Live From the Exito

This place is a good time.

♥ A heartwarming story about a New York skate shop owner, a New York surf shop owner, Paris, and Mike Carroll doing a backside 5050 ♥

We rant about seeing the same spots in Big Skate City™ trip edits like anyone else, but just the right mix of people skating them, and all of a sudden, none of the nitpicky skate criticism matters anymore. Really wish this Insta edit of Max Palmer, Remy Tav and Sylvain Tognelli skating go-to spots in Paris was 4x as long. (Also funny how 2/3 of the people in it don’t even have Instagrams.)

And on that note, Victor Campillo’s ender for his Quota part is the first bit of recent République footage to really stick to the memory. (Starting to notice a trend when New York news is slow…we just post a bunch of Paris stuff. Can’t wait to get this satellite office popping.)

It had a brief run on the TWS site, but “Crop Circles Volume 1” is now online in full, and is one of the best post-Love Park / Philly survivalist videos yet.

“A typical day was waking up at 6:30 A.M., breakfast, heading to the construction site, working till 10-11 P.M., and having a late night crew that stayed up to 3 A.M. on some days.” Monster Children has the story about how a small crew with minimal resources built the first-ever skatepark in Angola in just 28 days.

“Did skateboarder’s hopes for a professional minimum salary level die along with Rob Dyrdek’s dreams for a skaters’ union? Does there exist a ‘rough cut’ of Nike’s commercial in which Kyrie Irving clowns Eric Koston for not having a video game character in the last 10 years’ worth of THPS titles? Is this commercial ripe for parody by the remaining aggressive inline rollerbladers, except where they’re barging Lance Mountain’s backyard pool?”

Theories has the results from their Underground S.O.T.Y. poll.

Antonio x his famous L.J. via this past December.

TWS put up Antonio’s tricks from Duets, which includes maybe the first-ever clip shot from the inside of a trash can? We’d add it to our ever-growing thread of trash-themed skate memes, but it almost becomes low-hanging fruit at that point…

BETTY FORD” is a phone edit from Giovany Reyes featuring some boys traveling the world and skating everything from the best spot on the planet to the worst spot on the planet.

Pretty pointless to link a video with 100k+ YouTube views on here, but it’s been slow and it’s winter. Franky Villani has some New York clips in the middle of his Dickies part.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: We don’t often showcase dramatic dunks on here (or 2019 Warriors highlights, for that matter), but that Demarcus Cousins dunk was straight out of the 1990s NBA. And we’ve honestly been far too exhausted with any and all developments pertaining to the basketball team who plays on 33rd and 7th this past half-decade to have any solid opinion about the Porzingis trade. It’s just all too tiring. We have shit to do.

Quote of the Week: “The vegan girl at the vegan restaurant was having a vegan crisis about her vegan Super Bowl party.” — Alex Mosley

Put A Date On It

T.F. Global. Photo via Claudio Majorana’s book, Head of the Lion.

Is there a compilation of board flip challenge fails yet, or are we going to have to assign that grueling job to an intern?

Looks like the solid barrage of upstate New York videos is gonna keep rolling in 2019 (see #5.) The Seasons guys have a new ten-minute video on Thrasher entitled “Albany 2.5” with tons of Empire State Plaza footage, and a mini S.F. section at the end.

Wasn’t really sure what to expect from this upon click, and it thankfully ended up being smiles the whole way through ♥ Here’s a good seven minutes of Fred Gall iPhone footage at some D.I.Y. spot and a bunch of typical New Jersey crust.

ICYMI: Cooper Winterson unlocks another dimension of ConEdison Banks in his Skating Is Easy part.

Had a bunch of “wait, that spot’s been gone for years” thoughts watching this, and then realized it’s more of a remix than a new part. Either way! Any B.A. is good B.A., and Grant Yansura was nice enough to pull together a bunch of his [mainly New York] footage from SB Chronicles 3 and onward for a new-old “Slappy Seconds” edit, which includes a handful of unseen clips.

Theories is doing another “Underground Skater of the Year” thing this year, and we’re writing in a ballot for Jawn Gardner.

“Oh, you were just skateboarding? That’s weird. You can leave.” Solo has an interview with John Shanahan, and Skate Jawn has a lil’ feature on his photos.

Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Tim O’Connor posted up an unreleased episode of his podcast with Ricky Oyola, and Steve Brandi has a “Skater’s Favorite Skater” TWS vid where he talks about how Ricky influenced him over the years.

