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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#TRENDWATCH2014: Bailed Flat Tricks

dill

While skateboard video makers are fighting for the remaining morsels of our attention spans, a new #trend is elongating video parts for unclear reasons. Over the past few months, prominent videos have began to include footage of obviously talented skateboarders not landing flip tricks mid-part. And these aren’t slams or epic bails a la Andrew Reynolds’ sneaky Aldo campaign. No, they’re basic flatground tricks that laypeople primo on each day at the T.F. — the sort of maneuvers that a younger viewer may be lead to believe are only missed when pros participate in a bracket orchestrated by a SoCal warehouse with no natural light.

Say what you will about pro sports and how we’re not like them because “we’re artists, dude,” but at least they show us the missed layups and incomplete passes. Skateboarding’s most commonly digested media form (the skate video…pretty sure those are still more watched than contests) only shows you .5% of the blood, sweat and tears that go into a skate career. This latest trend seems poised to do otherwise, as it reminds us that Jason Dill misses switch varial heels just like we do when playing S.K.A.T.E. against our most white rapper-resembling friends.

In some convoluted way, bailed flat tricks in curated video parts bring us closer to Kevin Durant missing a game-tieing free throw than Gatorade or Sunny D or whatever the old guys on the porch choose to believe is “ruining” skateboarding today ;)

You couldn’t have known what I did for this.” — Future & Every Pro Skateboarder.

daniel-kim

Via The Brodies

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Winter Viewing: The Brodies

brodies

Photo by Pep Kim

Jeremy Elkin made his Brodies video available for online viewing today. Deep freeze depression = temporarily suspended. You can still purchase the DVD set with all four of his videos, a photo book, etc. over on the Theories site.

Who was the last skater to do four or five tricks in a video that got everyone hyped, who didn’t have a readily available part somewhere in the depths of YouTube? Accessible video technology put a stop to that towards the latter end of the previous decade. Except the dudes in this one came a bit before that shift: Akira hasn’t had a part since Mixtape 2 (during which he was probably a teenager), German has two awesome shared parts to his name but they’re seven years apart, Rob Campbell has been meddling in YouTube compilation land for years since EST 2, and Leo Gutman, legitimately one of the best skaters in New York, hasn’t been seen outside of the occasional montage since Flipmode 3 in 2006.

The Brodies is a slice of 2001-2006 — when filmers were fewer, resources were scarcer, but distractions were just as rampant — plus six or seven years of the advancements we have today. New York skateboarding is full of sick “whatever happened to” guys, and this video thankfully keeps that title away from a handful of the top candidates. Added bonus of Aaron Herrington, Daniel Kim and Jason Spivey footage. Both teams played hard.

(BTW since it’s awards season it all, it should be mentioned that The Brodies won two of our year-end honors: #22 for Akira’s entire part filmed in sweatpants and #4 for Leo’s Q.S.S.O.T.Y. win.)

Related: Theories has interviews with all of the dudes in the video, and Elkin’s Vimeo page has his other three videos if you’re too poor to buy the DVD.

SURFBOARD…SURFBOARD

swsanta

#MERRY #CHRISTMAS #TO #ALL

R.I.P. to founding Three 6 Mafia member, Lord Infamous, who died in his mother’s house of unknown causes this past Friday. Carroll was the only dude to skate to Lord Infamous in a major video part with his second section in Fully Flared, but there’s also this old Bryan Herman Pharmarcy part and not-so-old Adrian Vega part.

People in Yemen don’t have a whole lot to do, do they?

Thrasher spoke with Brandon Westgate about his flatground flip tricks, among other things. “It’s a trip when a flatground trick that’s easy gets people stoked more than things I killed myself for.” Relate-ability v.s. Gravity, man.

Theories of Atlantis interviewed all the dudes from The Brodies video.

Boil the Ocean’s “Now That’s What I Call Skateboarding” / Top 10 Parts of 2013 countdown has begun. Miles Silvas @ #10 and Donovan Piscopo @ #9.

Our homie Joe Cups (of Lurkers notoriety) is selling his new project, Stay Away, over on his website. Teaser here. He also has a new commercial for Vans Vault with some familiar faces in it.

A new promo for the Westchester-based PFP3 video.

Adidas in the Pacific Northwest and Norwegian Huf in…Norway.

The best and worst of Montreal skateboarding over on the Dime site. Ritch Homie Swain A.K.A. Lord SMS also put together a Dime mix last week.

Career-long Wu-Tang devotee, Gino Iannucci, talks about Wu-Tang.

We talk about the two respective “Shit” remixes: Despite everyone coming to terms with Drake over the past twelve months (us included), Pastor Troy is on the Atlanta remix. Pastor Troy > Drake, therefore the ATL remix > the regs remix. Last part in the next Baker video should be edited to the original song. E-mail me maybe???

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Remember when the Knicks drafted Andy Rautins so a bunch of Syracuse alumns could cheer for him in garbage time over Lance Stephenson? Whatever, he’d be playing for Denver right now if they had :(

ON MY SURFBOARD…SURFBOARD…

Boot Season

cyrus back smith

Cyrus Bennett — Back Smith at Battery Park, as seen in Looney Bin. Photo via Colin Sussingham, who’s been posting a lot of awesome photos on his Tumblr as of late. It has been online since Thursday night, but Looney Bin is really solid. Best LurkNYC video yet. Every Cyrus part gets better, the homie Adam Zhu has chill tricks, and that dude Jason Byoun’s part is great. If you’re still not at terms with Drake, you could probably find solace in the music there too.

Someone compiled a more official Jordan-inspired skate shoe rundown than our rinky dink Jordan at 50 post from February.

A #listicle of the ten most iconic New York City skaters.

The Theories of Atlantis site has DVDs of The Brodies for sale. It’s $25, but includes the past three Elkin vids, fancy packaging and a photo book. The video has gotten more replay than pretty much anything else from the past few months (A.K.A. anything else since Beef Patty and Solo Jazz.) Good to see not-neccesarily-pro New York skaters in their thirties still killing it. Also, Ishod is one of the best but Leo Gutman won S.O.T.Y. on QS.

The dudes behind Film Me and Goin’ Ham have a new video called Off the Braxx premiering online tomorrow. You can check the new teaser here.

Conor Fay’s part in Seasons Skateshop’s Capital Distruct video is chill.

Lurkers 3 coming soon.

More cool stuff out of Pittsburgh: Cody Baker’s part in While Yinz Were Sleeping and part two of the mini doc about Scumco and Sons.

Old war footage motifs (?) and some not-oft-seen spots in this New Jersey edit.

A bro cam edit with a topical title: “The Knicks Suck.”

The Hahafuntime crew relaunched their website.

If you’re fortunate enough to live in a city where Santacon doesn’t happen, you’re missing out on stuff like this and observations like this one.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Is there a more fun-to-watch team than the Warriors right now? What the hell was Jose Calderon doing when Steph Curry hit this?

Quote of the Week
Skate Nerd in his 30s:Ishod’s appeal doesn’t span to me.”
Skate Nerd in his 20s: “That’s because you don’t like any skaters under thirty.”
Skate Nerd in his 30s: “I like Lenny Rivas.”

Thanks to anyone who linked our Best of 2013 clip. Here’s a .GIF of the ender:

Cheer up, it’s supposed to be 50 degrees on Friday :)