📷 Photos by Chris Mulhern, Zander Taketomo & Pat Heid
For some skaters, the sight of a sanctioned skate plaza at the Philadelphia Municipal Services building — one made out of Love Park, City Hall and old Muni materials — is surreal. For Pat Heid and his crew, it is a victory produced by years of advocacy, meetings, dead-ends, close-calls, and divine timing.
Philly’s new plaza opens on April 17, and here is the story of how it became a reality.
The city is likely proceeding with building the skatepark in Mount Prospect Park after a long battle (there is one final meeting left on April 9), but at a reduced scale, “from 44,000 square feet to 19,500 square feet” — as revealed at the latest town hall. Looks like a transition-heavy design with some street on the side. Can we start holding hearings about getting a Born Plaza in this city before we’re all dead?
“Columbus Circle?” “No!!!” Feel much better about the future of street skateboarding in this city after watching Luca Mayer’s “$100 Chill” episode: they play S.K.A.T.E. inside subway stations, bumrush spots inside Wall Street offices, and then he spends most of his hundo on buying Bar Pitti for the gang. (QS is anti-Bar Pitti, but for reasons unrelated to Luca’s generous gesture.)
Via Jahmir on IG. Word is the official opening is next month.
Truly an honor for QS to make Simple Magic’s year-end best skateboard writing list four times. The fact that people actually read around here means the world. Thank you, Cole. Shout out Mike, shout out Farran, shout out Adam, shout out Frozen in Carbonite.
Crazy it’s taken this long for a Muni video to get pinned onto the list… Added Brian Panebianco’s “The Final Plaza” video, which documents the final days at Philly’s Municipal Services building, to the QS One-Spot Part Map 📍 This crew’s dedication throughout the heartbreaks is truly awe-inspiring. Amazing work from all involved.
Jace Detomasso briefly spoke to Thrasher about his Reggaeton Ledges ollie, on which he dislocated his shoulder first try and had to wait a year to go back. Pretty dope how anytime Jace ollies something, people want to get him on the horn about it.
Harold Hunter at the Bleecker Street Banks, 1994. Photo by Lance Dawes. Honestly can’t remember if this has ever ran as a headliner image before, but that spot has always stuck out as a “it’d be nice if that was still around”-spot, even though it was probably just a 2% better version of the McDonald’s Banks in Brooklyn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rest in Peace, C.J. Tambornino. “C.J. put the ‘G’ in genuine.”
“Don’t drive through Arizona acting like an idiot staying awake for days at a time.” The Bunt came through with what we’re going to dub “Everything you ever wanted to know about Brian Wenning but were afraid to ask.” The interview is brave, brutally honest, and a positive start to a new chapter in the life of someone we all looked up to as kids. Must-listen for anybody who came of age in the Photosynthesis and DC Video days.
A bunch of Canadians in Spain, with a handful of B-roll to “Yo, Best Idea.”
Always great to see new Philly Santosuosso footage, one of the hardest working men in skateboarding. (Always liked the way this remix came out, too.)
“NESH” is a rad New York edit from Victor Garland, featuring every spot we were too lazy to venture out to when we had the “where do we skate?” debate yesterday.
There are mixed reports about the severity of the whole police situation right now, but be careful if you skate the new Brooklyn D.I.Y. spot. Apparently, *building* may be more of an issue than just skating. Max Palmer never hurt nobody.
Shout out to the Long Live Southbank organization for keeping ambitions running high. They started up a fundraiser (with a million dollar goal) to restore a section of the spot that has been closed and un-used since 2004. The promo video for it is sick. (And P.S. The Banks are never truly “back” until the city restores the small Banks.)
Philly is going from having three of the most iconic street plazas within one block of one another, to potentially zero by next summer. Place can’t catch a break :(
What would the internet be if it weren’t for remixes of Bloby Instagram footage?
The Mira Conyo squad threw a contest up at the 181 Park a few weeks back.
Jenkem has Tommy Koehne’s HYD video playing in full over on their site.
This seems like a fun way to spend three months :)
Why didn’t you chase her down dude?
The most common e-mail from the past week has been a size chart request for the QS swim trunks, so here you go. All sizes in both colors are still available — it’s a long summer and we stayed stocked :) Grab them before some guy with a job does. Also got a good size run in tees and some bags left. Thanks for the support everyone ♥
Quote of the Week: “In this day and age, it’s sicker to not get footage.” — Nik Stain
