issue / 04
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Marco Giordano, quarter to wall bs 270 alley oop transfer. Foto Davide Biondani. a brief glance
EDITORIAL / 04
wishing all your dreams come true. db
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Jacopo Picozza, kikcflip. Foto Fabio Montagner. a brief glance
ISSUE / 04
CONTENTS
fragments
places
Blast! /the
THE BOSS East Of The Adriatic
purity of style / Cover: Andrew Zolin, pushing in the cold. Foto Davide Biondani.
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/ PHOTOS /LA
BORDER tour 2010
/Andrew Reynolds / Book Carhartt-Scott Bourne
Danny Sommerfeld
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EDITOR and CONCEPT Davide Biondani. (davide@abriefglance.com) ASSOCIATE EDITOR Guido Bendotti. PHOTOGRAPHERS Eric Antoine, Leo Sharp, Eric Mirbach, Marcel Veldman, Steve Gilman, Fabio Montagner, Davide Biondani. CONTRIBUTORS Francesco Paolo Chielli, Anton Jandet, Simone Bertozzi, Ailsa Hay, Fabiano Ferronato, Holger von Krosigk, Mirko Obkircher, Mauro Caruso. DESIGN Fake Donkey Lab.
www.abriefglance.com GET ALL THE INFOS at:
info@abriefglance.com
abrief glance skateboard mag is a bulletin published by fake donkey skateboard asd.
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facebook.com/emericaitaly
THE
BOSS
foto davide biondani
Andrew Reynolds. Hollywood.
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FRAGMENTS
Omar Salazar, 50-50 grind. Photo: Leo Sharp.
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FRAGMENTS
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Jerome Campbell, Bs noseblunt. Photo: Leo Sharp.
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FRAGMENTS
Andy Welter, Bs kickflip. Photo: Eric Antoine.
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FRAGMENTS
Daniel Cardone, Wallride to fakie. Photo: Davide Biondani. a brief glance
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PLACES/04
Los Angeles, California. 05.00 pm. Foto Davide Biondani a brief glance
PHOTO: DAVIDE BIONDANI
DISTRIBUTORE ESCLUSIVO: BLAST! DISTRIBUTION INFO@BLAST-DISTRIBUTION.IT TEL: +39 0362 18 55 454 BLAST-DISTRIBUTION.IT
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W DECKS OUT NO NEW HOLIDAY
Check Out New Skating from the team every week in Sunday Fundays videos at skateboarding.com & blindskateboards.com
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BLAST! The Border Tour 2010 Foto and words Davide Biondani
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The idea is pretty simple and clever: since the country where you live borders four
different countries, why don’t plan a trip per year with your team skating the spots
between two countries? Last year the Blast!Krew hit the slovenian surface, this year it was the Swiss Cross edition!!!
One week spent skating the spots between Valtellina, a nice and narrow valley famous in the italian skateboard scene as “the place where Danny Galli comes from” and Grigioni, the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland.
Thanks to Danny we skated some of the most impossible to be found spots you can imagine crossing the border every day, driving up the Alps till the Bernina pass at
2330 meters; stopping along the way to take pics of the glaciers or the Bernina Ex-
press, the highest adhesion railway route; then driving down to Saint Moritz and the villages around.
“Hey Danny, how the hell did you find all these rough and hidden spots in the middle of the mountains?” Someone asked.
Danny spent seven years of his life working in Switzerland, so he practiced his own
“border tour” for a long time, leaving home everyday at five in the morning, working all day and coming back home in the evening, using his lunchtime break to go spot searching. Sick!
The house we stayed at was an old luxury house from 1400 with a lot of rooms, a wide garden with flowers, fireplace under the porch, paints on the walls and old furniture from 1600;
It seemed to live in the Alessandro Manzoni’s novel “I Promessi Sposi” (also known as The Betrothed), the most famous and widely read historical novel of the italian language. Very fascinating.
The only fixed rule for the tour was everyone had to have a “mountain style” outlook… at least for one day. The crew took the invite so seriously that, while walking trough
the streets of the village to get a coffee at the bar all the locals were looking at us in a such weird way! Ah ha ha. How could you blame them? Ah ha ha. Which border will we cross next year?
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MAURO CARUSO, NOLLIE INWARD HEELFLIP. When we started skating this spot Mauro did’t know what to try so filmier Fede and I started making fun of him telling him he would always try the same tricks. That’s actually not true since he is got many tricks… but we were just trying to stress him out. Mauro was laughing too and he bet us he would land a new trick in less than ten tries. He landed it in more than ten goes but this nollie inward heel was so fresh and good that we paid him a beer anyway.
