A Dying Breed — The One Spot Part

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Photo: Cronan

A one-spot part was once a natural occurrence and a reflection of habit. Just as partying ate into the time we spent dedicated to night clips, a nationwide depletion of friendly plaza space pushed us into the crust. It now takes a concerted effort to film an entire part in [or mostly in] one place. On a week where we are mourning the loss of skateboarding’s most serendipitous crossroad with public space, let us not forget to celebrate the living.

By previous conservative definitions, Eggs wouldn’t have been considered a plaza. It’s in central Boston, but tucked away in central Boston; the nearest store is still a bit of skate away, rendering the “run, skate, chill, go to the store”-litmus test a fail. As center-city spots turned to memories over the last decade-and-a-half and our friends went searching for cellar doors, we had to widen the classification.

In 2016, Flushing’s a plaza, Third and Army is a plaza and Eggs is a plaza. We had to look past how far they were situated from sustenance. They had open space, they had a history and they had a culture.

Today, we celebrate Eggs with Gavin Nolan, via the lens of perhaps the most well-regarded one-spot part in skate video history. The rest is just a bonus reel. After all, how much actual footage of the subject was there in that 4:30 Reason part ;) ?

Filmed by R.B. Umali, Tom Gorelik, Evan Walsh & Elliott Vecchia. Also maybe the most boom-bap QS remix / clip ever, even though it has a guy from the Bay rapping on it :)

‘Swoosh’ — The Latest One From Supreme & Strobeck

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Before the concept of a “skateboarding shoe” really began maturing and booming in the nineties, a lot of “skate shoes” came from discount stores. Nike’s GTS was a canvas tennis shoe that covered sales racks at Marshalls two decades ago. It has largely been forgotten, beyond the fact it made its way into a bunch of skate photos and video parts, mostly on the feet of dudes who paid attention to their gear as much as the tricks they were doing. Today, with about 1/5th of the kids at a peak-hour L.E.S. session trying to look like they stepped out a Marshalls in 1995, it makes sense to revisit a cult-classic — which in many ways, was a proto-Janoski.

Supreme is releasing a run of GTS Nikes later this week. In the lead-up for it, they got Brian Anderson, Kevin Bradley and Alex Olson to skate both the most iconic plaza spot that still exists, and the most photogenic new plaza spot to be built in the past ~three years. With so many new skate videos (at least the ones filmed in cities) taking a spots-that-aren’t-really-spots approach, there’s now something refreshing about seeing B.A. do his first-ever Love line in a twenty-year-spanning skate career, or Challex doing improvisational turn-around lines at Republique that aren’t far off from Stevie’s wandering Love lines in The Reason. And shit, when’s the last time a pro simply did a crook fakie on a ledge to start off a line? Like 1999? That was nice to see.

We got the shoes, now how do we bring the plazas back? :(

Previously: the red devil, Joyride