Pad Dowd | Quartersnacks

When Quarters Cry

Daily News February 26th, 2018 · 5:00 am · 2

Just as promised ♥

Kurt Havens, the Academy Award winning filmmaker behind 2012’s Twomanji video, is back with another full-length VHS / Hi-8 / old camera (?) project entitled Ballhog. It’s pretty much a vintage-tinged Bronze B-cam video from the past couple years, and features iconic parts from Mark Humienik, Billy McFeely, and Josh Wilson.

Gang Corp, Frog, Humble, The Skate Kitchen, and Hardbody all have spreads in the new issue of Japan’s Eyescream mag. Probably won’t do you much good if you can’t read Japanese (the Google Translate camera feature is sick though), but still rad to see nonetheless. Shout out to everybody.

Oh, and Genny posted the raw photos from the Humble pages.

Jesse Alba made a loving tribute to our #MCM, Nolan Benfield, and then Frog Skateboards went and posted some quick extras from their trip to China last year.

Show me, don’t tell me.

Damn, imagine wanting to skate the Veteran’s Memorial 12 that bad? ;) jk. Marco Kada covered a lot of ground across the city and outlying areas (who even remembers the last trick on the Jersey City Hamilton Park five block spot…Zered’s Vicious Cycle part?) for his rad “New York Nice Guy” part.

Habitat has a clip of Fred Gall’s final session at Shorty’s.

Listen to your mom, but also listen to Zalfa — who once ruptured his crank skating the Big O in Montreal, peed blood, went to the E.R., came out a few hours later, and shot a photo of Max Palmer while wearing a bloody hospital gown. He has an interview over on Skate Jawn. Don’t ever ask me who my favorite photographer is again.

“You know he’d get his mental health check and go straight to Ralph and drop two grand on a fucking moleskin pair of trousers or something.” Some Monday motivation for anyone currently living on a couch in an apartment they don’t pay rent for: Free interviewed Lev Tanju about all the cool shit Palace has been doing in London these past couple years.

There’s a Bobshirt documentary. Can’t tell if there’s new footage tho.

Some more Elkin extras from Leo Gutman’s 2013 Q.S.S.O.T.Y. run.

Old parts, new uploads: Connor Kammerer in Spirit Quest + Dustin Eggeling in Static 4. This is a really pointless observation, but it’s kind of wild that the last Static video is already almost four years old.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: And then Russ thought…”fuck that overtime shit.”

Quote of the Week: “My celebrity crush is Ali from Travis Porter.” — Pad Dowd

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Can’t say the QS Rap Desk has actively been checking for new Wayne songs these past ~five years, so a bit “late” on this one (came out on Christmas), but wowwwowow.

There’s a fire remix video dropping on here ~~tomorrow~~ Wednesday ♥

It’s Like 2 Bros. But For Vegans

Daily News October 30th, 2017 · 5:00 am · 2

Photo by Andre Page

Happy Birthday Pad Dowd. He once filmed four lines in one day.

John Gardner, first ballot entry for the “Skateboarders Who Make The World Smile” Hall of Fame. He filmed a new, five-minute cruiser part for O.J. Wheels from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Thanks John ♥

LurkNYC has a new Carlos Mendoza part. Ender at Blubba is pretty nuts.

Can’t tell if it’s an oversight, but if Ride Channel is truly R.I.P., allow us to take a look back at some of the greatest headliners ever written for the skateboard internet.

The Bunt has a [text] interview with our friend Keith Henry, the photographer who is forever on the quest for the right-fitting pair of pants.

The 2000s nostalgia continues, with Dime guiding DC’s hand into the return of fatboy shoes via their re-issue of the DC Legacy. Ripped Laces has some words on both the slimmed down and husky versions of what is essentially the DC Air Max 95.

Thrasher put up a new, all-NY “Mind of Marius” with a bunch of chill Lenox footage.

The double-vision intro from Spirit Quest is now online.

You’ve probably seen it, this one. New 12-minute Frog edit.

The QS Film Desk isn’t the most enthusiastic group of Harmony Korine fans (haven’t watched the Epicly Later’d yet…), but gotta #respect anyone who made the leap from growing up on skate videos to making feature films. He talked about some of his favorite videos over on Vice.

There’s a new, longer version of the Nike SB vid of Lacey Baker skating around the city, which you’ve seen in commercial form of as pre-roll on Thrasher, etc.

“I cracked him over the head with the Yaje board. Avocado to the brain.”

