Vol.12 No.3, HOLIDAYS 2013
SKATING FOR
INNER PEACE
$4.95
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EDITORIAL NOTEWORTHY COMPANY PROFILE: SEVEN SUNS LONGBOARD THERAPY GOT STEEZ? OPEN: LGC SKATES ISRAEL VIETNAM SCENE REPORT SKATING FOR INNER PEACE A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO GOING FAST PUSH CULTURE FAMILY PICNIC SPAIN PHOTO ESSAY KRYPTONICS: THE REBIRTH WATER WORLDS: SLALOM CHAMPIONSHIPS ABLE-BOARDED: PROFILE OF KATH KILCULLEN LONGBOARDING FOR PEACE UPDATE ARTIST PROFILE: MIKE NIELSEN
Guto Lamera. Photo: Michael Bream
HOLIDAYS 2013
CONTENTS
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CONCRETEWAVEMAGAZINE.COM
THE FINE PRINT
We’ve had a pretty good fall this year, and well into October, I’ve found myself basking in a great deal of sunshine while I skate. That’s the good news. The bad news is that those of us in the eastern parts of North America are staring down at least five to six months of winter. On top of that, it seems like there is one crisis after the other. If it’s not government shutdowns, it’s chemical warfare — and if that doesn’t freak you out, there’s always Miley Cyrus. But as many of you have read in these pages, longboarding keeps me sane. After a bad day, all it takes is a ride on my skate and I am transported both physically and mentally. This is the “why” of Concrete Wave; we know that so many more people could benefit by the joy that longboarding brings. I just hit my 38th year riding, and I can’t imagine what it will be like to hit my 76th year. While we love exposing people to the joy of skateboarding, the truth is that Hollywood has an ability to reach millions. Think about the legacy of Back to the Future. That film inspired a generation of folks to take up skateboarding. On December 25, moviegoers will be treated to a new film from Ben Stiller called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The film has had some good reviews so far. But what intrigues me the most are the longboard scenes. There’s footage of Ben rolling around New York City and bombing a random hill. The film looks promising. Will this inspire a whole new generation of skaters? It’s hard to say, but it sure can’t hurt. Here’s wishing you all the very best for 2014! Rider: Mauricio Cadore at Parque Marinha, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Photo: Daniel Souza
EDITORIAL TM
Vol. 12 No. 3 HOLIDAYS 2013 PUBLISHER/EDITOR Michael Brooke | mbrooke@interlog.com ART DIRECTOR Mark Tzerelshtein | MarkintoshDesign.com CORRESPONDENT Jim Kuiack I.T. DEPT. HEAD Rick Tetz of CalStreets.com COPY EDITOR Jonathan Harms ASSOCIATE EDITOR Joey Bidner HEAD OFFICE 1136-3 Center Street, Suite 293, Thornhill, Ontario, L4J 3M8 Ph: 905.738.0804
WE CAN BE T HEROES …
Photo: Rick Tetz
he above two photos were taken on October 22, 2013. Concrete Wave, in conjunction with Longboarding for Peace, worked with Canada Blood Services to get longboarders to donate blood. The plan worked, and dozens of longboarders from across Canada rolled up their sleeves and gave the gift of life. Some people might find this story somewhat unusual for an action sports magazine. My sense is, however, that the world of longboarding can accommodate a lot of different stories. I’ve known Patrick Switzer and Anna O’Neill for many years. I’ve seen them both rise through the ranks and mature as strong competitors. It was quite a trip to see Patrick’s devoted fans at last year’s Board Meeting in Toronto. Anna has made quite a name for herself in the Philippines. While I am proud of their accomplishments on a race course, I am doubly proud to have them come out and support the Blood from Boarders initiative. We hope that this event turns into a regular affair. Our next goal is to team up with Music Saves Lives and start a longboard blood-donation program in the USA. From there, the plan is to eventually go worldwide and get 50,000 longboarders to donate blood. This will help save the lives of 150,000. A number of people who don’t longboard sometimes ask what makes it so special. There are all kinds of responses. Skaters will tell you they definitely enjoy the freedom, the speed and the blissful feeling under their feet. But I’d say there is one thing that definitely rivals all these feelings, and that’s the amazing people you meet through longboarding. So here’s to the heroes, both on and off the race course. Enjoy the issue! Michael Brooke, Publisher
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SKATESHOP DISTRIBUTION Buddy Carr Designs PO Box 1895, Carlsbad, CA 92018 tailtapinfo@yahoo.com Ph: 760.722.4111 CONTRIBUTORS (In order of appearance): Christopher Vanderyajt, Gádor Salís, Michael Bream, Daniel Souza, Laetitia Weyerman, Isaac Farin, Valeria Kechichian, Ben Kaufman, Katie Neilson, Anna-Selina Kager, Sunny Horsnell, Anonymous, Shane Poss Crosland, Dan Herzog, Jonathan Nuss, Danielle De Jesus, Jack Smith, Jim Goodrich, Judi Oyama, John Janik, Rachel Pramesi, Steve Pederson, Pierre Hazera, Martin Drayton, Dave Timermanis, Steve Quinn, Anahí Rossel, Chris Bennett, Mike Nielsen.
COVERS: 1. Rider: Axel Serrat Photo: Christopher Vanderyajt 2. Rider: Cami Best Photo: Gádor Salís
CONCRETEWAVEMAGAZINE.COM Concrete Wave is published by North of La Jolla Inc. Subscriptions (5 issues) are US$26 FIRST CLASS or CAN$26. Address change? Mag not arriving? Email us... don’t go postal. We can sort it out. mbrooke@interlog.com. We will notify you when your subscription expires. Publisher’s permission is required before reproducing any part of this magazine. The views and opinions expressed in Concrete Wave are not necessarily those of the publisher. We happily accept articles and photos. Please contact the publisher directly at mbrooke@interlog.com before you submit anything. We are looking for a variety of stories and images as long as they are skate-related.
NOTEWORTHY
PRODUCTS, PEOPLE, EVENTS
DTC
EARTHWING
BLOOD ORANGE
This brand new DTC wheel was developed to have fun skating under full control and with an insanely predictable slide. The result is a truly speed carving/hardcore freeride wheel. dtc-wheels.com
The 3D mold in the Supermodel 2014 is available in both symmetrical topmount and dropthrough. This 3D mold offers much more control with locked-in confidence. There are mild fenders over the wheels, providing added control and wheel clearance. That same geometry is mirrored at the instep to create an almost 360-degree concave for each foot. A “W” runs up the center that slides right into the arches of your feet to distribute pressure evenly across the bottom of your foot for more control. earthwingnyc.com
Blood Orange have come out with a new bushing shape that comes in the same five duros as their barrels and cones. It provides a unique feel that blurs the line between barrel and cone. They have also released new bearings. On top of this, seven new colors of grip tape have just hit. skatebloodorange.com
RAYNE The 36” Darkside hybrid deck crosses over a love of radial drops for DH leverage, control and lock-in with a yearning for a kicktail to get up, over and around everything and anything. Like a fun button for around town, now you can ollie, manual, blunt and firecracker your way from place to place instead of just pushing. raynelongboards.com
TUNNEL
Tunnel announces the reissue of the 1978 Tunnel Blackhart model. The legendary Rick Blackhart is a dominant skateboarder who attacks pools, parks and pipes without fear. The limited-edition 31” by 8.5” deck is solid alder wood. These beauties, built by Longboard Larry, are offered in the original colorways: natural, black, black and red, and black and yellow. tunnelskateboards.com
BRAKER
COBRA SLIDE GLOVES Aimless Skate is a new Canadian company that has picked the brains of the scene’s best riders to produce the topquality Cobra slide gloves. Made from a super-soft, super-durable goatskin leather, these gloves feature double thickness in high-wear areas like the fingertips and around the thumbs. They utilize doubled-up stitching to hold all the seams together for keeps. The short, piped cuff of the Cobra slide gloves makes for a comfy, tight fit that integrates great with the sleeve of leather racing suits. In order to ensure ideal hand temperature and to maximize the extraction of perspiration, the Cobra gloves contain perforated leather on the dorsal. aimlessskate.com
DUSTERS
Braker Boards are 100% hardwood, smooth riding, customizable longboards for the high-end consumer. These boards will cut and carve the perfect hill as well as aesthetically please all generations. Braker offers plenty of shapes and designs to fit the end consumer. brakerboards.com
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Dusters California announces the release of the Farrah Fawcett cruiser and longboard. Both boards will feature one of the most iconic images of the past 40 years, the Farrah Fawcett pinup poster. Dusters California will donate a percentage of sales to the Farrah Fawcett Foundation for each skateboard and T-shirt sold. dusterscalifornia.com and thefarrahfawcettfoundation.org
HONEY The 32” Mini V is a descendant of the popular 42” Velocity and 40” V2 Velocity. Pressed with the same concave as its big brothers, the Mini V is comfortable and responsive underfoot. If you’re looking for a smaller, lighter board to carry around campus or just want something different to zip around on, the Mini V will bring smiles to your face with its quick and snappy turns. honeyskateboards.com
FACEPLANT This company was founded with the hopes of creating a quality lineup of wheels at an affordable price. The feedback has been incredible so far. Also look for their Faceplant Boardriders longboards. wheelrz.com
WEIRDWOOD Weirdwood Skateboards come to you from the underground of Maine, USA. Owner Rod Kendall is an avid skateboard collector and ramp builder who likes to showcase trippy, unconventional shapes and artists that break new ground with function and innovation. Weirdwood is very proud to debut the first Jeff Tatum signature decks released in eight years. Jeff is a legend and pioneer in the skateboarding and longboarding world. Weirdwood will start the J T series (featuring graphics by Jeff) with a Hybrid 42” double kick for transition, parks and bowls and the 37” double kick for transition, bowls, parks, air, slides and cruising. East Coast: 207-6500926; West Coast: 760-216-9129. weirdwoodskateboards.com
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NOTEWORTHY
PRODUCTS, PEOPLE, EVENTS
KOALA Combine firsthand skateboard experience with a craftsman’s eye for originality and you have Dave Mcleod’s one-of-a-kind Koala Custom Boards. Tiring of the sameness that defines mass-produced factory boards, a few years ago Mcleod decided to do something about it, establishing Koala Custom Boards. Inspired by skateboard design from an era when the sport was still in its infancy, Mcleod’s handpressed birch skateboards intentionally fuse form to the desired function of individual riders. Koala Custom Boards reflect a bygone era when skateboard designs boasted their own unique styling. davster5@hotmail.com
RIPTIDE RipTide has finally unleashed the Street Series, which includes two traditional shapes — the boardside and roadside Cone and Barrel — plus three new boardside shapes for Indys and other traditional-kingpin trucks. Listed in order of stability: the StreetFatCone, StreetMagnum and the StreetChubby. Available as a kit or in pairs at riptidebushings.com.
DB LONGBOARDS Your feet aren’t the same from toe to heel, so why should your board be the same side to side? The Robot Special is Spencer Smith’s pro model and board of choice, incorporating one-of-a-kind asymmetrical concave with a rider-friendly design. The final product of many hours of development, this is one of the most well-thought-out, progressive boards on the market. The Robot Special delivers a bidirectional design that is suitable for both goofy and regular riders alike. dblongboards.com
HOLESOM New gloves by Holesom. Reinforced everything. Doubled-up leather where needed. Breathable
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LONGBOARD RACK
palms. Tongue closure. Comfy palm padding. Bitchin’ knuckle embossing. Ride with a smile and keep it Holesom. All gloves come with Holesom pucks. holesom.com
JATI
The Karate Chop is the result of rider requests for a smaller Chop Suey. Karate Chop has ¼” rocker and flared 3D wheel wells that create a nice and comfortable pocket. It also has generous kicktail and a small nose kick. Lastly, at 9.75” wide and 38” long, with 22”/24”/26” wheelbases, it’s a great compact yet versatile deck. jatiboards.com
This rack comes in two sizes, with three or five board slots that will hold longboards, skateboards, wakeboards and snowboards. It’s made of lightweight aluminum and has unique plastic inserts to cradle your board like a baby. It also has hooks on the bottom for helmet and gloves. The rack mounts on the wall with just three screws and retails for $29. mylongboardrack.com
DADDIES FOUNDER BECOMES AUTHOR
NUKE The W.M.D. is the newest wheel in the Nuke arsenal. For those who demanded a 75 mm wheel for more roll speed and predictable gripping in corners, we bring you the “Wheel of Mass Destruction,” a 75 mm/83A square-lip race wheel with gobs of speed and control. nukewheels.com
Congratulations to Melanie Loveland, who has just co-authored a children’s book entitled Coconut Jack. The book features illustrations by Talli Ettinger, wife of longboard pro Yoni Ettinger. Available on amazon.com.
