Philadelphia | Quartersnacks

Same Old Video Part, But It’s On That New Shit

Video & Remixes January 27th, 2012 · 11:00 am · 7

“WE ON THE WAY.”

It’s great to have south Jersey/Philly-based skaters going pro for major companies these days. It was also great to have Philly rappers (or at least one) resurface to national prominence last year. Considering skateboarding and rap are the two dominant concerns of this website, it should come as no surprise that the first re-edit of 2012 merges Real’s latest pro teamrider, Ishod Wair, with the Maybach Music Group’s latest pro teamrider, Meek Mill. Meek Mill saved the late-summer/early-fall of 2011, by drowning out the sound of people playing that lame collaborative album by those two boring rich guys with his repeated proclamations of being a boss. For that, we salute him and Ishod (another boss) with this remix.

Sometime in the near future, we’ll devise a non-rap re-edit for a change of pace. They just have to come back full swing by the summer though. Dreamchasers 2 should be out by then. We’re still going to be stretching 4:3 and mixing HD with SD, don’t worry…

Alternate YouTube Link: Pool, I don’t ever swim

Philadelphia C. 1996

Time Capsule April 6th, 2011 · 11:26 am · 14

Rob Pluhowski never occupied the “He changed my life and/or wardrobe” status that Anthony Pappalardo and Brian Wenning enjoy after years of elusiveness (which is of course, camouflaged by devout fans spending unhealthy amounts of time promising a comeback on various message boards.) However, he was still a crucial, style-centric chunk to the whole period that has come to be defined as “the Photosynthesis era.”

Several days ago, he uploaded the closest thing we have to a Revisited volume for the city of Philadelphia and the many individuals who gyrated around it as it rose to become a huge skate city in the mid-to-late nineties. The clip includes a handful of Sixth Sense makes and outtakes, and footage from several crucial years that preceded all things related to Alien Workshop and Habitat becoming massive parts your life if you happened to start skating in Philly, Jersey or New York between 1998 and 2002. Pluhowski doesn’t spend much time skating these days, as he is a family man (some of this is touched upon in Pappalardo’s “Epicly Later’d” series), but a big thank you goes to him for going out of his way to bring something like this to the surface.

The Love Park Story

Time Capsule February 13th, 2011 · 10:05 am · 5

“I saw a 411 opener of Ricky olling two cans off a propped up tile, and I thought that was the dopest looking thing I have ever seen on a skateboard. I told myself when I go back to Philly, I’m propping up them tiles and skating over those cans.”

If you spend any time on the skateboard-related part of the internet, you have no doubt seen part 2 of the Josh Kalis Epicly Later’d series. The series has already began dwelling on a lot of the east coast “golden era” stories, namely some of the lesser known political alliances that existed in Love Park as it was beginning to rise to prominence in the early-to-mid-nineties. Since the series is obviously more biographical of an individual (i.e. there’s more to Kalis, Stevie, Ricky Oyola, etc. than just Love Park), it makes sense to share some biographical work that was done on the actual spot from seven years ago.

“Saga of a Skate Landmark” was a thirty-minute segment that originally appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of On Video Magazine. (For the few who may not know: On was a more documentary-esque approach to skateboard video magazines that lasted for the first few years of the 2000s, they would cover tours, skaters, and things like that, but their real strong suit was well-researched pieces like this, with solid interviews and archival footage. Basically, a lot like Epicly Later’d but less focussed on specific individuals as opposed to events, spots, etc.) The segment expands on a lot of the Kalis meeting Stevie story, and the Kalis versus Ricky angle, but overall, it is definitely wider in scope towards the actual spot, as it features interviews with the park’s original city planner, Photosythesis-era anecdotes, and plenty of amazing footage. The video used to be on Google Video, but has been giving “Not Available” errors for quite some time, so here it is on Vimeo.

Here’s the text message I received prior to seeing the new episode, as I was watching the Knicks embarrass themselves against the Clippers on Wednesday evening. It’s a humorous summary. Quote of the Day. Via Roctakon:

Light Chance of Flurries

Daily News December 6th, 2010 · 12:22 pm · 4

Is there any way to start conjuring up royalty money from trivia questions? Do Jeopardy subjects get hit off with a modest check to reward them for providing content for the show through their existence? Probably not, but it is the second mention this year for us in a trivia atmosphere, so it’s kind of cool. (First one was here.)

