Skateboarding & Color Coordination — A Retrospective

A #NYFW Special Report

Words & Interviews by Frozen in Carbonite
Photo Collages by Requiem For A Screen

Skating writ large prides itself on a “no rules, bro!” ethos. #Menswear, an entity with which skating has become increasingly intertwined of late (via Vogue Skateboarding Magazine, etc.), has all kinds of rules. No black belt with brown shoes. No wearing white after Labor Day. One’s tie can’t go past one’s belt. Skating has no such faux pas — except for MAYBE brand-mixing — i.e. one can’t wear a Venture shirt if one is skating Indys or Vans socks if you’re wearing Nikes.

But what if I told you that skaters have curated their own sartorial code for decades — painstakingly color-coordinating their shoes, shirts, hats, and even spots? However, the modern-day thrift store aesthetic has left color-coordination by the wayside, even as color-blocking seemed to make a comeback last year, or some shit. So, in conjunction with New York Fashion Week, enjoy this retrospective of color coordination while you’re waiting to get into the Wang party or whatever.

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NYFW Wrap-Up — #Trendwatch2016 Early Report

acne studios shoelace belt

With many unseasonably warm days this winter, we were already able to see some of 2016’s #trending formations. And with a seasonably bitter cold #NYFW, we were able to sit there with hungover stares and contemplate it all. Keep in mind that the to-be-mentioned hungover contemplations may seem awfully dated by the time of the Polar video’s stateside premiere in March. Our most impressionable and yearning-for-inspiration L.E.S. colleagues will inevitably be Bloby-fied come April.

Lo-Def 5050 Combos

For many of us, 180s and shove-its into and out of 5050 grinds were our earliest flirtations with combining tricks. As our palettes became more refined and our skateboarding matured in accordance with the times, these were inevitably phased out and thrown into the pile known as “little kid tricks.” That pile, by nature, sits there and stagnates — unless of course you ran out of tricks to try in S.K.A.T.E. and need a sex change to give the dude a letter, or the even rarer occasion that skateboarding collectively chooses to to re-embrace a little kid staple like the varial flip.

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What a Time to Update the Website

alltimers wall

Mike Carroll re: the greatest line ever done and hardflip quality control. Also shout out to regional names for tricks. Nollie half cab for life. Buzz off dude.

Contest footage isn’t exactly #onbrand for QS but some pretty wild stuff went down at 50 Kent and the L.E.S. Park for Damn AM. They even fixed the crack in front of the double set so we can all skate it every day! Meet you there in five.

The only fashion week journalism that has really #mattered: SMLTalk walked us through all the stages of Jim Greco’s personal style. Italian mobster was maybe the sickest look. But maybe only saying that because Goodfellas turned 25 last week.

Kinda hard to debate Barcelona not being the greatest skate city on earth when you can watch a six-minute edit from there that spends its time at practically none of the most commonly known spots. “Let’s just put a bank here.”

A straight-up nollie on the bank / wallride at Chase downtown is a pretty hot move. They moved the planters back in front of that thing a month ago, btw.

Route One has a mini video interview with Zered.

Apparently three people skate in Bangladesh.

Fuck off Hawk, you can’t even flip your board you old prick.

Boil the Ocean on Quiksilver’s demise and maybe something re: Trukfit becoming a gas station brand + Corey Kennedy’s Hawaii thing? I don’t know man.

Quick #summer #trip #to #NY clip with some dudes from S.F and here’s the new Skate Jawn iPhone montage featuring notable MPC™ affiliates.

With thin ledges trending hard after Aaron Herrington’s Dime Glory Challenge win, Kingpin compiled a #current #listicle of the all-time greats on narrow surfaces.

Skate and Annoy has been posting some sick old skate ads over in its archive.

QS Rap Desk: Hotbox Social’s Young Thug “Leaks & Loosies” compilation from earlier this summer is actually better put-together than Slime Season, though the latter features mastered versions of some of the same songs.

Quote of the Week
Sexually Active Young Lady: “I’m not sure, I might’ve only fucked him because his bio said ‘free spirit.'”
Tron Jenkins: “Don’t be mad at him because he went to college.”

R.I.P. Jersey City Junk Spot.

She Think It’s Wavy & Gnarly

book

Thanks for all the love for the ten-year. The book drops December 8. It’s really cool. More info soon.

Late one today, but late-day posts during #nyfw are kinda like a QS tradition ;)

Labor has Sabotage 4 DVDs. (Also ICYMI.)

