Crazy But It’s True

Photo via Giese

“Jake Phelps surely embodied worlds in decline: Old San Francisco, famously non-PC, MJ1s on his feet until whatever deadstock tap ran dry, proofing a decades-old print publication with a snarling discontent any seasoned editor would recognize and respect. An artifact arguing and cussing every day for a place in a world moving some other way.” Unfortunate to link their way two weeks in a row for obituary purposes, but Boil Ocean has a way with them words.

“Though I would sometimes cross the street to avoid him, I can remember so much of what he said to me.” Patrick O’Dell also wrote a thing about Phelps over on Vice.

And here is a re-link to Willy Staley’s California Sunday profile of Phelps that originally ran in 2016, A.K.A. what BTO labeled as “secular-press skate piece top five.” Would be *so* open to a conversation about what the other four are ;)

The new Gang Corp video, Black Business, is premiering this Friday, March 22, at 198 Allen Street at 7 P.M.

Someone mashed together five minutes of Hjalte Insta clips a nice remix

Mike from Lottie’s takes five minutes to tell you what he’s pissed off about.

Munchies has a mini doc on the institution that has sustained New York skateboarding like none other throughout the 2010s — of course, we’re talking about 2 Bros. They also bring up a terrifying reality re: the ten-year leases that got signed at the start of the decade ending (e.g. when everyone was still reeling from the recession), and the dollar slice soon becoming a thing of the past.

“I think the mainstream American skateboarding culture is kidding itself. They’re really dismissive of emotions in a way that is hurting itself. It’s becoming more and more inline with traditional athleticism, but also what is acceptable as a skateboarder is so narrow – you have to be cool, not talk about your feelings.” If you’re one of those idiots like me who put off watching Minding the Gap for months, here’s another motivator: Skateism put their interview with director Bing Liu online. Yeah, you need to enter your card details, but a Hulu trial to watch it is free, and you can cancel the second you finish the movie — provided you’re not destroyed for the rest of the day.

Solo has a video profile of steez lord and Polar rider, Shin Sanbongi + Nick from Palomino took his legacy media expertise and wrote an introductory guide on Japanese indie zines and videos for the mag’s all-Japan issue. No Meatball interview?

TWS interviewed John Shanahan, though we all know A.V.E. had the best part in The DC Video.

Let’s just throw the interview loosies in one place… Frank 151 interviewed R.B. Umali (text), Enrique Lorenzo interviewed Dani Lebron (this one is audio, and yes, they have heavy accents, but their english is pretty perfect) + the Slam City Skates blog interviewed Colin Read (text.)

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Going to suspend our micro coverage of the NBA this week to acknowledge that the best feat of teamwork and athleticism of the past seven days was this guy getting a ~15-foot I-beam onto a New York City subway.

Quote of the Week: “Who the fuck is Andrew Wilson?” — Jake Phelps, flipping through a Skate Jawn

Cover More Ground, Faster

Jordan was already in 2025 in 2005.

“But after you’ve finished a project the best sign is if people come and actually use the space, often in ways you hadn’t envisioned in the design process. Skaters are particularly good at this.” If this were a tired and wired meme, the former would be Malmo, and the latter Tartu, Estonia ;) Jk, but you should read this interview with the woman reshaping the northeast European country’s approach to multi-faceted public space.

Marcus Pulvermacher has a fun new winter edit featuring Genesis, Caleb, Max Palmer, et al.

Already a big 2019 for Baltimore crust: A big crew put together a montage entirely filmed at that spot from The Wire. (See also: Weekend Viewing — Yardsale’s East Coast Video.)

Solo has an awesome interview with ledge GOAT Javier Sarmiento about the early history of skating in Barcelona, his Powell days, growing up in a situation where terror attacks are normal, Catalonia’s political situation, and a bunch of other stuff.

Pete Spooner uploaded Jeremy Murray’s half-New York part from Skating Is Easy.

Hotel Blue has a new montage with a mini Juan Virues part at the end. Even after a decade of unrepentant “Summer Trip to New York” coverage at every possible spot in the Financial District, that “lump to pole” by Rector Street has to have one of the slimmest trick lists in all of Lower Manhattan. Front big spin was sick.

The researchers at Krak compiled one of those “spot history” things for the Baker / Deathwish team’s favorite New York skate spot.

Bill Strobeck is the latest guest on The Bunt, and Alexis Sablone is the latest guest on the Mission Statement podcast.

