QS Film School — An Intro To Modern Skate Videos With Plots

In Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film about the porn industry of the 70s and 80s, Burt Reynolds’ Jack Horner gives a fateful speech admonishing the advent of home video: “I have a stable of actors and actresses. They’re professionals. They’re not a bunch of fucking amateurs. They’re proven in the box office. They get people in theaters, where films should be seen, and they know how to fuck.”

It is not hard to imagine similar tirades (maybe with a few words switched out) occurring in Powell-Peralta boardrooms as the 80s were coming to a close, and skateboarding was around the corner from a crash. Skate videos of the decade were refined and narrative-driven, and for good reason. There were only like, six tricks invented at the time, so they had to fill up those other 53 minutes in an hour-long skate video with story, personality shots and other shit.

But what would come after skateboarding’s believed-to-be demise was a rebirth. Videos like Snuff, Video Days, Tim & Henry’s Pack of Lies, and Questionable were unrepentant in their progression — they were too busy inventing modern skateboarding in front of your eyes to worry about the extracurricular malarky from the Animal Chin days. New faces and a camera thrown in a backpack was the name of the game. The old mode was dead. But for how long?

Skateboarding draws many parallels to pornography, but one of the most curious ones is an incessant need to add narrative to something that nobody watches for the story. As we will soon learn, plots returned to skate videos as quickly as they went.

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It’s Like 2 Bros. But For Vegans

Photo by Andre Page

Happy Birthday Pad Dowd. He once filmed four lines in one day.

John Gardner, first ballot entry for the “Skateboarders Who Make The World Smile” Hall of Fame. He filmed a new, five-minute cruiser part for O.J. Wheels from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Thanks John ♥

LurkNYC has a new Carlos Mendoza part. Ender at Blubba is pretty nuts.

Can’t tell if it’s an oversight, but if Ride Channel is truly R.I.P., allow us to take a look back at some of the greatest headliners ever written for the skateboard internet.

The Bunt has a [text] interview with our friend Keith Henry, the photographer who is forever on the quest for the right-fitting pair of pants.

The 2000s nostalgia continues, with Dime guiding DC’s hand into the return of fatboy shoes via their re-issue of the DC Legacy. Ripped Laces has some words on both the slimmed down and husky versions of what is essentially the DC Air Max 95.

Thrasher put up a new, all-NY “Mind of Marius” with a bunch of chill Lenox footage.

The double-vision intro from Spirit Quest is now online.

You’ve probably seen it, this one. New 12-minute Frog edit.

The QS Film Desk isn’t the most enthusiastic group of Harmony Korine fans (haven’t watched the Epicly Later’d yet…), but gotta #respect anyone who made the leap from growing up on skate videos to making feature films. He talked about some of his favorite videos over on Vice.

There’s a new, longer version of the Nike SB vid of Lacey Baker skating around the city, which you’ve seen in commercial form of as pre-roll on Thrasher, etc.

I cracked him over the head with the Yaje board. Avocado to the brain.”

Seems like there’s a sick spot under all those Halloween decorations.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Kyrie Irving on the C’s is 2011 D. Rose I guess?

Quote of the Week: “Strike one, that’s her man. Strike two, that’s her other man. Strike three, she’s a fed.” — Dallas Todd

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pacific Ocean in the Backyard Looking Sexy

Screen Shot 2014-05-08 at 11.14.06 PM

There are obviously an overwhelming amount of causes that need contributions right now, but even if it’s just a few bucks, please contribute to the construction of the Annapurna Skatepark, Nepal’s first international-standard concrete park.

Slapmagazine420 @ gmail shared this amazing Jim Greco flow chart. What’s ur fav?

Congrats to Yaje on his Transworld cover. 1) Is it safe to say the easiest way to land on the cover on a major magazine while skating a spot in New York is via the Columbus Park rail. 2) Why does the cover layout of TWS now look like TSM?

