Nike SB | Quartersnacks

Ishod & MPC™ in Puerto Rico Montage

Video & Remixes February 11th, 2016 · 7:00 pm · 7

Just in time for the coldest weekend of the winter, here’s the full video from last month’s Puerto Rico trip with Ishod and the Most Productive Crew™ in New York City skateboarding. Many of us are in our third year of embracing Puerto Rico as the east coast’s winter retreat, so we stepped a bit outside of our San Juanese comfort zone to cruise around New York’s sixth borough.

Outtakes and field notes from the trip can be found here and here.

Features Ishod Wair, Cyrus Bennett, Cory Kennedy (first-ever line holding a #boom? The high-tech S.A.D. towel of 2016?!), Eric Koston, Bobby Worrest, Justin Brock (who unfortunately got hurt two days into the trip), Andrew Wilson and Max Palmer. Filmed, edited and #skatevideohouse music supervised by Johnny Wilson from Space Heater.

If you’re into the photo of worlds colliding below, our friend Zach-Malfa Kowalski made a full ‘zine from the trip. You can download the PDF here. It’s sick.

Puerto Rico Update — Part 2

Video & Remixes January 15th, 2016 · 11:26 am · 7

Photo by Zach Malfa-Kowalski

Puerto Rico — like every other skate destination in the world — has its fail safes. Just as you can’t get through a “Summer Trip to New York” clip without someone skating the Rector Street Bench or doing a trick over the wall at Columbus Park, Puerto Rico has its unavoidable trappings that appear in every last bit of getaway coverage. You end up having to roll the dice: either make the half-hour/45 minute drive to the smaller cities outside San Juan and hope you find spots, or go where you know there’s going to be shit to skate, even if Robert Lopez Mont fakie flipped it back in some obscure video from 1974.

These safe spots are places you’ve seen throughout Puerto Rico’s current tenure as skateboarding’s de facto winter getaway — the black marble low-to-high, the ledge plaza in Rio Piedras, or the photogenic-but-apparently-really-tough-to-skate bowl in La Perla, which we avoided due to a #nomoreskateparks rule set in place.

And as tired as you may be of seeing the lil’ black marble low-to-high and bank combo spot that Conor Prunty shut down this time last year, you’d be hard pressed to find a more relaxing spot. Comes with a guy who climbs up in the tree to get coconuts for you, a nearby beach, and the world famous El Hamburger just a block skate away. Last round of extras above, #tbt below, and full clip dropping this February.

P.S. Walgreen’s out here has the fire gift sets for date night with bae.

Puerto Rican Update

Video & Remixes January 13th, 2016 · 11:04 am · 1

Photo by Zach Malfa-Kowalski

This is our third January in a row of spending some considerable time in America’s never-ending prospective 51st state, and what Billy Rohan once coined as the sixth borough of New York City. Past journeys — short of a day trip to the eastern island of Vieques — have kept us conveniently in San Juan, where the majority of the #trending Puerto Rican winter phenomenon keeps its home base. The island is big, but not that big: driving from San Juan to the west side is like driving from New York to Philly, except you stare out the window and see rolling hills rather than…the Linden refinery.

Mayaguez is one of the main cities on the west side of the island, and with one night in San Juan, we trekked the hundred miles there. After a pit-stop for the trip’s official sustenance (Medallas and arroz con pollo), a mini concrete racetrack-type spot with a Flushing-width gap in the middle, and a spot check at an abandoned waterpark visible from the highway (we got kicked out by stoned security guars in under ten minutes), we made it to Mayaguez with about an hour of daylight left to skate one of the funnest parks any of us had ever been to.

Filmed by Johnny Wilson

One of Mayaguez’s standouts skate-wise is a gigantic University of Puerto Rico campus. Like most college campuses, you could theoretically skate it for a week and not get bored — provided you never got kicked out. We skated for two hours later than we were expecting to, and then headed towards the well-lit park in Aguadilla.

Next day was a trip to more-or-less the most scenic park imaginable in Quebradillas, where we bumped into the squad from Shorty’s. Off the parks for the rest of the trip, and in these streets talking about shit Robert Lopez Mont did. (“Yeah man, Robert fakie flipped that three story drop when he was 14, man.”)

Happy belated birthday to Cyrus 1Oak.

‘Core:’ A Nike SB & Quartersnacks Video by Johnny Wilson

Video & Remixes August 22nd, 2015 · 10:56 am · 18

All photography by Zach Malfa-Kowalski

Nike SB and Quartersnacks present “Core,” the new video by Johnny Wilson. The project depicts a week-long journey through Upstate New York, with stops in Albany, Syracuse, Ithaca, Rochester and Buffalo.

This was unequivocally the first skate trip in the history of skateboarding where not a single person complained. No “these spots suck,” no “let’s go somewhere else,” no “pull over to this Taco Bell.” Not even a request to stop at local D.I.Y. spots, as it was deemed that skating D.I.Y. without having contributed their construction is not as #core as a #bond with the #streets. Nobody even knew what a “skatepark” was. #core ;)

Features Bobby Worrest, Hjalte Halberg, Nick Boserio, Antonio Durao, Cyrus Bennett, Q.S.S.O.T.Y. Max Palmer and Andrew Wilson. Filmed and edited by Johnny Wilson. All trip photography by Zach Malfa-Kowalski.

Alternate YouTube Link

Upstate Update: Ithaca, Rochester & Buffalo

Video & Remixes August 14th, 2015 · 10:29 am · 4

Photo by Zach Malfa-Kowalski

The western half of New York state has a handful of cities that are just over an hour drive from one another. This includes Buffalo and Rochester, the second and third largest in the state.

The first stop was Ithaca, home of the westernmost Ivy League school and birthplace of the Tornado Spin — the subject of skateboarding’s first viral video. You really gain an understanding for how seldom-seen these cities are when a three-year-old / minute-and-a-half-long Jake Johnson Brick Harbor part is repeatedly brought up as the only reference point for the locals showing you spots.

After an Orvis catalog shoot and some cliff jumping, the spent the first night at the cement wave with white bulbs that Jake skates in said part. We managed to avoid Cornell cops that night, but didn’t get so lucky the next day, when we went back to skate a building funded by college drop-out, Bill Gates. Happy to say I’m writing this on a Macbook, because our short stint at Bill and Melinda Gates Hall resulted in a one-year ban from Cornell University property.

Photo by Zach Malfa-Kowalski

“You’re going to Rochester? There are flatbars everywhere.”

At least six thousand people told me there are flatbars all over Rochester. They weren’t lying. There are flatbars all over Rochester. Can’t figure out why the city planners have such an affinity for round, one-to-two-foot-high flat rails, but they’re literally everywhere you look in the city. Google tries to get you drunk if you ask about it. No wonder everyone upstate is hammered all the time ;)