Having started rolling at the age of 21 (25 now), researching and building a world around skating has been a great passion of mine since. Although I owned skates at the age of 8 and destroyed them– I couldn’t afford actual oxygens or K2’s growing up. Never the less, I still had an itch for the sport on a subliminal level. Occasionally running into skaters like Anthony Soto, Sal Zaso, and Alex Nunez while out on their adventures either filming or casually skating something in the neighborhood of Queens, NY. Finally when being able to afford skates in college, I happened to meet a friend freshman year who was part of an old school crew founded in Queens called 22k which is essentially an elementary school that had a complex backyard with all kinds of unfinished stair cases, ledges, and gaps–essentially an unfinished street park to anyone that had a pair of blades and wax. These guys were around for the high and low times of our sport and were great enough to introduce me to Daily Bread, VG4, and Hoax 2. They helped fill in a major gap that I unfortunately had missed when thinking back to prime time blade history.
Well for those who aren’t part of the steady fan base, OD has been around since 2006. I’ve had major influences to pursue media in NY. Some of those that stick out to me are: B.Unique’s edits, Angelo Ferrer’s early photography, Old IMYTA’s, and Victor Callendar’s skate comps. Battle my crew and LMS(Last Man Standing) included. The idea behind OD has always been progress and capturing skating of the average roller in our city. Our edits are meant to be fun and give you a glimpse that NY is still doing it’s own thing. Being so, I want to thank the few regular homies that help start the crew which has now really grown to be our entire city. The following edits below were taken down due to quality issues or stupid politics for what ever reason. Either way, I hope you enjoy them and take a look at our hustle from then. Taking a look back though, humble beginnings don’t end bad–you just grow up and get over shit.
This edit is the second edit I ever made but the first one to go public. It’s filmed on a GL2 I owned at the time because they were crazy popular back then. Hah! Still a pretty banging camera imo. Featuring long time friends: Patrick McClear and Michael Valenzuela. I have an edit in the works which is essentially suppose to be the very first public edit ODNY was suppose to release but perfectionists always wait or sit on stuff for too long unfortunately. LOL moment we always laugh about: check out Mike V in this edit with the praying mantis arms.
This is first edit I dropped after acquiring a Canon XHA1. My circle then was still pretty small so filming friends was a start.
This edit is featuring skater John Estrella(Punch Master John) and John Tkaczuk from the Lower East Side of Manhattan. John was always a pretty chill dude who was known for his crazy antics and Mr. Tkaczuk just always reminded us of Fish. Dude was always down to skate anything and everything. Probably the first time featuring new kids that I hadn’t skated with before.
This was the first edit I dropped using the Canon 7D. I fell in love with the camera for the way the lenses captured video in low light. Featuring all time friend: Michael Valenzuela at what was back then almost a ritual spot to a good portion of skaters in the Jackson Heights area of Queens, NY.
Hope you guys checked out all that and enjoyed some. For the few local heads that are reading this, just hope that you don’t think you need an expensive camera to drop dope material. You just need yourself, some homies, and what ever you have that shoots video. So tired of the misconception that edits need to be highly pretentious and shot by a film crew to produce something that’s fun to watch. Stay up NY!
-Dave