Not a lot of content like this going live on the skateboard internet in the age of Instagram Stories: the Village Psychic dudes drove from Minnesota to Memphis to escape the cold and did a long[ish]form blog post with photos about their journey.

One of those “I’m not really sure wtf this is about” Boil the Ocean posts: something about testing for weed and the Olympics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Forever love that double noseslide line. Or any double noseslide line, for that matter. Matt Velez uploaded three minutes of Mark Wetzel raw files to his YouTube.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Gotta be that Kyrie v.s. Iggy highlight — no, wait. J.R. Smith’s hat. Yeah, J.R. Smith’s hat is the play of the week.

Quote of the Week: “OVO is the new RDS.” — Torey Goodall

Whatever You Do, You Have To Keep Moving Forward

Cyrus, Antonio, Bobby Worrest, and others on a Nike SB trip skating around somewhere in the middle of the country.

The only regret from 2018 that came into the QS office on the first day of 2019 operations was not editing the second half of last year’s “Best of” clip to “Thank U, Next.” Kyota has us covered in his winter iPhone montage though. Borough Hall, L.E.S., the new 11th Street manny pad, etc.

Had no idea what this was upon click, but it’s pretty sick: “Massapequa Keith Garbarino Mixtape” via Matt Schleyer. Switch back tail shove at Riverbank was fire.

“The city could have blindly purchased a half-pipe but have instead commissioned a sweeping concrete amphitheatre and painted tarmac hill. The expressive architectural gestures exist without the need for an explicit purpose, allowing children, families, cyclists and skateboarders to develop their own relationship with the space.” You already know most of what it has to say, but this is a nice article about cities embracing skateable public space.

Lucas Puig has an iPhone part for …Andale Bearings.

Paul Grund has a quick photo feature over on Skate Jawn about him, Bobby D, Hjalte, and Nik Stain’s voyage through Eastern Europe with Ben Chadourne. And yeah, there doesn’t seem to be much use skating anywhere else in Prague.

Even almost two years after its demolition, there’s no lack of “last days of Shorty’s” content, but this mini doc on Tommy Cuba, one of the original Shorty’s crew members, is probably shot way better than the rest of them.

Raw Deals #008 via Tombo from roughly around ~2003 A.K.A. the era of rough fits. The “fashion” from this time period is really something else. Half the people are dressed like they’re getting a greasy hungover bagel in Murray Hill on a Saturday morning wearing their girlfriend’s Ugg slippers.

There’s some condo over on 61st and Riverside that has its own private mini ramp the same way it’d have like, a swimming pool or a gym. That thing will definitely get a ton of use. (There’s a rail and a few ledges in front of the Soulcycle that you get some time at, though.)

These edits from Swedish slappy lords Poetic Collective are — along with the POP Clips — some of the funnest Euro edits going right now. Never not hyped to skate (and book Euro tickets) after watching one.

The Bunt is back with a new season. Their first episode is with Pedro Delfino.

Rest in Peace to the Lower East Side Guy in All White.

While everyone has a reinvigorated interest in Soulja Boy given his recent, um, media blitz, we feel obligated to point everyone in the direction of this Endless Shrimp mix that Shrimp C did back in 2017 (it was the last episode of the show he ever did.) He listened to literally every Soulja Boy song in existence, and narrowed the best ones down to an hour-long playlist. There are a couple omissions, but to each their own.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: The game itself was ok, but the end of Sixers v.s. Thunder was the most fun all last week.

Quote of the Week
Inquisitive Gentleman: “How the hell do you even know that guy?”
Sean Kinney: “I went to his wedding. He has nipple rings.”

We post this every MLK Day, yes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Autopilot For The Weeeek

“Without that skater/photographer communication, you have no choice but to sit and wait for the photo to show itself. It felt like I had photographed a wild leopard in the jungle.” Bobby Worrest — 360 flip noseslide. Photo by Jeff Comber. Head over to King skate mag for the full blurb.

*First great video part of 2019 alert* The scientists at Palace realized they needed some young blood on the team and got Heitor Da Silva (alum from the same Swedish skate school as Oski) onboard. He has an awesome new Adidas part out right now (that backside flip, switch frontside flip line…), and an interview about his journey from Brazil to Norway to The Triangle™ over on Grey. Could have probably dug a bit deeper on the song, but oh well.