Skate Jawn posted up a timely photo feature from the Dime Glory Challenge.

YouWillSoon (!) made a Vimeo remix of the new bro cam Fred Gall footage that surfaced online a few weeks ago.

Theories has all the raw files of Luke Malaney’s Look Left part.

Jenkem tried to extract as many possible answers as they could regarding the Transworld acquisition, and the future of the magazine.

News 12 New York did a segment with Tyshawn and his mom re: Taste So Good.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Maybe the second time a college basketball highlight has made Play of the Week, but yeah, what else. And for a Duke player, of all things! (Idk shit about college ball, just know that we’re supposed to not like Duke because everyone I know from North Carolina is a UNC fan.)

Quote of the Week: “I’m O.D. good at nunchucks.” — Andre Page

Maybe the most slept on 411 section ever.

Live From the Exito

This place is a good time.

♥ A heartwarming story about a New York skate shop owner, a New York surf shop owner, Paris, and Mike Carroll doing a backside 5050 ♥

We rant about seeing the same spots in Big Skate City™ trip edits like anyone else, but just the right mix of people skating them, and all of a sudden, none of the nitpicky skate criticism matters anymore. Really wish this Insta edit of Max Palmer, Remy Tav and Sylvain Tognelli skating go-to spots in Paris was 4x as long. (Also funny how 2/3 of the people in it don’t even have Instagrams.)

And on that note, Victor Campillo’s ender for his Quota part is the first bit of recent République footage to really stick to the memory. (Starting to notice a trend when New York news is slow…we just post a bunch of Paris stuff. Can’t wait to get this satellite office popping.)

It had a brief run on the TWS site, but “Crop Circles Volume 1” is now online in full, and is one of the best post-Love Park / Philly survivalist videos yet.

“A typical day was waking up at 6:30 A.M., breakfast, heading to the construction site, working till 10-11 P.M., and having a late night crew that stayed up to 3 A.M. on some days.” Monster Children has the story about how a small crew with minimal resources built the first-ever skatepark in Angola in just 28 days.

“Did skateboarder’s hopes for a professional minimum salary level die along with Rob Dyrdek’s dreams for a skaters’ union? Does there exist a ‘rough cut’ of Nike’s commercial in which Kyrie Irving clowns Eric Koston for not having a video game character in the last 10 years’ worth of THPS titles? Is this commercial ripe for parody by the remaining aggressive inline rollerbladers, except where they’re barging Lance Mountain’s backyard pool?”

Theories has the results from their Underground S.O.T.Y. poll.

Antonio x his famous L.J. via this past December.

TWS put up Antonio’s tricks from Duets, which includes maybe the first-ever clip shot from the inside of a trash can? We’d add it to our ever-growing thread of trash-themed skate memes, but it almost becomes low-hanging fruit at that point…

BETTY FORD” is a phone edit from Giovany Reyes featuring some boys traveling the world and skating everything from the best spot on the planet to the worst spot on the planet.

Pretty pointless to link a video with 100k+ YouTube views on here, but it’s been slow and it’s winter. Franky Villani has some New York clips in the middle of his Dickies part.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: We don’t often showcase dramatic dunks on here (or 2019 Warriors highlights, for that matter), but that Demarcus Cousins dunk was straight out of the 1990s NBA. And we’ve honestly been far too exhausted with any and all developments pertaining to the basketball team who plays on 33rd and 7th this past half-decade to have any solid opinion about the Porzingis trade. It’s just all too tiring. We have shit to do.

Quote of the Week: “The vegan girl at the vegan restaurant was having a vegan crisis about her vegan Super Bowl party.” — Alex Mosley

Already Got Those

Five out of five Tompkins skaters agree that this is the best box ever made. Sadly, it’s on the other side of the planet. We got to talking about replicating it — anybody know any welders? (Real question.)

Holy big flip, here is an illicit link to Brandon Westgate’s part in the new Element video, Peace. (Read: Will probably get deleted.) Really sick to see him still gunning for it as hard as he was in the Stay Gold days, and on a lot of new/seldom-seen New England spots at that. Would comment on the THPS music, but Brandon Westgate never struck me as a skater who is too invested in music.

Not much other info on it, but “Background 1” is a fun lo-def video with a ton of faces you’ll recognize from Gang Corp edits, Tompkins, and L.E.S. Park. All street clips.

Nik Stain, Hjalte, Paul Grund, and Bobby DeKeyzer went to the best skate spot on the planet and other European destinations. Ben Chadourne on the beat.

