Extralinkable

Frame via Mehring. Sorry that Rob’s a bit blurry. Hate hate HATE that Instagram replaced Tumblr for things that Tumblr was way better at doing, e.g. not compressing skate photos into goddamn 700px size, but then again, I’m sure someone was going on about the same thing when all the mags were going under, so…

Pssst…shops are getting spring/summer QS stuff in now. Online next Monday, May 13. More info soon ♥

The first Blobys edit in over a year! This one got a good deal of burn these past few days. Roman Gonzalez is the all-time leading scorer of making visual poetry out of tricks nobody else is getting away with :)

I guess people are just, like, nosepicking the side of the building at Blue Park now?

Lurker Lou premiered his new part — filmed entirely in purple Adidas Campus shoes he kept finding in Cape Cod Marshall’s locations — on a box truck decked out with L.E.D. screens this past weekend. Village Psychic made a video profile with Lou about his footwear-based artwork over on their site.

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Anarchy Town

“A disc jockey, prison guard and a lumberjack walk into a vape lounge. A lounge team member looks up and says: ‘I know you folks. You must be coming from Human Resources Online’s list of the worst professions in 2018, ranked in terms of average salary and advancement opportunities, right?’ Before they can answer, a pro skateboarder wanders in behind them.” — Boil the Ocean explores the dynamics of skateboarding’s shrinking middle class as we approach the 2020s.

It seems Michael Jordan has been watching Josh Velez’s past couple parts.

Dudes skating Everson between piles of snow: “…Or Get Off The Pot” is a new Syracuse edit from Lukas Reed.

Village Psychic had a couple nice pieces on their site recently. First, they caught up with contributors to Transworld, old and new, to get some recollections on the mag, and they also got Tony Hawk on the horn about where he (as someone who has had the widest range of endorsement deals in existence) draws the line on corporate sponsors.

Thrasher posted the interviews and photos from their feature on the Chrystie vid.

Even a bunch of dudes from Germany who haven’t grown tired of skating the same downtown spots summer after summer aren’t resistant to T.F. West’s magnetic pull. “Transit Ride” is a half New York / half L.A. mini video by Paul Herrman. (And also confirms that you aren’t really dating yourself by pointing out Gang Starr in the most oft-skated to rap artist conversation.)

Spring is for cab flips. Zach Moore’s part in Skating Is Easy is now online.

“If I saw the spots he skates waxed, I’d just think it was rollerbladers.” Thrasher uploaded the raw files to Brandon Westgate’s “Bog Town” part, filmed primarily (all?) around his home in New England.

Brad Cromer is the latest guest on The Bunt.

Yet another reminder to watch Minding The Gap if you still haven’t summoned the nerve to type in your card # for that free Hulu trial… Free interviewed the film’s director, Bing Liu. They were slow to get to it at first too, but became instant fans once they watched the film.

Ricardo Napoli’s video, Ciao, is premiering at The Woods in Williamsburg (48 S 4th Street) tonight at 7 P.M. You can watch his last video, Making It Happen, here.

Spot Updates — 1) The ledges on 110th and Central Park West had chunks taken out of all of them by the city. 2) Haven’t seen footage of it in a bit, but recently received an email tip that Queens’ Broadway Park is currently fenced off for construction.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Haven’t had Russ on here in a minute.

Quote of the Week: “You know what, his style isn’t fake. He’s just ugly.” — Stafhon

A nice Monday morning mix from Roctakon. Listen while you sit alone in a smoke-filled cafe before skating, watching your past lovers cry ♥

Mailbox Money

Congrats to Jason on the pro board ♥

Chrystie NYC’s first full-length video, Chapter One in now live on Thrasher. Features an ender part from Aaron Herrington, a bunch of footage of that dude Kuae Cosa who’s been popping up in Cons edits, the up-close angle of the other way ollie at the Crosby Street Vespa Bump… and that ride-on grind at LaGuardia High School is insane.

As far as “concept parts” go, filming one entirely on cobblestone spots is a bold undertaking.

On the opposite end of the texture spectrum, Village Psychic made a montage only at playground spots around New York, and reminded us of why we don’t do remix videos without skate audio anymore.

“The guys in the video don’t give a fuck about the American industry anymore. We were also all listening to a lot of Tupac at the time and getting kicked out of spots in Cali, then jumping into the van and blasting that Tupac song kind of cemented it.” Ok then. Free has a full retrospective on one of the seminal skate video imports of the 2000s, Lordz’ They Don’t Give A Fuck About Us (and answers the question we were asking a lot back in 2013: what happened to William Phan?

Steve Mastorelli made a rad Silvester Eduardo remix. Actually missed a bunch of this footage before. Syracuse nollie flip was sick.

Jake Johnson v.s. The Louvre. Still holding out for Chris Pfanner v.s. The Met one day.

These Bunt episodes are getting pretty long. Kerry Getz is the latest guest. Love a level-headed, smart former pro. Shame that the angry, “everyone screwed me over” curmudgeon types tend to get all the attention though.

Theories uploaded what will be the final installment of the Elkin raw tapes series, and Tombo uploaded #9 of his raw deals series in the event that you need some VX footage from a long time ago to go along with your morning coffee ;)

Copenhagen and Malmö still got Paris beat on the whole “skateable obstacles integrated in public spaces but not exactly skateparks”-thing, but yeah! What they said! But for New York! Would trade like 3-4 New York skateparks for just that little red plaza on the side street in Berlin.

