When people travel to a city they’ve never been, they’re called tourists. They do typical things at predictable places. When skateboarders travel to a foreign city, however, we’re tourists who skateboard. Doi. We still go to iconic spots and snap pictures, but we do a little more than just dawdle before them—we do tricks down, across, or over them. We interact with them. This of course makes us very special.
The skater whooshing across your monitor is our buddy Joe Hamilton, who spent the summer here before returning to his native Australia. Even though he’s from Tasmania (which prompted us to ask him if life is lonely on the edge of the earth. His response? “Sorta.”), he tends to simplify for us Americans because so few realize Tasmania is not its own country. After he’d bought his ticket back I wondered whether Joe would fly east or west back to Australia. I shit you not he said, “Through Los Angeles — whichever direction that is from here.” Sorry, Joe. It’s only fair a nationality besides ours gets thwacked with the global idiot-stick now and again.
Joe and I had turned a couple days into interborough skate missions, which always began in Brooklyn and usually stretched across the Williamsburg Bridge. On this particular day we skated our way to the Brooklyn Banks when, after scoping out the iconic City Hall ledge-to-drop, we saw this friendly marble creature lying in wait across the street. Joe has a crispy ollie so he handed my non-photo-inclined-ass his SLR. After only three tries (which, as Salman Agah recently commented about Geoff Rowley’s First Try Friday at The Berrics, oughta count as one) he landed the above souvenir 50-50 down the infamously rounded-out and kinked hubba. Some tourists passing by were very impressed, judging the way they hemmed and hawed about whether to approach him for an autograph. (No doubt, Joe is a talented guy. Tasmanian media groups: give this guy a job.)
Photo tip to self: Ever heard of little things called run-up and roll-away?
When we got to the banks we ran into a kid named Rueben Barrack who traveled with his brother from somewhere idyllic like Southern Florida or San Diego to come skate NYC. Here Rueben battled his nerves for the better part of a half hour for this clean kickflip. He had caught it about three times but kept bottoming out. Finally he said fuck it and rolled away.
(Sequence by Joe Hamilton)
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sweet photoset on the last one.
09.02.09 at 10:29 am
The Williamsburg Bridge has to be the most perfect way to start any skate session.
09.02.09 at 10:38 am
wow. the berrics gets a shout on SBTC now? what the fuck is happening?
09.02.09 at 10:52 am
i dont go anywhere without a board.
09.02.09 at 10:56 am
badass
09.02.09 at 11:00 am
who fucking cares?
09.02.09 at 12:51 pm
Why do you want to bring skateboarding to this wack ass website? You suck.
09.02.09 at 1:46 pm
Skateboarding is the next generation’s electric guitar: It should have died 20 years ago, but it just goes on and on, b/c everyone’s too lazy/stupid/drunk to think of something new, and even when they try, it turns out completely gay (see “free-style walking”)
Christian Hosoi and Gator were like Lou Reed and the Beatles….you’re never going to do it better, only different
09.02.09 at 3:47 pm
@Capt. Obvious
I think you’re completely thick. You think skateboarding ended with Christian Hosoi and Gator? And you think street skating is… a dried up, try-hard of transition skating? Do you think you have something unique to say about skateboarding because you saw Stoked when it was in the festivals? Don’t congratulate yourself. idiot.
09.02.09 at 6:22 pm
is that it? you skate?
COOOOOOOOL…
09.02.09 at 6:55 pm
how cool is that kid with the shirt that says “i love russian girls”??
09.02.09 at 8:04 pm
cool website, joe hamilton.
09.02.09 at 9:03 pm
wait sec, AMAZING website, joe hamilton!
09.02.09 at 9:08 pm
Hyperbole. I share your sentiment. I wish SBTVC was more like Big Brother. You hear that, Carnie?!
09.02.09 at 9:39 pm
yeah, isn’t Joe’s website rad? And let me add that’s him doing all those tricks on the ledge (tricks he was doing at 12&A until he left).
09.02.09 at 9:40 pm
Skateboarding has become boring as shit.
09.02.09 at 10:46 pm
Then stop watching.
