You can take the Bostonian out of Boston, but you can’t take the Boston out of the Bostonian. In the days of Joey Pepper’s Aesthetics section and Jahmal Williams riding for DNA, Boston was the epicenter of bump-to-bleacher skateboarding. Longing for those sweet green metal days and displaced from their homeland, some savvy New Englanders decided “Fuck going to Reggaeton Ledges” this past summer, and began their own propped up empire nearby. The crowd followed suit.
Other notable developments in Grand’s latest are Spencer Hamilton bringing his two signature moves to Columbus Park, and the QS Spot Desk being wrong about people needing Bondo to skate the one surviving bank under the 125th Street 1 train ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Features Spencer Hamilton, Nick Ferro, Dana Ericson, Connor Champion, Kevin Tierney and Brian Delaney. J.P. Blair on da lens.
We’re two months out from awards season, and skateboarding’s drift from YouTube montages to minute-long Instagram clips renders each year’s I.G.S.O.T.Y. race more contentious than the last. Spencer Hamilton, who has spent the better part of the year rehabbing from a back injury, doing waist-high kickflip back tails, and promoting better posture to us all (actually typing this post more upright than usual out of respect), is an early frontrunner for top honors.
Edited by IG-mix genius and Eggs Mayor, Dutchmaster Delaney. Filmed by the Dime boys and Grand Collection. Graphics by Dana Ericson.
…but the rest of the clips were really good! Spencer Hamilton with what’s tied for the best 360 flip near the East River in recent memory (see #7), Tierney skating stacks of shaky rubble, and of course, Wade fuckin’ D. skating New York just in general. We tossed that footage together for a Grand Collection remix featuring four faves ;)
Free beer to whoever disses it with a Tas Pappas tag. Photo via The Shady One
“One thing I realized once I started being in the world of Instagram was that people don’t let go of things. If something has emotionally affected somebody in some powerful way sometime in their life, that doesn’t fade. If anything, social media kind of fans the flame of that and almost reestablishes that emotional connection.” With so much discussion of social media and its pros/cons in any skate interview these days, it’s nice to hear that it actually does have a way of bringing about some greater good from one of the happiest people to ever ride a skateboard, Ray Barbee.
“With a skater like Jamal Williams, Ricky Oyola or even Pat Steiner, people aren’t pulling out the yardstick to measure how high they’re ollieing. It’s more the feelings people get by watching that person on a skateboard.” Also with a good bit of social media talk + skaters having an impact on people’s lives, Get Born Mag has a detailed interview with Josh Stewart. ~feelings~
Hotel Blue is the new board company from the LurkNYC camp, and Nick just dropped a nine-minute promo featuring the entire team over the weekend. Back smith backside flip on the Leonard Street ledge was wild.
Bobshirt has a 25-minute interview with Bill Strobeck detailing pretty much every last anecdote about the prime era of Alien Workshop + Habitat. Includes a special guest appearance from a former orange-beanied colleague halfway in ;)
Boil the Ocean on Anti-Hero’s persistence in an increasingly tense landscape of board brand longevity, and a potential Daan Van Der Linden S.O.T.Y. run.
Well, this is the first instance of someone skating in Polo shoes I can remember, which re-opens the hypothetical discussion of what the Ralph skate team would look like…
Quote of the Week: “Positivity is sexy. Creativity is even sexier.” — Andrew Wilson
Speaking of all new levels of skateboarding, Tiago was in town for Street League and these two clips of him skating Seaport and the L.E.S. Park got brought up in at least four conversations this weekend. #SOTY.
Put a formal Twitter inquiry regarding the inventor of the noseslide earlier this summer (the consensus was Gonz.) Mackenzie Eisenhour discusses it in this TWS piece regarding the origins of the noseblunt: “Even prior to the noseblunt, Mark is also credited with adapting the noseslide to ledges and handrails on the streets, after seeing photos of Neil Blender innovating nose stalls on ramps.”
Given as how they’ve been dominating all forms of culture since Switch Mike started blasting So Far Gone in any and all of his BMWs and Herschel became the new Jansport, it should come as no surprise that the most enjoyable skateboard podcast also comes from Canada. Season two of the Bunt is now running, and starts off with cult hero, Spencer Hamilton. Expedition-1 talk, non-alcoholic beers, etc.
Glad the news about the Berlin benches getting removed ended up being a false alarm. A replica of that should be mandatory for every U.S. city with over six skaters. My second favorite skate spot on this planet.