Paper has a quick feature on Skate Mamis, a collective of girls doing cool shit in Puerto Rico.

Aaron Herrington and Mark Suciu go on an artsy cruise around Lower Manhattan.

The Sabotage crew is releasing another video in 2020.

Ricardo Napoli’s new video, Ciao is premiering in Williamsburg, next Monday, April 8. Flyer + more info here. Teaser can be found here.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Tyshawn’s T.F. West part on the big screen at Barclays.

Quote of the Week
Charles Rivard: “He skates like he’s on coke, and parties like he’s on weed.”
Rob Harris: “More like he skates like he wishes he had friends.”

Link or Drown 2

(Colors.)

The week’s best piece of skate content: The New York Times with an illustrated story about Chico Brenes’ journey from asylum seeker fleeing Nicaragua, to pro skater, to the present day in his home country.

“I kind of consider 2000 to 2009-10 the dark ages of skating. It was just like, the filmer and photographer decided what a skater would skate. If you were good, you got shipped out to California and you would skate with people that would be like ‘You need to do this.’ Almost like there were requirements. ‘Do this handrail.'” Spot-finder extraordinaire, Dave Caddo, has an interview with Village Psychic about the rules of skating new spots, blown out spots, and unlocking spots.

Spent a month or three mulling about whether to write something about the three skate movies that came out in 2018 on here. Quite obviously, nothing on that end came to fruition, and this Paris Review piece on Minding the Gap is nine zillion times better than anything I could have written on what is, far and away, the best “skateboard movie” ever made. Get that free Hulu trial if you haven’t seen it yet.

i-D has a long feature commemorating Palace’s ten-year journey from a brand conceived in a dilapidated skate house by Southbank to what it is today: employer of Torey Goodall, Jamal Smith and Tico ♥

Slam City Skates has a long interview about the current status of the Long Live Southbank project, and it being on the cusp of reaching its massive fundraising goal to open up + reconstruct the closed-off portion of the spot.

LANDLINE” is a rad, mostly NJ-based mini video by Matt Hilzenrath.

Brad Cromer has an all New York part (with a couple Jersey clips) commemorating the release of his new Huf pro model.

Unclear if he’s been reading more women authors or not, but Mark Suciu has a bunch of New York clips in his new Thunder part. Pretty sure he’s the first one to get a clip at those year-old, two-second bust ledges by IBM, and that rock ollie in front of Corner Bistro is fucked.

Ciao is the latest all-New York video by Ricardo Napoli. Teaser here.

Here’s the preview for Virgin Blacktop, a documentary about a 1970s skate team based out of Nyack, New York.

Jahmal Williams is the latest guest on the Mission Statement podcast, and Joe Castrucci is the latest on The Bunt.

More post-“BLESSED” content: New Order Mag has a quick “Five Things” interview with Bill.

Stuff You’ve Probably Caught Already: Frog has a team montage over on Thrasher, Eli Reed has a part that is 70% filmed in New York and made this guy’s girlfriend think he died + Franky Villani and Jakes Hayes skate two or three city spots in their Duets section.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Trae Young with the magic trick.

Quote of the Week: “When two skaters have babies, a VX dies.” — Shawn Powers.

Put A Date On It

T.F. Global. Photo via Claudio Majorana’s book, Head of the Lion.

Is there a compilation of board flip challenge fails yet, or are we going to have to assign that grueling job to an intern?

Looks like the solid barrage of upstate New York videos is gonna keep rolling in 2019 (see #5.) The Seasons guys have a new ten-minute video on Thrasher entitled “Albany 2.5” with tons of Empire State Plaza footage, and a mini S.F. section at the end.

Wasn’t really sure what to expect from this upon click, and it thankfully ended up being smiles the whole way through ♥ Here’s a good seven minutes of Fred Gall iPhone footage at some D.I.Y. spot and a bunch of typical New Jersey crust.

ICYMI: Cooper Winterson unlocks another dimension of ConEdison Banks in his Skating Is Easy part.

Had a bunch of “wait, that spot’s been gone for years” thoughts watching this, and then realized it’s more of a remix than a new part. Either way! Any B.A. is good B.A., and Grant Yansura was nice enough to pull together a bunch of his [mainly New York] footage from SB Chronicles 3 and onward for a new-old “Slappy Seconds” edit, which includes a handful of unseen clips.

Theories is doing another “Underground Skater of the Year” thing this year, and we’re writing in a ballot for Jawn Gardner.

“Oh, you were just skateboarding? That’s weird. You can leave.” Solo has an interview with John Shanahan, and Skate Jawn has a lil’ feature on his photos.

Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Tim O’Connor posted up an unreleased episode of his podcast with Ricky Oyola, and Steve Brandi has a “Skater’s Favorite Skater” TWS vid where he talks about how Ricky influenced him over the years.

Not a lot of content like this going live on the skateboard internet in the age of Instagram Stories: the Village Psychic dudes drove from Minnesota to Memphis to escape the cold and did a long[ish]form blog post with photos about their journey.

One of those “I’m not really sure wtf this is about” Boil the Ocean posts: something about testing for weed and the Olympics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Forever love that double noseslide line. Or any double noseslide line, for that matter. Matt Velez uploaded three minutes of Mark Wetzel raw files to his YouTube.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Gotta be that Kyrie v.s. Iggy highlight — no, wait. J.R. Smith’s hat. Yeah, J.R. Smith’s hat is the play of the week.

Quote of the Week: “OVO is the new RDS.” — Torey Goodall