Mouse | Quartersnacks

20 Years of Girl: The Ben Sanchez Tribute Post

Time Capsule August 22nd, 2013 · 8:10 am · 19

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Before anything: Manolo’s Tapes went live with an incredible retrospective of all the Girl and Chocolate videos yesterday. We can talk about Keenan’s switch flip, or how ahead of its time each Koston part was, or all the crazy stuff Marc Johnson has done, but let’s talk about some real shit…Ben Sanchez.

A longtime personal favorite Chrome Ball post is the dual tribute to Ben “Burger Boy” Sanchez and Shamil Randle. For a pair of twenty-year-old companies, very few of their riders have been afforded the ability to fade into obscurity like those two, and nostalgic reminders of less prominent names are among the greatest joys of The Chrome Ball Incident.

If Richard Mulder, Mike York, Chico Brenes were the seventh, eighth and ninth guys off the bench, then Ben Sanchez was something like the twelfth. Not to sound like a broken record, but the era when Girl and Chocolate were a batch of the best skaters alive surrounded by dudes who were more style than pushing the envelope is the one we most frequently put on a pedestal. Those guys helped the videos feel more like skate videos, and less like blockbusters. Koston and Guy were there to show you how good skateboarding could possibly be. Mike York got you hyped to try some pretzel spin noseslide combo that inevitably ends with a tic-tac. Ben Sanchez, on the other hand, was the guy who made you remember, “Damn, I haven’t done a half cab noseslide in a while.”

First you drink Snapples, now you sipping Mo’?

Time Capsule July 5th, 2012 · 1:18 pm · 11

“Where is Royal Flush right about now?” It’s funny how when you skate, there’s “the Jake Johnson song,” “the Rick McCrank song,” “the Mariano song,” etc. “Worldwide” by Royal Flush is most definitely the Keenan song. Just check the YouTube comments.

In our annual Keenan Milton R.I.P. / reminder of how Mouse is the best skate video ever post, here is Keenan and Gino’s part from Mouse plus the radio skit near the end, with commentary from Spike Jonze, Aaron Meza, Eric Koston, Guy Mariano, Mike Carroll, and Rick Howard. It’s from the Girl/Chocolate box set, which you should most likely already own. (It’s $32 on Crailtap, if you don’t.) It’s not much, just Mariano talking about how you can only use “timeless hip-hop” if you’re using it for a video part, as opposed to, you know, Band of Horses or some emo shit. We firmly disagree with his entire non-“hot song of the month” stance either way. There’s some stuff in there about the good-ol’-days when Spike Jonze didn’t know how to use a greenscreen, too.

It’s a party, it’s a party, it’s a party…

Daily News July 18th, 2011 · 10:51 am · 3

Willing to bet that she’s rolling all those beers over to Grove Street.

Ragers, Inc. is a Flip Cam video from the homies out in Vancouver. It has footage of our favorite Canadian skateboarder, Torey Goodall, and undoubtedly the best soundtrack to a skate video in 2011. Euro section gets the best song (at 3:16.) It’d be perfectly fine if a major pro skateboarder recycled this song for a blockbuster skate video part. (Mildly related: We still got that Quartersnacks Tiesto edit on ice for 2011.)

Guy Mariano talks about Mouse. Some of this has been touched upon in the commentary on the Mouse DVD, but he explains why the switch front shove crook down the handrail was relegated to the credits.

Taji interviewed Grandpa about Autumn’s ten-year-long history. Related: An interview with Dave Mims, Autumn’s owner. Here’s to another ten.

To compliment the Billy Lynch part included in last week’s Flipmode 3 anniversary post, here is his part in the Long Island based $20 Off No Tax video, which came out a few months after Flipmode 3 in 2006. Click here for the full video.

This Skate & Annoy headline — “Dipshit Accidentally Kills Pedestrian, Sets Skateboarding Back 50 Years” — is reminiscent of that classic skit from The Chris Rock Show, where he chronicles all the events that have set black people back and ahead. Perhaps this winter, when there is less stuff to update with, Quartersnacks will chronicle all the ways that skateboarders have been set back and ahead throughout history. “AND THEN CAME THE SOURCE AWARDS…”

Someone does a sick front board off the rounded marble ledge at Exchange Place in this New York to San Francisco clip. First song is one of those few that should be off limits for recycling though.

Aaron Herrington (whose name keeps reading as Al Harrington…remember that dude?) skates a lot of quintessential Quartersnacks SoHo spots in his Boneyard part. Heavy alternation between SF and New York spots seems to be big in 2011 (Dela, Westgate, etc.)

Two weeks late, but Slappy Cove is a wrap.

Probably even more late, but the downhill bump-to-bump thing in Maspeth is temporarily blocked off due to construction. Save yourself the trip, since it’s one of those spots you need a car for.

Quote of the Week:
Sweet Waste: “What are you about to do?”
Jack Sabback: “I know this 19-year-old Hare Krishna girl that’s throwing a rooftop party.”

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Mouse: A Jive-Assed Saga of Epic Proportions

Time Capsule July 5th, 2011 · 4:21 pm · 4

Seems like a good day to get into this…

We brought out the pom-poms to celebrate Trilogy turning 15, but it should be mentioned that in the company-wide artistic achievement rankings, World’s masterpiece is in a close second place for best skate video of 1996. It might seem weird to first see a four-year-old video in 2000 and be able to say it’s your favorite for the next ten years, as most VHS tapes we hold dear to our hearts are intertwined with some bit of nostalgia from the period they’re from, but Mouse has somehow held up to be the best front-to-back skate video to this day. There was a more generous definition of age back then, as it took years for a video to become old, now it takes a few weeks. Keep in mind that videos had a much longer literal shelf life in 2000, as Active and CCS still had Las Nueve Vidas De Paco and Welcome to Hell listed on their video page three or four years later. Hell, Autumn had *sealed* copies of Memory Screen in 2001…it’d be surprising if Autumn had copies of Since Day One right now.

The best soundtrack (Frozen and Carbonite already discussed the joy of finding sample sources via Girl and Chocolate videos, a musical direction they have unfortunately abandoned in recent productions), the most iconic part of the 90s in Mariano, Koston’s most all-around rewatchable part, Gino’s nollie cab back tail, even B-list roster members like Burger Boy coming through with timeless parts (Two steps to a great video part: skate fast and skate to Earth Wind & Fire), and something that is otherwise an anomaly — skits that are as worthy of repeat viewing as the video itself. 38 minutes of neglecting that the fast forward button was invented. How many other videos can you watch the whole way through, intros, B-list roster, and skits included?

We told you to buy the Girl & Chocolate box set four years ago. You’re an idiot if you didn’t. Hopefully that mouse from the Keenan skit is magically still alive so we could buy it a beer.

(This has been uploaded on YouTube by three different people. None of the versions have the audio because due to the Curtis Mayfield song, the good folks over at Warner Music Group decided to strip the audio away. Here is is with audio in tact.)