That’s An Awful Lot Of Bad Ledges

95th and Columbus might be the *original* Forbidden Banks, as explained by Eli Gesner in Jenkem’s “Neighborhoods” video on the Upper West Side. 📷 Photo by Greg Navarro.

Pretty much the only Go Skate Day edit worth your time, year after year: Sabotage’s GSD 2022 is now live.

“Can post-Olympics, post-Instagram, post-Phelps skateboarding still maintain the purist allegiance to the etiquette and rules of old?” Free has a #longform piece on the politics of finding spots, preserving the secrets of spots, and being the first-and-second to get tricks on certain spot up on their website. (For additional reading, Mike Munzenrider interviewed Atiba, Tim Fulton and Mike Heikkila about this same ever-complex dynamic back in 2020, and QS ran an interview with the creator of Skhateyou, the website every single skate tourist has used when traveling in Europe, back in 2017. Things haven’t gotten any clearer, as you can tell by the Free article having the widest net of perspectives yet.)

More »

The Week In Noseslides

When we are entrenched in a moment — a space where the skateboard media machine feels entirely focused on one full-length, one seminal part, one finicky faux pas — it feels like Nyjah Huston is just frozen in time, midway down a quadruple kink rail, just waiting for our conversation about Gustav’s foot placement to quiet down before he can resume grinding down the remaining nine kinks.

We are long past the days of skateboarding’s progression standing still until the next VHS tape comes out. Time waits for no man — and a bunch of Swedes holed up in Barcelona listening to MF Doom are no exception.

Noseslides, The Building Block of Modern Skateboarding™, don’t pause for anyone either. Though we were all up in arms about the mirror pretzel line, Nisse’s noseslide pop-over the rail was Sour Solution II‘s peak plain-old-noseslide execution. Beyond that, the video set its sights well beyond the Forbidden 14.

More »

Fredo In The Cut That’s A Scary Sight

The fingerboardable history of Columbus Park, coming soon…(Via @bobbybils on IG)

Whoa have you ever seen Mark Suciu’s Photosynthesis part?

Now that that’s out of the way, this is maybe the first Monday Links post ever where there are more links to articles (i.e. written words) than videos…

“After drilling his truck bolts back for a bigger nose and noselsliding ledges in the ’80s, Mark had one of the first noseslide photos on a rail (one where he’s actually sitting on it rather than just dinging it) as a sequence in his June 1990 Poweredge.” As per an indirect solicitation, Mackenzie Eisenhour enlisted Guy Mariano to chronicle how the modern noseslide was invented. As suspected, Mark Gonzales is responsible.

“As he flies through the air, he is caught between life and death, suspended in the void of nonexistence — the ultimate Kleinean motif.” Jamie Thomas’ “leap of faith” as a work of avant garde art juxtaposed against the art of Yves Klein. Yeah, fuck it, why not.

Vice has an interview with Jonathan Rentschler about documenting the final years of Love Park for his book, Love. QS review for it here. And you can should buy it here ;)

This is oddly…not bad? Deadspin (of all places) has a #longform article about the full history of Rodney Mullen V.S. Daewon Song — though idk about it “changing skateboarding forever.”

If you’re wondering how many nights the five-minute line in Miles Silvas’ new Adidas commercial took, Monster Children has an interview with him about it. (Spoiler: 4.)

Boil the Ocean offers some thoughts on J. Scott Handsdown and Dan Pageau taking crowdsourcing via the skateboarding community to newfound heights. To be fair, they ain’t special — Meatball pioneered this concept when he tried to GoFundMe a ticket to Australia so he could tag along on a Hardies trip.

Dill gets nostalgic for eighty minutes in probably Bobshirt’s longest interview to date.

This is the funniest spot in New York right now.

Volume 7 of Elkin raw files via Theories. Ollieing an open newspaper box door in the middle of a line is some real shit huh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A thirteen-minute remix video of Wes Kremer and some DC friends from Mick Robbins.

Quick clip from Cooper at Owl’s Head Park.

The new Byrdgang video is premiering at China Chalet this Thursday. 8-11. Video plays at 9:30. 47 Broadway obvs. Flyer here.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week:Hello, police? Chris Paul is trying to beat me up.”

Quote of the Week:

Summer Friends

sjkickflipchrome

Dunno why there’s been so many B&W headline images lately ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Scan via Chromeball

#TBT that time Daniel Kim ruined the BBQ.

“You have to create all new levels of skateboarding that never existed before.”

