Given that most mainstream media outlets tend to make skateboarders look like complete retards when they’re on TV (Dill, Bam, Sheckler, etc.), it is always nice when they don’t fall victim to the otherwise inevitable propensity for fucking up anything skate-related. I say this with wholehearted acknowledgement that skateboarders dominantly are retards, with a select few exceptions, so making them come off as seemingly coherent and competent of existence in modern society at large is a feat in and of itself.

I haven’t seen HBO’s latest show, “How to Make It in America,” largely due to the fact that, like 70% New Jersey-ians, the one cable-having resource I had canceled HBO the morning after the series finale of The Sopranos aired. However, according to what I have been told, it hasn’t really dealt as explicitly with skateboarding as people had expected when they heard Javier Nunez had been casted for it. That’s probably a good thing, as seeing Kid Cudi doing kickturns at the Banks with a film crew would be an unfortunate image to see.

The promotional video for it is great though, and almost the sort of thing that you wouldn’t expect from a network tailored to reaching a fairly wide audience, as I’m not exactly sure how well it would resonate with a audience that doesn’t know who Sean Sheffy is. The whole thing is an account of Javier’s character, who is otherwise seldom seen in the series, but supposedly a very large background player. It’s not hard to figure out what cast of characters is responsible for informing the cocktail of seemingly fictionalized accounts of “Wilfredo” by everyone from Gino to Reda to Luis Tolentino to Koston. There’s a handful of actual tricks in it too, which I’m not mad at. It’s the best thing on TV since Jersey Shore.

Watch it over at HBO.com, The Legend of Wilfredo Gomez.

Around halfway into the decade, an oft-discussed Quarter Snacks personality, one who has been an integral part of this website’s existence both in its current incarnation and various other forms of existence it had taken up in the past, by name of Danny Weiss, took up the hobby of photography. He recently released a wide array of photographs dating midway back into the long-forgotten 2000s, an era when the TF reigned supreme and youthful possibility seemed endless until the sun began to pierce through the darkness and the sweat started to dry into uncomfortable crust at Union Square.

He has a website called The Great Books Have Been Written, which I have deliberately neglected adding to the links section after all of these years, partially because of its absurd and overlong name that has been the a part of various explanations all rooting back to the way Danny wishes to present himself as an artist (he recently suggested the much more favorable “Quarter Snaps” as a name for his website, which I support 100%), but otherwise due to the often imbalanced relationship that I have had with Danny Weiss over the years. Perhaps I don’t exactly know how to wrap my mind around his standing as an artist. He’s a total sweetheart either way.

I have included several selections from his website to entice you into going there. The selections tend to lean in favor of content over composition because this is in fact a skateboarding, southern rap, New York lifestyle, etc. website, and they seem more relevant than mandatory Robert Frank homages and pictures of cops and snow.

So without further ado… (more…)

I recently regressed about fifteen years into the past technologically, as I no longer own a computer, or at least a working one. Which you know, means that it is a bit hard to maintain a website. Maybe they’ll orchestrate a fundraiser on password night at the Bowery one day, but until then, we’ll see how this goes.

Speaking of technology, skateboarding seems to be headed fast into two different directions. While everyone is taking out student loans to they could buy the latest HD device for their “film” and/or profound excavation of the beauty and brilliance that coincides with a bunch of skateboarders sitting in a cargo-van littered with McDonald’s wrappers and Coors Light cans, the opposite end of the spectrum is moving in a wholly different direction — the low resolution Flip Cam / Cell Phone Cam / iPhone 3GS. Frankly, this is the more honorable option, but that should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with this website’s aesthetic biases. Long-gone are the days when the VX1 was the sole standard, and you were a failure for owning a TRV or Canon according to a bunch of message board geeks. The real format war has come.

Anyways Adam Abada made a flip cam video, as did everyone’s favorite Nolita degenerate, Matthew Mooney. And here’s one of Pryce and Francesco in Malmo. Where they skate in zero degree weather.

Bryan started posting out takes footage from the mid 2000s over on Official. Luis Tolentino and Jasonwear sections are the first to be up, and they should bring you back to a time when life was much simpler.

Due to a Ryan Hickey thread on the Slap Message board, someone posted a link to this unreleased interview footage of Ryan Hickey that wasn’t included in the DVD release of Deathbowl to Downtown.

Camo pants!

Ty is famous.

The takeover! I can do without the screaming dread though. It only works in Smif-N-Wessun songs.

“I saw her at Lit years later, and she was like, ‘What are you doing here?’ What am I doing here? I’ve gotten into like thirty fights here. What are you doing here?” - Marquez.

Today is the ten year anniversary of two of the last decade’s top ten rap records (number one, and number eight or nine, respectively). This date marked the beginning of the end for New York’s hold on musical relevancy that expired around the time Trap Music came out, and has not experienced a resurgence since. And probably never will. (Disclaimer to casual readers: Quarter snacks does not acknowledge modern genres of music outside of rap, so MGMT, Animal Collective, and other gay Brooklyn bands do not have any effect on the city’s musical relevancy.)

In the midst of all the Banks-being-closed-for-four-years talk, the dream topic of the Little Banks’ reinstatement is something that should be addressed. If you have any ideas as to how to convince the idiots in the public works department who prefer overgrown weeds, homeless people and heroin needles over skateboarders that a revival would be a good look, please share your ideas here.

Anthony Pappalardo is like the Stephan Marbury of skateboarding. He’s somehow Converse’s star player, but literally doesn’t do anything. I know that half of Long Island will be out for blood upon reading that, but after about a decade, old video parts don’t really subsidize a lack of heart when the rest of the team is out there on the court killing it every night. Someone give Sammy Baca a shoe, he actually skates.

So much for the Parks Department’s age-old excuse of kicking us out because we’re “damaging the property.” Last time I checked, snow doesn’t experience “property damage.” But they seem to feel otherwise. At least we’re not the only ones suffering at the hands of discrimination.

Still pretty much the best European on a skateboard after all these years.

What an idiot.

Quote of the Week: “He has yellow fever. I don’t like niggas who got yellow fever.” - B.B. the Boss

You can still hop that joint?

Stereo sucks, but they posted some footage of Adrian Vega that is more than worth your time. Perhaps the only redeeming factor of the Union Square demise that occurred last year is the (hopefully) impending trend of propping up tree grates Temple University style over the seemingly useless metal posts scattered about the perimeter of the the park. [*I’m actually not 100% sure that is Union but it looks like it.]

I know people around here tend to get offended whenever there’s a God forbid, non-skateboarding related post, but if you are a fan of Switch Michael Strobert’s work on the Mind Field Re-Edit, you should probably give this a quick watch. If you hate it, oh well.

The previously discussed lack of a rail over the six at FedEX is no longer.

Good luck with this one.

I completely forgot that this was even put online, but watch Can’t Ban the Snackman 2 if you haven’t seen it already.

Quote of the Week: “Only real fucking whores go out in January.” - Roc