NEWTON KLEVER The Patriot is Klever’s most advanced freeride and racing deck. It is 9.5” x 36.5” and features a .625” micro-drop. There are multiple wheelbase options (27”/28”/29”) and large CNCmachined wheel wells. The almost symmetrical shape makes it ideal for freeriding. kleverskateboards.com
The Newton retains the geometry of popular RKP trucks in a shorter, lighter, topmounted package. With Newton’s 50o angle baseplate and 5 mm offset 180 mm hanger, axle height is only 53 mm and weight is only 13.25 ounces. Die cast aluminum, premium axles and kingpins complement the clean lines. Natural and colored finishes with multiple bushing options available. Works ideally on cutaway-style decks and is a highly desirable concept for LDP decks. newtonskate.com
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NOTEWORTHY
PRODUCTS, PEOPLE, EVENTS
CADILLAC
Poured in the same THC slide urethane as the 81A Swingers, the 70 mm/78A Cadillac Swingers are made for busting out giant slides with ease. The 78A formula provides some extra grip for confidence at higher speeds. Stone-ground to slide smoothly right away, the Swingers wear evenly down to the high-performance hub. With a centerset hub and graphics printed on both sides, these wheels can be flipped to promote more even wear. fullcircledistribution.com
CORRECTIONS In the September issue, the photos on pages 84, 85 and 125 were shot by Marion Ross. The photo on p. 158 (David Dean) was taken by Khaleeq Alfred. Cover #3 was actually Jamie Jacobson.
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From left: Tommy Ryan, Robin Logan, Glenn Miyoda, Bruce Logan and Di Dootson Rose.
NATIONAL SKATEBOARD REVIEW From Oct. 5-19, 2013, Di Dootson Rose and National Skateboard Review (NSR) hosted the “Home-Grown San Diego Skateboard History” exhibit at ArtLab in San Diego. More than 250 people attended the opening reception to meet some of the pioneers of California skate history, view the exhibit items and buy skateboard-related art. Guests included Patti McGee, Henry Hester, Bruce Logan, Robin Logan, Brad Logan, Tommy Ryan, Larry Balma, Dale Smith, Lynn Kramer, Tim Stahl, Mike Williams, John Hughes, Glenn Miyoda, Jim Goodrich, Steve Cathey, Denis Shufeldt, Lance Smith, Chris Yandall and Layne Oaks. The closing reception attracted Laura Thornhill-Caswell, Brian Logan, Debbie Gordon, Tom Stewart, Todd Huber, Gregg Weaver and Dave Dominy. The art and product for sale was produced by Chris Yandall, Dave Hackett, Jim Goodrich, Lance Smith, Natalie Das, Patti McGee, Steve Evans and Tim Stahl. Event T-shirts are available. CW
P H OTO S : L A E T I T I A W E Y E R MA N
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SEVEN SUNS What are some of your earliest skate memories? Gael Canonne: Everything started when I was 7 or 8, somewhere around 1985. At that time I was living in California and my mom had the good idea to get me a skateboard. I rode like crazy. Not long after that, I moved to Paris, France, with my dad and rode my new skateboard down my street all the way to Place Clichy and used old bus tickets found on the way to take a ride back up to my building. At the time I used to ride on my knees. At some point I realized that by using harder wheels, the board would start to drift and slide in the sharp turns. That’s when I decided to make my first pair of slide gloves! Years went by, and I ended up leaving my skateboard in the closet as I started using my bike and eventually a moped at age 14. Then, later on, still attracted by board sports, I started to snowboard as soon as I saw the first boards popping out here and there. How did you start making longboards? My first longboards were made in 2006. I had been wanting a longboard for a long time but never crossed the step yet. Building and handcrafting things myself has always been an obsession, so I naturally came to the conclusion that the best way
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to get what I wanted was to fire up the Skil saw! Last thing I remember is that the two old snowboards I had sitting there disappeared! By the time they were finished and I started riding them, lots of friends and people in the street would ask me where I “bought” my board. I ended up making a few for some friends and quickly realized that finding old snowboards at a good price was not that easy, plus I was frustrated that you have no concave or camber and cannot have any nice finish or design underneath the deck due to the sole of what was once a snowboard. After some research I decided to create my own brand. My dad lent me a little space in Paris. I bought some wood, resin, fiberglass and carbon fiber. Made a hydraulic press with steel beams and made some molds out of wooden casings and plaster. Not long after that I had my first-ever homemade longboard built from scratch, and on top of that it was perfectly rideable — and still is today! At that time I started by myself. Not long after, my brother joined in, and by 2009/2010 our company, Blackkross, was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, longboard manufacturers in France. Unfortunately, by that time, things didn’t go well with my brother, so I decided to quit with him and start a whole new longboard company called
Seven Suns Longboards. At that point I changed the whole manufacturing process and materials used with the goal of making top-of-the-line longboards with a more positive vibration.
What is it like being a part of the French longboard scene? When we first started introducing our boards that were radically different than what riders were used to, we had a lot of criticism, and for some reason it wasn’t always easy. But on the other hand, the amount of riders, friends and family encouraging us helped us not to give up and keep on going! After that we participated in a lot of skateboard events (freerides, world and France downhill championships and slalom championships) throughout France. This allowed us to create a strong relationship with the core movement of longboarders and slowly extend to the newcomers as the sport grew bigger and bigger all over the world. We also sponsored riders from the very beginning in order to help develop our boards and spread the word by riding, making videos and pictures. This experience was really fun and exciting, as we felt that we were directly pushing up the longboard scene in France at our scale!
As I created Seven Suns, this new adventure took a whole new meaning to me, as the market has evolved so much that most of my customers are now riders buying their second or first longboard. They are full of curiosity about the sport and have many questions about their new acquisition. This is why I also created an online longboard guide (www.longboard-guide.com) explaining almost all you would want to know about longboarding when you just arrived in the scene! Customers really feel reassured to be able to speak directly to the shaper and are excited about buying a local, handcrafted, highquality deck. Many customers also like to come and visit our workshop to see how their boards come to life — and of course to test them, as we have the whole range ready to test! They are always welcome here! So, being part of the longboard scene in France has been a lot of work but very fun, and allowed us to meet many interesting people, and we really feel that we are part of the development of the sport over here. What are some of the reasons that your boards are different? Well, we really tried to find our own way: materials used, designs, way of making the boards. We always tried out many different constructions to get where we are today and not just use what we read here and there or what people have been telling us to do or not. Many prototypes have been made and tested so we could see for ourselves how things turn out in real. Our aim is to offer high-quality boards made with high-tech materials but in a craftsmanship way. We like to make custom boards for customers. And we always try to have the lightest and toughest boards out there. Performance is as important to us as design and finish. And we have enough different models to try to satisfy all types of riders. There are about 15 different models in the range at the moment, and we are planning on coming out with some really high-tech stuff soon! All along the process we also try to be as environmental friendly as possible and always aiming to do better. But the best way to see the difference of our boards is to see them for real and ride them! In general people are simply blown away when they hold one of our boards for the first time! Many people tell us that they are afraid to ride them because they don’t want to ruin the finish, and they even think of hanging them on their wall! (Is that a good thing?) No matter how many pictures we put up on the Internet or in magazines, they never completely appear what they really are like.
How did you come up with the name Seven Suns? Our company philosophy is to make the best boards possible and always try to improve that. Never compromise on quality. Have a positive image and way of dealing with every aspect of the company. From this positive sight of this all came out the “Seven Suns” name: seven being a “magic” and positive number in numerology and the sun being an extremely warm, strong and positive emblem. Both together sounded good, so here we go! Is it difficult to be in Europe developing longboard products? Do you have plans to move to the United States? The longboard market in France and Europe is
totally different than it is in the U.S. For a start, it is way smaller. All the American big longboard companies sell in France and are all over the skate shops at prices that are hard to compete with; same thing for the brands made in China. So today if I want to sell my longboards in a skate shop and be competitive, it is extremely hard, and for me almost impossible, as I cannot include the shop’s margin and make a living at the same time. All this makes it extremely difficult to make a living out of it if you only sell your boards. The only way to make it work would be to have a more “industrial” approach, which I am absolutely not interested in. I’d rather not make longboards any more than have to create a “factory” to mass-produce. This is why we started specializing in other things like electric guitars, motorcycles, bikes and more. This way we can keep each one of these activities in a custom quality, small production spirit. All together they will allow us to still have fun and make a living. I was born in France and grew up in California until I was 7 or 8 years old. My mom has been living out there since then, and I have visited her almost every year for vacation. I love California and have thought about moving there many times. I’ve been torn between the two countries. It is hard to make a decision, but when I lost my green card and tried to [get] a new one, it was such a hassle — not to mention how I was treated at Immigration! — that I slowly made my life in France. I’m sure that I could have developed a bigger business out there and not struggle so much, and even today I still think about moving out there once in a while … But hey! I’m only 35. Many things can still change! CW
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LONGBOARD THERAPY:
FROM FEAR TO FREEDOM By ISAAC FARIN, LMFT
W
hen I first received a call from Alexis’* mother, I had no idea if Longboard Therapy would be the most therapeutic option for her. Alexis was 11 years old and already had two open-heart surgeries. Her mother described her as having fears and phobias, anxiety, intruding thoughts, obsessive-compulsive behaviors and a major fear of illness. On top of all that, Alex lives with her 17-year-old brother who has autism, which has been quite a challenge for her. During her first visit to my office, Alexis was intrigued with the idea of Longboard Therapy. She asked many questions about the Longboard Therapy news article on the wall of my office and the longboard hanging from the ceiling in the waiting room. She shared that although she thought it would be a good idea to try Longboard Therapy, she figured she would have a very hard time, because she was not good at skateboarding when she tried it years ago. Alexis and I spent quite a few sessions working on her relational issues with family and friends, as well as her fears and phobias. We renamed some of her phobias to change her relational connection to them, and we practiced mindfulness and hypnotic interventions to provide a different context for her to make changes. Although we were not longboarding yet, we were working through the metaphor of Long-
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board Therapy: learning to live in the present moment with mindfulness, focus and balance and stepping outside her comfort zone. During my first formal Longboard Therapy session with Alexis, I was admittedly not very hopeful that she would pick up the basics quickly, especially since she was quite scared the first time we moved off the grass and put our boards on the pavement. But by the second session, Alexis was riding comfortably and feeling the flow. I was shocked, she was shocked, and we were both thrilled. I will never forget the smile on her face; I could feel her sense of accomplishment while her mother and grandmother watched her ride. I suggested to Alexis that she could take this flow with her into other areas of her life. She certainly took that to heart. After five sessions involving the longboard as an intervention, Alexis has learned to ride, turn, brake and go downhill. She no longer complains of fears or phobias, and
she is doing much better at home. She even stepped out of her comfort zone by auditioning for a particular play—something she normally would not have done—and she got a part in it when many others did not. In addition to this, Alexis’ grades have improved; she recently made the quarterly honor roll at school, which was also a new development for her. Alexis continues to ride through her challenges, exceeding even her own expectations about what is possible. During our most recent session, I asked Alexis to articulate how Longboard Therapy has been helpful to her. She shared, “Ever since I started longboarding I feel free, and I never thought I would be able to be longboarding. I didn’t believe I had balance. It taught me to get out of my comfort zone, and when I am longboarding, I ditch the negativity and skate away so they can’t catch me.” CW *Names have been changed for confidentiality.
