An Interview with Dave Caddo

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Words & Interview by Zach Baker / Photos by Trevor Culley

One of the cool things about having the privilege of knowing how to ride one of these things, besides being able to find pot no matter where you are in the world, is that it keeps you exploring. It sends you out to uncover weird parts of familiar places, makes you creep into all sorts of alleys and ditches and post-industrial shit-piles, and on many occasions, you’ll leave feeling a lot happier than when you got there.

Every time I see Caddo, he’s having a pretty good time. Then, every time I see some Caddo footage or photos, he’s having a pretty sweet time. He skates all these spots I’ve never seen before, in cities I’ve never thought to go to. He’s gotten clips at like, the Holy Trinity of New York busts: the Roosevelt Island Monument, Forbidden Banks and the Holy Grail on Nostrand Avenue. Caddo goes out of his way to keep skateboarding interesting for himself, which is why his skating is so much fun to watch.

His part in Politic’s Division, which is his second full part in as many years, is loaded with all kinds of new approaches to familiar spots, fun lines down hills and in all kinds of parking lots. Here’s a chat I had with him about Enid’s, longevity, and kickflips.

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Tell me about when you kickflipped into the Roosevelt Island monument.

That was when it first opened up. I don’t know why, but the Parks Department would close it one day a week. You get maybe ten minutes before the old security guard comes out and starts yelling at you. But the guy is like sixty-years-old, it takes him a while to mosey over. The guy got there and his technique was to stand right in the way. He’s just mellow about it, kept repeating over and over again “no, no, no.” He was just saying that for ten minutes. [John] Valenti was walking backwards with the camera as I’m trying the last one and luckily I made it. I almost rolled into the guy.

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A Sense of Seriousness…

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Emilio Cuilan’s DANY video is now available for purchase from TheDANYstore.com. Supreme and Labor also have copies for sale. The video features full parts from Shawn Powers, Genesis Evans, Jason Byoun, Adam Zhu and Yaje Popson, plus appearances from a whole lot of others. Minute teaser for the video can be found here.

Happy birthday Keith Denley.

There’s this video of Kenny Anderson and Vincent Alvarez skating Lenox Ledges (Antony Correa cameo!), and yes, Kenny footage is always a pleasure, but there’s only one bit of Lenox footage from the past week that anyone was talking about. Good lord.

Trife alumnus, Black Dave Willis, has a new part live on the Thrasher site entitled “NYBD.” Gap to front blunt on the out ledge across from World Trade is a wild one.

Can’t Ban the J.B. Man.

Tredje Akten is a rad 20-minute video by the homie Tao from the Malmö + Copenhagen scene. Features Ville, Hjalte, etc + a full Polar section at the end.

NY Skateboarding posted part one of apparently a three-part series of video interviews with Keith Hufnagel. This one talks about meeting Keenan Milton, the infamous Ryan Hickey house that housed all homeless skateboarders of the era, moving to San Francisco, skating Embarcadero, etc.

Gotta #respect a ten-minute Boston video that doesn’t hit Eggs once. Not easy. “Mean Streets Volume 2,” A.K.A. the LurkNYC boys go to Boston.

Two teasers for upcoming videos that should be a good time: Division from Politic Skateboards (#caddoalert), and Elan Vital from Studio Skateboards.

What Youth did a quick video interview with Challex Olson. He slipped on a sandwich.

Who’s going to lug this parking block to Tompkins T.F. West?

This is tasteless and insane, but you can visualize every scenario of this hypothetical Seinfeld script that imagines the characters’ lives in the week after 9/11.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Who cares about Melo’s Olympic postgame interview, Russell Westbrook’s “Now I Do What I Want” video is singlehandedly the most inspirational sports moment of 2016, and the only promotional material the NBA needs for the 2016-2017 season. #MVP.

Quote of the Week: “I’m so glad I didn’t go to double town China set.” — John Choi

Started the past week worth of mornings with this, and it worked out pretty well :)

QS Neighborhood Association

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The QS webstore is now stocked with spring merch. Available in U.S. shops now. Japan, Europe & Canada this week. Please give us this week to catch up on the intial rush of orders e.g. don’t send a “where’s my stuff?” e-mail on Tuesday morning. Thank you everyone for your support in helping us continue to do what we do ♥

The new Helas mixtape makes me want to sell everything I own and move to Europe. Also kinda reminds me of the #fun days of catching Euro vids like TDGAFAU and issues of Puzzle stateside and fantasizing about a perfect world of marble living an ocean away. Not a ton of Lucas footage, minus a few lines and um…THIS.

New iPhone clip from Genny featuring “Don’t Mind” and a repaved Allen Street.

“Low-key we’re already rappers.” An interview with Na-kel Smith and Tyshawn Jones.

After a bondo job, this spot has been going hard in the spring Insta clip cycle.

Bobshirt has a new 20-minute video interview with Gino, where he nerds out on gear, old videos, midtown Manhattan spots (Breezy Ledges was his favorite?!), etc.

This “New Rules” montage out of Baltimore that got posted on Thrasher this weekend has been getting a lot of talk lately. A lot of its more insane tricks are in D.C. (full yell-at-screen mode at the nose manual nollie flip and knobbed Gold Rail tricks), but it’s great to see an underrated scene like Baltimore get some burn.