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CARLO CASSAN, 50 50 GRIND UP TO BS TAILSLIDE This afternoon all the guys were skating this bank as a launch ramp. It’s always a pleasure to shoot with Carlo because he is the kind of skateboarder who tries to find a different way to skate a spot; this long 50 50 grind up turned into a bs tailslide is just an example. Good job mister “WG”.
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IVAN INGLESE, OLLIE. While parking to reach a spot we saw Ivan running out of the van and going straight to the other side of the parking; “ Where the hell is Coconuts going?” Someone asked. He came back, got his board and started to check the run up of this tall and long gap. “I want to ollie it” he said. “Now?!” Bas asked. “Yes, right now”. Ivan loves gap, definitely.
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MARCO GIORDANO, KICKFLIP. This set of stairs is inside a school. Usually you cannot skateboard inside a school during lessons time, but since there were skateboard ramps all around we were supposed to be doing the right thing in the right place. No matter if kids were looking at us through the windows instead of listening to their teachers…no one said a single word or kicked us out. Instead of sitting in his classroom in his hometown Milano, Marchino was kickfliping a big five inside a schoolyard in Switzerland.
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LUCA CRESTANI , WALLRIDE NOLLIE BS OUT. What’s better than starting your daily skateboarding session with a perfect wallride nollie out on a rough bank to wall under a blue sky while breathing the freshest air coming down the Alps mountains?
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DANNY GALLI , FS BIGSPIN.
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MAURO CARUSO, SWITCH KICKFLIP. After a whole day spent watching the other guys skating his spots Danny forced the crew to stop to this gap. Since he is a polite person he went directly to the owner of the building asking him if we could skate and take some pics in the place. The man was really friendly and allowed us to stay, but the weather was getting worst and worst; a damn cold wind was blowing from the mountains full of snow and it also started to hail. In few tries Danny landed his fs bigspin but broke his board slamming hard on the cold ground. Fuck. Mauro kept the media busy with his switch kickflip, just the right time for Danny to set up a new deck and roll away his trick.
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DANNY GALLI, FS NOLLIE HEELFLIP IN. I don’t know how Danny Galli found this spot, probably during one of his snowboarding trips across the border; the bank is behind the cableway station and we waited more than one hour in the parking lot to get in. As soon as the workers left, an amazing session went down. Guess who landed the first trick?
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LUCA CRESTANI, FS SMITH GRIND OLLIE OUT. The man behind the trip took care of everything to make sure every spot would have been properly skateable during the trip. More than 2 weeks before the mission he had already bought a metal sheet to skate this new place. Luca Crestani pays his tribute to his buddy starting the session with a smith grind ollie out down the steps.
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CARLO CASSAN, BS SMITH GRIND. Every Blast! The Border Tour must have a bs smith shot of mister Carlo Cassan. Show your steez mate.
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goodbye Saint Moritz.
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BOOK
East Of The Adriatic a book from Carhartt written by well known skateboarder and writer Scott Bourne who takes us on a Balkan road trip through Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania to Croatia. A series of stories about their night and day adventures and their emotions with photos from Bertrand Trichet, Sergej Vutuc, Lars Greiwe, Jaka Babnik and Scott Bourne itself . East Of The Adriatic is the first publication of 19/80 éditions, a Paris based publishing company whose leitmotiv is: “To make books that make you move, grab your board, get your camera or pull out your pen”. db.
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“The words and the photographs presented in the following pages were gathered while traveling through Eastern Europe in search of new and undiscovered skateable surfaces. The skateboarding has for the most part been omitted, for no other reeson than to give the viewer an idea of what is actually happening in the head of a traveler as well as what he sees during such explorations. The writing here in, is taken directly from a journal I kept while traveling East Of The Adriatic. The photos are nothing more than visions as each individual saw the journey. The camera itself can be much like a pistol blast as we steal the treasures of each new town or cause a trouble when a native belief we have stolen his soul...here in lies our adventure! “ Scott Bourne. a brief glance
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Rain_Albania / Lars Greiwe
Sutka_Macedonia / Sergej Vutuc
Tito building_Belgrade / Bertrand Trichet Sutka_Macedonia / Sergej Vutuc
Rokets_Serbia / Lars Greiwe.