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Cami Best Photo: Gádor Salís
OPEN: LGC SKATES ISRAEL In late August and early September 2013, 14 female riders from 11 different countries gathered in Israel to shoot OPEN, the first full-length female longboard movie. This is a short chronicle on how we lived this lifetime adventure. By VALERIA KECHICHIAN
I WAS FIRMLY HOLDING CINDY ZHOU’S HAND while she was getting her first tattoo. She was getting the Hebrew letter Ayn inked on the back of her neck surrounded by 14 dots: one dot for each rider on an amazing trip. Ayn is a letter in the Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Maltese and New Persian alphabets. It means eye, openness, spring, water … Ayn is OPEN’s official symbol and general concept for this trip. It was the last night of our journey and we were at our goodbye party at a house in the middle of an open field, somewhere near Tel Aviv, but it felt like the middle of nowhere. A lot of people were there, in the house, on the porch, on the grass and in the halls. It was hot, humid, loud and noisy. We were exhausted and dirty, but we were perfectly fine. We all knew we were ending a journey of a lifetime. Nine of the 14 riders got the same tattoo, because that’s how much it meant to us all — a memory that will be in our bodies forever, about those 13 days in Israel shooting the first ever full-length movie about female longboarding. The idea of this trip started some months before, when Jacky Madenfrost, Monica Madenfrost and I were heading to the Longboard Girls Crew office in Madrid on a public bus. We started fantasizing about how cool it would be to go to Israel and skate over there. We had just received a visit from our brothers at Dasilva Boards, a native Israeli longboard brand, and had made such a strong bond that we were inspired to do something with them — so why not in Israel? The excitement only grew as the idea became more ambitious. At first we thought it would just be us with a GoPro, but the idea of taking some of the best female riders to Israel quickly started to gain more weight. The list of riders, the filmmaker, the route, the plan, the cost, the money … we got carried away so fast it was a constant explosion of ideas. Needless to say we missed our bus stop, but we had just created something that after three months of extremely hard work would turn into our biggest project to date. In late August, the first of us slowly started arriving in Israel from our hometowns. We were all coming from different cities and countries, so the first three days until we all got there and started shooting were messy. There was no defined sleeping time or eating time. If you woke up at 5 a.m. you would find people talking in the kitchen or playing guitar. If you woke up at 3 p.m. it would happen the same. People were coming from so many countries and time zones that it was jet-lag chaos. For the first half of the trip we rented a house in Ein Kerem, an hour away from Tel Aviv. It was a beautiful Romanic house with a lovely garden. Those first days we spent the time talking, setting up our boards, playing musical instruments, going for short walks in that small neighborhood, shooting the first interviews, talking about the longboard scene … I remember those days being very slow, but that wouldn’t last. The first day of shooting and all the following would be hectic. DH, freestyle, freeride, dancing, skatepark, street … we had everything. We met with the local Israeli crew the first afternoon and the stoke was sky-level. I always say that the best part of traveling is meeting with the locals and having human (and sometimes alien) interactions. It was such a great afternoon. You’re in a country that is far away and different from where you live, and all these people show up to meet, skate and share some love for this sport. It’s heart-filling. I have this image of us in the van leaving and everyone outside waving us goodbye, feeling the same stoke we were feeling. Truly special.
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The first days of shooting were particularly hard due to all the production issues coming up. We had the Dasilva Boards crew in charge of the local production, but moving 20 people around a country like Israel was no easy task. Solving problems in Israel is not like solving them in Spain, Canada or the U.S., where you basically know how things work. The roads in Israel can be sketchy, narrow, oily, extremely old or fantastic, depending on the spot, so every day was a wild ride. We spent the first half of the trip in the north of the country and the second half in the south. Most of the days we split up in two groups according to the spot and the riders’ discipline. Tel Aviv is a very Mediterranean city, so it wasn’t very shocking landscape-wise. We enjoyed the boardwalk, the beaches, bars and restaurants. The real cultural shock would come in Jerusalem. The cultural mix there is amazing: Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims, Orthodox … everyone living in the same ancient city packed with history. We skated the rooftops, visited the market, had the tastiest falafel of our lives and rocked the buddy system so no one would get lost. We wanted to go to the Orthodox neighborhood but the Dasilva guys told us it was not a good idea. Their “dress code” is very strict, and not following it would bring us major trouble. I also wanted to go to the occupied territories, but again, they told us it could get sketchy. We learned a lot about the conflicts and heard very neutral people talking about them. The Sea of Galilee is in the north, and all the surrounding roads flow into it, so basically everything is downhill. We had a rad session over there and finished the day sitting in the sea watching sunset in the place where Christians believe that Jesus walked on the water. Regardless of religious beliefs, being in these places was blowing our minds. We moved south after almost a week. The Sde Boker Kibbutz in the Negev desert was going to be our home for the last days of the trip. We were supposed to arrive early but stopped on a slope we found and ended up spending the whole afternoon in an amazing slide session, all 14 of us. We were genuinely stoked about being together, teaching each other new tricks, trying new slides and getting them as long as we could. Rad, rad day. We got to the desert late at night, so we didn’t really see where we were. The next morning we gathered for breakfast and Daniel Etura, the director, asked me, “Did you look out the bathroom window?” We were in the middle of the desert, right next to a crater, something I’ve never seen before. We screamed as much as we could with excitement, hardly believing our luck of being there. The desert sessions were out of this world. The landscape, the roads, the colors … so different from what we are used to. Ramon Crater may have been one of the most amazing roads of the trip. The south was filled with fun activities besides skating, like camel riding or going to the Dead Sea. In case you don’t know, the Dead Sea has nine times the amount of salt a regular sea has, so nothing can really live there. The water is thick and oily and you float. Yes, float — you can’t go down. It’s a really bad idea to put your head down in the water or scrub your eyes if your hands have touched the seawater, though — it’s a premium ticket to painland. But the major fear above all was the scars and the salt. Most of us were full of road rash, so this didn’t seem like a pleasant ride. It turned out it wasn’t as bad as we thought, but it was far from being fun, I guess.
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Sharing the experience. Photo: Ben Kaufman
Cami Best ripping Jerusalem’s rooftops. Photo: Katie Neilson
The desert sessions at Makhtesh Ramon (Ramon Crater) were out of this world. Photo: Ben Kaufman
Planning lines at Ramon Crater. Photo: Ben Kaufman
Ishtar B채cklund (left) and Amanda Powell. Photo: Ben Kaufman
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Katie Neilson (top) and Amanda Powell in Ramon Crater. Photo: Gádor Salí
From left: Jacky Madenfrost, Micaela Wilson, Jenna Russo, Cristina Sánchez and Gina Mendez, ready to hit the hill. Photo: Gádor Salís
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Cristina Sánchez and Valeria Kechichian feeling some serious stoke in the Negev Desert. Photo: Gádor Salís
Gádor Salis kickflips in Tel Aviv. Photo: Katie Neilson
Valeria Kechichian enjoys the moment. Photo: Ben Kaufman
The last day we came back north to Yafo, as we were meeting local Arab, Muslim and Jewish kids in the Twinned Peace Sport Schools as part of the program with Longboarding for Peace. It was an amazing and rewarding experience. Bringing people together, especially kids, through longboarding is one of the biggest things we can do. Longboarding for Peace is doing an amazing job worldwide, and supporting this cause in Israel was the only way to go when we first thought about this whole project. Three different national TV channels covered the event on the news, and it was a little step ahead to reach acknowledgement for the cause. That night was our goodbye party at Dasilva’s and the night we all got tattooed with the Ayn symbol. That summarizes a bit the whole meaning of this trip: exciting new place, new friends, the gift of learning, rad skating and amazing adventures with eyes, heart and mind wide OPEN. Life is a journey, and we don’t want to miss any of it. Build your own adventures, learn while living them, have fun and be good. The OPEN trailer was released some weeks ago, and it’s just a glimpse of the kind of movie it will be. We honestly can’t wait. And we couldn’t have done any of this without the awesome riders who came and gave their best to make it big. Thanks to Daniel Etura, the director of the movie and the guy with the most patience of anyone I know so far. To the Dasilva Boards crew — Alon Meiri, Ben Kaufman, Tom Goldwasser, Ty Charap and Ido Cami — we couldn’t have done it without them. To Matt K for being the most talented follow-camera person I know and getting the sickest shots at ridiculous speeds. (He was also the most whiny person of the trip!) To the local crew, everyone we met, everyone who’s helping now and everyone who supported us with our Indiegogo campaign: THANK YOU. Your support means the world to us. Big ups for our sponsors that got us there and believed in the project as much as we do: Loaded Boards; Orangatang Wheels; Daddies Board Shop; Sector 9; Landyachtz; Kahalani; Vault; GForm; Bustin; Riviera; the Israel Ministry of Tourism; El Al Airlines; Índigo Energías Renovables; Rayne; RipTide Bushings; Ennui; Slipstream; Concrete Wave Skateshop Cologne; Bastl Boards; Kaina; Solo Freeride; Rey Trucks; Inercia; Cult Wheels; Marta Guillén; Divine Wheels; Incus; XS Helmets; Zero Gravity; Caliber Trucks; Concrete Wave magazine; Sickboards; Toxic World Skateshop; The Pucks; Paris Trucks; Triple Eight; and Abec 11. This adventure was epic. Here’s for dreaming big. And me, I’m again, as part of this column’s tradition, writing this article on a plane, this time while flying from NYC to L.A. I just attended the Broadway Bomb and am heading to L.A. for new skate adventures. The Bomb was a sick event that, as usual, gathered skaters from all over the world in New York, so I got the chance to meet with great humans. I was deeply touched by meeting the girls that attended the event: Anna O’Neill, Jenica Davenport, Keyla Denise, Monica Mejía, Lyndsay McLaren, Katy Fry … they are all SO amazing and lovely and rad! Some OPEN riders also reunited in NYC during the Bomb: Cami Best, Micaela Wilson, Cindy Zhou, Gina Mendez and I. The level of excitement was over the moon, because that’s how much we love, support and care for each other. We continue working. The female longboard scene is doing it right. Follow us daily at: LongboardGirlsCrew.com | Facebook.com/longboardgc Twitter: @longboardgirls | Instagram: LongboardGirlsCrew CW
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By ANNA-SELINA KAGER
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R
egardless of where you live on this planet, sport is the essence of social cohesion and gives a community or society the strength and courage to consciously build a healthier environment. Vietnam, a country historically marked by several wars and political setbacks, is on its way to economic recovery and therefore also open for free minds and spirits to share new ideas and visions. The revolutionary communist leader Ho Chi Minh, who is still hailed by a significant percentage of the Vietnamese population, left his traces on the characteristics of Vietnamese society. But these characteristics and the history make this beautiful country and its inhabitants conspicuous and eager to build up a new world of freedom and diversity of ideas.
Bush Lâm shredding in Tây Hổ, Hà Nội (Hanoi). Photo: Sunny Horsnell
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Quang Văn chilling with a friend in the Old Quarter of Hanoi.
Bush doing his little morning dance in Hanoi.
Vietnam is a country where people still do a lot of things manually and enjoy the pureness of handcrafted items and homemade food, which also means people depend on each other’s skills and therefore give high priority to family and community. Also a big part of their lives still takes place outside, starting with a morning sport session every day, which might include dancing, stretching, martial arts or yoga on the sidewalk or in a park. Briefly speaking, Vietnamese citizens try to keep a balance between the wave of digitalism, globalization, outdoor activities and solidarity.
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I wanted to tell my story of my Vietnam, how I arrived here and how I experience a different society through an approach of skating for a better lifestyle and cohesion on the other side of the world. It’s a society whose story has been taught in every history class, and a country that earns all my respect to be such a proud nation of human potential and natural resources. A series of coincidences brought me to Vietnam. While living in the Netherlands, working for SNV Netherlands Development Organisation as a communications intern, I suddenly got kicked out of the bubble and had to make a choice between moving back to Austria — a country I still love and call home, but left because of good reasons — or moving to Vietnam. The little nomad in me taught me right and made me decide to relocate to Vietnam. Vietnam is one of the least-developed countries in Southeast Asia. It seems very odd to Westerners at first glance, but this impression is mainly a typical culture shock. You always imagine what a developing country might look like, but you can
never fully imagine how it would be to live there if you have never lived there before. I found a place with busy roads, the narrowest alleys you have ever seen in your life, hoots from every corner and the most significant smells of delicious Pho and Bun Cha everywhere. I was here, in Hà Nội (Hanoi), with both feet on the ground, a new job, new friends and a society and culture I eagerly wanted to be part of from now on. Expats here have different approaches to help them become part of the society. Some go for excessive partying every weekend, some go to yoga or meditation classes, and others choose to join an international charity club. The tool I used was my longboard. If you share the same passion of shredding down on the concrete waves of Vietnam, you overcome every cultural difference and you suddenly speak the same language as anybody else in the world. There is no need of explaining yourself if you ride down a road together with a bunch of Vietnamese guys and girls and just enjoy being there, having a blast and learning from each other.
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Anna-Selina with her favorite board on the secret highway spot in Ho Chi Minh City.
Because the proportion of people who speak good English is quite low in the north of Vietnam, however, I first had to make friends with expats. So in the beginning I shared my passion and my ideas related to longboarding with Westerners I met. A longboard is already very exotic in Vietnam, and a longboarding girl is like being the 10th world wonder: What the heck is that girl doing on the streets on that big weird thing? I started enjoying this “wow” effect. People started talking about it in Hanoi, and strangers came to me in clubs and asked me where they could get a longboard here. And then I suddenly met Timm — with a double m — a German shredder who told me about a crazy tall Dutch guy who would skate every meter in Hanoi on his longboard. So I tried to find this dude — unfortunately without success. On my way to longboard enlightenment in Vietnam, however, I met Quang and his friend Bush, a down-to-earth guy with a passion for reggae, dubstep, drum and bass and — who would have known — for sliding. Both got their first longboards in China and have been totally stoked ever since. Through Quang and Bush I finally also met the crazy Dutch dude, Marco, and his wife (now ex-wife) Francine, both stoked longboarders. The lost boys and girls found each other. I remember we wanted to meet up on a Thursday evening, right after work, to go skating around Westlake, the biggest lake in town, with a shore length of 17 km. Totally excited, I ran out of the security door of my house and bumped into a Canadian guy, who almost started crying out of happiness when he saw me with all my gear. “Girl, this is awesome!” he said. “You got a longboard here? Can I join you?” Well, there he was, Tim (with one m), another member of our freshly baked crew, lovingly named The Hanoian Longboarders. The Hanoian Longboarders is a Facebook group that began growing significantly in the first few weeks. We tried to meet up at least once a week. Soon the guys started to make those meetings a multifaceted target date where people came together to skate, play music, meet new people and enjoy the beautiful view from the northern banks of the lake over the hustle and bustle of the city center.
