the year’s ten best video parts, which is always a good source for some under the radar choices.

Figured we’d get one more “what the actual fuck” trick before the year was out.

I know what you’re thinking! “Oh no, not another podcast!” But but but, the difference here is that it is refreshing to hear a) a woman interview a pro skater, and b) a skateboarder have to dig a bit deeper than “how I came up” and tour stories to relay what they do to a non-skater. Listen to Jerry Hsu on the first episode of the “Dig” podcast.

Pretty much everyone who uses the #skatetwitter hashtag got together, wrote individual things about their favorite skater to watch in 2018, and nobody mentioned Tiago Lemos. Ok, guys.

Speaking of the best skaters, here’s an Ishod Wair x Michael Jordan remix.

Not local, but wow is this part great: Shogo Zama for VHS Mag. Japanese skaters have this particular ability to flow in lines that is unlike anything else out there.

Anomaly” via Skate Jawn is another entry in an already stacked roster of upstate New York vids to come out this year.

Every time I see footage of the Empire State Plaza spot, I feel a lil’ bit dumber for not taking the trip up there at least once this past summer. See it in “Frank & Ted’s 2018,” filmed pretty much all over the northeast and in Barcelona.

New York Related Stuff on Thrasher ICYMI: Frankie Spears’ part obvs has a bunch of clips from the city, and this “No Hotels” video does too. Hope Bob was ok with drop-in on the spot he found ;)

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: It’s so wild that Ron Baker gets cut from the Knicks, signed to another team despite sending all his shit from New York back to his hometown, and is now a Vegas favorite for 2019 NBA Finals MVP.

Quote of the Week
Zhu: “It’s hard for me to get in the habit of stretching.”
Conor: “Yeah, it’s hard for me to do anything…besides like, smoke weed.”

We don’t normally post gospel music on here, but felt it was appropriate for the holidays ♥

Took the Links Offshore

This bench has made a long journey from Delancey Curb, to the front of a Rivington Street pizza restaurant, and eventually, back to its rightful community at T.F. — though none of us have been there since Thursday, and also the D.A. softball league is back, so it might be up in heaven now.

Oh, so you’re just throwing barricades now?

Tony Choy-Sutton has a rad new video entitled “Gas,” which features John Gardner, Franco, Pat Gallaher, and a part from Sean Frederickson full of scary spots.

“Sownd” is a 13-minute video of mostly New York footage from some (mostly?) North Carolina ex-pats. The boardslide line at Riverside Park and the ender are wild.

Was kind of wondering how long it’d take for an all-Borough Hall part to come along. Would be shocked if someone wasn’t working on an all-Borough Hall video right now too. (Also, seeing 2k18 American footage of people doing a line at a real street spot with dozens of skaters chilling on some steps in the background is ♥♥♥)

While sifting through a box of random skate DVDs, I remembered I had these two nineties Boston videos, the earlier one of which includes a Jahmal Williams part from literally 27 years ago. Just uploaded to YouTube here.

Mark Del Negro has a new five-minute part over on Theories.

In the never-ending Instagram demo, perhaps the pro daily dribbling out indifferently phone-filmed park clips is not some navel-gazing lazy, tossing half-baked bones to his or her followers while too hungover to step to street spots.”

Krak did an “all tricks” compilation from the long Barcelona hubba ledge that has been popping up in quite a lot of videos as of late.

“There’s something modest to his skateboarding, in that he can realistically do anything, but rarely rolls away with flair or arrogance. It’s a very polite way to ride a skateboard.” A guy with the same name as a former Cons pro offers up a review on the Cons video, which — if you haven’t been on the internet all weekend — is now online.

The Gristedes on 96th Street closed down, which means you can now skate the bank in front of it that only Jaws otherwise skated in some Weed Maps clip…idk dude ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: This is one of those weeks where if it didn’t go to Lebron, it’d just look like some full hater shit. So it’s going to Lebron.

Quote of the Week: “This is a pretty sweet spot. It reminds me of Germany…not that I’ve ever been to Germany.” — Nolan Benfield re: a French restaurant in France

Monday Links Are In Retrograde

If you need affirmation of how incredibly difficult it has been to do these posts over the past two weeks, look no further than the fact that Thrasher is posting astrology content, this girl is still looking for which one of you who spilled coffee on yourself at Herald Square, and apparently, EVERYTHING is “going right” in skateboarding right now…Spring can’t come soon enough.

