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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Losing The Bunt Jam — A Court-Level Perspective

📝 Words by Zach Baker

Saturday morning — or afternoon, rather — I woke up in a Hyatt Regency on King Street in downtown Toronto. My forehead had a lump. At the foot of the bed were yesterday’s blood-soaked socks. I read texts through one eye as I tongued a chipped front tooth that I swore was perfectly fine a day ago.

As a family, we moved every couple of years because my dad was a college basketball coach. He was an agent for a second, then coached the Harlem Globetrotters for two years, went on to scout for the NBA for a while, and now, he’s an assistant coach for the NBA G-League Ignite, a team without a hometown, constructed to serve the NBA’s development league and currently stationed in Henderson, Nevada. They had the most picks out of any single organization at this year’s NBA Draft. It’s kinda cool and pretty weird.

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Bed, Snacks & Beyond

📷 via @mariosk8

Zered is the latest subject of the Lookback Library’s “Cover Discussions” series, chatting about his three Transworld covers and three Skateboarder covers. (Crazy he hasn’t had a Thrasher one before, especially given the Massachusetts connection with Phelps.)

“Caller 10” is a crustaceous journey by Pittsburgh’s Radio Skateshop through one of the roughest cities for skate spots. Includes a great Zach Funk part to close it out.

While we’re on the topic of crust, peep Adam Meuller’s part in Justin Bohl’s Detroit video, Minted, which includes everything from lines on broken boats through abandoned buildings to polejams out of snow piles.

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