Know a few people who would die happy after skating this spot for an hour.

Me, you, and Cyrus Bennett have the same favorite skateboarder. Hint: he skates more than everyone, for longer than everyone, is older than everyone, and is more oblivious to what’s going on in skateboarding that everyone.

Jake Johnson gave Dickies a tour of his hometown D.I.Y. spot in State College, PA + skated his backyard mini-ramp with a handful of special guests.

Skating is easy for Pat Gallaher.

Traffic scanned a 2005 TWS article about a D.I.Y. tour they did in Hartford, Albany, Rochester, Akron and Pittsburgh back in the early days of the company, with words from Ricky, and a bunch of rad photos. Never knew they were the architects behind that still-running Albany bank-to-ledge. #respect.

Jimmy Marketti uploaded uploaded an old edit of some Rob Campbell footage from 2005. The rollaway on the frontside wallride at the Banks is hall of fame.

The Village Psychic guys like Borough Hall a lot A.K.A. they made a video of all their 2018 iPhone footage. They look high, but when the hell were those plastic orange blocks there?

Not sure how to feel about this… A skateboarder at Le Dome was the main tipster to unraveling the biggest art heist in a generation ;)

Wow. Quite literally, “sorry I didn’t say hi.”

Spot Updates: Not the most oft-skated spot these days (unless you’re winding up there after getting kicked out of Bigscreen or something), but there’s not much to skate at Penn Plaza anymore, as the building put astro turf all over the upper portion of the spot.

Winter #TBT: The Brownsville igloo from ~2011.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Giannis just doing what we all feel…except maybe if you’re a Rockets fan.

Quote of the Week: “I was back at the hotel in bed watching everyone’s Instagram stories…just thinking ‘we’re all so fucking stupid.'” — Pryce Holmes

En Route

They were gon’ lie to you but they just had to tell the truth. The dickhead who couldn’t get his weird bagel order fast enough last month got arrested, by the way. Imagine explaining to your loved ones that a slow cinnamon bagel was your reason for getting locked up. Be patient with everyone 2k19 we outtt.

No, “First Post of 20__” this year because we’re already on the way…

Instead of rumor mongering, Village Psychic got on their responsible journalist shit and found out the truth behind the hearsay re: Tiago getting banned from the U.S.

Not sure what Soup Skateboards is, but their new promo has Jason Spivey footage + it’s always a pleasure to see footage of the childhood-favorite Zipper Ledge (across from the grate ledge on 114th and Morningside), which has been under scaffolding for a century.

We had to call an emergency office meeting on Sunday to debate whether or not we could, in clear conscience, link a video that has a 360 shove it front smith body varial out in it. Talks were held, feelings were hurt, norms obstructed, but after hours of deliberation and taking into account the slow news week behind us (plus the really sick FedEx line), the link passed along party lines. Sebo Walker has an “8 Days in New York” part up on Thrasher where he skates some of the city’s standard tourist traps.

Bronze uploaded a few John Shanahan outtakes from It’s Time.

Quick New York section at the start of “Pack,” a video by [I’m guessing] some Austin dudes.

~Boil the Ocean want some more~ here’s an addendum to the site’s “Best Parts” countdown, with ten more worthwhile 2018 parts, and quick blurbs about each.

Mark Gonzalez made a video tribute to Dylan Rieder’s 360 flips.

Peter Spooner’s new video, Skating is Easy, has a New York premiere in Bushwick tomorrow. 101 Wilson Avenue, 8 P.M. Flyer here if you think we’re lying. This line from it is sick.

Lyon seems fun :)

McNally Jackson is staying in the same space. Lurk on.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: The Sports Desk is a stubborn place. It wasn’t until the 2016 Finals and The Greatest Sports Game of All-Time that we realized, yeah, we gotta stop with our silly Lebron freeze. Enough is enough. But we still can’t bring ourselves to give James Harden a play of the week because of all the excruciating final five minutes of NBA games he has robbed from our lives. So here’s a young man doing a behind the back dunk…in a high school game.

Quote of the Week: “Yeah, it’s terrible…but I’ll still skate it all the time.” — Zered Bassett re: that new skatepark next to the B.Q.E., which nobody can seem to come on a consensus on a neighborhood for.

Happy belated birthday to Max Palmer da G ♥ thanks for the inspo. Baby you’re a firework.