“I went from being a kid skating on my block to hanging out with all the best skaters in New York City because I learned how to do a frontside 360 boneless.” A friend once had a story about how their book club took a razor to The Powerbroker and sliced it up into three books to make it more reasonable of a read. This isn’t that dramatic, but a blog interview that takes over two hours to read is a lot for most people in the era of byte-sized #content — but we’re *SO* happy that people are putting detailed, rich content on the internet that requires a commitment! Isn’t that what it’s for?! The Slam City Skates blog’s interview with Eli Gesner about skateboarding + graffiti in New York in the 80s, night clubs in the early 90s, the beginnings of Shut + Zoo York, etc. is like a little history book :)
In case you crawled under a rock in the early hours of Thursday morning and are just joining us… Supreme released Candyland, a new full-length video in honor of their new S.F. shop. Spent the weekend thinking what exactly to write about it, but it feels like a certain switch inward heel is the perfect writers prompt. #staytuned.
This past year, nobody else incited as many smilesand remindersof the gloriousescapism that skateboarding provides. Thank you Jamal Smith, 2017’s Q.S.S.O.T.Y., for inspiring us to enjoy the world on a skateboard. Sadly, we can’t fly you to Canary Islands like Thrasher can (…not yet), but just wanted to say thanks :)
Even as an institution that often gets chastised for Rihanna songs in skate clips and bad filming, we gotta chime in here: wtf is with the choppy frame-rate, wtf is up with the darkass clips, and wtf is up with that Morrissey song in Antonio’s new Berrics part? The skating though…is absolutely F U C K E D.
Oddly enjoyed this way more than expected, probably because they skate a bunch of weird shit that nobody bothers with, e.g. they got two clips at the Gristedes on 96th Street — a Weed Maps “Summer Trip to New York” clip with Jaws, Tommy Sandoval and Boo Johnson. I think we ran into Jaws at a rave when he was filming this.
…aaannndddd Village Psychic made a “Best of 2017” mix of the year’s ACTUAL S.O.T.Y., regardless of what the yellow t-shirts may have told you.
“Belgrade is the best city I’ve ever been to in my life.” The Rios Crew continues to inspire skateboard travel dreams far outside the conventional Euro destinations with each new clip. “Dunja,” their latest, hits Serbia’s capital, Montenegro and Croatia.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: It’ll never not be funny that Kyrie was just like “nah, I don’t wanna play with this dude anymore.” He lost yesterday, but this was sick.
Quote of the Week: “You should just make Q.S.S.O.T.Y. ‘The Max Palmer Award.'” — John Choi
“He does pretty hard tricks.” — Javier Sarmiento re: Jesus Fernandez. Part early Epicly Later’d, part “Day in the Life,” and all people just fanning out on what a great human — let alone skater — he is, Free Skate Mag‘s threepartJesus documentary is the positive force we need in all of our lives right now.
Somehow missed this one when it first came out, but Heavenly is a sixteen-minute video of mostly Texas (?) dudes skating mostly New York spots. They lowkey went in on that Water Street rail-to-rock that Connor lipslid, and switch backside flip manual at the Brooklyn Tompkins park is insane.
“You didn’t want to do outdated tricks, you wanted to stay up because the tide was moving. As much as skateboarders, critics, journalists, or whoever is recording the timeline of skateboarding want to say that there are no rules, there always has been a wave. And you’re either in the front of the wave or behind the wave.” Bobby Puleo on a simple question for Village Psychic: “How do you feel about wallies?”