Behind the scenes of a one-up with Charles Rivard Ph.D.

Cell Jawn #25 via Mitch from Philly (yo everyone please watch your friends’ backs when skating the triangle on 9th Street…) + Philly trip clip via Max Hull that feels post-Love even though its pre-post-Love n shit.

Early edit of Derm’s “Welcome to Politic” part from last year #jersey #jersey #jersey

Here’s a Guardian article about Palace, where you learn that many of the beloved product descriptions on their webstore are Food Network inspired.

Fun lil’ VHS-flavored clip from some Long Island homies.

Quick feature from skateboarder turned New York firefighter, Mike Hernandez, who you might remember from old issues of Strength, Slap, etc. [Warning: bikes.]

Shout out to everyone who contributed to the Addias Ababa skatepark fund that was linked on here a few months ago. They were able to build the first skatepark in Ethiopia with the $35k that was raised.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: The Drakes would eventually lose this game, but Kyle Lowry’s timing with this Hail Mary was unbelievable. Despite having zero emotional stake in either, sorta praying for a Heat-Cavs E.C.F. for the theater.

Quote of the Week:

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Spots From the Internet

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Via Philly

Creature dropped an official “Welcome to the Team” part for Jon Gardner, which features a whole bunch of his best moments from Bruns 2 — or at least a handful of the most shout-at-the-screen inducing ones. You should still buy Bruns 2 though. Shout out to that phase Marquez went through in 2008 when he tried to film a Creature sponsor-me tape and would drive out to Sayerville 4x a week :)

Hopps put their “Saturday” commercial from the Polar premiere online. Features footage from Keith “Loudest Cheer at Any Premiere” Denley, and Brian Clarke skating the always cool-looking Museum of Natural History benches.

QS crowd fave Derm takes a step back from the crust and does some lines at L.E.S.

New iPhone video via Genesis featuring the N.Y. Ramp Co. quarterpipe, double-curb rainbow concoction at 12th & A, Keith Denley’s first clip of 2016, and other notable developments to occur in lower Manhattan skateboarding this past month.

An interview with Tony Choy-Sutton, the guy behind the lens of Heaven’s Gate, 2016’s frontrunner for spot selection and best avoidance of noted #traps.

Green Zine interviewed Nick V. from LurkNYC. Shout out to Non Fiction.

Boil the Ocean sorta reviews the Polar video, sorta ties it back to Henry Sanchez’s recent “I’m still skating” revelations, and dwells on the big-ification of small companies.

Filed under: “Skaters who seem strangely even more relevant to what’s going on today than when they were actually putting out parts.” Whatever happened to Jake Rupp?

New one from Canadian #skatevideohouse thinktank, CLUBGEAR.

Photojournalistic piece on the skate scene in Iran via Vice.

An artsy and subdued remix video of 2013 Q.S.S.O.T.Y. Leo Gutman’s last part.

The GX1000 video premieres in New York on next Tuesday, April 19th. No info on venue yet, but *assuming* it will be where every skate video premiere in New York is :) Teaser here, and GX photo feature here.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Seventy two, and bumped Kobe Bryant’s final NBA game to ESPN2 in favor of a prospective seventy three.

Quote of the Week: “I heard having heavy ankle weights is actually really bad for you. You’re supposed to work your way up.” — Daniel Kim

#TBT when street skaters had vert sections in the middle of their parts.

Morning Report

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Both of these missed Monday links yesterday*, and both deserve special attention.

Bronze just dropped a video for their now-available Huf collaboration, chopped up to the plethora of newscasts about footwear-related violence. It’s basically a real good mini Josh Wilson part, which contains a First Annual Regular Stance Heelflip of the Year Candidate. The second GS9 part has Tierney exploring even more griptape colors, and Dick Rizzo furthering the ongoing resuscitation of the Verizon Banks. Dude, why does everyone hate the VX so much these days? ;)

The other day, we were having an office discussion about how Last of the Mohicans is low-key one of the more influential New York videos of the past decade or so. Even though ~75% of the footage was from Florida etc, the New York bits rewired how visitors and recent ex-pats went about filming in the city. It was one of the first vids to entirely ignore skating below triple-digit Manhattan streets. Before Mohicans and those early Dobbin Block montages, few people gave a shit about trekking out to East New York or Morris Heights to skate some rugged brick bank spot you could get stabbed at. Nowadays, that’s some people’s entire M.O. That was one of the first videos to really prioritize sticking its nose in outer borough crust.

ANYWAY, Caddo was a big part of that whole era, and he dropped a wallride-heavy L.A. trip part for Politic yesterday. No music, just urethane screeching against walls. The Politic guys even went the distance of calling it a “casual” part — not like footage has ever done justice to how insane this dude’s skating is anyway :)

ICYMI: There’s a great noseslide in the video that Politic dropped last month, and here’s a .GIF 4 da Tumblr of the Caddo kickflip at the biggest bust in New York.

*Unrelated to this, but related to yesterday’s Monday Links post title: This is still the best Meek Mill song of 2015.