San Francisco | Quartersnacks

The Spot is the Star: The Week in Spot-Based Videos

Daily News March 18th, 2016 · 1:20 pm · 15

new barcelona skate spot

Dude, we love themed video parts. Grate themed video parts, garbage themed video parts, dumpster themed video parts! And there is no more beloved theme to build a video part around than to learn every nuance and cranny of a skate spot by skating it for the full duration of said part. Given the rate at which spots worth learning have been diminishing, we’ve been given reason to celebrate such one-spot achievements more than ever. You think it’s a coincidence that both 18-year-olds and 38-year-olds love Gonz’s “just cruising in the street”-thing from Video Days? Cruising is everyone’s M.O. now, whereas maintaining fidelity to one spot takes extra effort.

With that, a genre has skyrocketed in popularity within the skateboard media marketplace: spot-based content. Whereas since the demise of 411 “spot checks,” the story has 97% of the time been about the skater, the team or the event, spot-based videos are the new way to make us remember that we better learn how to skate walls if we ever want to skate an street object outside of a caged-in skatepark ever again ;)

Atlanta’s checkerboard spot benefits from more lenient “plaza” definitions that we allow in 2016. There aren’t many longstanding street spots with multiple ledges left, so it becomes one by default — though it may be the only Great American Skate Spot™ 2.0 that I have no desire to skate. (Shit looks mad high.) The spot doesn’t have a storied mythology or celebrated culture, and its background is not densely layered with regal civic buildings or skyscrapers. It’s just a spot that has been long enough for us to be forced to respect its status in the era of depleting spots. An all-Columbus Circle part was in order for last year to commemorate its ten-year run for the same reason, until a cop decided to pepperspray a teenager…

Jimmy Lannon, noted “regular” Magenta outlier and 2014 “Best Line at Three Up Three Down” titleholder, paid tribute to the spot’s longer-than-usual tenure in Thread / Headcleaner, with a literal #musicsupervision choice that’s one step removed from Mark Suciu skating to Phil Collins’ “Sussudio” or like, Soy Panday skating to “Panda.”

LurkNYC without the NYC: Cyrus Bennett in ‘Braindead’

Daily News February 19th, 2014 · 5:42 am · 5

Photo via @lurknyc on Instagram.

As recently discussed, nobody from the northeast really escapes to Miami anymore. People go to L.A., sure, but San Francisco has become a go-to winter refuge for those easily dissuaded by that traffic-laden city some 400 miles down the coast. (Cue up every person who’s ever said “S.F. is a lot like an east coast city, except _____.” Maybe we make it out there one day and discover just how inaccurate of a job rappers and FTC videos do in portraying it.)

Nick vonWerssowetz‘s new video is a twelve-minute project filmed during a three-week hideout in San Francisco. It has been online for 48 hours, which means it’s pretty old by today’s internet standards. There are standalone versions of every other Cyrus Bennett part on YouTube, so why not? Below is his closer from Braindead.

You can watch Braindead in full here. There’s a Kingpin Skinny Pimp song in it. (Also why hasn’t someone skated to “One Life 2 Live” yet? Seems like a missed opportunity, especially given the past few years worth of videos’ heavy indulgence in lo-fi Memphis stuff. Night footage edit to “Midnight Hoes” maybe?)

Yo, so like, Blind Jeans are obvs back, but so is color blocking it seems…

P.S. Whatever reputation for, uh, “eccentric vagrants” San Francisco may have — New Jersey has it beat, at least for this week.

Permanently the Best Little Kid Skater of All Time

Time Capsule May 9th, 2012 · 11:32 am · 9

(This full ad is really sick.)

48 Blocks has been posting an all-Pier 7 video by Brad Johnson over the past two weeks. Highlights include Marcus McBride doing every plausible flip trick over the blocks, Rob Welsh being a #phatstylez icon, Young Stevie almost attempting a boneless, and Lavar McBride reminding everyone that he will forever be the best little kid skater. No, it doesn’t matter how many kids today can nollie flip back tail (or 1080) before they can buy cigarettes.

As a companion piece to the Pier 7 video, here’s Lavar’s part from S.F’s Greatest Misses, also a Brad Johnson creation (while we’re at it, he’s also responsible for one of skateboarding’s greatest party parts.) It’s a compilation video released in 2006 that encompasses the late-EMB days through the Pier 7 / Union Square era. The mid-nineties Cellski track also cares to remedy the underutilization of classic Bay Area rap in Bay Area skate parts, an issue we’re still dealing with today.

It has been on YouTube for five years, but the quality is trash. Here’s a cleaned up version. Oh, and here’s a link to watch Trilogy, just in case.

Day Shift

Daily News November 11th, 2010 · 5:12 pm · 3

Saw a new video on 48 Blocks (embedded at the bottom of this post) and got hyped enough to go looking for some lifestyle-y SF photos from the nineties.

Somehow wound up on Flickr and spotted this Ramondetta photo (yes, obviously, it’s not from the nineties) from Travis Jensen’s Flickr page, with this write-up below:

+++++++

“My office is located on the 6th Floor of one of the Embarcadero Center Towers in downtown San Francisco. The view overlooks world renowned skate spot “Hubba Hideout.”

Located in Ferry Park, in the heart of The City’s Financial District, Hubba Hideout consists of two waist-high ledges that align the stairs of the elevated walkway connecting Ferry Park and One Maritime Plaza. Hubba, if you don’t know, is slang for crack. The spot, which sits on a slight hill surrounded by large trees, earned its nickname in the early ‘90s, as it was a popular incognito place for individuals to congregate and smoke crack, high-level execs in tailor-made suits included.

Now a popular afternoon drinking and weed smoking spot, throughout the 90s and into the early millennium, Hubba Hideout to street skateboarding was like Maverick’s or Pipeline is to surfing, meaning you didn’t skate there unless you knew what the hell you were doing. Many a skaters have gotten their asses handed to them on a platter messing around at Hubba.

In the early millennium, the city and many businesses were able to curb skateboarding with the induction of skate-stoppers (steel knobs affixed to ledges, handrails and other surfaces to prevent skateboarding). Hubba was one of the first spots to go. The spot has since been de-knobbed by local vigilante skateboarders at least ten times.

Although there are currently no skate stoppers on the ledges, the city has removed a good chunk of the landing area and replaced it with gravel, making the spot virtually unskateable without lying down a sheet of plywood, masonite or metal.

Occasionally, from the 6th floor of my office, I’ll see skaters — tourists mostly, sizing up the ledges. Very few actually skate them. They mostly go there to pay homage. However, on the day this particular photo was taken, I heard the clickety-clack of skateboards and looked down to see professional skateboarders Peter Ramondetta and Brian Anderson, photographer Gabe Morford, and a couple other cats that I couldn’t make out. Peter and Brian were gearing up to get down on the ledges. I took this as a que to get my camera.