Don’t Care If That Drop-Off Got Some Mileage Mileage

It’s one of those “more words than videos” weeks :)

“But skateboarding’s worldview can often become so totalizing that commitment to it far into adulthood, past the age when it’s socially acceptable to ride around in a school bus smoking weed and listening to Slayer, can look like protracted adolescence. This is why skateboarding, for a large chunk of the country, will never fully outgrow its degenerate associations. And that’s fine.” It is notoriously difficult to produce a genuinely great piece of writing about skateboarding, but Noah Gallagher Shannon’s profile of Grant Taylor ticks all the boxes. Send it to your mom.

The cutest skate interview you’ll ever read: Skate Jawn spoke with Alexis LaCroix about life with his Instagram-famous cat, Rita.

Supreme has a quick Hi-8 Insta clip with Gonz, T.J, Rowan et al. for their upcoming collaboration with Spitfire.

“Love gave you this feeling, and I can’t explain it. Muni does not. At least for me it doesn’t.” Brian Panebianco checks in on a Love-less Philadelphia skate scene.

Sidewalk interviewed the mind behind Science Versus Life, and touched on the connections between New York and London skate history a bit. Your photo incentive check is in the mail btw ;)

With Ripped Laces effectively dormant in 2018 (no shade), The Hundreds blog has oddly been publishing some dece coverage related to the world of skate shoes: “Retracing the Strange History of Shoe Design” + a #listicle of five non-skate shoes that still became tied to skateboarding.

Stefani Nurding has an op-ed piece about how “Girls Nights” have bolstered the acceptance of femininity in skateboarding.

An interview with one of everyone’s favorites, Justin Henry, where he reveals that Lebron James does, in fact, have more J.R. Smith in him than he cares to admit hehe.

This goes a good deal more in depth than his Epicly Later’d, though he isn’t as amorous with nature in it: Jamie Thomas talks to Chad Muska for an hour.

A decent bit of New York footage in feel-good Rob Hall part.

Spot Updates — 1) As you probably caught on already, Skate Jawn built a box to go over the cobblestones at Blue Park. 2) Columbus Park will probably be fine. Fingers crossed. 3) The building moved the planters back in front of the ledge at CBS.

QS Sports Desk: More excited for the off-season, than we were for like, the entire second half of the postseason. And if you think Lebron is coming to the Knicks you need to move to Mars.

Quote of the Week: “Hell no I don’t watch soccer. A bunch of buddies kicking balls? I’m good.” — Meatball

QS is perpetually giving 90% of skate video editors a hard time for their uninspired marriage to Big L + and this idea that basically all rap still needs to sound like nineties rap (how boring does that sound tbh?), but we’ll throw you guys a bone here because there’s a substantial chance you haven’t heard this one before, and it’s really fun:

Monday, Call the Girls, Get ‘Em Linked Up

Photo by Jason Lecras

We have a capsule with Nike SB releasing this Saturday, April 14. It’s definitely our best one! More info soon ♥

Gonna throw in an early left field link, but the Pass~Port in Greece edit is the best (i.e. watched it more than once) trip edit that’s dropped during 2018’s Winter Getaway Footage Dump Season (yes, I know Australia is in the southern hemisphere.) It’s always nice to learn of some nice new songs in a skate edit too :)

“That’s what I keep telling myself, ‘maybe in ten more years.’ Those ten years go by and I’m still not ready. Actually, I’ve come to terms with it, this is it.” Skate Jawn interviews productivity legend, Dave Caddo.

“In a Warhol-esque version of a future skate industry where 1% of pros earn lavish salaries and the rest ball for position, will everyone have their own brand, with price-points scaling higher in accordance with gnarliness and footage releases?” Boil the Ocean on pros’ t-shirt ventures, and the cult of Jerry Hsu’s Sci-Fi Fantasy brand.

Even if it is in the Times + includes the phrases “daredevils” and “neoliberal training grounds,” Jeff Ihaza’s feature on how skateparks came to be understood, accepted, and built passes the litmus test of linkable traditional news outlet skate coverage.