Pha Hoang from the Surfpoint Vietnam crew after a session on the Mui Ne highway.
Anna-Selina doing a spot check on Mui Ne's amazing highway.
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The group has 40 members now, which is a big number for a country lacking in access to real longboard equipment. I’ve since moved to the South, so I hope someone else will take over the lead and further spread the stoke in the beautiful North. Building a longboard community in a formerly communist country gives us the opportunity to connect people through something other than just work and structure. It’s all about having fun, enjoying freedom and sharing interests. People near our spots started asking our Vietnamese shredders if they could come and bring their kids, try it out themselves or just watch us skating. After seven months living in Hanoi, I traveled back to Europe to reconsider my future plans and to meet my friends and
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family back in Austria and the Netherlands. Nothing had changed back home, but I saw the importance of being part of a community to be able to achieve goals together and learn from each other. People were still doing the same things — working during the day, skating on the boulevard of Scheveningen in the evening, drinking a cocktail at the Zahara Cocktailbar afterwards — but skating strengthened the community in The Hague, where I used to live before I moved to Vietnam, more and more. The shared stoke helped people to develop themselves both skating- and personality-wise. After going back to Europe, I accepted a new job offer in the south of Vietnam and, along with my new Bastl Boards Bolero,
moved to Ho Chi Minh City. As this move was also be a small restart, I thought of making my vision of a growing longboard family in Southeast Asia more tangible. So I contacted Jacky Madenfrost and decided to take over the lead for the Longboard Girls Crew here in Vietnam. Exciting days followed this decision and brought me to meet a wonderful bunch of people from all around Southeast Asia in one place: Putrajaya, Malaysia. The TFY Skate crew organized a downhill event, with a rad crew shredding down a track with a maximum speed of 70km/h. Amazing days with probably the most interesting people I have met so far on my Southeast Asian adventure. Everybody is totally stoked to grow the sport and the community. We even
The Longboard Girls Crew Vietnam at their first meeting at Saigon Outcast.
A couple of Saigon's best groms at Saigon Outcast.
created a group on Facebook with the name South East Asian Longboarding, which rapidly gained members, from 50 members on the first day to 200 on the third. Here in Ho Chi Minh City I’ve already managed to get some girls together for a Longboard Girls Crew. We’re still quite small, but we’re growing. We are very proud to call Saigon Outcast, a venue in District 2, which also features a halfpipe and some good roads around it, our second home. I have met wonderful people with the same kind of mindset and vision here. Andy Ngo, Thai Nguyen and Boris Dufour all want to give further and do what they can do best, skating. We are planning to create a new venue for street skaters and longboarders somewhere in the city and if possible also organize some epic downhill events out there in the beautiful mountains of Dalat, Mui Ne, Tam Dao and some other spots in the North. We’re not sure where our mission will lead us, but we all want to use skating as a tool to strengthen the Vietnamese society and teach kids and others to laugh and enjoy life on a plank and four wheels. I would say we are ready for a big season, with many more events in Southeast Asia on the schedule right now — for example the upcoming annual Haven’s Gate: Tanay Mayor’s Cup in the Philippines on my birthday, December 7. And remember our season here is infinite. We can skate here all year! No snow, and if it rains during rainy season the roads are usually dry again after 30 minutes. We would all be totally stoked to welcome some of you guys (and girls!) here in Southeast Asia. So if you plan a trip, just let us know via one of the above-mentioned FB groups. Big love from the lovely country of rice noodles! CW
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FOR
Skating INNER
PEACE
Author's note: This is written anonymously both for my sake and that of my family. hen I told this magazine’s publisher why I would not be meeting the deadline for an article I pitched to him some time ago, I felt it necessary to explain why. To be honest, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t think, and happiness in general eluded me, which severely inhibits one’s ability to write. When I explained my situation, all he could say was, “That’s some heavy stuff.” I considered myself a strong and confident individual throughout my young adult life; I climbed up trail-less mountains that were infested with poisonous snakes and spiders and nearly broke my leg on the descent, among many other near-death experiences. Yet despite my death-defying actions, death caught up to me in a different way and nearly destroyed me. It was indeed some heavy stuff. I explained it to the publisher as this: Whenever a door starts to slowly crack open, giving me a glimpse of sunshine, it’s slammed shut in my face. I suppose this is where I should tell my story. Like many stories, it starts with a girl. I met her on Valentine’s Day through a friend. I hadn’t thought much of her at the time, though I could
W
certainly tell she was very outgoing. I hadn’t particularly planned on hanging out with anyone that day; I had been going solo for a year at that point and was pretty comfortable with it. Instead of trying to talk much with this girl, I instead left early in favor of going home to edit some video footage that I had been working on. The next day my friend told me that this girl had been checking me out, so I thought I would give it a shot. I ended up getting the girl’s number and started hanging out with her. It seems like it should be a fairly happy story at this point: boy meets girl on Valentine’s Day, girl is really cool, boy starts dating said girl. I had been seeing her for a month, and I really liked her and enjoyed being around her. I felt really happy and everything felt natural — but that’s when my life turned into a nightmare. I received a phone call from her one day with some shocking news: She found out that she had contracted a “silent symptom” STD from an exboyfriend who had cheated on her. She was concerned that I might now have it too, so she insisted that I get tested. Of course I agreed to it, and I made an appointment with a doctor.
I wasn’t too happy with her at that time, for obvious reasons, but a few days before my appointment I had started talking with her again. She gave me the whole story and insisted that I find a way for her to make it up to me. She was an extremely talented apprentice at a tattoo shop, so we decided some new ink would be a decent way for her to do so. She had otherwise proven to me that she actually did care about me and really felt bad about what had happened, even though it wasn’t necessarily her fault. The day of my doctor appointment was the worst day of my life. I went for the test, which wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience to begin with. Right after I got done with the test, I sent her a text message that if she could provide her lab results, I could be treated immediately instead of having to wait for my results to come back. It was a fairly long message, and she never responded. I figured she was just at work. Hours later I was lying in bed watching TV when the friend who had introduced us called me up in tears. She told me that my girl was dead — that she’d been killed in a car crash. I was speechless. I asked her what time it had
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happened, and she said it was about four hours before the call. It was 11 p.m. at that time, and four hours ago was exactly when I’d sent her my long text message. I locked up. At first I couldn’t do anything; I just stared into space, not believing that it happened, thinking that it must be a mistake of some sort. Then it dawned on me that I had killed my own girlfriend, as she was the type to text and drive. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I went into work as usual the next day. I hadn’t told anyone at that point because there wasn’t anyone around to tell. I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts because I knew I would simply lie around and cry, and possibly try to do something to myself that would be final and irreversible. I didn’t talk to anyone at work; I didn’t listen to music like I always do; I simply immersed myself in bitter and painful silence. It wasn’t until several days later that I discovered the truth: She had died just an hour before I sent the text message to her. I suppose you could say I was relieved that I didn’t actually kill my girlfriend, but she was still dead, which wasn’t exactly comforting. She was simply driving to work when her car lost control and she smashed into a guardrail. Seconds later a school bus plowed into her car and broke her neck, killing her. She was 19 years old, and her 20th birthday would have been in two weeks. She was an only child. I had experienced the death of a friend before, but this was different. I had a strong emotional connection with this girl, and the empathy that I felt for her parents on top of what I felt was mentally excruciating. I have always been a proponent of the Chaos Theory, and this solidified my beliefs in it. I stopped doing everything that I loved: skating, rock climbing, hanging out with friends ... it was all too much. Living felt like it was too much. I turned to drugs, thinking they might help me. But that was certainly not the route to go, as I realized after weeks of bingeing. It took me almost a month to get back to my life as it once was, being physically active and going out with friends. My family tried to be there for me as best as they could, but I couldn’t be helped. I needed to figure things out on my own. Her parents held an open-casket viewing at her memorial. It was terrifying to look at her lifeless face that so frequently had a giant smile on it. Her entire face was swollen up to the point that she didn’t even look like herself. To make matters worse, this was the first time I was actually meeting her parents. I was barely able to tell them who I was, and that I wished I could have met them under better circumstances. Two weeks after her death, I went back to the
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testing clinic. I had to speak with the staff counselor who was to give me my lab results. “I have good news!” she said, but when she looked at my face she could instantly see that it didn’t matter much to me. I explained to her that I was glad I didn’t have any STDs, but that exactly two weeks and one hour before that very moment, the girl who might have given me any possible disease had died. It has taken me a very long time to get over the fact that my last memory of her relates to an STD clinic. But that’s not where this story ends. I have a cousin who’s five years older than I am. He was a police officer in a city nearby that’s known for being rather violent, especially where he was stationed. He was injured on the job while responding to a call: A man on PCP was causing trouble in a bar that was trying to close. Long story short, my cousin had three full bottles of vodka smashed over his head before backup came to subdue the drugged-up man. My cousin, who is like a brother to me, ended up with a
brain contusion. He was no longer allowed to work on duty and spent almost a year on medical leave against his will. When he did finally return to working, he was assigned to serving in court as a representative for his district — a dull, insipid job for a man who, like me, thrives on excitement and action. Both of us rely on these things to keep ourselves happy. He became depressed with his lifestyle, but he was recently married so he had someone to support him — until she wanted a divorce. His wife kicked him out of the house. He later found out that she had started seeing her exboyfriend. He was devastated by this, knowing that another man was in his own house, sleeping in his bed with his wife. Three weeks after my girlfriend died, he attempted to kill himself by overdosing on his medication and drinking heavily. Thankfully, it didn’t work, and he lived to see the next day, on which he and I were supposed to go to the beach. Two days later, as he was walking at night
Nick Burkus finds his inner peace. Photo: Shane Poss Crosland
near the new apartment that he was forced to move into, he was mugged in the streets by two men. My cousin put up a fight again. He ended up being stabbed in the stomach, but he continued fighting. He got one of them to the ground and started pummeling his face with his fist when the other mugger took a rock and smashed it over my cousin’s head, giving him yet another head injury — thankfully “just” a concussion this time around. All of this added to the emotional pain I was already dealing with. My life had gone from a pretty carefree one to feeling like I was the star of a really bad soap opera. I dabbled with the idea of just giving up, putting my car in fifth gear and driving directly into the nearest telephone pole, but I couldn’t — not because I was afraid of death, but because I decided there were still too many fun things to experience on this planet. Since then I’ve graduated from college, and I’ve noticed myself contemplating life more than I ever used to — and I used to think about it a
lot. Now that I’m done getting my education, where am I going? What am I going to do? How can I achieve the happy life that I tried to set up for myself? To this day, one of the few things that manages to keep me grounded is skateboarding. For me, skating offers an escape like nothing else can. It keeps me focused, positive and looking ahead. It makes me want to progress, to make my life better and richer in quality. It gives me something to work on. With skating, it’s impossible to become stagnant; there’s always something new to master. Got that switch heelside down? Great, now do a switch toeside. Got all those standup slides down? Nothing else to do ... right? WRONG! Go ride some vert, ride some street, skate 50 miles nonstop, learn slalom, ollie on that longboard that isn’t meant for ollies ... do whatever you can possibly come up with. Skating is amazing because it allows you the freedom to do and learn and create whatever you please. The path to perfection is an endless
one, and quite frankly, that’s the way it should be. I get bored with hobbies once I get too good at them, which is why I have so many. But the one thing that’s never left my repertoire is skating. It’s always there, and once you have the setups you want, it’s always free. There’s no lift ticket to pay to get to the top of your favorite local hill, and many skateparks are free. The act of skating can be meditative for many people, and I know it certainly is for me. Meditation implies that you block out all other thoughts and matters in your life to focus on one specific thing. In this fashion, longboarding can be very meditatively therapeutic because when you’re bombing hills at 40 mph or throwing out huge standies, you cannot afford to focus on anything but the matter at hand. When I get to the bottom of a hill, all I think about is my skating and how I can do it better, instead of all that has gone wrong in my life. The entire experience is focused only on skating, which is very liberating for someone with a worried or troubled conscious mind like me — or perhaps you. You could consider it “longboarding for inner peace.” There’s a phrase that many longboarders jest with: “It’s all downhill from here.” And while that may be appropriate for the DH scene, it doesn’t necessarily have to be true for your life. While some of the most interesting rides in life may be “downhill,” both figuratively and literally, there’s always still that hill or mountain to climb back up. Just like longboarding, life is a perpetual drop with the struggle to get back to the top. To this day, I still find myself thinking about those hypothetical “what ifs.” What if she hadn’t died? What would my life be like right now? It’s impossible to say. But I can say that life is a ride, and mine has very much been a winding roller coaster, the kind that makes you throw up. It’s strange how different it feels to lose traction when doing slides in comparison to losing traction in life. I guess the best lesson I’ve learned from all this is that even when life figuratively jams up your bearings and makes you eat pavement hard, when things seem like they can’t possibly go worse but then do, giving up is not the answer. Life is very precious, and there are so many wonderful things we can do with it. You never really know how lucky you are when you’ve got it good until that moment becomes a very distant memory. I am sharing my story with you right now because I want everyone to understand that skating gives me something to live for. It is more than just an activity; it is a lifestyle, and there is a very large and welcoming community that comes along with it. A skater is never alone. CW
