The Best Skate Videos & Parts of 2023 — QS Readers Poll Results

🎨 Illustration by Cosme Studio
📊 Ballot Count by 4Ply Magazine

The results are in: a time-capsule of 2023 skateboarding, as voted by QS readers. Some old favorites have returned to the rankings, and some new ones have emerged.

And yes, it should be stated, perhaps louder than in other years, that year-end rankings are an imperfect artform. Miles Silvas’ “City To City” part that would eventually land him Thrasher‘s S.O.T.Y. trophy premiered a few hours before voting for the QS Readers Poll closed (that didn’t stop him from getting some votes in those final moments though.) Yuto dropped his April part three days after voting closed. But we are committed to the belief that nobody wants to talk about 2023 after Christmas. And for a year when it felt like Skateboard Oscars Season™ began in August, we had to make the call. All those parts that missed the cutoff will be eligible for next year’s voting, same as years past.

If you are just joining us, this ranking was voted on by QS readers from December 4th to December 8th. If you’re interested in the methodology, 4PLY broke down how we tally the votes

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Turning the Page

Angel and the Papi Brand dudes dropped the new installment of their Bronx-centric video series, and it’s the most extensive one yet: Bill$ 4 Inflation went live last week. Features great parts from Angel Fonseca (who’s still getting better and better) and Justin Adams + other homies, and a lot of dives into Bronx spots that only the locals skate.

Nothing is touching Limo edits right now. It’s not even that much skating, but the eight minutes fly by in Limosine’s North Carolina trip video featuring the entire team.

Ryan Mettz made an extended edition remix of Max Palmer’s “Spiked Off” part from March with more guest clips, B-sides and unseen clips.

Feels like fuckin’ yesterday: The Shady One dove into some old footage and made a “Summer With Friends 2016” montage that provides a vivid snapshot of downtown Manhattan skateboarding just seven short years ago. Features pretty much anyone you would’ve seen in a Johnny Wilson video circa 2016.

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Stafhon Boca & Coles Bailey Star in ‘Coles; Stafhon’ by Zach Baker

🧠 Words, Photo & Video by Zach Baker

I was driving a 15-passenger van containing roughly 11 skaters in the middle of the night when I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Elijah was next to me and I realized that I probably needed to explain myself. I’d been working on this project with Coles and Stafhon called “Coles; Stafhon” and as I stared at what I could of the highway, some dumb imagery superimposed itself across the windshield. I was laughing, I told him, because I’d just imagined Coles walking into a dimly-lit dining room, sitting down and eating pasta very, very seriously.

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I Can Buy Myself Griptape, Write My Name on the Tail

📸 via Zach Baker

For Fuck’s Sake: The Tompkins construction start date has been moved …again. October 16th. Going to stop posting these every week from here on out. It starts when it starts. (P.S. Some of the in-better-shape obstacles have been moved into storage.)

“They had a trashcan fire in one of those iconic Love Park bins. It was so cold that people’s bushings were freezing up making turning impossible… They had to grab their board and leave it by this trashcan fire for five minutes, which would buy them five minutes of skating before the bushings froze back up and they had to do it again… It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, people everywhere.” Palace videographer, Jack Brooks, is the latest subject of the Slam City Skates blog’s “Visuals” series, in which he discusses Bill’s “Pigeon” edit, the Palace Kalis board, filming Lucien’s Palasonic part, and more.

A watershed moment in the Bobshirt franchise: an hour-long interview with Rick Howard and Mike Carroll.

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Drive The Fiat Like It Was A Chevy

📷 Photo by Joel Meinholz

“I hate to lean on this clichéd-ass targeted-ad-ass assertion, but skateboarding is a global support system.” Zach Baker wrote a trip article about an Alltimers trip to Medellín for Thrasher. The video + Joel Meinholz’s photography from it are all included 🇨🇴 Somebody bring Tom Knox to that first plaza.

Known goat, Jawn Gardner, empties and shreds an abandoned pool in Bridgewater, NJ that was built during the Eisenhower administration, and skated as far back as the mid-80s — while giving us a nice history lesson in the process 🐐

Ron Allen is 60 years old 🤯

Joe Buffalo has a new part out for his Anti-Hero guest board. If you don’t know about Joe, please watch the New Yorker mini doc about him from 2021.

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