Car in Belgrade_Serbia / Scott Bourne
Town 13_Skopje / Bertrand Trichet
Kid in Terane_Albania / Sergej Vutuc a brief glance
purity of style
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Danny Sommerfeld a brief glance
Danny Sommerfeld has many names. He’s been called Sammy Donnerfeld or Danny Sommerbernd - the latter alluding to being “Bernd”, typical German skater-lingo for a state of mind that ranges from confusion to stonedness. He’s been riding for Mob Skateboards for ages, now works for them, and I’ve always felt that he reflected that company very well. The same sophistication, humor and humility that is inherent in the Mob, makes Danny the very special skateboarder that he is. He doesn’t seem to take skateboarding for something other than it is - a very good time with your friends, and something aesthetically pleasing. He’s down to earth, which is even more remarkable, if you know how good he is on his board. Look at this guy when he skates, look at every inch of his body on every picture in this magazine. It’s a purity of style that only few people possess. I won’t end this saying that he will have the last part in the next Lakai video and will be your next whoever - Carroll, Lucas, Guy, Mike-Mo. Because I know he will not. But I think it’s kind of charming to have someone with the potential for all that, but with the awareness that this isn’t everything that counts. Perhaps Danny is also a lazy bastard like many of the the big talents we’ve had in Germany so far. Come on Danny! Holger von Krosigk Foto: Eric Mirbach. Interview: Davide Biondani.
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Bs smith grind. a brief glance
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Gap to bs lip to fakie.
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Hi Danny, can you introduce yourself to those who don’t know you? Hello, Italy! My name is Danny Sommerfeld and I’m living in Germany, the country I was born in . To make myself more appealing to the italian readers I can tell you that I have italian roots – my grandmother originated from Bella Italia. Where are you now? Around skating or working? I’m still in Germany. But I no longer live in Kassel, the city I grew up in but moved to Giessen to do an apprenticeship with MOB Skateboards. You could say, I work for skating and skating is my work. Any plan for the winter? It’s hard to skateboard these days…too cold outside!!! My only plan is to get some proper winter shoes. Otherwise I keep myself warm and in shape for next summer by skating the MobCity indoor skatepark, the SkateLounge. Do you travel a lot? Which is the best place you have been to and the one you liked the most? Since I have to work every day I don’t really have any time for long or exotic trips. My traveling is pretty much restricted to german cities right now but I like it everywhere. The people I travel with are more important to me than the perfect spot. And which would be the place you would move to live? A little further south would be nice. Who do you usually skate with? Mostly Iwan Martaller and all the other MOB boys. Which would be your “dream skateboard session”? Scarlett Johannson and the Black Ninja … puh, that’s a tough one.
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Bs tailslide to noseslide to fakie. a brief glance
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Which is in your opinion one of the best video part? I really like Austyn Gilette’s video part in the Habitat “Origin” video. Since there seems to be a never ending flow of very talented amateurs, I go through phases. I definitely like the Habitat and old Transworld videos. Do you like to go shooting and filming, or you get stressed? I like filming better but since, professionally speaking, photos in magazines are more important in the business, I like shooting photos too – especially because that put some extra Euros in my pocket if I place the stickers right. Who do you like shooting with? Eric Mirbach sent really good pics of you… Yes. I like Eric. We have known each other for a long time now and still like each other. Since we’ve been working together for a while, we know which way the cookie crumbles. In your opinion style in skateboarding is something that you born with or you can work on it to get it better? I think you can definitely try and work on it but you shouldn’t try too hard to achieve a certain style because it won’t be your own style anymore. Everyone’s an individual. Three names between your favorite skateboarders and what do you like of them? Marc Johnson. Kenny Anderson. Austyn Gilette. I like their selection of tricks. They inspire and motivate me. We met during a Lakai/DVS trip few years ago, I have heard you ride for Converse now, when did you change and which are your sponsor now? I started skating for Converse 1.5 years ago. I also get support from MOB Skateboards, Polster Trucks, Lousy Livin’ Company and Cleptomanicx boxershorts. In 2011 I won’t be getting no Kr3w gear anymore.
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You work for Mob Skateboards now, what do you take care of in the company? At the MOB headquarter I’m supervising the warehouse and manage the team, plan trips and scout trends. Sometimes I have to push buttons. How is skating and working at the same time for a skateboard company? More responsibilities and less time to shred? For the company it’s a real treat because they get to abuse me for everything from modeling for photo shoots to planning skate trips with no budget. On the other hand they do understand very well if I have to leave early on a friday because i have to go to a contest or on a skate trip. How did your point of view change about skateboarding after getting into the “business part” of it? Involuntarily, I started to think about the business side of skateboarding as well. Which is the best city for skateboarding in Germany now in your opinion? Even though I haven’t been there a lot, I have to say Berlin. I like the vibe of this city. The locals are easy going. Berlin has a lot of spots which allow for a lot of different options to skate it. OK that’s it Danny, do you want to add something? Thanks for your time. Thank you for your support and this interview. You have to excuse my short answers but today is friday and I, once again, have to leave work early. Thanks to the MOB and all the other cats. Ti amo.
Fs bluntslide transfer. a brief glance
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see in
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20
ya
*abg loves you.
011 *
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