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Dan Herzog. Photo: Jonathan Nuss
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A BEGINNER’S GUIDE
TO GOING
FAST YOU CAN’T SIT DOWN IN A CLASSROOM AND LEARN what it means to go fast and how to do it. You can be told how to draft, how to take a line around a corner properly, what setup to ride in certain situations and how to do a slide with perfect form, but when you get on the hill, all that “book learning” flies right out the window. I am not saying that learning about the factors of the hill is a bad thing. But if you’re not learning these things at a hill and applying them time and time again, you’re not going to know when to use them. When you’re skating a hill, anything can happen. You can’t afford to be going by the book; you have to learn to make these skills second nature. A very important part of going fast is headspace. If this is your first time exceeding 35 mph, remember that. You are about to experience something completely new for the first time in your life, and that is always exciting. Don’t try to be the cool kid and act like it’s nothing. In my case it was probably the scariest, most life-changing moment of my life. Even though you may have watched your favorite skaters ride like this hundreds of times on the Internet, that doesn’t mean you have done it too — nor does it mean that you are as good as them when you finally get around to trying it. Your gear is really important. Ride hard bushings and a board with a lot of reference points on it until you get comfortable. You will probably regret getting a board with only radial concave and a basic shape. There is no worse feeling than hitting the fastest part of the hill and forgetting where your feet are on the board, only to look down and see that your front foot is over the farthest bolt holes. Gear can be very technical, though. With the amount of variety available in today’s market, you’re going to want to get some advice from someone experienced. If you have a proper shop in your hometown, they probably employ at least one experienced rider. So go to that shop, be nice to the employees, make good friends and take their advice, because they know what is good for you and they are there to help you become a better skater. You are going to want to go downhilling with people who are more experienced because it pushes you to learn. As a grom, gaining acceptance with the older, more experienced skaters can seem difficult. Offer to pitch in for gas or snacks, and start working
BY DAN HERZOG
on your driver’s license if you don’t have it. At the very least, be appreciative of those trying to teach you. Don’t push out to the front of the pack if all you are going to do is wobble the whole way down. That ruins everyone’s fun. Most importantly, don’t try to snake lines, even on a closed course. It doesn’t get respect, and it just disrupts people’s runs. The thing about skating fast is that you’re not going to be combining your freeride skills with your downhill skills for a long time. It is simply terrifying for you and others around you. It’s a fairly advanced way of riding, and you don’t just learn how to do it overnight. It’s something that you as a rider have to get comfortable doing, and it takes a long time to become confident with it. The best place to really learn how to up your high-speed freeriding is in a controlled environment. So, next time you have a chance to skate a closed road, as tempting as it may be to take it slow, try doing one less slide out of each run and see how fast you can get yourself to go. Challenging yourself to do fewer slides in a run will make you more confident about doing them at higher speeds. Just make sure you take proper precautions. When you’re learning, you are going to fall, and if you’re not falling, you’re not learning. Be aware of your surroundings, because if you think you’re putting yourself in any sort of danger, then you are definitely putting those close by you in danger too. That brings me to the most important part of this column, and that is falling. Falling isn’t something that happens and that you shouldn’t be doing; it is a part of life, and rather than just embracing it, get good at it. What I mean by that is every time you do fall, put as much focus and effort into falling properly, on two hands and dragging your toes, as you were into not falling. For me the true sign of an experienced skater is when they avoid sliding on their bellies; they straighten their arms and never lose track of what is in front of them. Knowing how to fall means that you are one step closer to falling less, because you eventually grow to understand falling. I’m not saying you don’t fear falling; never become completely fearless or arrogant. Rather, become more confident in yourself so that if you do fall, you and those around you will be safe. Going fast is really fun. All you have to do is find that hill to practice on and gain experience on, and enjoy it. CW
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PUSH CULTURE FAMILY PICNIC A GREAT EVENT DOES MORE than just get you excited about longboarding. It pushes our culture, forms relationships and shapes the ways in which our sport can grow by bringing so many people to one place in commonality. How we organize and form these events has a direct impact on how potent this concoction can be. The Push Culture Family Picnic set out to accomplish all of this, but happened to fall on the worst of storms and intense weather conditions imaginable. You might be thinking about how this most likely pulled the event apart, but due to the dynamic format of a freeride and ambitiously creative organizers, this event had a fight to survive. This motivated all of us to make the most of the weekend, leaving with the inspiration of the stoke pumping through our veins as if the storm never hit. The event took place at Vermont’s Burke Mountain Ski resort. Our weekend of madness began with the excitement and anticipation of riding the amazing one-mile Burke track without a race, simply to ride it as friends and experience a weekend skate trip. A freeride is especially fun because you get to bro down with new people and connect with people you may have raced against
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By JOEY BIDNER Photos: DANIELLE DE JESUS before — but this time without the threatening environment of a race. This gives you a chance to mellow out, shred hard and have fun without the goal or pressure to win and perform. This kind of event is what pushes our culture, as the roots of longboarding initially came from these kinds of group rides, which then stemmed to the racing scene we now know. This sense of camaraderie can be lost or forgotten in the competitive environment of downhill racing, but it was the attitude we subconsciously adopted that allowed the weekend to run smoothly despite what we were about to get hit with. We all knew about the warning of probable rain, and most were OK with it: simply bring some rain wheels and thank the heavens for leathers, as they doubled as one-piece raincoats. In the same fashion as most crews that came to the event, we also drove down for hours packed in several cars and arrived late at night, anticipating a wet campground as the downpour began on the drive in. To our surprise, the campground was empty. We soon found out that the gracious event organizers had made the impulse decision to rent a big house for all of us to crash in. What
Eric Chernushenko (aka Junker) grabbing rail as though his life depended on it.
Joey Bidner is wishing for rain wheels right now, but scrubbies, a will to live and plastic bags over his socks will be enough to charge this hill.
better way to kick off this weekend of debauchery than to find a skate house packed with boards, good people and loud music? This would be our spot to jam out for the weekend. As expected, the first late night of shenanigans came to a close as we geared up for some rain riding the following morning. With leathers zipped up and plastic bags around our feet, what could possibly stop us? After a solid cooked breakfast in the cafeteria of the lodge, we piled into the cube van. Our jaws hit the floor as we climbed up the seemingly endless track of perfect pavement and steep pitches with back-to-back hairpins and sweepers, something you seldom come across in Eastern North America. If you see Patrick Switzer grinning from ear to ear about a track, you know you’re in for a treat. After climbing almost 1,000 feet, though, our hearts sank, as a drop in temperature caused the harmless rain at the base to turn into a torrential downpour of snow at the top. But even with flakes from hell pouring over us and winds howling, we didn’t hesitate to charge the track! After four runs of madness we were forced to stop, as we were now riding in more than 4 inches of snow and soaked from head to toe. We later found out we had been hit with some of the tang from a freak tornado that had struck just south of us. It turned out that this would be our only chance to hit the track all weekend, as the snow did not stop, but it was only the beginning of what was to unfold for us. I was not sure what to expect when we got back to the lodge. Sure, some of us were still happy and excited in the truck on the way down after four of the wildest runs of our life, but some were seriously frustrated and disappointed after traveling so far and sacrificing so much to be at a blown-out track. But to our surprise, once we hit the lodge, almost everybody was still hyped to be there. It was clear we were not going to be able to
Brian Bishop (in red leathers) shares an enthusiastic high five — proof that good times were had despite the weather!
skate anymore this weekend, but because our intentions were to get away and have fun at this freeride, not to compete or win a race, we were subconsciously wired to find something else to fuel the drive. This laid-back vibe is what allowed the riders to relax and just have fun with the situation. This format of an event is new to eastern Canada, but has been done in Europe for years and has recently been picking up on the West Coast. It’s the perfect environment for a culture to grow, as it brings communities together for a unique purpose. Once we realized there was not going to be any more riding, we began the search to find some stoke to keep our motors going. We busted out the Vew-Do balance boards and even had a tuck-off contest. Outside we had snowball fights and did some buttboard sledding. We then moved to the house to start the night off and found our way to a local bar that had an amazing mini ramp to get some skate going. Sure, some people
were disgruntled and may have gone home, but for the rest of us who stayed and went to find some fun, I can say we had a worthy time! On day three, it was clear there was still no riding, so event organizers Marc Dean and Travis Davenport pulled some strings and spent some money on getting every rider access to an indoor water park nearby. It was then clear that these two were truly in the business of organizing events to fuel all the people there and to create an atmosphere to have fun and get inspired. They did not care about the money to be made by hosting an event, or the recognition. They cared about making sure the riders were having fun and left the event motivated. Organizers like Marc and Travis deserve to be in the business of event planning because they go above and beyond. I hope to see more freerides on this side of the world, as they are true nourishment for our culture. Get inspired and bring one to your community! CW
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Spain PHOTO ESSAY Rider: AXEL SERRAT Photos: CHRISTOPHER VANDERYAJT Last November Original Skateboards sent me to Barcelona, Spain, to photograph Original team rider Axel Serrat.
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Spain
PHOTO ESSAY Even thoroughly rested, we were not ready to fully absorb the dramatic landscapes that surrounded us. This summer vacation town on the sea, contrasted by endless mountain roads overlooking towns, capes and ocean landscapes, with the French Alps to top off the views, cannot be summed up in only a few words.
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Spain PHOTO ESSAY
When I touched down in “España,” I linked up with Original cinematographer Nick Patrick, and we headed up the cost to El Puerto De La Selva, Girona. We got to our hostel exhausted after the 22.5-hour trip and immediately passed out to recharge for the coming days.
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Spain PHOTO ESSAY
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After three days of early morning and late night film sessions, we trekked back to Barcelona for a day of rest and relaxation (FUN), and to shoot some street skating in a city that seemed architecturally designed for skateboarding.
Spain PHOTO ESSAY
The prospect of an eight-day, nonstop shooting trip had been daunting, and I headed home feeling like I had captured just the surface of what Spain and Barcelona have to offer. But I am excited to go back again.
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KRYPTONICS Doug “Pineapple” Saladino, 1978.
h t r i b e R The Photos by JIM GOODRICH Interviews by JACK SMITH
More than 35 years ago, Kryptonics wheels hit the skate world. Their urethane formula was revolutionary, and a sea of red, blue and green wheels appeared almost overnight. The company’s marketing was brilliant, too — color-coding each durometer, measuring wheels in millimeters instead of inches, even selling wheels in a canister — and its print ads in SkateBoarder magazine caused millions of skaters to drool over them. But times eventually changed; the brand was taken over a number of times, and its products ended up being sold mainly in discount stores. But through an interesting turn of events, Kryptonics has relaunched. We wanted to share with readers the history of this brand because the people who were associated with it had a dramatic effect on skateboarding.
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D. DAVID MORIN INTERVIEW July 2013
How did you originally hook up with Kryptonics? D. David Morin: I originally hooked up with Kryptonics while I was attending the University of Colorado in Boulder, circa 1975. I had met Duane Hermanson, the then VP, and he told me about their wheel development. Jimmy Ford was in the shipping department and was busy pushing Kryptonics to expand their product line from deadening formulas to reduce industrial machine vibration to more resilient compounds for the burgeoning skateboard wheel market. We went up against Road Rider wheels and OJs. I rode for Krypto while finishing college as an R & D guy, and started meeting a lot of the early street racing guys. Randy “R” Smith was a local favorite on the cool-looking Turner skates. I skated as a kid in Hollywood and used to go to the Teenage Fair at the Hollywood Palladium and watch the Hobie team. My early skateboards were Makaha decks with Hobie wheels with Chicago trucks.