Seems like there’s a sick spot under all those Halloween decorations.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Kyrie Irving on the C’s is 2011 D. Rose I guess?

Quote of the Week: “Strike one, that’s her man. Strike two, that’s her other man. Strike three, she’s a fed.” — Dallas Todd

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Living Every Day Like It’s Spring Break

Video & Remixes November 17th, 2016 · 3:26 am · 2

Had some leftover footage from the past couple trips + a few things that might’ve potentially ended up in the now [probably?] defunct QS Drop Offs series. Threw this # feel good # clip together :) It’s a spring-themed fall video, and though it has summer footage from foreign counties, we limited it to places where the summer feels like it does in the city right now (66 today!) Heard a new skatepark that took thirty years to complete just opened up, maybe see you guys over there later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Features: Johnny Wilson, Josh Wilson, E.T, Tyler Warren, Vincent Touzery, Max Palmer, Matt Perez, Tyler Tufty, Charles Rivard, John Franco, Pad Dowd, Adam Zhu, Tico, Hjalte Halberg, Louie Lopez, Jack Greer, Andrew Wilson, Daniel Kim.

Contributing Filmers: Pad Dowd.

Also, gonna just leave this here…

The QS Transition Facilities Tour — Part 3

Features & Interviews November 27th, 2015 · 3:04 am · 6

Photo by Zach Baker

[Part one here, part two here]

When celebrating the virtues of skate-friendly cities like Copenhagen, it’s important to remember that they didn’t become that way by accident. A place like Denmark may not have the vehement sue-happy culture we do, but there’s still a long process to build a utopia. People with college degrees and sophisticated understandings of architecture, city planning, etc. — who also happen to skateboard — fought for that shit. Many cities are slowly starting to recognize skateboarding as something more productive than spraypainting on a wall or pissing in a corner. Now the next step is figuring the subtleties out. “Maybe a blind-built pre-fab park isn’t the best idea…”

When presented with a chance to do something permanent with the locals in Providence, it didn’t make sense for it to be an exclusive keyholder type of project. It also didn’t make sense to add on to an existing skatepark; they have a whole community already doing a good job at keeping that flame lit.

Filmed by Dan Mcgrath and Johnny Wilson.

Adrian Hall Park, across the street from the Trinity Repertory Theater in downtown Providence, has been a stop for skaters since the early nineties. It has a platform to do tricks off, some steps, and a curb — not a great spot, but enough to keep interest when you get the boot out of everywhere else downtown and are willing to settle on skating anything, insofar as you don’t get hassled. Beyond the skaters, there usually isn’t a whole lot going on in the park. It’s not scenic, as it’s on a side street next to a parking garage: a perfect place to drink a brown-bagged beer or take a nap on some cardboard if you don’t have anywhere to be that night. It was also a solid candidate to be turned into something more than just a barren stone park.

The QS Transition Facilities Tour — Part 2

Features & Interviews November 25th, 2015 · 11:31 am · 1

Photo by Pad Dowd

One of the byproducts of New England’s tightly-knit park scene is that it created a generation of locals who are resourceful and good with their hands. There’s not always a park being built, but if you look hard enough, there’s always an opportunity for a one-off in a forgotten crevice of the city. These will range from the equivalent of what we know in New York as works of “Jerry Duty,” to micro spots that stuff one-tenth of a skatepark into a cleared out corner behind an industrial zone.

A lot of these spots aren’t under some main bridge, or in a well-traversed warehouse district, e.g. how the B.Q.E. spot is a fully public D.I.Y. creation. Maybe a guy knows a guy who knows a guy, and he’ll give skaters free reign over a hidden patch of land to the side of his building before he figures out just what the hell he’s going to do with it. The results become a bowl corner next to a factory’s crumbling smokestack, or a wavy spine concoction built over an out-of-commission gas pipe that even National Grid doesn’t know the deal with. Barring a few anomalies, the northeast isn’t equipped for long lasting full-fledged D.I.Y. skateparks like more spacious parts of the country are. People have been living on top of each other for hundreds of years here; spots like these are left to make do with the leftover crumbs of the city.

Filmed by Johnny Wilson & Max Palmer. Alternate YouTube Link.

The most insane example involved a thirty-minute drive from downtown Providence, until you pull up to a dilapidated building in a neighborhood that has nothing but liquor stores. If you’ve seen that movie Prisoners, it’s basically like that building where Hugh Jackman takes the guy to torture him.