2014 New York Skateboarding Year in Review: 20-16

the tombstone

Photo via Lurker Lou

Part two of our annual countdown series. Part one is here.

20. Marble at the T.F.

Throughout its history, Tompkins obstacles have been wood, steel, rubber, and sometimes even glass. The ability to move these materials without much manpower has been essential to the spot’s transient nature. Only the flat and The Crack™ remain — everything else is just passing through until some green-suited bandit musters up the nerve to remove it.

T.F. culture experienced a shock this summer when a foot-tall, slanted slab of marble mysteriously appeared inside the baseball diamond. It became the first marble obstacle in Tompkins history, and dubbed The Tombstone™. This two-foot-wide piece of rock broke the record once held by the blue rail for the longest-standing loose object of the post-Autumn era. Claims of liquid-nailing it to the ground were abound in May and June, except that was, like, way too much work for anyone to do. The spot was gone as mysteriously as it appeared by the end of the month.

A video posted by . Kevin Tierney (@youngkev) on

More »

The Power of Marketing

subway-ollie marketing

A little known fact that came up at the time of our noseslide research in 2012: Eric Koston was not the first person to noseslide the curved rail at Philadelphia City Hall. James Frankhouse was. Even if Koston was the second to do it, he was still really the first. Why? Koston’s was in one of the biggest blockbuster skate videos of all time. James Frankhouse’s was in some Colorado shop video. (BTW, we’ll send anyone a care package if they could procure the part for online viewing.)

Any rich girl who vacations for a living can tell you about the value of #marketing and having a strong #personalbrand. Why would skateboarders assume that they are exempt from the rule?

While we were touting Koki Loaiza’s benchmark of being the first person to ever ollie over subway tracks, a commenter (“cheese”) insisted that “my n*gga Mike from the Bronx” had done it a year earlier. He had proof, in the form of a 240p YouTube upload from summer 2012. Why was M.N.M.F.T.B. not being properly credited for his achievement? Marketing, man. He did not have a filmer and photographer willing to stand in the middle of the tracks, access to New York Times editors’ ears, or a production team responsible for past subway-related successes.

Another commenter offered some friendly advice: “Mike from da Bronx need better marketing people fam.” “Cheese” took note and went on to make a 240p re-edit featuring the trick in question, as an effort to give M.N.M.F.T.B. the accolades that he never received.

The fancy angle from the Tengu video is cool and all, but you realize how little space there is between the board throwdown and the edge of the platform more here.