Noah Johnson’s GQ profile of the GX1000 crew does as well. (Yes, Noah skates.) “It’s frustrating shit when you almost die.” Yeah, dying seems pretty wack.

While the Times may think we “won,” we also lost one of the best ledges in lower Manhattan this past week. The deknobbed ledge at Seaport that was more-or-less a go over the past year-plus is now knobbed not only for grinds, but for manuals too!

Weckingball is the latest guest on The Bunt.

Normally don’t care about “oh, so-and-so already skated to that song”-isms — especially in this fickle footage economy — but “Blowing Up Fast” holds a special place in many hearts. This guy does a line at Three Up Three Down, hypes up P-Rod, and has never seen Baker Has a Deathwish, which is totally fine because it’s almost ten-years-old now goddamn.

And on that note! Village Psychic interviewed Josh Stewart about the unwritten rules of #musicsupervision and editing gimmicks in skate videos.

Our friends from 2nd Nature did the “winter trip to Barcelona” thing.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Everyone else is on the Sixers playoff bandwagon orrrr?

Quote of the Week
Rob Harris: “Yeah, Baker is having tricks in everyone’s part in the Alltimers video.”
Adam Zhu: “Oh, so he’s like the Gonz?”

Everybody Loves the Sunshine

Photo via Stu

Here is a rad ten-minute documentary about the scene in Nairobi, Kenya. Shout out to skateboarding. No shout out to anything we have ever complained about on here.

The Vacation apparently condensed into Politic. They have a sick new montage up with new footy from Ross Norman and curtains from Dave Caddo #officefaves.

Skateboard graphics have always been low-key political, and this came out good: An oral history of presidential skate graphics. “Straight talker?” Whatever you say, Henry.

Two years after the historic “Vogue Skateboard Week,” Anna Wintour comes through with what actually amounts to pretty decent mainstream magazine coverage of skateboarding re: the progressively shifting tide against its gender bias.

“Luke Malaney or Keith Denley?” “Both in 2007.” Jersey Dave interviewed New Jersey sweetheart, Josh Wilson, for Skate Jawn.

Jersey Dave’s part from Stop Fakin’ 3 + cameos from Freddy, Quim etc. is online.

“I guess it’s kind of like, for example, a guy builds his dream house and then he goes off and has a cabin in the woods elsewhere. You know, a lake house. When you can have that, obviously that’s a privilege. You don’t always want to be at the one place, and it’s overrun with children and remote control cars and rules.” Village Psychic with a piece on the rules of contributing to and skating D.I.Y. spots.

Always a safe bet for some interesting noseslide variations — Mark Wetzel’s part from Traffic’s Look Left is now online, and includes guest tricks from Ricky and Rich Adler.

John Valenti uploaded a B-sides clip of Charlie Cassidy’s N.Y. Archive part, and Theories uploaded volume 11 of Elkin raw files. Rest in peace Saint Vincent’s Bank.

Whoa, wtf happened at House of Vans

We’d mark this as non-skate-related reading, but everyone knows it is just as skate as anything else on the list ;) NY Mag has the complete history on the rise of halal carts in New York. “Halal carts cross barriers. Cheap food triumphs over bad politics.”

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Jay Arrrrrrrr Smith!

Quote of the Week: “Y’all lives suck.” — Josh Velez to a group of schoolchildren

Thank you to post-7 P.M. sunsets & anybody who’s ever made a song about the sun ♥

When Quarters Cry

Just as promised

Kurt Havens, the Academy Award winning filmmaker behind 2012’s Twomanji video, is back with another full-length VHS / Hi-8 / old camera (?) project entitled Ballhog. It’s pretty much a vintage-tinged Bronze B-cam video from the past couple years, and features iconic parts from Mark Humienik, Billy McFeely, and Josh Wilson.

Gang Corp, Frog, Humble, The Skate Kitchen, and Hardbody all have spreads in the new issue of Japan’s Eyescream mag. Probably won’t do you much good if you can’t read Japanese (the Google Translate camera feature is sick though), but still rad to see nonetheless. Shout out to everybody.

