The 2017 Shirtless Kebab Tour

connor

C. Champion via W. Dada

“Every time you disprove the prejudices of a pedestrian, you win a small victory that reverses the erosion of our collective social capital.” As sarcastic as we may get about the tired “skaters see the world differently” trope, there’s always something reassuring in our ability to — on on some tiny level — leave the world better than it was before, provided we stop sitting around talking shit about pants for long enough. Caught in the Crossfire’s “Four Small Ways Skateboarding Can Change the World” is inspiring, intelligent and heartwarming writing for a tough world right now.

On that note, #respect x999999 to Young Will and everyone in Providence, Rhode Island. “If you have an idea, for pity’s sake run with it, for the good of us all.”

Half a million pounds of Love Park granite is being shipped to Malmö, Sweden. Shout out to all the cities and people doing cool shit to make humans’ time on earth better.

If you guys in the comments are calling Shanahan a “’99 Kalis deadringer,” you better brace yourselves for the ’99 Stevie version because its really really real.

Ugh, Jake ♥ Just wait on it

This might be an illegal link, but here’s Yaje’s Riddles in Mathematics part til it gets taken down. Non-sketchy link to buy the video here. Sorry TWS, it’s Yaje ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“One day’s lifted bar soon becomes the next day’s hurdle to be ollied, and later kickflipped, and eventually kilty mcbagpipped for an after-credits clip set to a whimsical indie-rock tune.” — Boil the Ocean explores ledge skating’s shrinking middle class, via the lens of Tiago’s switch back tail™. And yes, YouTube debaters, Antonio could’ve easily been #1 but Tiago got it for the trick’s status as a “culture-unifying moment.”

The most entertaining raw files clip in a really long time: A full 18 minutes from Na-Kel Smith’s X-Games “Real Street” part. Most elastic slams in the business too :)

ICYMI: Johnny made a clip of Cyrus and some Nike SB boys skating in Texas.

Skater types.” Facepalm emoji ya.

Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine is now available to stream on Hulu. (You may need to put in your card info for a free trial blah blah blah.) You can read and disagree with the QS review here.

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*Non-Skate Related Alert* The latest episode of 99% Invisible deals with abandoned buildings, squatters, riots, and everything else surrounding Tompkins Square Park in the 80s and 90s. “You got guns? We got piss buckets.” Shout to Mostly.

Quote of the Week: “The price isn’t the problem. Pryce is the problem.” — Dallas Todd

I learned frontside flips via Pryce’s Seaport line A.K.A. have never fully *flipped* one in my life. They still count in S.K.A.T.E. though ;) Thanks Pryce.

The QS Transition Facilities Tour — Part 3

adrian hall

Photo by Zach Baker

[Part one here, part two here]

When celebrating the virtues of skate-friendly cities like Copenhagen, it’s important to remember that they didn’t become that way by accident. A place like Denmark may not have the vehement sue-happy culture we do, but there’s still a long process to build a utopia. People with college degrees and sophisticated understandings of architecture, city planning, etc. — who also happen to skateboard — fought for that shit. Many cities are slowly starting to recognize skateboarding as something more productive than spraypainting on a wall or pissing in a corner. Now the next step is figuring the subtleties out. “Maybe a blind-built pre-fab park isn’t the best idea…”

When presented with a chance to do something permanent with the locals in Providence, it didn’t make sense for it to be an exclusive keyholder type of project. It also didn’t make sense to add on to an existing skatepark; they have a whole community already doing a good job at keeping that flame lit.

Filmed by Dan Mcgrath and Johnny Wilson.

Adrian Hall Park, across the street from the Trinity Repertory Theater in downtown Providence, has been a stop for skaters since the early nineties. It has a platform to do tricks off, some steps, and a curb — not a great spot, but enough to keep interest when you get the boot out of everywhere else downtown and are willing to settle on skating anything, insofar as you don’t get hassled. Beyond the skaters, there usually isn’t a whole lot going on in the park. It’s not scenic, as it’s on a side street next to a parking garage: a perfect place to drink a brown-bagged beer or take a nap on some cardboard if you don’t have anywhere to be that night. It was also a solid candidate to be turned into something more than just a barren stone park.

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The QS Transition Facilities Tour — Part 2

spine wave

Photo by Pad Dowd

One of the byproducts of New England’s tightly-knit park scene is that it created a generation of locals who are resourceful and good with their hands. There’s not always a park being built, but if you look hard enough, there’s always an opportunity for a one-off in a forgotten crevice of the city. These will range from the equivalent of what we know in New York as works of “Jerry Duty,” to micro spots that stuff one-tenth of a skatepark into a cleared out corner behind an industrial zone.

A lot of these spots aren’t under some main bridge, or in a well-traversed warehouse district, e.g. how the B.Q.E. spot is a fully public D.I.Y. creation. Maybe a guy knows a guy who knows a guy, and he’ll give skaters free reign over a hidden patch of land to the side of his building before he figures out just what the hell he’s going to do with it. The results become a bowl corner next to a factory’s crumbling smokestack, or a wavy spine concoction built over an out-of-commission gas pipe that even National Grid doesn’t know the deal with. Barring a few anomalies, the northeast isn’t equipped for long lasting full-fledged D.I.Y. skateparks like more spacious parts of the country are. People have been living on top of each other for hundreds of years here; spots like these are left to make do with the leftover crumbs of the city.

Filmed by Johnny Wilson & Max Palmer. Alternate YouTube Link.

The most insane example involved a thirty-minute drive from downtown Providence, until you pull up to a dilapidated building in a neighborhood that has nothing but liquor stores. If you’ve seen that movie Prisoners, it’s basically like that building where Hugh Jackman takes the guy to torture him.

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