Skate Spot Porn | Quartersnacks - Part 2

All-Star Fashion Week Weekend

Daily News February 9th, 2015 · 3:10 pm · 8

pebbles

Late one today. Weather got things sluggish.

“Skaters in Cars Looking at Spots” cruises around the Financial District with Zered.

“My last name is Baker, so this is called The Baker Video.” Good friend and breaker of four boards in one session, Zach Baker, made a fun skateboard video.

Life is Goodie is dropping on 4/20 fool.

“Rob [Dyrdek] told me, ‘Look, dude, there’s gonna be no pro skaters in the next…I see in the future no pro boards.'” Ride has a great interview with Josh Kalis about China, standalone video parts, GX1000, a declining middle class in skateboarding, and a future with no boards. ICYMI: Hit You Off Management dropped a “Kalis in Mono” remix last week, mentioned in the interview’s first question.

Sorta on that note, Village Psychic got an interview with the dudes who run Mood Skateboards, a company with no team. “In the 80s and 90s, pro skaters were the best at skating, but now everyone is the best. The ‘need’ for professionals isn’t the same.” It’s gonna be a really weird next couple of years, man.

Always a lot of surprises in this dude’s skating: Joel Meinholz time machine mash-up.

Some enviable weather in Gigliotti’s new clip.

The bro Jersey Dave has a photo book up for sale.

Dunno if these are the ten *greatest* spots ever built, but Kingpin has a listicle of ten “what were they thinking when they made this” spots from around the world.

Boil the Ocean compares Big Brother‘s resistance to abiding by the skateboard industry’s self-image to the Slap message board’s similar disposition of today, and uses the word “sanctimoniousness.”

The Helas team’s IG clips combined into one montage, with a mini Ishod and Lucas part at the end :)

“Before the Hubba girls, the Duffs girls, before Erica Yary or Leanne Tweeden, and long before any hot chick would be caught dead in a Thrasher shirt, there was Rosa.” SML Talk reminisces on the nineties most iconic half-naked skateboard hardware company model. Chromeball also had a Rosa tribute years ago, which includes a scan of the “15 Things You Didn’t Know About…” segment from Skateboarder.

Jake Johnson v.s. the D.C. Gold Rail, circa 2010.

Who had the better high fashion backpack ad, Eli or Alex Olson?

Part two of NY Skateboarding’s joint interview with Gino and Dill is now live.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Lebron v.s. Durant won’t be much of a narrative in the NBA soon.

Quote of the Week: “Johnny peaked with Space Heater.” — Max Palmer

Follow @quartersnacks

If you’re stuck inside and need a good time-killer, I was recently put onto the fact that a lot of episodes of Insomniac with Dave Attell are on YouTube. It hasn’t been the best for productivity, but is really fun to reminisce on the drunken world of the early millennium that most of us had yet to experience (still recognized the venue for the “goddess” party though hehehehe…) The two New York episodes are here and here. Playlist with most of them here.

Skate Spot Porn: Copenhagen, Denmark

Features & Interviews January 16th, 2015 · 5:00 am · 14

“Four skate spots and one skatepark all on the same street — I can’t tell which is the skatepark.”

By the third or fourth day, Copenhagen begins to feel like a colossal joke. Coming from the classic American “if you get hurt, you’re gonna sue us”-disposition, almost every spot is met with a “What the hell were they thinking when they made this?” You don’t get kicked out much*, and the general public seems way too concerned with enjoying their chill lives to tell you you’re ruining some slab of stone. On top of everything, there’s a canal full of swimmable, clean water dividing the city — sorta like if the Hudson was unpolluted and safe enough for a swim after you got done with a summer session on the Westside Highway. There are a thousand beautiful girls riding by on bikes, and even the pizza is mysteriously better than you ever thought Danish pizza had the ability to be. It’s an expensive playground for adults, but not in a hookers/drugs/”tonight we’re getting fucked up“-kind of way.

[*In the two weeks I spent there last summer, we got kicked out once by a knife-wielding hash dealer who said we were scaring off his customers. He promised to kill us if we stayed at the spot. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Better safe than sorry?]

Jarmers is the Tompkins of Copenhagen. It contains two highish ledges, good-yet-razortail-inducing flatground, and a nice ledge for sitting, drinking beers and watching hours go by, not unlike some green benches we have quite an affinity for. If you watch the Skate Europe episode above, you’ll see a snapshot of the attitude that has allowed Copenhagen to become one of the most skate-friendly cities in Europe: “They cleaned the ledges every week…every week we’d have to re-wax them. We actually met the architect [who built the plaza.] In the beginning, he was almost crying, ‘You’re ruining my plaza.’ We [told him], ‘Nobody is using the plaza besides us, you should be happy.’ [He says] ‘Maybe you’re right,’ and I think after that, they stopped cleaning [the ledges.]” Now, there are even cheesy lil’ ads on the screens at Jarmers depicting some of the locals who skate there. It is worth noting that all of this takes place adjacent to a financial building at a major crossroad of the city, and not in some tucked away outskirt.

Also in that episode, which was created in 2010, they mention how there are two spots in the city: Jarmers and this Venice-esque path alongside the beach with a long concrete ledge. Quite a lot seems to have happened since then.

Skate Spot Porn: Tempelhof Skate Plaza in Berlin

Features & Interviews August 9th, 2013 · 10:24 am · 11

In a spring Monday Links post, we commended Berlin on recycling old materials in the creation of a sanctioned space for skateboarding, mostly at the expense of Philadelphia’s consistent idiocy. On the last day of a recent trip where skateboarding was hardly a priority (it was also 100+ degrees for most days), we had a chance to check out the Tempelhof Skate Plaza. With the opening of Paine’s Park, which incorporates the original City Hall benches, Philly took a step in the right direction after years of stubbornness, but the approach to each space is miles apart.

If you ask about spots in Berlin, a common notion is that “you have to know where everything is,” in the sense that you can’t skate around and find everything like you could in a city that has a “downtown.” This spot exemplifies that to an absurd degree. Though it is still technically within city limits, it sits on a defunct airfield-turned-public park that’s far removed enough to have once accommodated a commercial airport. Once you get off the train, and pass a hilarious excuse for a skatepark that some small American city would surely dream to pass off as sufficient after outlawing skateboarding, you enter a field with an asphalt track circling around it.