S. Alba, D. David, Vicki Vickers and M. Alba (sticker on face)
break into it. I was driving 100 miles a day while attending law school in San Diego just to hand out wheels, stickers and T-shirts to skaters like Pineapple, Steve Cathey, Dennis Martinez, Ellen Oneal ... and also up around Venice and all the way out to the Inland Empire. I was everywhere and had a cool Porsche 914-6 that got me around until George Powell totaled it one day. What about favorite skaters or crazy stories from that time? As far as great skateboard stories, the whole era was epic. Capitola, the Catalina Classic, the Hester Series, the skateparks and all the characters ... Rich Novak and the Santa Cruz guys: John Krisik; John Hutson; Fausto; Steve Olson ... Signal Hill, La Costa ... there’s so many people and places. It was a whole world. Gregg Ayres, Neil Blender, the Bones Brigade guys: Lance; Cab; McGill; Tony Hawk; and so many more like Ray Allen, Vicki Vickers, [Dave] McIntyre, Bolster, [Craig] Stecyk, [James] Cassimus, Glen E. [Friedman], Mullen, it goes on and on. Lots of favorite skaters — Jay Adams was one of my faves, as unpredictable as he was stylish.
The big skating boom was over in the early ’80s and advertisers were dropping like flies. We couldn’t survive so we adapted. We expanded our editorial base in the hopes the expanded advertising base would follow. We were covering all the extreme sports well before that phrase was invented. You’ve heard of the X Games? We started X-Journalism back in 1980, combining all the radical action sports, aka extreme sports, into ACTION NOW: BMX, snowboarding, skating, etc. I guess we were too far ahead of our time.
D. David at the first Hester Series pool contest, Spring Valley, 1978.
What was your title at Krypto? I was a sales rep and all of California was my territory. I paid my way through law school selling Krypto wheels. Were you involved in wheel design or designing the great Kryptonics ads? I was never involved in the wheel design or the advertising. That was all Jim Ford back in Boulder. He was brilliant. I thought our ads really stood out, and I couldn’t wait, like everyone else, to see what was next every month. Jimmy was really clever, and the production was top notch. My job was promotion mostly, starting with giving wheels to skaters like Gregg Weaver, Rodney Jesse, Stacy Peralta, the G&S team, Jim Muir, Jay Adams, Tony Alva, David Hackett, Duane Peters ... Then it was the Krypto team during the Hester Series with Steve Alba, Micke Alba and Scott Dunlap. I think I sponsored Bobby Piercy also. The street racing scene was hardcore. Krypto tried to
When did you leave Kryptonics? I left Kryptonics in 1980 when I took at job at Surfer Publishing Group. I had been announcing professional skating for years (and surfing) and freelance writing for SkateBoarder quite a bit. When I graduated from law school Dave Dash asked me if I wanted to be publisher of SkateBoarder, as he was moving on to a newer mag at Surfer Publications and needed a replacement. I said yes. Then I became editor-in-chief after it broadened its scope to become ACTION NOW.
Why did you kill skateboarding? That’s so funny and ludicrous that people think I killed it, but they do. I was at a rehearsal dinner a decade ago and some guy married to the bride’s sister got drunk and figured out who I was and came after me because I killed skateboarding. Why would I kill the hand that fed me so well for all those years? Skateboarding was very good to me. But it’s cyclical. SkateBoarder first came out in 1964. Then after four issues it died. It came back in the early ’70s. Then died.
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At its zenith, SkateBoarder was a 200-page glossy monthly, chock full of ads. Everyone wanted in the market and the magazine. By 1980 we were at 84 pages and nearly unsustainable. Everybody had gone away. All the big boys ... gone. We were forced to expand or die. We tried. But to say I killed the sport is pretty aggrandizing. I was a reporter. That’s like saying I killed Lincoln if I reported Lincoln was dead. I somewhat recall our editorial staff talking about the upcoming issue and what the cover should be. Paul Haven, Cassimus, Stecyk and myself always tried to put a clever spin on our covers. The mag tone was very tongue-in-cheek, and like any publication, we were in the business of selling newspapers, or in our case, magazines. I don’t even remember the exact cover — it was so long ago — but we had a long story about “is skateboarding dead and can it survive?” We were poking the sacred cow. The readers were outraged, but the once mega-industry was already gone due to lack of sales ... yet we were to blame. What was your life and career like after Kryptonics? My mom was an actress and my dad was a lawyer, but me and law never got along. Stacy Peralta got into acting and was doing guest-star roles on Charlie’s Angels and movies and stuff. He encouraged me to pursue it. After ACTION NOW I went to Saddleback College and hosted a cable show for two years and acted in a student film. I sucked. So I picked the thing I had the least amount of talent at and moved back to Hollywood to pursue that. I went on to do more than 200 national commercials, 40 guest-star roles, 40 films and a couple of sitcoms as a series regular. My credits are on IMDB.com. I also trailed directors and was making short films. I ended up writing and directing two features, Cold Play and Johnny. At that time I was living in a loft in downtown L.A. and got a film acting gig in Kenya, Africa. After a month in Nairobi, I decided to move there. I bought a one-way and sold everything I had and flew to Kenya Oct. 1, 2011. What are you doing these days? Currently I’m teaching a seminar series on the cinematic arts in Nairobi (Slingshot Seminars on Facebook) and a nine-week Hollywood acting course. I own Slingshot Productions and have numerous projects in various stages of development. Otherwise, I live on the coast on the Indian Ocean near Somalia in Lamu. My current life credo is “teach art or make art.” Kryptonics was the halcyon days for a lot of us. I know it was for me. So many memories, too many to remember.
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JIM FORD INTERVIEW
When did you begin working at Kryptonics? Jim Ford: I think it was early 1975. I moved to Boulder from the East Coast in late ’74, worked a few jobs for a short time, then got hired at Kryptonics to work in production. That was before they got into skateboard wheels. What did you do before the Krypto job? Before moving to Boulder I was a lab technician at a big chemical company near Washington, D.C. I was still going to college part-time then. In Boulder I tried being an oxygen tank deliveryman for a week and had a random assembly job for a few months before getting hired at Kryptonics. What was your title? At first I didn’t have one. The best description would probably be factory worker. I did production spray-painting of rollers they later coated with urethane, some welding and various other equally unexciting production related jobs.
Did you skateboard as a kid? I did, home-made. A friend and I deconstructed his sister’s old steel-wheeled roller skates and screwed them to boards we cut out on a band saw. We could only ride them on sidewalks because the streets were too rough. I remember using black electrical tape to put a racing stripe down the middle of mine. Who was hired first, you or D. David? It wasn’t until I convinced the president and VP of Kryptonics to get into the skateboard wheel business that D. David was hired as a rep, so I preceded him by a year or two. What was the first wheel(s) you were involved with? Were you involved in wheel design? It’s a long story. The very first wheels were prototypes that were developed clandestinely by me without the knowledge of Krypto’s management. I designed a wheel and got a friend who worked in the machine shop to make a steel master. Then we rigged it so the doors wouldn’t lock after work, snuck back in at night, made a mold from the master and started pouring different formulas we found in the lab into the mold. Nobody knew about it but us. We made a lot of bad ones, but eventually we came across this really soft and bouncy material. They came out white, and I almost threw them in the trash because they seemed way too soft to work or even hold the bearings in place. Jim Ford tests out the magical Krypto red formula, 1978.
Darren Ho, Wallos, Hawaii, 1978.
Just for fun, I put them on one of my boards just to try them out. It was unbelievable. At the time I had a few boards; one had Road Riders, one had Power Paws and I think one had Bennett Alligators. They all performed about the same. In the flat parking lot at Kryptonics, any of those wheels would glide about 20 feet before you had to push again. I got on the wheels we made in the lab and went all the way across the parking lot and out onto the street. That’s not an exaggeration. They were so fast and quiet it didn’t seem possible. What did you do next? At the time there were some local slalom and downhill races in Boulder on Columbine Avenue. There was no way I was going to ride those wheels standing up in the downhill because there was no runout at the bottom of the course. So I gave them to this kid who rode lying down on his board. He could stop by dragging his feet. There were a lot of spectators at that race, including the VP of Kryptonics. The downhill race was about two blocks long. The guy riding those white wheels won the race by about a block. Nobody could believe it. The VP went up to the kid and asked him about the wheels. I forgot
to tell him they were unauthorized. He told the VP he got them from me and I was busted.
Ellen Oneal freestyling in Mission Bay, California, April 1978.
Did you get in trouble? I got in some trouble initially, but soon after I told them how much I paid for a set of wheels at a local retailer, Kryptonics decided they would get into the business. They even gave me a title, something like Consumer Product Manager, because all they produced was industrial parts for mining and computers. I got to move up from the factory to an office and started marketing and selling wheels. It was a big step up for me. I was selling wheels to shops and distributors, designing all the wheels, producing ads and skating almost every day either at the local park or on mountain roads. When did you start designing the ads? Right from the start. The first ad was in 1976. It was a small, lame, black-and-white ad because I didn’t have much of a budget. Later that year, we had an ad agency come up with a logo that the VP approved but I wasn’t crazy about. It was a circular logo with the Star-Trac written big through the center of the logo. Actually, I hated it. We ran
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Jim Goodrich displays some of his iconic images.
it a few times in the first few ads and then I exerted my influence and ditched the Star-Trac. The new logo used the same shape but Kryptonics was now the only word and it was encircled by three colored rings that represented the color coding of our wheels: green = hard, blue = medium and red = soft. I got a budget to do color ads and the creative juices started flowing. It was fun because I loved skating and I knew we had a product that was clearly better than the competition at the time. Any favorite ones? Yes, lots of them were favorites. The one titled “Fast Relief” is one of them. I had a friend back on the East Coast who worked in a plexiglass company make a giant pill vial and lid. Then we printed an equally big label from a local pharmacy. We laid the vial on its side with wheels spilling out. There were a few other ads that I really liked doing. One was titled “It’s Only Natural,” when we started making wheels with plastic cores for the bearing seats. It had a wheel cut in half sitting beside an avocado and a peach, also cut in half. Another one was titled “Tired of Playing the Name Game?” It didn’t even show our wheels. Instead it had all these different objects that represented the names of our competitors’ wheels. There was a “Weed” (no, not that kind of weed), a toy “Flying Saucer,” a toy railroad “Tunnel,” some dog “Bones,” a glass of “OJ,” a toy “Snake” (slithering out of the tunnel and around the glass of
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OJ), a toy “Alligator” crushed under the flying saucer, and a “Yo Yo.” Along the same lines, we kind of burned Sims Pure Juice and OJ wheels with an ad titled “Tired of the Same Old Juice?” It showed one of our new hard green park wheels sitting next to a lab beaker half-full of green juice with whipped cream on top, a slice of lime and a straw. The ad we did to promote the successor to the white prototype wheels was titled “Rock’n Roll.” It showed a soon-to-be-famous Krypto Red sitting on some rocks. The copy talked about the smoothness and speed and bragged about how nearly every downhill race in 1977 was won on Krypto reds. The other one that sticks out was titled “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet.” We machined big brass casings to look like rifle shells. One was standing up with a wheel on top, so it looked like a hollow-point bullet. The other shell was lying down and had what looked like black powder pouring out. That was it — clean and simple with no copy. Those were my favorite wheel ads. I had other ones when we got into making the high-tech foam-core decks and wood boards, but that’s another story. What was the industry reaction to the ads? It was great. I got a lot compliments and won some awards, a few at the annual SkateBoarder magazine banquet for best ad and best ad campaign. More importantly, though, it created sales for the company that were hard to keep up with from a production standpoint.
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Any great skateboard stories? Oh, yeah. I can think of two incidents in Colorado where the newly developed red wheels created some problems for some friends I gave sets to. We used to drive up into the mountains outside of Boulder and skate down Four Mile Canyon. As the name implies, it was a long ride with hardly any cars and mostly mellow curves and steepness. The problem was when you switched from, say, Road Rider wheels to Kryptos, the ride became way faster and pretty hairy in places. One time a buddy got going too fast, got speed wobbles and tried to run it out. He got in about two huge steps before he went down, rolled and ended up in the ditch on the side of the road. When we went back to check on him, both his feet had gone through the front of his shoes. His shoes were halfway up his shins but they were still tied on. To get them off, we had to pull them down and off over his feet. Another time on the same road, we took a guy who wasn’t much of a skater. He also got the speed wobbles, ejected, but never made it to the ditch. It was the middle of summer and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Instead of rolling out of the high-speed fall, he opted for a belly flop. When he got up he had the worst case of road rash I’ve ever seen. His entire chest was scrubbed. Both his nipples were completely gone. He was hating life, but we couldn’t hold in the laughs. At the time he failed to see the humor in it. One winter I got to ski with George Powell, Tom Sims and Art Harris (one of our distributors) in Aspen. That was a blast because we all skied well and managed to forget the competitive nature of the business for a short time. There were a lot more stories. I had some great road trips in California with D. David and some fun trips to Europe for trade shows. Favorite skater? I think of all the skaters we sponsored over the years, Stacy is the guy who would rank as my favorite. He was a great guy, a stylish skater and went on to do great things with George Powell and the Bones Brigade. When did you leave Kryptonics? They fired me in 1980 when the skateboard boom ended and sales tanked. It was a pretty sad day for me. Skating was in my blood for a long time, and all of a sudden it was over. Looking back, I get why they didn’t need me, but it doesn’t make that memory suck any less.
