Sure, friends in the background are allowed to clap and cheer, but a stoicism has always been expected of the person rolling away. It is part of skateboarding’s great contortion of reality: a year spent on a video part is boiled down to three-and-a-half minutes, oh, and dude wasn’t even that hyped on himself when he landed those tricks.
Ben “Actually, I Like Wearing Wack Gear” Blundell receives redemption after barely any clips in Courtesy. Go watch his “OJO” part over on Thrasher. Rest in Peace Dillon ♥
Gotta hand it to Europe’s Most Productive Crew™ for consistently doing something that feels so natural and different than everything else out there, year after year — especially in a country without much of a skate industry. Also ~love~ the recurring role of dogs in their videos. “Nap Mint Nap Volume 4” is the latest from the Rios Crew. We really gotta make it out to Budapest, pretty much everyone says nothing but good things…
In hindsight, it’s pretty crazy that a peak shiny suit era Bad Boy song ever slipped into an Alien Workshop video, even for 45 seconds. And guess what! Twenty years later, we get the full [re]edit: Manolo remixed two decades of Kalis footage to the complete extended version of Black Rob’s “Whoa.” FWIW, that album has some sleepergems.
“Pornography had already been done, and the skate/fetish graphic thing said all that needed to be said on the subject. Take away the black bag and the sticker about censorship, and you just have a dumb idea repeated endlessly. For nearly 3 decades.” Ted Barrow wrote a nice piece on the history of the black bag World Industries board, and everything that followed it over on Skateism.
Solange in a skate clip ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Def worth the watch from Peter Deigaard + Drew, Hugo, Ville, and all the Copenhagen boys, which will make you feel the summer even if you have no Danish travel plans :)
“DOA RMX” is a video featuring some upstate dudes (pretty sure…), and has a random ass remix of Pat Washington footage from the early 2000s at the end, which is timely given Jamal Smith reminded us about his iconic Got Gold? part last week.
Realized the other day that Tao’s “KBH MIXEN” video is the 2018 video that still gets the most revisitation in 2019. Felt Ville’s section deserved it’s own upload :)
Not quite sure why the willy grind has been making a comeback as of late, but there’s a lot of good stuff in Brandon Gironda’s part via the Westchester County-based PFP5 video (ender is wild) + an accompanying Q & A with Mike Sassano about the long-running video series.
“When people are in public spaces or people are walking through public space…They conceive it as a kind of as a private property. Do you understand what I mean? So it’s like, ‘this is for this…Look there’s a bench here and it’s clearly meant for people who have shopped in that store to come here and eat this kind of fucking sandwich…’ They have a certain kind of possessive sense of everything.” — The always insightful Ocean Howell, with your #longread for the week via an interview about *shock* how skateboarders interact with public space in 2018.
We’re holding an editor’s meeting first thing this morning to see if it is possible to do a skateboard version of this New York mag article: “The Oral History of Four Loko in New York. A lot of cancelled following day sessions, and a lot of unnecessary nights in bookings coincided with this era writ large.
Two Brazilians came through and filmed his five minute shared New York part during that one magical week when the planters were moved away from the CBS Ledge. I know GX got all you psyched, but everyone please be careful filming in traffic, for the love of God.
“I didn’t really receive shit out of it other than 11-16 year-olds hating me. Now that they’re 23 and they finally meet me, they tell me I’m a nice guy.” Love Skate Mag has an interview with Lurker Lou.
……aaaaaannnnnddddd Jim Thiebaud — someone who has received death threats over board graphics — has some thoughts for the “leave politics out of skateboarding” crowd.
Interviewing skaters alongside their moms could actually be a good interview series idea.
Quote Tweet of the Week:
(On that note, you might want to check out Stefan Janoski’s stop motion short film, “God I Need A Girlfriend.”)
Daily NewsAugust 6th, 2018 · 4:45 pmComments Off on Getting There, Getting There, Getting There…
This is perhaps the *SECOND* (!) time in this skateboard media enterprise’s modern history that there has been THREE :( Monday Links post to hold the five slots on the homepage. We’re working our way out of this slow news cycle + backend work and should be good to roll with more than two continuous updates to share with you by this time next week. (Hopefully! …but actually!) In the meantime, please enjoy the above image of Justin Henry and Dustin Henry. Photo by Zach Sheats.
Frog collaborated with Noah on a run of printables, and made this six-minute clip fetauring Jesse Alba, Chris Millic, office favorite Krazy Frankie, and Pat Gallaher, with spiritual guidance from self-help guru, Jason Byoun.
“Oh yeah, I remember what that comment said actually. It was like, ‘My 5 year old cousin could make this on Microsoft Paint.’ Do you actually use Microsoft Paint?” Noah also has an interview with Chris about the history of the always-triggering Frog factory.
The Canal crew has a new edit filmed exclusively at the Grand Street basketball courts (I guess we’ve all just been forced to come to terms with that spot to the point of it being an acceptable place to spend an entire day, huh?), and an interview about their brand over on the Office mag site.
…aanndd the latest round of Elkin raw tapes has footage from the spot before its colorful make-over, and good God did it look way more depressing five years ago.
“Cleardata” is a twelve-minute video that offers a glimpse into what post-apocalyptic Philadelphia skateboarding looks like in 2018.
This one of a bunch of upstate N.Y. dudes doing some non-obvious Paris spots earned a couple rewatches. Always nice when a trip video feels like something more than just a mere footage dump.
Diego and Tyshawn are leading everyone else in 2018 for tricks that leave phone screens and comment sections, and actually enter conversation between IRL humans.
“Midtown to us was really just like 5 blocks though. Like 50th Street to 54th Street on 6th Avenue.” Village Psychic catches up with R.B. Umali for some stories about skating Astor, Pyramid Ledges, Union, Courthouse Drop, Flushing, etc.
Tufty showed up and surprised us in Paris on our first day, then we didn’t see him for the rest of our trip because he was doing grown man shit, like waking up before 1 P.M. to go skate spots before they get too crowded.
TWS also uploaded 411 issue #2, which features a Tom Penny “Wheels of Fortune” section filmed exclusively at the skatepark that Palace’s winter pop-up park, Mwadlands, was based on. Fwiw, 411 creator, Josh Friedberg, said that the Penny section was one of his favorites ever from the video mag’s run.
Staletape is a 28-minute long Philly scene video by Joe Ostrowski.
“Whereas Torey Pudwill’s arm motions often hit the red while balancing on history’s most drawn-out backside smith grinds and backside tailslides, Magnus Bordewick’s flapping generally coincides with rocketing pop and crater-making impacts.” Boil the Ocean re: the state of arm movements in skateboarding and Magnus’ new part.
“Popwave” made me want to go skate not-so-good skate spots with all my friends.
QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Donovan Mitchell should be fun to watch for like, the next decade-and-a-half? Who does everyone have for Sixers-Celtics?
Quote of the Week 11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “What’s the best trick you can do?” Adult Skateboarder at Le Dome: “Pop shove it.” 11-Year-Old Scooter Kid at Le Dome: “…you’re kidding me, right?”
This is the first semi-late Monday Links post since we vowed to swear off them in honor of the queen’s 30th birthday. BUT — in our defense, the entire office is a bit lagged from traveling back to New York yesterday. We don’t deserve a Gucci polo, but at least it’s not going up at like 4 P.M. ♥