“I used to be more of a character back in the day and just dive into the river, swimming for the board and making people laugh. I remember Jaime Reyes gagging because I was in there doing backstrokes. They say swimming in that shit helps your immune system.” Village Psychic spoke to Brian Wenning about some of the spots that were instrumental to his skating.

Caddo and Lou gave up on skateparks in 2016. It looks like it has been working out.

…aanndd John Valenti uploaded five minutes worth of B-sides featuring Lou, Caddo and Taylor Nawrocki from his N.Y. Archive video.

TWS uploaded all the raw footage from the Villains dudes’ trip to New York.

Theories resumed Elkin Raw files, which are always heavy on Leo and Aaron footy.

(Three raw clip links in a row, see what I mean? Springtime hellooo where r u…)

PFP5, the latest installment of Michael Sassano’s now long-running Westchester skate video series, will be premiering up in Peekskill on Saturday the 14th. Teaser here.

The crooked rail at Columbus Park is maybe the last place anyone expected to see a slappy front nose 270 A.K.A. the Explore Page, but there it was in Matthew Martin’s Hombre Hardware part.

“Cyclist stabs skateboarder during street spat.” Ok, the “It’s a fucking bike lane, asshole!”-guys are getting a bit out of hand.

Though Hurricane Maria obviously derailed the recent tradition of every skate crew spending January and February in Puerto Rico, the Scumco guys still made it down there for a fun trip video. Tons of Philly Santosuosso footage ♥

The Bunt’s newest episode is with Austyn Gillette.

Oh and, we have a new project with Nike SB coming out. April 14. More info soon :)

Since skate content is running low, here’s a link to a new Peewee Longway video that is four minutes of him reenacting the quaalude scene from Wolf of Wall Street.

And with militant veganism being so fashionable with New York skateboarders right now, here’s an informative article about eating right that isn’t Alex Olson yelling at you for eating a cheeseburger. Jk hi Alex ♥

QS Sports Fuck the NCAA, Respect to the Players-Desk Play of the Week: Gonna be so sick when J.R. Smith is the 2018 Finals MVP this year.

Quote of the Week: “Lowkey if I ever get rich, I’m gonna buy Brick 9.” — John Choi

This clip got posted on April 8, 2007 (Marcus Garvey rails were a new spot then…), and dubbed “The Neverending Winter.” Same mood eleven years later (a lot of these spots are still around), though I wish the quality of the upload wasn’t full trash.

Too Hung To Huck

Truck + mixtape dropping soon

These “new old” clips can be hit-or-miss (often miss), but Tombo’s 2000-2010 one that dropped late last week is an incredible document. It encapsulates the entire first decade of east coast skateboarding in this millennium — brown pants, first-wave cellar door searchers, Justin Barnes cameos, I-Paths, ABC Ledges, etc. Also, why does it still feel like Brandon Westgate has been 20-years-old for the past 15 years?

It’s that time of year when the Barcelona clips really start to roll in. Spencer Hamilton, Dana Ericson, Brian Delaney, Nick Ferro and Wade D. went out to the land of zero skate spots and came back with a sick clip for Grand Collection.

Who Kid has the best part of 2018 so far [with no skate footage.]

Yeah, there’s plenty of novelty clips of dudes skating in Timbs, but this guy hardflipped a triple set in a pair. Honestly can’t wait for the QS x Timberland SB collab.

Jesse made a throwaway iPhone/skatepark clip, but even he admitted it kinda sucks ;)

Our bud Adam Abada wrote an article about the skate scene in Ghana for MC.

Chris Mulhern dropped 6 minutes of loosies in anticipation of his upcoming full-length.

I mean…there’s gotta be an easier way?

Much respect to Uru out in Japan for distributing and spreading the word about QS, Alltimers and other hot skateboard brands in the far east. Skateboard Story has an interview with him about his operation.

Yo, shout out to the damn Nine Club for bigging up the Louie and Tiago remix. FRANKLY, us around the office felt it was among our best work in recent history, but it didn’t seem to get the traction we were envisioning for it. Glad to see it put some smiles on some faces out there. Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend.

Watching Drake take money from people in the backwards version of the “God’s Plan” video hasn’t gotten any less funny in the past three weeks.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Fuck the NCAA. Respect to the players.

Quote of the Week: “Quartersnacks? Is that like a pun about fat quarterbacks?” — Girl on the Street

Just about had it up to here with this winter bullshit…