Hard To Choose One

Summer 2020 QS goods are arriving at skate shops now. Product should be in all of our accounts in the U.S, Canada, Japan and South Korea by the end of this week at the latest, but Europe and Australia will be a lil’ late. Check your Australian and European locals in early June. Please support shops via their webstores or if any are doing curbside pick-ups for product while they remain closed in some areas. Our webstore will relaunch with summer goods on this Friday, May 22 @ 10 A.M. E.S.T. Top spread via Prov Tokyo.

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56 Nights In Quarantine & They Was All Crazy

Photo by @sciencecock, who also has a story about what may have been the last session at the Brooklyn Banks before the pandemic took hold of the city, and construction began to dismantle the bricks. There’s currently a petition to try and save the spot. If you have any memories of the Banks, please post them on social and tag @nyc_dot #nycdot #savebrooklynbanks so they understand this is not just some random underpass, but a landmark to tons of people who have pilgrimaged to New York for it. Also FYI: This space has nothing to do with the Parks Department, so leave them out of it :)

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Bags of Sand

Broadcasting live from the Lefrak City building ♬ If you haven’t listened to it yet, the Bronze 56k radio mixtape is incredible. The music is mostly time-tested hits from their videos (including a F.C.C-mandated run-back of “Dap You Up“), but the commercials are gold. Laughed out loud 10+ times on first listen.

Listen to Hjalte’s beautiful voice on the latest episode of The Bunt ♥ Stingwater also made a GROeTH remix as an accompaniment to the interview.

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The Last Time The City Shut Down — An Oral History of Skateboarding In New York Right After Hurricane Sandy

Photo by Pep Kim

New York has quite literally never felt like it does right now in this quarantined liminal space that we are in. The level of quiet in Manhattan at 8 P.M. is incomparable to even the deadest, coldest Sunday night in a residential zone. Obviously, there’s a reason for this, in that we all must do our part to minimize human contact so that COVID-19 can be contained, hospitals can maintain a semblance of functionality, and we can begin to burrow out of this chapter. Mobbing to skate midtown and being a responsible member of society are clearly at odds right now.

However, the current state of the city did bring up memories of a different disruptive event: Hurricane Sandy.

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The Best Skateboard Videos of the 2010s — QS Reader Survey Results

Illustration by Cosme Studio

This was the decade that the full-length skate video was supposed to die. We began the 2010s with everyone insisting that Stay Gold would be the last full-length skate video. Then, Pretty Sweet was supposed to be the last full-length video. Some people thought that Static IV would be it — the end, no more full-lengths after that. But I feel like I heard someone say Josh was working on something new a couple months back? Idk.

The experience might’ve changed. We’re not huddling around a skate house’s TV covered in stickers to watch a DVD bought from a shop anymore (if this past weekend is any indication, it’s more like AirPlaying a leaked .mp4 file via a link obtained from a guy who knows a guy), but the experience of viewing a fully realized skate video with your friends for the first, second or twentieth time is still sacred.

Just as we asked for your votes for the five best video parts, we did the same for the five best full-lengths: if you could choose the five videos that defined the 2010s, what would they be? The results were a bit more surprising than the parts tally in some ways, given that it felt like independent, regional and newer, small brand videos dominated the decade, yet Big Shoe Brands™ and Girl + Chocolate still made their way into the list. The top-heaviness of some companies or collectives was less of a surprise, in that certain creators loomed large over the 2010s.

Like the installment before it, this list is sans comment for 20-11, and then via favors from writer friends for the top ten: here are the twenty best skate videos of the past ten years.

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