Having this set-up in your back yard is a sure-fire way to guarantee that you will never have another dull moment for the remainder of your existence on this planet, and realistically speaking, it’s not even that elaborate compared to what people have in skateparks these days.

Barely news, but there is quite literally nothing to skate at Hoboken Ledges anymore. Not that it actually matters, but this is being posted for nostalgia reasons more than anything. Or if you had some bizarre plan to go all the way to Hoboken in order to skate the fountain gap, which has been fenced off for some time, but now looks like it is fully to-be torn from the ground.

Did you know that “Kick Push” is the sixth-greatest Chicago rap song of all time?

Spotted a link to this Swedish montage on the incoming links to Quartersnacks. Even though the skating and spots are pretty cool (and Quartersnacks supports the majority of things related to Scandinavia), it deserves mention mostly because by watching it, you will learn that there are dudes out in Sweden making “Hard in the Paint” remixes. Not like the aforementioned electro remixes either, we’re talking Swedish rap here. Over Lex Luger beats… Yeah…

As the iPad and all that shit is (supposedly) changing print media, old-fashioned zines seem to be less on paper, and more digitized. Skate Jawn is an online skate zine that is laid out slideshow style, just as if it were to be paper. It features a bunch of content from people still keeping Philadelphia skateboarding alive, a Mike Maldonado appearance, and some solid photography.

That rail looks pretty mellow… Not like it might as well be vertical or anything…

Saving the best for last, and knowing that going a few months without some Quim Cardona content is never a good thing, you should check out the recently unearthed Quim and Mike Cardona 411 “Wheels of Fortune” segment. This guy is one of the most endlessly entertaining skateboarders ever, crazy style and all. It’s great to see he’s still killing it to this day. I’m sure that Manolo dude gets all sort of requests, but the world definitely needs a Quim mixtape from him. Both the above photo, and the clip were spotted at the Domestics blog, which maintained by the one and only, Jersey Dave. “Down with the hip-hop.”

+++ Follow Quartersnacks on Twitter
+++ Add Quartersnacks on Facebook

Alien Workshop’s Photosynthesis Video: Ten Years Later

Time Capsule November 8th, 2010 · 11:15 am · 28

(Or how hamburgers remain to be one of the greatest instruments of eating.)

One of the major footnotes to Habitat’s ten-year anniversary video is that it marks a decade since the release of Photosynthesis, the finest skateboard production of the 2000s. It was the video that taught New Jersey what to do with its shoulders when it does a backside nosegrind, gave one final hurrah to Long Island’s seemingly endless allegiance to the swooshy tan cargo pants, and provided a small dent to the ozone layer due to the surge of Philadelphia field trips that proceeded it.

If that is not enough to back up a longstanding cultural impact, the homie from Boil the Ocean summarized the video’s main contributions to the act of skateboarding fairly well: “Van Engelen’s grease-fire ledge attack, Pappalardo’s clockwork precision, Fred Gall with one pants leg up, Danny Garcia demonstrating how to pop out of a backside tailslide, Wenning’s backside nosegrinds and switch heelflips, Josh Kalis doing ‘the’ 360 flip and the walk down into Jason Dill’s bent world, back when he was doing all those 180s the hard way into ledge tricks and settling into New York.”

But skateboarding alone does not make classic skateboard videos, as ironic as that may sound. Before high-speed internet, it took a few years for tricks to get outdated — not to mention the turnaround on editing, production, and shipment of physical VHS tapes that preceded the release of the said tricks. Simply running down a list of maneuvers in a post-millenial video is not enough to surmise it being worthy of the “classic” label, e.g. when was the last time you watched Menik Mati? Once a video reaches ten years of age, the atmosphere and feel of an era gone by is what makes or breaks the chances of you unearthing the tape from its dust jacket. If you find yourself justifying any portion of an older video as “good for the time,” it’s not a classic. The whole thing requires a timeless quality.