NetworkA Hits The City Streets In ‘Asphalt NYC’

Bedrocket‘s NetworkA is exploring New York City’s grungiest street corners. The extreme sports channel has launched Asphalt NYC, a documentary series that paints a portrait of the Big Apple by examining the figures who are skating, dancing, and biking around its fringes.

Asphalt NYC isn’t exactly an extreme sports series, but creator and Sundance winner Rene Johannsen is well aware that urban life has always been a major part of that lifestyle. Each episode will profile the people who prefer dirty streets and dark subway cars to glitzy high-rises and swanky clubs.

That being said, the first episode does feature an extreme athlete: skateboarder Quim Cardona, who apparently inspired the character of Telly in Kids, Larry Clark’s controversial 1995 cult classic film. Nearly 20 years later, Cardona still cruises around the city on his skateboard as a remnant of a bygone era. In case you’re not convinced that Asphalt NYC

aspires to spotlight a grungy attitude, you need look no further than the scene where Cardona picks up trash with his bare hands after bowling over a garbage can.

Five more Asphalt NYC episodes will arrive over the coming weeks, with Johannsen focusing his camera on subway breakdancers, Queens-side BMX bikers, and others who live the same sort of streetwise lifestyle. It’s a series that would be out of place on a channel like VICE, but it is certainly fitting on NetworkA, where it serves as a reminder to the channel’s 430,000 subscribers that there’s more to extreme sports than kickflips and custom snowboards.