Just like that, another week has passed, and an entire week’s worth of skate-related stuff has happened. Crazy how it keeps happening. Anyway, let’s start with the best news first: Stalin plaza appears to be saved. Dr. Paul O’Connor has the report from the scene, but the gist of it is that the city government wanted to test the structural integrity of the plaza, which is what the fences were all about, and that they determined it’s fine. The city also held a public forum, at which the skaters were able to present that petition that you all (better have) signed, helping make the case for its continued use. The ledges got a little roughed up while the workers were doing their tests, but have been reassembled and appear to be perfectly functional. This post from the Estonian homies, who bravely embarked on a Prague trip when the plaza was still fenced off, is proof:
Given how persistently the world has been losing iconic skate spots, it’s good to hear this one’s safe for now. Especially because I still haven’t gotten to skate it!
Words by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue
Beyond that, this weekend marks the first heats of the Women’s Battle at the Berrics (#WBATB). The Berrics has been building hype with a series of fun, short videos focused on the athletes. Leo Baker and Mariah Duran go first, followed by Margie Didal and Adrianne Sobloh. Leo versus Mariah should be good. Mariah tells us that, “I play skate with my homies all the time,” while Leo warns that the first time they’d skated in weeks was the day before this video was recorded, but both are stomping tricks left and right. Two weeks off hasn’t put a damper on that nollie heel game. I still have a strong aversion to Berrics content, but, as Leo put it, “It’s a pretty cool moment in history.” That’s true, and I think I’m going to break down and watch tomorrow. I’m mostly rooting for everyone to take Steve Berra’s money, but also… Go Candy!
Okay, on that note, there’s a smattering of other biopic content focused on women pros this week, namely this rad Paradeworld video with Nora to celebrate her new Adidas capsule, and a short i-D profile of Beatrice Domond. We’ve said our piece about the Nora collection (we love it!), but we’ll say that Beatrice’s little interview is cool because she’s basically saying that to get on the two hottest brands in skateboarding, she ignored everything trendy going on and just did her shit. Maybe it’s a naive little fantasy, but I’d sure like to think that sponsorship will, at least in some small corner of the skate world, continue to depend on how dedicated you are to skating and how authentic your style is, not how many stairs you can biggerspin flip in an Olympics qualifier.
Okay, in other awesome news, Jenkem is hosting five full pieces of academic scholarship, and has assembled them together with little skater-friendly abstracts from Jenk staffers and contributors. If you’ve been to Pushing Boarders, or even followed it online, some of the authors of the work will be very familiar to you: Girls Skate Brisbane’s Dr. Indigo Willing; Re-verb Skateboarding founder, Pushing Boarders co-founder, and my current roommate Dr. Sander Hölsgens; and Skatepal ambassador Dr. Dani Abulhawa, among others. The abstracts are great previews, but if you have the time, this is an amazing opportunity to read all these papers in full. Jenkem has, as they put it, “broke them out of their ivory paywalls, and shared them in full here to get your mind juices flowing.” Mmmm, mind juices.
Speaking of Jenkem, Alexis Castro also wrote a very hot take on the economics of online video content in skateboarding, and while I have way more to say about the subject than I can say in this humble news aggregation column, I can say that it’s also worth a read.
Lastly, but certainly not least, we’re going to keep extracting every bit of content we possibly can from Skater Girl wine. Why? Because it’s fucking funny. After sharing two weeks of laughs about it, Dr. Willing dived really deep into the subject and discovered this YouTube video of the actual dog from the actual label — yes, it’s based on a real bulldog — riding an actual skateboard. While we’ve all seen a bulldog on a board, there’s something about a bulldog on a board in a tutu diving full speed into a bush, not because it couldn’t stop, but because it wanted to tear a massive chunk of foliage out in its teeth. Fierce.
While that could very well be the Clip of the Week, it’s not technically a skate clip, which brings us to our actual Clip of the Week. This one is via SkatePal, of a young man in Palestine landing his first boardslide. As heartwarming as it is to see someone land their first boardslide on a flatbar, that in and of itself is not why I selected this one. Who among us has not been that fucking close to getting a trick, only to be denied by the cruel whims of physics and fate? Who has not done that little frustrated t-rex arms thing? Or lain some extra seconds on the ground after eating shit, questioning everything? And, after finally getting that shit, doing the same thing but in a happy, exhilarated way? This is the most relatable shit I’ve ever seen on Instagram and I love it.
Oh and this week’s Chad quote goes pretty much hand in hand with the above clip.
Struggle is embedded into the DNA of collective consciousness, it is an element of life that is not meant to be questioned, only experienced, it is a part of nature, thus it is a part of humanity.
— Chad Muska (@TheMuska) October 15, 2019
On that note, time to to a super crowded indoor park and spend two hours trying and failing to relearn switch back tails, all while screaming appeals to an indifferent god that does not exist. Have a great weekend everyone!
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Featured image via Save Stalin Plaza petition on Petition.org.