Listen to Bobby Puleo fan out on the Gonz for five minutes. He’s really good at finding the right words to describe why certain small things make a trick or photo extra special.

I’ve found myself using the word “super” too much lately, too :( Gino Iannucci is the latest guest in an hour-long interview on Lee Smith’s podcast.

Always down to plug something that resurrects the lost art of the video review. Live gets all Boil the Ocean on us and uses a bunch of vocabulary stuff and long sentences to do a joint review of Doll and It’s Time, two videos that occupy space on opposite ends of the spectrum (and country.)

If you’re 30+, you’re bound to get emotional watching this nine-minute-long raw Pier 7 greatest hits compilation.

Enjoyed this more than the “pro snowboarder with some ‘summer trip to New York’ footage in his skate part” label prepared me for: Forest Bailey’s NYC/MTL/PDX-based “Florg” part.

Here is what is slated-to-be one of the final Elkin’s Tapes episodes, featuring a good bit of pre-groer Daniel Kim footage.

The general harshness of the world feels extra apocalyptic in an election year, but if you’re an optimist (or willing to turn your sights that way), I read this article (from April 2018) about the [good] ways in which American life is currently being reinvented on a micro level and felt fuzzy inside, at least for a bit ♥ Love you guys, and please go vote next Tuesday!

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: This four-second video encapsulates the entire history of the Brooklyn Nets. (And yes, if it was by a Knicks player, it’d encapsulate their past 17 years too obvs.)

Quote of the Week: “A Bennett grind is like another drunk tank trick.” — Dana Ericson re: someone else (forgetting who) originally coining a smith kickflip as being a “drunk tank trick.” (Hypothetical: Has there ever been a Bennett grind that’s been better than even the most generic switch back smith? Actually, nvm.)

A lot of parentheses this Monday. Mind’s all over the place. (Or something.)

Fall Thru Like It’s August

It’s simple.

“When I spoke with one of my friends about writing this piece, she cautioned against it, stating that women in skateboarding have come so far in the past few years and I should wait to see what happens in the next few. But this isn’t an article about female skateboarders. This is a piece about my experience as a woman in skate culture.”

Cyrus made an eight-minute iPhone video with tons of 917 crew extras + clips from his travels.

The Canal Wheels full-length video, Mode, premieres at 198 Allen Street (between Houston & Stanton) at 8 P.M. on Thursday. Quick teaser here. Flyer here.

Gang Corp uploaded a bunch of B-sides and outtakes from their last California-based video, “Grabba.”

Kickflip god Brandon Westgate is the latest guest on The Bunt.

Village Psychic offers up some thoughts on the Polar video, which rather than being viewed collectively as a culture via a bunch of humans gathered in a room, was experienced on…PornHub. (Ed. Note: The video has been left off #QSTOP10 consideration until it is offered up on a more “official” viewing channel, because if we start counting things uploaded there, we probably have to start considering all of achievements uploaded to the ol’ Hub in a given week.)

“It’s dancing. And dancing’s fucking subjective. That’s why it’s a really weird thing when you can make a living doing it. And I was lucky that some people liked the way I danced. And I don’t ever take that for granted.” Rob Welsh reflects on his first-ever TWS Check Out.

Vice has a piece on the history of the frontside flip — both the Reynolds kind, and the Muska variation.

“As nostalgia deepens to the point that people tune in to watch retired and beloved pros flipping through old CCS catalogues, each new print ‘Thrasher’ and ‘TWS’ issue begins to look like a collector’s item, every board on the shop wall a potential hanger, every pro with a couple video parts under his belt a legend.” Boil the Ocean ponders on just when does the nostalgia go too far.

Ricardo Napoli’s Making It Happen video from last year is now online in full.

Juultage” is a montage filmed around New York that’s presumably Juul’s first not-so-covert foray into piercing through a skater market otherwise dominated by Cheap Cigs™ purchased in Chinatown with a state of Virginia stamp.

On the occasion of us getting into a tangent about European skaters aging more gracefully over on the small #skatetwitter community, here is a new Jesus Fernandez part composed out of footage that was leftover from The Flare.

Quote of the Week
Sweet Waste: “It’s crazy you’re 30 and never had a video part.”
Keith Denley: “I’m just gonna go down in history as one of those O.G. legends who never had that much footage.”

For whatever reason, this has been the go-to morning soundtrack in the QS office for the latter half of August.