I know you worked for Haro. How did that come about? D. David made that happen. When he became the main man at ACTION NOW magazine he got to know Bob Haro, who was just starting to ride his BMX bike in skateparks. He started running ads in the magazine and mentioned to D. David that he was looking for someone to run his company while he went on a tour of the U.S. promoting freestyle BMX. D. David recommended me, and Bob flew me out to L.A. for an interview. He picked me up at LAX in a jacked-up Toyota 4Runner that I think had been recently rolled, and he had a big, gnarly perm that stuck out about six inches. I remember thinking this might not be such a good idea! Turns out we hit it off OK, and Bob offered me a job. Bob left around 1991 after we sold the company to Derby Cycles and I became president shortly after that. I bought the company back in 1993 with a group of investors and ended up staying with Haro for 24 years, so it all worked out pretty well.
Then to have the option to put the wheel on all or some of the completes was a no-brainer.
What are you doing these days? I resigned from Haro in 2005 and about six months later started a new BMX company with X Games legend Dave Mirra. It’s still going strong. I’m not skating anymore, but I still ski frequently and ride a bike virtually every day. I also just celebrated 40 years of marriage to my high school sweetheart. Life’s been good.
What has been reaction from retailers? From the ones that know the brand from the ’70s it’s been amazing. Some retailers I’ve spoken to about bringing back Star-Trac wheels said with a smile, “I sold s---loads back in the day; I think I could do that again!” The others that have heard about the brand but don’t know the history, it presents us with the opportunity to share it with them.
What are you going to be offering to skaters that will ignite their interest? Unlocking the rich history of the brand and bringing back quality wheels. Kryptonics heavily influenced many of today’s wheels. Kryptonics Star-Trac wheels were the original performance wheels. What surprises you most about the re-emergence of the brand? The excitement we have seen so far. I have read posts like, “Wow, I used to ride the red ones. I don’t skate anymore, but I think I’ll buy some and start skating again.” It does not get much better than that. We did a Doors collaboration with Dusters a few weeks back and I was lucky enough to meet Robby Krieger from the band. I was wearing a Kryptonics shirt. He looked at me and said, “I used to ride the red ones.” CLASSIC!
Who would you consider your key customer? Anyone that rolls, really. But that is a great question. We are going to appeal from the start to the 40-plus-year-olds who know the history, and through them we are going to let them tell stories (with our help) to their kids and others. It’s truly an iconic wheel brand, and a huge part of skateboarding. To me, Kryptonics wheels are to smoothness and quality what Independent trucks are to turning, and that’s massive.
INTERVIEW WITH BRAND MANAGER STEVE DOUGLAS INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL BROOKE What were some of the decisions to bring back Kryptonics? Steve Douglas: Once the opportunity to do so became a reality we jumped on it. We have a brand called Dusters California [that] is focused on the late ’60s and ’70s, and we make longboard and cruisers. So to run Kryptonics through Dusters as a pure “play” wheel brand was simple.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. … I wanted to get your thoughts about cutting through the huge amount of product that’s currently available. There is only one Kryptonics. The Star-Trac were game-changers, and with our new technology, new durometers and a new size (75 mm), plus the truly iconic name, this gives us an edge. We are not a new brand trying to break into the market. The brand started in the ’70s and now we are back, better than ever. Sometimes you do get a chance. CW
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S L A L O M R E P O R T BY JONATHAN HARMS
WATER
WORLDS RAIN DISRUPTS SLALOM’S R BIGGEST EVENT OF THE YEAR Slalom and rain don't mix well. Lienite Skaraine, playing the waiting game. Photo: Judi Oyama
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acers had high hopes for the 2013 World Championships of Slalom Skateboarding, held Oct. 11-13 at the Hockley Soap Box Derby Hill just northwest of Houston, Texas. But repeated rain showers on the second day caused several lengthy delays, forcing the organizers to make difficult decisions about whether to keep racing, and if so, who got to race, and when. Those decisions, and the reactions to them, highlighted many of the larger issues that slalom racing has faced over the past 10 or so years: “Pros vs. bros”; timing and software; how much time to devote to warm-up runs; keeping racers’ interest during a long day of racing; and how best to keep communication open between organizers and riders. Those issues are present at many races, but at Hockley the rain and the added expectations that accompany slalom’s biggest race of the year brought them into sharp relief, like a flash of lightning during a thunderstorm. It wasn’t for lack of effort. The irrepressible Eddy Martinez and the rest of the Texas Outlaws had lobbied hard for the chance to host the event and were excited to welcome the world’s best racers to their home state. The Hockley location was an ideal race venue, with easy access, a great surface and slope and near-constant tailwinds — plus a free ride up the hill via skitch. The Outlaws provided free food and drink for all the racers, both carnivore and vegetarian, and a catered awards party. More than 70 riders, from 10 countries and at least 15 U.S.
Longmont, Colorado's Joe McLaren shows the drive and desire that have made him the No. 1 slalom rider on the planet. Between deluges, "The Beast" won both the giant and hybrid slalom events at Hockley to capture his fourth consecutive overall world championship. Photo: John Janik
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states, came to Hockley ready to throw down, and at least $4,000 of prize money was up for grabs, as well as individual medals for the top three places in each event in the pro, amateur, women, juniors and masters divisions. All divisions got full results in Friday’s singlelane giant slalom, with racing starting in the late afternoon and continuing until about 9:00 p.m. under the bright lights that lined the hill all the way down. One focal point of the event was the BAR, or Big-Ass Ramp, a 9-foot-high beast that launched riders onto the course like a rocket. But the BAR’s presence also caused controversy, because some racers, including most of the Europeans, had never gone down a ramp that size before. The drop itself was intimidating, at least for the first couple of tries, but especially on a slalom setup; most riders prefer a loose and ultra-turny front truck, which makes a big drop much more dicey than it would be on a park or downhill board. Besides the fear factor, though, it was obvious that starting from the BAR gave a huge advantage over starting from the standard 3-foot-high start ramp. Thus the well-intentioned desire to inject more excitement into slalom ended up clashing with the need to ensure fair conditions. In hindsight, and looking to the future, it’s an issue that needs to be resolved. One thing that wasn’t in dispute was Joe McLaren’s continued dominance of the pro division. His combined time for his best two runs was more than two seconds faster than the second-place finisher, Latvia’s Janis Kuzmins, and another second faster than Canada’s Louis Ricard — neither of whom is exactly a slouch. But when he’s on, McLaren is practically unbeatable. No wonder they call him “The Beast.” In the amateur division, Joseph “Kyle” Smith from Ashland, Kentucky, barely edged Californian Paul Chestnut by less than .05 to take the top spot. Canada’s Patrick Brassard grabbed third by only .02 over Chicago vet Chris “Cfav” Favero. Lynn Kramer took first in the women’s division over Judi Oyama. Latvia’s Lienite Skaraine, Natalya Dudina from Russia and Madee Prez from Texas took third through fifth, respectively. Both Kramer and Oyama used the BAR, while the other three women riders used the regular start ramp. Taking nothing away from any of the riders, it’s interesting to speculate on whether the results would have been different if they had all used the same ramp.
In Juniors, Petr Matous of the Czech Republic took first, followed by Californian Oshean Lehrmann and Canada’s Hubert Roy. And in the Masters, former world snowboard champion Kevin Delaney prevailed over Jonny “The Thriller” Miller for the win. Brad “Jackhammer” Jackman took third. Because of the 30-40% chance of rain on Saturday, things actually got going by 9:00 a.m. — a rarity at most skateboard racing events. But Mother Nature wasn’t impressed. Two lengthy rain delays, one in the morning and the other in the mid-afternoon, kept qualifying from finishing until after 9:00 that night. After more than 12 hours on the hill already, and with the prospect of further rain looming large, the organizers decided that only the pros would get to race head-to-head — reversing an earlier announcement that all the divisions would get to race. It was a difficult decision, and not easy to communicate to all the riders, some of whom had left the hill during the rain delays. This decision meant that final results in ams, women, juniors and masters would be decided by each rider’s single best qualifying time out of two runs. Not everyone was happy. Both Jonny Miller and Bobby Thomas voiced their disappointment in no uncertain terms, and numerous other riders seemed equally, though less vocally, dismayed. In the pro hybrid finals, McLaren again came out on top, but in a much closer race than the GS, nipping Sweden’s Viking Hadestrand by .3 seconds over two runs. The pro race actually ran very efficiently, but even so it didn’t finish until after 11 p.m., in air so thick with humidity the riders were practically swimming through it. The last people left the hill at about 11:40 p.m. Just after midnight, rain again began to fall, and it continued nonstop until late Sunday afternoon. The organizers spent Sunday trying to find indoor locations in the hope that the tight slalom event could be contested somehow, even as a truncated flatground event, but even those efforts didn’t bear fruit. At about 3:00 Sunday afternoon, the rest of the racing was officially canceled. Hypothetically, racing could have started late and gone on into the night, but the awards party had been scheduled and flights had been booked, so it just wasn’t feasible. The results would have to stand as they were. To their credit, most if not all of the racers seemed to be in good spirits at the party, so it
had the usual vibe of good times shared among people who genuinely do like each other. Not surprisingly, however, in the wake of the Worlds, numerous discussions erupted online. Some focused on whether slalom events should be run rain or shine, as most downhill events are. Others debated whether different or more efficient organization would allow races to run faster and more smoothly. Still others discussed the fairness of favoring “pros over bros,” of allowing different-sized start ramps in the same event, or of limiting the size of major events. All of these are serious topics, especially at larger races for which riders often spend considerable amounts of money on travel, food and lodging. The 2013 Worlds showed that organized slalom racing still has some issues to work out. The one thing that wasn’t discussed as much was the amazing quality of the riding itself — perhaps because among those in the know, it’s simply a given. Although some hardcore skaters or media may believe otherwise, modern-day slalom is no joke. It requires plenty of skill, confidence and dedication. Few people, even the most cynical, could fail to be impressed if they were to stand at the course’s edge as riders like McLaren, Kuzmins, Ricard, Kramer or one of the Hadestrands blast by. Just like any other kind of skateboarding, in the end, slalom racing is about people testing their own limits. That’s why, even when conditions are beyond their control, riders keep coming back. CW
OVERALL RESULTS PRO
AMATEUR
1. Joe McLaren 2. Janis Kuzmins 3. Viking Hadestrand
1. Joseph “Kyle” Smith 2. Sebastian Vorhoelter 3. Patrick Brassard
WOMEN
JUNIORS
1. Lynn Kramer 2. Lienite Skaraine 3. Judi Oyama
1. Petr Matous 2. Oshean Lehrmann 3. Daniel Duquet
MASTERS 1. Kevin Delaney 2. Jonny Miller 3. John Ravitch
For full results of the Worlds, go to slalomskateboarder.com.
PHOTOS: 1. Amateur overall winners Vorhoelter, Smith and Brassard. 2. Brothers Dan (left) and Gabe Duquet. 3. Kevin Delaney. 4. OG Texas Outlaw Eddy Martinez. 5. Scandinavian power trio Viking Hadestrand, Bruce "Norski" Bjortvedt and Mikael Hadestrand. 6. Lynn Kramer, Lienite Skaraine, Judi Oyama, Natalya Dudina. 7. Juniors Hubert Roy (left) and Petr Matous. 8. Masters Jonny Miller, Kevin Delaney and John Ravitch. 9. Steve Pederson on the BAR. 10. Master racer Jamie Hart. 11. Mark "Gumby" Gosser and Paul Coupe. 12. From left: Janis Kuzmins, Joe McLaren and Viking Hadestrand. 13. Smart Car lift to the top. 14. Sebi Vorhoelter. 15. Lynn Kramer, top of the world. Photo credits: Rachel Pramesi - 1, 2, 3, 6, 14; Pierre Hazera - 7, 8, 11, 12, 13; John Janik - 4; Steve Pederson - 5; Martin Drayton - 9; Judi Oyama - 10, 15. HOLIDAYS 2013 CONCRETE WAVE 95
ABLEBOARDED RIDER PROFILE: KATH KILCULLEN By Dave Timermanis
EDITOR’S NOTE: The author is based in Montreal and handles the distribution for Carver Skateboards. When we met up this past summer, he told me about some of the more unusual customers he’s encountered. From ship captains to emergency room surgeons, the range of people he meets is fascinating. Even so, nothing prepared me for the story of Kath Kilcullen.