Oh, and Genny posted the raw photos from the Humble pages.

Jesse Alba made a loving tribute to our #MCM, Nolan Benfield, and then Frog Skateboards went and posted some quick extras from their trip to China last year.

Show me, don’t tell me.

Damn, imagine wanting to skate the Veteran’s Memorial 12 that bad? ;) jk. Marco Kada covered a lot of ground across the city and outlying areas (who even remembers the last trick on the Jersey City Hamilton Park five block spot…Zered’s Vicious Cycle part?) for his rad “New York Nice Guy” part.

Habitat has a clip of Fred Gall’s final session at Shorty’s.

Listen to your mom, but also listen to Zalfa — who once ruptured his crank skating the Big O in Montreal, peed blood, went to the E.R., came out a few hours later, and shot a photo of Max Palmer while wearing a bloody hospital gown. He has an interview over on Skate Jawn. Don’t ever ask me who my favorite photographer is again.

“You know he’d get his mental health check and go straight to Ralph and drop two grand on a fucking moleskin pair of trousers or something.” Some Monday motivation for anyone currently living on a couch in an apartment they don’t pay rent for: Free interviewed Lev Tanju about all the cool shit Palace has been doing in London these past couple years.

There’s a Bobshirt documentary. Can’t tell if there’s new footage tho.

Some more Elkin extras from Leo Gutman’s 2013 Q.S.S.O.T.Y. run.

Old parts, new uploads: Connor Kammerer in Spirit Quest + Dustin Eggeling in Static 4. This is a really pointless observation, but it’s kind of wild that the last Static video is already almost four years old.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: And then Russ thought…”fuck that overtime shit.”

Quote of the Week: “My celebrity crush is Ali from Travis Porter.” — Pad Dowd

Can’t say the QS Rap Desk has actively been checking for new Wayne songs these past ~five years, so a bit “late” on this one (came out on Christmas), but wowwwowow.

There’s a fire remix video dropping on here tomorrow Wednesday ♥

Blue Sofa

Colin Sussingham has been posting a bunch of photographs from the 917 video over on The Local Weather. The Max photo above is stolen from there obvs.

Here is a YouTube link to the 917 video, for all those averse to fringe video players. Still overwhelmed by how contagiously good vibes that entire video is.

So sick of the being bad at skateboarding on purpose trend.

“What’s the hardest trick in skateboarding?” “Getting a job.” There’s been a relatively decent batch of content about skateboarding’s most difficult maneuver floating around this past week: Heath Kirchart ranks all the jobs he’s had since retiring from pro skateboarding + Brandon Westgate talks about lumber mills and cranberries.

Brian Panebianco made an eleven minute documentary that highlights one of the bonds that formed between a homeless Love Park local and the park’s skateboarders.

The new Gang Corp edit is sick.

“Unlike Alien Workshop, DC recognized a new generation preparing to don swishy pants and opened its East Coast flow spigots, and now spot-searching Droors-endorser John Shanahan helps DC find a path after long years of wandering.” Boil the Ocean dwells on how DC is re-routing its approach to the skate shoe landscape.

Bill Strobeck put together a VX best-of edit from roughly 2000-2004 for Thrasher.

Cafe Creme has an interview with #QSTOP10 fave, Magnus Bordewick.

Gotta respect a “D.C. to Boston” edit that completely skips New York. This place can be a real pain in the ass, but at least we got an hour at Big Screen Plaza yesterday.

Rob Campbell footage will never not get a link ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Skate Jawn made a Glory Challenge edit with a bit of street skating mixed in.

Spot Updates: The banks under the 125th Street 1 train station have been under construction for a year or two. The oft-skated ones on the south side of 125th have a massive curb at the start now, but you can skate one on the north side of the street — although someone’s going to need to throw some Bondo on that crack right before it.

Quote of the Week
Jason Byoun: “I’m depressed yo.”
Inquisitive Gentleman: “Why?”
Jason Byoun: “Summer’s over yo.”