09.02.09 at 11:01 pm
I liked the sequences but it was too short. Noice!
09.02.09 at 11:29 pm
Hey Peter Madsen, it’s me again. You’re a fucking kook and a dog. You suck for sweating this website enough to sell those skaters’ souls just so that some lousy hipster garbage can try super hard to act like they know what’s up with skateboarding. Are you happy now you fucking dog? Do you enjoy listening to what these cockroaches have to say about skating? Like, this dude fucking kickflipped the banks rail and these shits-for-brain are talking about Gator and how skating is boring now? Why even subject any skater to this kind of crap?
09.02.09 at 11:30 pm
@.
Why do you troll the comments of a wackass website?
09.02.09 at 11:33 pm
To ask a series of valid questions, and to son you. If not, then why reply to ‘trolls’?
09.03.09 at 1:47 am
@.
I don’t know what to tell you. Skate or die, dog. Go read Low Card or something. What does “To son” mean? Is that like you’re my father giving me advice?
09.03.09 at 2:05 am
I know you don’t know what to tell me: you fucking shouted out the berrics on this website; you just told me to ’skate or die’, like a jock would, sarcastically; you used the phrase ‘interborough skate missions’ and then bothered to mention the act of skating over ‘the Williamsburg Bridge’; you ’scoped out the iconic City Hall ledge-to-drop’; you referred to the black hubbas as ‘friendly marble creatures’; you sweated some tourists’ reactions to skateboarding. A real skateboarder would either never do any of these things or never think of mentioning having done them to anyone else, especially the kind of detritus that is the typical visitor to this site. And yes, that’s what ’son’ means.
09.03.09 at 3:07 am
Youch. You’re like a character out of one of Chuck Palahniuk’s shitty books.
09.03.09 at 3:47 am
PWND.
I want to skate with @.say and I dont even skate. spoken like a true profit. lumber-Jocks are FTL.
09.03.09 at 4:00 am
@. Send me an email (it’s listed on the aboot page) so we can continue this conversation.
09.03.09 at 4:14 am
j’adore poo’ing
09.03.09 at 5:40 am
Rollerblading is waaaaaay better than skateboarding.
There’s a reason there’s ice skating but no ice boarding.
And that is because it would be very boring.
You all know it’s true.
09.03.09 at 9:38 am
ever heard of a gif?
09.03.09 at 12:24 pm
rollerbladers got 8 wheels! do the math asshole!
09.03.09 at 2:23 pm
joe’s site is fucking awesome. that is all.
09.03.09 at 3:50 pm
@ .Says – lol at u man, I was skating the banks when you were in diapers. A real not give a fuck type does not give a fuck enough to comment on some website. That’s pretty gay of you dude. Internet tough guy routine makes you hard son! Why don’t you meet me down on the banks at midnight tonight and we’ll see who’s tough. I’ll be the guy in the Santa outfit.
09.03.09 at 3:56 pm
Rollerblades have twice as many wheels and they’re twice as good. It’s that simple.
Plus you don’t have some annoying board to worry about so you have a lot more freedom.
09.03.09 at 4:26 pm
skaters are hot!!!
09.03.09 at 4:35 pm
GIF or GTFO
09.04.09 at 12:24 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V08u_2yb93g
09.04.09 at 3:58 pm
the 4th frame of that second sequence is Thrasher worthy.
09.05.09 at 12:46 pm
See how it’s only little kids standing around cheering the skaters while they do their cool tricks? That’s because skateboarders are fucking pathetic unintelligent losers who have the same hobby as 9-14 year old boys.
Can you imagine how badly you would make fun of a 25 year-old who’s favorite movie was “Crank” or “300,” or who played fighting games on PS3 all day? It would be relentless. And yet mid-20s skateboarders somehow get a pass. I will never, ever understand this.
Worst of all, they couch their arrested development in the guise of art, like *jumping down stairs* is art. Give me a fucking break!
09.15.09 at 10:49 pm
Epic photo set guys! Shame that Mr Ramirez has thrown has toys out the pram and ruined a good string of comments..
04.15.10 at 11:18 am