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I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT when I got an email from the Department of Leisure and Culture of the city of Dorval (near Montreal). Two staff members, David Lebrasseur and Paula Chiarella, were contacting me to ask if I could help a local skater and surfer. Her name was Kath Kilcullen, and she was looking for a better skateboard. My first reaction was, “Cool!” Then Dave and Paula informed me that Kath had some challenges. As of November 2013, Kath has had 50 or more surgeries. She’s had at least 40 knee procedures, starting at the age of 13. At 24 she got leg braces and was in a wheelchair at 30. Kath became an amputee in 2010 and a double amputee in 2012. As if all this were not challenging enough, for at least 25 years she has battled lupus, an autoimmune disease, and she's also a survivor of a rare form of cancer.
Initially, I was shocked by the request. I couldn’t fathom why a double amputee would require a skateboard. Dave explained that Kath was using a small street skateboard as a mobility aid to help her get around town, and as exercise, which she could not get in any other way. But that board wasn’t truly maneuverable in the way she needed it to be. I’d never encountered anything similar before, and I wasn't sure how I could help. But as I began my drive to meet Kath, I realized I was off to meet a truly exceptional person. Kath and her husband, André, turned out to be one of the coolest couples I had ever met. Their home was filled with two dogs, a few cats and 10 grandkids. A “shaka” was painted on the wall of the bedroom, just below an unusual mechanism designed just to help Kath get on and off the bed each day.
I felt a little nervous as I showed Kath some different decks and trucks. But compared to her small street board with hard wheels, the possibilities for improvement became obvious — possibilities that Kath had already seen. Within minutes, Kath was seated on a board, surfing the living room with a huge smile of true joy. Andre looked on and began filming with an equally big smile. As this was taking place, it caused me to reflect on my own abilities. Kath truly was an inspiration to watch. The new board's turning radius enabled her to make the sharp turns from one room to the other, gliding with just her hands to push and balance. These maneuvers were not really possible with her old board, or even with her electric wheelchair, despite its having more controls than a car. A short while later Kath sent me a video of her “freeriding” indoors in the Dorval community center (thanks again to the coolest municipal administration ever). She was smiling from ear to ear. During the past year, Kath’s skateboarding sessions provided the workout she needed to gain cardio and strength and burn off the stress of her challenges as she headed for amputation number four. I talked to Kath after the operations, as we were still trying to figure out a better solution than regular grip tape, which was giving her scrapes where no one really deserves them. We posted our progress on Facebook, which caught the attention of Lonnie Morris, the president of a company called Slushgrip. Lonnie stepped up and sent us a couple of rolls of Slushgrip’s foamy grip tape, which really helped. Kath being Kath, she kept skating, scrapes or no scrapes. She told me that after the fourth amputation, the doctors were surprised at how fast she was rehabilitating — significantly faster than they ever imagined. Thanks to her training with the Carver, she had enough core muscle strength and balance to begin working with her brand new prosthetic legs well ahead of schedule. Then again, I can’t see Kath believing much in schedules. Kath has changed things in a big way in a small part of the world. The city of Dorval, which like many other municipalities long frowned upon skateboarding, has now classified Kath’s skateboard as a mobility device, up there with wheelchairs and electric scooters. She is allowed to take her deck into public venues, including places like swimming pools. Kath even has a
KATH BECAME A DOUBLE AMPUTEE IN 2012. AS IF ALL THIS WAS NOT CHALLENGING ENOUGH, ADD LUPUS TO THE MIX, AND CANCER! special label to place on her board, not unlike the common wheelchair logo we all are familiar with. Through her extraordinary efforts, Kath has moved skateboarding into officialdom, “fitnessdom” and even “rehabilitationdom.” She rides at the local skatepark. You can often spot her out there in the cool rainy weather, mixing it up with all the younger skateboarders who are aiming for the competition rankings. Kath has no fear or inhibitions. Her bravery and drive make it plain to all skaters that everyone has their own personal challenges to overcome. So, connecting the dots, we have some cool city staff, who contact a local skate guy, who does what he can — and then there’s an incredible woman who does what she can, resulting in doctors who are amazed. City bylaws get changed. Youth and adults get inspired and motivated. Magazine articles get written. Word continues to spread. Look for Kath at teamnanny.blogspot.ca or facebook.com/TeamNanny and watch this immensely strong skater challenge and expand the world’s perceptions of what is possible. CW
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Longboarding for Peace:
UPDATE
Peru: The Return
By Steve Quinn and Anahí Rossel The kids came flying down the hill in the rain—racing, sliding, some falling—but all smiling and laughing. First, down San Isidro, known for smooth speed runs and some intense tight turns. Then, down the S of La Molina, to work on how to enter corners and how to do pre-braking. And, finally, down Valle Hermoso de Surco to work on handling speed and to let some of the better riders cut loose. These were kids from Chorrillos, a neighborhood on the south side of Lima, Peru—all at risk and underprivileged. A group called Alto Perú organized the event with the support of sponsors including Concrete Wave, Longboarding for Peace, DB, Jet and Road Shark Boards. Local surfer-skater Diego Villarán started Alto Perú nearly 10 years ago—informally at first by lending kids his surfboards, and later creating full formal programs to incentivize good behavior by lending equipment and offering training for surfing, longboarding, self-defense and breakdancing. Joined by Matías Ballón and others, it was organized into a full nonprofit organization that is making a real difference in one of the tougher neighborhoods in Peru. The neighborhood is famous for being a battleground site in 1881 during a war with Chile. It still is a battleground, but now the enemies are drugs, crime and quitting school at a young age. Many of its at-risk residents end up in jail or worse. I have traveled to, downhilled and worked in more than 40 countries in my lifetime; the extremes of Peru are something I have seen in few other places. Peru is a country full of potential, but where the vast majority of the people have few opportunities. The rich live in neighborhoods next to the poor, with great views of beautiful beaches in front and blocked views of poverty behind. There are many excellent spots to ride, and some of the top riders in the world come from here, including Felipe Malaga, Marko Arroyo, Gonzalo Brandon and others. With the mighty Andes Mountains
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Things continue to build with the Longboarding for Peace movement. We are so fortunate to have such strong support from the longboard community. Companies are stepping up, and slowly but surely things are growing. If you’d like to get involved, feel free to email mbrooke@interlog.com.
Diego Villarán (second from right) spends time talking with young riders at Valle Hermoso de Surco. Photo: Roberto Zamalloa
nearby, smooth roads in the foothills and seemingly endless surf spots, it is a country made for action sports. Almost all of the younger generation are diehard longboarders, it seems, or want to be. The cost of equipment is more than double what you would expect to pay in the United States. There are small groups of wealthy children that have the best, most modern boards, racing leathers, helmets, slide gloves, etc., and large groups of others who could not afford those things without years of saving and sacrifice. Few of the poor people can afford to buy a board, much less safety gear. Some have to beg, borrow or steal to ride. I own a company called Road Shark Boards. When I first came to Peru a few years ago, there was little doubt that the sport was on fire here. The streets and hills were so full of riders that it was completely amazing. It was like a scene from California during the ’70s, but with longboards. I organized a Longboarding for Peace event in Peru in 2012, working with Seismic Wheels and Triple 8 to organize materials for that event. It was featured in the January 2013 issue of Concrete Wave. As I was planning several trips to Peru in 2013, CW publisher Michael Brooke and I were
talking about a second event there. Soon after, we were contacted with a request to organize an event with a local Peruvian nonprofit, Alto Perú, to do an event near Lima. Anahí Rossel, the person who contacted LFP, takes up the story from here: Everything started when I came across LFP on Facebook. They had shared an article by Neil Carver from Carver Skateboards about weapons being exchanged for longboards in the USA. The article was so shocking and amazing I simply decided to congratulate LFP for their work and for the sharing of information of this kind. In my message I didn’t just congratulate them, though; I also told them that if they ever wanted to make any event in Perú, they should let me know to see if I could be of help on any level. The answer came faster than I expected, saying they had been here before but they would certainly love to come again. That’s when I got in touch with the guys of Alto Perú. Alto Perú (www.altoperu.org) started in 2004 with some free surf lessons for the kids in the neighborhood of Alto Perú, Chorrillos, Lima. Little by little it evolved into a nonprofit organization (
LANDYACHTZ DONATES 125 COMPLETE SETUPS!
in 2010) dedicated to creating athletic and cultural spaces for low-resources kids in the neighborhood. That way the workshops and activities started to grow and get better, turning Alto Perú in a place where positive values and love of sports like surf, downhill and Muay Thai were being shared. When I met with Alto Perú representatives Diego Villarán and Matías Ballón, we decided we were going to plan the most amazing day of full downhill that we could for the kids who practice it—kids who didn’t just love longboarding as we did but who were also behaving in the neighborhood, at school and home. After a lot of planning, we met again, jumped in a van with the kids and started our trip. The day was cold and wet. It had been raining all night long and we thought it would be a disaster! But surprisingly, the kids were really excited and enjoyed the challenge of riding on the wet pavement. The hardest part was trying to control everyone’s excitement and getting them all to ride safe. At the end we decided they would take turns using the helmets because, you know, no helmet no riding—and we were a few helmets short. We visited three classic Lima spots during the day and headed back home in the evening. We were all very tired but happy. The kids had so much fun and got to visit spots that they couldn’t before because of the distance. We had free gear provided by sponsors Road Shark Boards, DB, Jet and Cloud Ride Wheels. We rewarded those kids who showed not only riding potential but also good and kind hearts. The only condition for giving them the boards was that they promise to stay on track, both in school and in the neighborhood.
A HUGE note of thanks to our good friends over at Landyachtz, who have donated 125 completes. Yes, you read that correctly — that’s more than $35,000 worth of longboards! We are beyond stoked with this donation. It means we can now open programs in Hungary, Vietnam and Malaysia. We will also be expanding LFP in Houston and Toronto. At “La S”, Giomar tucks into a left turn, watching for the upcoming right. Photo: Anahí Rossel
It was the most amazing day, and we would definitely do it again. There’s nothing more incredible than seeing the smiles on those kids’ faces when they’re on a board, practicing the sport that we all dearly love! Thanks to Renzo Alvarado for the support and all the awesome photos, to LFP, Concrete Wave, Road Shark Boards, DB, Jet, Cloud Ride Wheels, Alto Perú and everyone else involved with making this possible. So, what does Alto Perú need to continue its work? They say they need safety equipment, like helmets, slide gloves, knee pads and racing leathers, plus more longboards. They also need sponsors that can support the organization overall. Road Shark Boards donated several complete longboards (with Seismic Wheels), as did DB Longboards (Cloud Ride Wheels) and Jet (Abec 11 Wheels). It is a good start, but they need more. We challenge others to support Alto Perú-type organizations and Longboarding for Peace wherever they find themselves. Working hard to make the world a better place is worth the hassle—plus you get to go longboarding a lot! CW
A few of the Chorillos kids who participated share a moment with Alto Perú's Diego Villarán (with sunglasses) and co-organizer Renzo Alvarado (far right). Photo: Anahí Rossel
United Kingdom on Board Chris Pearson lives in the coastal community of Cornwall in England. In early October 2013 he contacted LFP and things immediately started to roll. He has started building a network, and workshops are coming soon. We look forward to seeing great things coming out of the United Kingdom.
Canadian Blood Services and Hema Quebec In what is surely a first, LFP created a national day of giving blood. Dozens of longboarders rolled up their sleeves in five different places across Canada. Thanks to Switchback Longboards, Longboarder Labs, Royal Board Shop, Longboard Smooth Lion of Longboard Haven. Haven, Top of the World and Restless for stepping up. Remember, each time you give blood, you save three people. If you would like to bring this initiative to your country, just contact us directly at mbrooke@interlog.com.
New PINS and NEW Website Thanks to Heidi Lemmon, we now have longboardingforpeace.org.
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ARTIST PROFILE
MIKE NIELSEN HAS BEEN SKATING AND DOING ART for most of his life. Originally Chicago and Northwest Indiana were his stomping grounds, but now he calls the mountains of British Columbia, Canada, home. Always a huge fan of skate, comic and game art, Mike forged a long career as an artist in the game industry, spending his days drawing horrific monsters, mutants g in pencil, pen and ink and digital art, he also has schooling for 3D modeling from the Art Institute of Vancouver. His preferred subject to draw is anything wild, wicked or imaginative. These days he’s a freelance artist always on the hunt for cool jobs (hint, hint) and he prefers a longboard over his old street deck. Recently he’s done a huge amount of work for Bricin Lyons of Coast Longboarding, including all the visuals, posters, logos, shirts and hoodie designs for the Danger Bay 12 race. Mike has also done work for YARDWASTE, Giant’s Head Freeride and Longboarder Labs. Mike lives in the mountains of Maple Ridge with his wife, Joan, four kids, two dogs and the occasional Sasquatch. Mike can be reached at ArtOfMikeN@hotmail.com. You can also check out galleries of some of his other work at facebook.com/ArtOfMikeN. CW
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