This past holiday season, we were blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with one of the most elusive fashion houses on earth. No, it was not Chanel or Celine, but another opulent, French-speaking office: Classic Griptape.
99.3% of Classic’s profits get funneled back towards research into how to stay ahead of the competition in continuing to produce The World’s Best Griptape™, but the remaining .7% of our collaborative profits were spent on a team retreat to Puerto Rico.
Photo via Chuck 📷
“That could have been me.” The Guardian spoke to several Black skateboarders — including our dear friend Aaron Wiggs, along with Harold Hunter Foundation chair + architect of The Black List, Patrick Kigongo — about their experiences in the shadow of Tyre Nichols’ murder at the hands of police.
“Yeah! At Glendale High!” Farran Golding had Nelly Morville talk over her Paymaster part about how the Limosine connection came to be + filming for their inaugural video.
Columbus Circle continues to enjoy its reign as the spot of the winter: Christian Kerr just dropped an edit with a days’ worth of Columbus footage, and yes, you get to see Gabe Tennen shred in it! It’s a foregone conclusion someone is going to drop a one-spot part from there by May, right?
If you were too young to have experienced the real-time reign of the skaters most synonymous with the nineties — but had already clocked your 10,000 hours of watching skate videos by the time, say, Jake Johnson hit the scene — there’s a decent chance you carry a vivid memory of first seeing Zered in a video (especially if you grew up in the northeast.)
95th and Columbus might be the *original* Forbidden Banks, as explained by Eli Gesner in Jenkem’s “Neighborhoods” video on the Upper West Side. 📷 Photo by Greg Navarro.
Pretty much the only Go Skate Day edit worth your time, year after year: Sabotage’s GSD 2022 is now live.
“Can post-Olympics, post-Instagram, post-Phelps skateboarding still maintain the purist allegiance to the etiquette and rules of old?” Free has a #longform piece on the politics of finding spots, preserving the secrets of spots, and being the first-and-second to get tricks on certain spot up on their website. (For additional reading, Mike Munzenrider interviewed Atiba, Tim Fulton and Mike Heikkila about this same ever-complex dynamic back in 2020, and QS ran an interview with the creator of Skhateyou, the website every single skate tourist has used when traveling in Europe, back in 2017. Things haven’t gotten any clearer, as you can tell by the Free article having the widest net of perspectives yet.)
Like the ancient French Canadian proverb goes, “Impossible is only a skate trick.” Chuck and Classic Grip’s team of scientists did the impossible and actually managed to make the waning days of 2021 — when everyone else was spiraling from their March 2020 PTSD — look like a good time.
This one is a lil’ late New Year edit from Classic Griptape, featuring a grip to Stafhon Boca and Will Marshall appearances, plus …honestly cannot believe I’m about to type this… the return of Pryce Holmes footage to the QS front page. Starting to cry of joy now. Have a good one 🥲