2015’s version of skateboard literature’s longest running summer wrap-up is here: Dubai or Not Dubai – Frozen in Carbonite’s S.O.T.S. x P.O.T.S. post. “Indeed, using the most powerful communication medium of our time—Instagram—as a yardstick, following the most popular thirst trap accounts down an Instagram wormhole leads to a dark place where every comment is either in a foreign alphabet or ‘Come to Dubai.'” (P.S. Who the HELL is responsible for deleting that Tiago Lemos We Are Blood remix from FB? Someone please re-upload it. P.P.S. “Stick Talk” > “I Serve the Base” for Tiago maybe. P.P.P.S. Can confirm Future cuts the music off and puts his thumb in the air after the “I ain’t got no manners…”-part when performing “Stick Talk.”)

Malfa uploaded a lot of great photos from the “CORE” upstate New York trip.

Tim O’Connor interviewed Bill Strobeck for an hour-and-a-half.

Jim Hodgson uploaded a five-minute 1996 edit of QS cult-favorite, Andy Bautisa, largely filmed at QS cult-favorite skate spot, Lackawanna Ledges. (Relevant.)

Free Skate Mag has an article and some photos from a Palace trip to Paris that ended up producing a lot of the footage from Paramount.

Rob Harris posted a 13-minute throwaway reel with a bunch of footage from the M.P.C.™ guys, and Max Hull uploaded another video of their trip down to Puerto Rico (includes Watermelon Man sightings.)

Ten years prior to Canada’s current #moment, it had a smaller, more skate-centric #moment when videos like North were dropping. Village Psychic revisited the 2004 Anti-Social video from that era. (Anti-Social has a new one dropping next spring, btw.)

Youness is without question one of the top-three most impressive IRL skateboarders I have ever witnessed. Someone made an Instagram remix of his footage, and I’m sure he did it all in under five tries probably joking around.

Most of my friends rocked the Staples way heavier as far as Lakais went, but there was definitely a later cult around the Manchesters. SMLTalk has a requiem for maybe the last Lakai shoe to make an imprint in the skate footwear landscape.

The soap shoes documentary is finished!

The new Bust Crew video is basically a Mother / Quasi bro-cam montage, and that Gilbert back lip on the Kent Ave. step is super cool :)

Gonz kinda sorta tells the story of the original ollie over the eventual “Gonz Gap.”

Quote of the Week: “I don’t fuck with that ‘bros over hoes’ code. That’s some skater bullshit.” — C. Williams

Bando Lingo

flag

Photo via @mdfilms on IG

She’s better than you, and has better style.

Sorta inevitable that Sheckler would meet the “why the fuck you lying”-guy, who was the unofficial soundtrack of Labor Day weekend.

Some photos of the soon-to-be-completed skatepark in East Williamsburg, which is developer-speak for “not not sorta Bushwick.” (It’s off the Graham L.) Looks on the mellower side of the skatepark spectrum, a la Canarise.

The fakie hardflip over the block at J Kwon should put an end to the age-old debate.

The most important piece of #skate #journalism in at least thirty years: Jenkem interviewed the iconoclast who tried to ollie the thirteen-flat-thirteen in the rain…which of course, is one of the five greatest tricks to never happen.

Thanks to perhaps the most heavily reblogged trick of 2015 (and maybe a surging interest in Canadian exports), Spencer Hamilton earned a place in the hearts of many who otherwise forget that Canada often produces superior skateboarders to America. Supra took notice, and made a “best of” part for him to bring anyone else up to speed.

Rare in-office week for the QS Fashion Desk, in preparation for #NYFW: SMLTalk runs down the greatest headwear choices in skate video history and here’s an an interview with Fergus Purcell, one of the principal designers behind Palace.

Vice has an #uplifting mini-doc about the emergence of skateboarding in Palestine.

Bronze’s “ask me anything” department is right — it doesn’t matter what crew “shitted on” whatever other crew in New York, because New York skateboarding never fully recovered from Dave Mayhew’s stay here in 1999:

The backside flip off the big bank over the police barrier is legitimately still the 8th or 10th best trick done in city limits after Westgate’s 2x ollies on Canal Street, Kalis’ fakie flip at Newport, Jake’s wallride, Rieder’s impossible, and a bunch of stuff Zered has done. Also, forgetting that part was a massive oversight here.

That being said, Pyramid County’s Ripplescape video is solid, and features a handful of the more insane things to happen here in recent months (pull-in nosegrind at Columbus Park, frontside flip the Seaport bench, etc.) Way more enjoyable than any other U.S. tour vid in recent history.

“In the span of just about a week, Boil the Ocean internet web blog was able to compile an array of image-damaging content features and fiery remarks that reflect poorly on the extreme sport that once seemed on pace to unseat baseball as the sport of the future.” Wipe your lens Wilson, damn.

Eli Reed doing some manuals, and some bro cam footage from the Mira Conyo squad.

Spot Updates: The downtown Brooklyn post office spot is now knobbed.

Quote of the Week: “Having a French bulldog is like buying a used Jaguar. It’s the best and you’ll love the thing, but it’s going to cost you a ton of money.” — Barnes

Enjoy that school year y’all ;)