Architectural Digest

Photo via @tossnyc_slon

“Everything hard to get or expensive isn’t necessarily any more fulfilling. If caviar was $1 a pound, I don’t think anybody would want it.” Jenkem interviewed Antonio Durao about the move to Hardbody, sponsorship history, and his beautiful perspective on this thing we call life ❤ ️

Ted Barrow runs through the history of the Courthouse-Blubba-Columbus Park triangle that sits at the site of the once worst-slum in America — and now makes up probably 25% of New York skate coverage — for the latest episode of Thrasher‘s “This Old Ledge.”

Our friends at Place Mag and Daniel Paese tried to answer one of humanity’s most confounding questions via video essay. No, not are we alone in the universe, but the eternal: “why don’t you skate at the skatepark?”

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The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2023 — QS Readers Poll Results

🎨 Illustration by Cosme Studio
📊 Ballot Count by 4Ply Magazine

The results are in: a time-capsule of 2023 skateboarding, as voted by QS readers. Some old favorites have returned to the rankings, and some new ones have emerged.

And yes, it should be stated, perhaps louder than in other years, that year-end rankings are an imperfect artform. Miles Silvas’ “City To City” part that would eventually land him Thrasher‘s S.O.T.Y. trophy premiered a few hours before voting for the QS Readers Poll closed (that didn’t stop him from getting some votes in those final moments though.) Yuto dropped his April part three days after voting closed. But we are committed to the belief that nobody wants to talk about 2023 after Christmas. And for a year when it felt like Skateboard Oscars Season™ began in August, we had to make the call. All those parts that missed the cutoff will be eligible for next year’s voting, same as years past.

If you are just joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers from December 4th to December 8th. If you’re interested in the methodology, 4PLY broke down how we tally the votes

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Shrinking Attention Spans & The Search For the Perfect-Length Skate Video

📝 Words by Mike Munzenrider
🎨 Collage by Francesco Pini
📊 Data Analysis & Graphs by Pete Glover of 4PLY Mag
📼 Data Courtesy of SkateVideoSite

It has never been easy to make a full-length skate video. Today, it might be harder than ever.

If you’re Josh Stewart, owner of Theories of Atlantis Distribution and the filmmaker behind the Static series, videos just take time. So much time, in fact, that he says Brett Weinstein, who stars in the forthcoming Static VI [58 minutes], put out a half-dozen other video parts with his Chicago crew, Deep Dish, in the time it took to finish the latest Static.

Or, if you’re a company man like Deluxe team manager and videographer Tim Fulton, you’re fighting everyone else’s schedule. If someone on Real has enough footage for a part, Fulton says, it’s unlikely everyone else is also close to completing a part — and even then, skaters are eager to get their footage out. So they put it out.

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The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2022 — QS Readers Poll Results

Illustration by Cosme Studio
Ballot Count by 4Ply Magazine

It seems that the impossible has happened: we’ve tallied a QS Readers Poll, and there’s no Tom Knox in sight 😲😲😲

All jokes aside, beyond light output from Mr. Knox in 2022, this is perhaps the year that the multiple part approach wielded by S.O.T.Y. hopefuls began to adapt itself to people’s recollections of the past twelve months. Whereas in past years, when multiple releases tended to split the vote in clear favor of one over another, 50% of this year’s Top 20 parts are from the same five people.

Also worth noting that the point spread between slot #14 and slot #10 for single parts was four points. Maybe we introduce a runoff feature next year ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The #1 video was a landslide.

If you are just joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers from December 5th to December 9th

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The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2021 — QS Readers Poll Results

Illustration by Cosme Studio
Ballot Count by 4Ply Magazine

The votes are in, the ballots are tallied, the blurbs by writer friends from the internet are written, and our annual exercise of trying to combat content fatigue and fried attention spans is live.

For anybody uninitiated: back in 2019, we asked QS visitors for the five parts and videos from the 2010s that they would bury in a capsule under the earth for future inhabitants to reference once all other evidence of skateboarding had been erased. In 2020, we adapted this concept to encapsulate one year. And here we are in 2021, with the results of the same excerise.

No commentary for the full-lengths or 20-11 ranked parts. Special thank you to all the writers that took the time to share some words about their favorites. (Lol that the order for the 4-1 writers is the same this year as last. Total coincidence.) Major shout out to Pete at 4Ply Magazine for compiling all the data.

If you are just joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers from November 29th to December 3rd.

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