The Long, Strange Trip — How Travel Took Over Skateboarding

📝 Words by Mike Munzenrider
🎨 Collage by Francesco Pini

One of the most remote skateboard demos ever happened more than 20 years ago in a village north of Madang in the lowlands of Papua New Guinea. Located off Australia’s Cape York, Papua New Guinea is the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. Some 840 different languages are spoken there — more than anywhere else in the world. Just around an eighth of its population lives in cities, so it is very rural. “It’s not developed at all,” says former pro skater Kenny Reed, who in the early 2000s, read a book about the place and decided to go there by himself following a skate trip to Australia.

Reed says he had hoped to get deep into the country’s highlands, but the travel agency with which he booked his trip said such excursions can take six months of planning. He was coming on short notice and was given a more simple itinerary. “It wasn’t as far out as I wanted to go but it was really far from civilization,” he says. The people he met were subsistence farmers who didn’t wear shoes. He’d brought his board and folks were curious about it, though hard surfaces were tough to come by. “The king of the village had a plywood floor in his hut [so we took it out] and we used that,” Reed says of the resulting one-man demo. “After that, they taught me how to throw spears and shoot bows and arrows.”

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Message From Home

📷 Photo by Zach Baker

Though a bit lagging on concrete specifics, The New York Times had a feature last week about the pending restoration of the Brooklyn Banks, which apparently has the mayor’s support? (2023 is actually what they said when they pulled all the bricks out three years ago.)

Cutty spots and familiar faces in Nick Kassebaum’s Sinkhole video, which is almost entirely filmed in New York.

Does this spot have an agreed upon name yet, or is everyone going to do the whole civil war over naming rights? Neema Joorabchi posted up a two-minute edit from the new, blue and yellow recycled plastic ledges on Essex Street.

“I’m in the midst of a battle right now, I’ve gone back down to riding a 7.75” board.” The Slam City Skates blog interviewed Danny Brady for their “First & Last” series.

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All These Damn Plugs and Young Takeoff I’m the Socket

Connor C. @ Columbus C. • Photo via @jfv.studio 📷

Feel like this should’ve been on the repost circuit way heavier… On Friday, Stussy dropped an eight-minute promo by Antosh Cimoszko featuring what amounts to small parts’ worth of footage from Aaron Loreth, Diego Todd, Jesse Alba and Hugo Boserup + appearances from others.

Also related: A few minutes of Diego Todd loosies.

The Halloween Stickers crew dropped HSS2 last week. No full Liam McCabe part, but that FedEx line is absolutely fucking insane. Not sure if anybody has done two flip tricks down the sixes before.

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This Summer Last Summer Like Déjà Vu

carl

Spring QS merch is trickling into shops in the U.S. Available now at Supreme New York & Los Angeles, Labor, NJ, Alumni [Nyack], 510, Andrew [Miami], Atlas, Civil, DSM, Emage, Home, Humidity, Orchard, Pitcrew, Seasons and Uprise. Available in Japan now. Available in Europe, Korea and Canada next week. Available online next Monday, May 8th, at midnight E.S.T. Thx 4 the ♥

Congrats to Cyrus on his first magazine cover. Gonna party extra hard for the first cover he gets with his name actually spelled right ;)

Walker Ryan has low-key (mid-key?) spent the past few years doing some of the best tricks on the staple New York spots. Old Friends put together this five-minute A.B.D. edit of all his city footage. Respect to filming the World Trade out ledge from the Burger King window, and to the fact that the security guard standing at the bottom of the bank is basically a part of the Roosevelt Island spot, no matter the clip.

Quim Cardona and friends in the montage from Politic’s First Division video.

This video is dreadful, but Chris Pfanner does a beast line from the rail to the double bump-to-bars in the projects on Madison Street.

Drew Connors dropped a promo for Bailar II, featuring Shredmaster Keith advocating for the resurgence of the Polish Park ledges on McGuiness — A.K.A. Derick Ziemkiewicz Park. You can watch the first Bailar video here.

Genny uploaded his first iPhone video of the spring to a David Banner classic.

The last part of Making It Happen is online, via Patrick Vidal and some monstrous pop.

Jonathan Rentschler has a sick-looking new 176-page book coming out that documents the final three years of Love Park.

Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but the latest Bunt episode is with Ryan Gallant.

Russian Bob and Reda put together this retrospective on New York skateboarding’s first videographer, R.B. Umali. Happy 40th R.B. (Rewatch his “Shoot All Skaters” episodes from a few years ago because they’re bomb.)

Boil the Ocean re: Chromeball Interview #100 with Danny Way.

Enjoyed this edit from London’s proverbial T.F., Gillett Square (“Crackba” is a sick nickname), which was outside of Torey’s first apartment in London :) Memories, man!

So do we buy tickets to Prague orrrrrr……?

Lol @ them skate-proofing this hellhole of a spot. Shout out Hjalte. Also, the Marcy Rails are done for. Thanks to Mike Heikkila for the intel.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: I hate Paul Pierce, but respect the fuck out of Paul Pierce, and now that he’s out of the league as of yesterday, I don’t hate Paul Pierce. Godspeed to one of the great NBA villains.

Quote of the Week: “Would you rather go to jail for one year by yourself, or go to jail for ten years with gang?” — J Boy

Endless Shrimp is back!

...well?

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