Speaking of all new levels of skateboarding, Tiago was in town for Street League and these two clips of him skating Seaport and the L.E.S. Park got brought up in at least four conversations this weekend. #SOTY.

Put a formal Twitter inquiry regarding the inventor of the noseslide earlier this summer (the consensus was Gonz.) Mackenzie Eisenhour discusses it in this TWS piece regarding the origins of the noseblunt: “Even prior to the noseblunt, Mark is also credited with adapting the noseslide to ledges and handrails on the streets, after seeing photos of Neil Blender innovating nose stalls on ramps.”

Some more footage of Antonio Durao skating Harlem, presumably from the same day that he did the line that was #1 on the QS Top 10 last week :)

Given as how they’ve been dominating all forms of culture since Switch Mike started blasting So Far Gone in any and all of his BMWs and Herschel became the new Jansport, it should come as no surprise that the most enjoyable skateboard podcast also comes from Canada. Season two of the Bunt is now running, and starts off with cult hero, Spencer Hamilton. Expedition-1 talk, non-alcoholic beers, etc.

Lindsey Robertson and the Media Bias Against Heelflippers: A Case Study.

Tao did a rad remix of the Nike SB FRI.day video with the CPH fam.

The early 2000s nostalgia continues. Is the Pace Ledge due for a comeback?!

Glad the news about the Berlin benches getting removed ended up being a false alarm. A replica of that should be mandatory for every U.S. city with over six skaters. My second favorite skate spot on this planet.

Kingpin interviewed Ian from Jenkem about the Jenkem book. Available here.

NY Skateboarding posted up part two of their interview with Keith Hufnagel. A good bit of Brooklyn Banks talk in there. Aaannnddd there’s a new Crail Cocuh with Huf and Carroll. Good bit of Embarcadero talk in that one.

Um, no. New Jersey is actually the best. John Cozz’s HYD part.

Quote of the Week: “It’s literally harder to get into a bar than it is to get married.” — Rob Harris

Enjoy that school year everyone ;)

Oh, Perfect.

IMG_6588

DANY video JFK Terminal 1 premiere. Coming soon.

Noseslides on handrails have remained dormant since the peak Muska years, Koston/Frankhouse nosesliding the curved 20 at City Hall era, etc. It’s been a long 10+ years, but we may have to consider a plain and simple noseslide down a handrail as a current frontrunner for N.S.O.T.Y. Shout to Mostly Skateboarding for the tip.

EggsTech™ without the Eggs. The boy Dana Ericson hit up Barcelona for a lot of heavy noseslide and shove nosegrind maneuverings. [*Mandatory mention that he skates a lot of non-stock Barcelona spots :) *]

/ end noseslide related content

Some heavy start of summer vibes in Genesis’ new iPhone clip, and MDW edit from Buck Prichard featuring Caddo, Brendan Carroll + others.

Beef Patty alumni v.s. Connecticut concrete parks via Max Hull.

“Let’s not forget that skateboarding has been multi-platform media since the Bones Brigade videos.” Skateboard Story ran a brutally blunt and honest interview with Eben Sterling, a guy who’s worked at Thrasher for over two decades, about the mag’s continued success as we decry the imminent collapse of print media, and how you’re definitely a dick if you’re on the QS comments section in 2016 thinking Rihanna being the god is some Urban Outfitters “irony” shit.

On same-but-different note, Village Psychic has a feature about Scotland’s North magazine, which only shoots and runs photos on film.

Bobshirt has a video interview with backside nosegrind popout pioneer, Jerry Fowler.

“The way they let the hill bombs run out with no music has an intensity impossible to concoct with slow-motion drone filmography, and its montage structuring is refreshingly dense, difficult to digest in even a few watches…” Boil the Ocean gets its #filmtheory on to juxtapose the GX1000 video with um, skateboarding in the Olympics.

There’s tons of heavy shit in the new Kyron Davis part, including a full-on front board up that thing in the Columbus Park playground that only BMXers hit up.

A topic that has more-or-less steered skate conversations for 20 years: pants.

Although this has to do with one of the worst qualities of American culture, here’s an interesting interview with a lawyer who skates handrails, and took his proficiency at talking to cops to specialize in skateboard related legal-cases.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: This is going five, right? …four?

Quote of the Week: “Anthony Bourdain ruined dating because now you have to take a girl to like, Thailand.” — T-Bird

Out of the country for a bit, so be aware of a potential delay in reply time if you’re trying to get in touch re: anything xoxo :)