Ephemeral Moments — The Subway Tricks From ‘Mixtape’

Before skating in the subway was an aesthetic direction you could film a montage around, before tricks underground went viral on mainstream news sites, and before we qualified what’s been done on pieces of MTA furniture, there was Mixtape. It featured the first shot of New York subway skating ever put into a skate video.

They were six B-roll tricks dumped into a friends montage, but they’ve kept a more permanent imprint in my memory than the majority of things I’ve seen in skate videos since. I’ve never made the walk between the L and the 8th Avenue trains at 14th Street without thinking about this clip.

Every interview with someone involved in the current *moment* of small companies touches on the “relate-ability” a niche-oriented brand is able to communicate over the might-as-well-be-CGI skateboarding you see in major company videos. In the years after Mixtape came out, there wasn’t a lot of relate-ability going around. Until the early 2000s wore on and innovations like IRC democratized the reach of skate videos, a company video guaranteed one thing: California.

Mixtape wasn’t just relatable because it was local, or because the skating wasn’t down big handrails. It meant so much more because of subtle moments like the subway tricks — they were as opposite of California as you could possibly get.

More »

Party Heart

There’s one bodega in the world with a QS board hanging in it, and it belongs to Wavy Mike. Much respect. Photo by TeamWorks NYC.

Boil The Ocean rightfully pointed out the insanity of the major skateboard-related headlines from the first week of the year — “Andy Roy Attempts To ‘Choke Out’ DMX Live Onstage” (even though it obviously wasn’t a choke out), “Jereme Rogers Arrested Following Nude, PCP-Fueled Hotel Rampage,” and “Brian Wenning Quits Selfish Skateboards Via Jereme Rogers Diss Track” (featuring a rapper with the same name as the Green Diamond video.) Looks like it’ll be a good year.

Who’s the genius responsible for this abomination of concrete work? Way to ruin one of the best ledges at the spot. Lurker Lou recomended the offender serve Jerry Duty: “The act of riding with Mraz, and looking out while he creates masterpieces.”

A lot more people would be filming New York subway clips if our subway stations looked anything like Sweden’s. Those high Scandinavian taxes really seem to go a long way.

It’s always fun to watch someone skate Los Angeles like it’s an east coast city.

An interview with Bill Pierce that discusses the “Busenitz of British music,” among other things. Also, Stripes is a great movie (and on Netflix Instant.) It’s kinda what we all imagined Miles’ military career to be like.

If you want a high-quality .mov version of Missing Persons, which was definitely one the better NYC-based web videos from 2011, you can download it here.

Rob Campbell has an ad in the new issue of Transworld.

Spot Updates: 1) The black marble spot from last week’s post is already knobbed, which isn’t the least bit surprising. The entire time we were eyeing it, we assumed they’d knob it before even taking down the construction blockades. 2) Whenever the Museum of Natural History’s front plaza opens back up (it has been blocked off for restoration since summer 2010), it’s going to have some decent (by New York standards) handrails in front.

Quote of the Week: “There are two guys in front of Tompkins with a sign that says ‘Free Advice.’ Brengar should sit down next to them with a sign that says ‘More Free Advice.'” — Bill Strobeck


Ball Forever > Rich Forever. “Party Heart” is a jam though. After all, it does say “featuring 2 Chainz” on it. Someone in the YouTube comments said “All this needed was OutKast” and they are 900% correct.