“I’d rather watch Kenny do a backside 180…” The same wonderful remixer who treated us to post-Pretty Sweet remixes of Jesus and Carroll went ahead and put together a feel-good George Benson x Kenny Anderson pairing.

Always nice to break free from the L.E.S. Park industrial content complex on Monday Links :) Bill$ is a new, 11-minute video from Angel Fonseca and The Bronx boys.

Choppy Omega was the first one to ollie the Love Gap, Vinny Ponte was the first to document it, and Reynolds is the first one to piss people off for flying in to just get one trick and bounce. Vern Laird and Jimmy Gorecki wax on about the days when not everything at Love Park was on film.

Even though it was only partially based in New York, Last of the Mohicans was a 2008 that further propelled the typical mode of skating this city into deep outer borough crust. Joe Perrin and OJ Wheels put together Relapse of the Mohicans, a 13-minute video with parts and cameos from the entire original cast.

The Bunt’s latest is with Bastien Salabanzi.

Boil the Ocean furthers expands on the concept of professional skateboarding as professional wrestling by weighing its potential future as a Pay-Per-View spectacle.

Spot Updates: 1) The building further knobbed everything at CBS, to the point where you can’t even skate it as a keyhole ledge anymore. 2) M2M closed down / is moving.

Anyone go into Think Coffee on Mercer and looking to make some extra money?

think coffee

Stop shaming night owls you squares. The case for going to bed at 2:30 A.M.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: 6′ 3 180 pound Russell Westbrook over … 6′ 11, 270 pound Demarcus Cousins.

They could’ve given an Oscar to Network because apparently it came out yesterday.

135th & Riverside

john shanahan - james juckett

Click to enlarge. Original post here.

We don’t often run posts of a single photo, but in a year with a lot of remarkable New York-set photographs already (Mehring’s shot of Olson on Water Street, Atiba’s Dylan Reider cover shot, and Keith Morrison’s stolen shot of Austyn Gillette all come to mind), John Shanahan’s diptych of James Juckett stands out in particular.

Located at 135th and Riverside, this stoned-lined pathway leads you to 12th Avenue under the Riverside Drive Viaduct. There isn’t much to skate here, but for such a photogenic location, it’s surprising it hasn’t popped up in even a lifestyle-y skate photo until now. Your Tumblr dashboard won’t tell you two things about the spot: 1) Both the runway to the first set and the space after it are downhill. The guy had half a second before he hit the wallride. 2) The brownish spot on the ground between the two sets has to be one of the most urinated-on pieces of public space in New York City — we’re talking decades of piss that probably couldn’t be cleansed if you threw a bucket of bleach on it. The dude literally risked a staph infection for this awesome pair of photos.

On some full movie nerd shit: This stairway’s scenic qualities have been put to use for quite a while now. It appeared at the end of the 1948 film Force of Evil, which was one of the first movies to have a sizable chunk of its photography done on the actual street in New York, as opposed to a set. Martin Scorsese has been geeking out over it for pretty much the duration of his career.

Great work from skater James Juckett and photographer John Shanahan.

You Cannot Be Serious: Gino Pushing

Click to Enlarge. Times Square doesn’t look that cool anymore, does it?

There is a great new Nike commercial that features “Gino pushing.” Ending a skateboarding commercial off in Times Square, or even acknowledging Times Square in anything skate-related comes off corny and touristy 99.9% of the time. Times Square has a lot to do with New York, but absolutely nothing to do with New York skateboarding — even your typical “Summer Trip to NY!” montage knows to avoid it.

BUT, if you want to have Gino Iannucci fit into a lineage of James Dean circa 1955 (the photo was taken several months before he died), and a 1980s John McEnroe Nike ad campaign referencing the original Dean photograph, that would apply to the .1% space available for exceptions. It’s like the skateboard-equivalent of the final scene in Boogie Nights where Mark Wahlberg is doing an impression of Robert De Niro doing an impression of Marlon Brando. Or something.