VERSUS SKATEZINE & PLUS #109 “SPECIAL BERN” SUMMER 2015 VERSUS-SKATEZINE.CA JEREMYVERSUSDURAND(@)HOTMAIL.FR
Vinz / BS Flip
Tom / Truck smash
Mil채 / BS Tail
Mil채 / Kickflip
Charlie / FS Hurricane
Charlie / Blunt / Bernside / Fabio Stoll
Charlie / FS Rock’n’roll / Bernside / Fabio Stoll
Cyru / BS Disaster
Dom / Wallride & Crooked
Dom/ Heel-flip
Nick Heuberger is another great dude I met in Bern a couple of years ago. He helped me out so much on “The Versus Video”, that, at one point, I was really thinking about calling it “Nick’s Video” instead of... Anyway, he’s so humble, he doesn’t even realise, that, since The Boss, (not Andrew Reynolds, no, I mean the real one, Jan @ rojafilm) is only riding bicycle (ah-ah-ah), Bern would be pretty much dead skate-video-wise. (Don’t wanna talk shit here again, but not everybody is cool enough to be part of “Mr Marco Matti’s himself video-project”... Anyway, that’s another story) So yeah, in 2013, he did, all by himself, another video, called “Bearings”. And here is, an interview about it, about berne skate-scene, and some more shit... Enjoy (or go fuck yourself)! (photos by Fabio Stoll / art by Nick Heuberger) Alright, straight to business... After the Bumblefuck video, you pretty much saved my ass, helping me out on the Versus video, that was taking over my life. And then, you didn’t had enough, no, you made Bearings, a film about skateboarding in Bern... Filming, editing, and you even made the entire soundtrack with your band... Does being vegan gives you some extra-power, or are you just a workoholic? No extra power. But when I’m psyched on something, it’s all I can think of and all I want to do. At that time I managed to find a job where I worked 40% making just enough money to get by. During those 1.5 years where I had that job I spent 5 days a week making Bearings. Weather skating, filming, editing, looking for spots, making the photos or writing and recording music for the soundtrack, I was nearly always somehow working on Bearings. That was definitly one the best 1.5 years of my life! Did you mellowed out a little bit now that you became a dad? Depends on what you mean mellowed out. It’s just a shift of priorities. I’m definitly not one of those people that say “oh I have kids now, time to get serious and stop doing fun stuff”. But on the other hand, I want to spend time with my 2 dauhters and we need to make some money so they don’t starve. I work 80% now and the kids normally go to sleep around 8 or 9 in the evening. And the little free time I have has to be devided up between making music, skating, meeting friends and just chilling the fuck out. So in terms of skating, I have mellowed out. But I still try to keep busy! Do you still have a bit of time to skate? Will we have the chance to see footage from you on the new video project from Matti? I actually will have a bit of footage in Mattis upcoming video! I try to skate once week, but that doesn’t always work out. I would be able to skate more if I would only want to skate in my free time, but at the moment I am super
stoked on making music with my band There Is A War again, so I spend most my free time in our bandroom destroying my ears. About Bearings, where did your inspiration came from for the concept? I think Transworld too, used to have videos city by city, and not skater by skater like we are used to watch nowadays... And why only black’n’white? Right around Fully Flared I was just exhausted by the insanely high level of skating. I couldn’t and still can’t relate to it anymore. I have no Idea what any of those tricks must feel like because it is so far away from anything I could ever do on a board. It’s not just Fully Flared: Nearly all videos and clips. I could just as well watch Olympic Gymnastics. Around that time I discovered japanese Skatefilms. Those are so different! They’re much more creative and all about the energy in skating. So I got completly obsessed with those japanese skatefilms. I spent hours and hours looking for them on the web. Also those “Fishing Lines” with Michael Mackrodt. And Minuit!!! An amazing french skatefilm! Lots of stuff like that. And then I realised, “shit! I want to make a film like that!” Focus more on pure skating, which to me means skating everything. Looking for stuff to skate for me is just as fun as actually skating it. Black and white because that way it’s easier to give all the footage a similar look. That was Zois Delgado’s wise idea. And yeah, I know those Transworlds now, but I didn’t know them at the time. What was the best part working on such a huge project? Seeing it evolve and grow. Thats what I love. It’s the same with writing a song, painting a picture, filming the last few tricks for a part or editing a film: at the beginning you have nothing and slowly slowly you see it grow and form itself into something finished. Seeing that happen satisfies me like nearly nothing else! What about the worst? To me, working on the Versus video, was trying to find a compromise between skateboarding, filming and shooting pictures... I mean, I was always out there, but, I wasn’t really skating for weeks sometimes! What about you? No bullshit: There was nothing bad about working on Bearings. I like filming just as much as I like skating (unless the person I am filming is a dick. But I don’t film those people). The bad thing came afterwards: The sudden change from spending for 1.5 years nearly only on making Bearings to a fulltime deskjob, kids and nearly no time for skating or music anymore. That was a shock for my mind and body.
I was wondering, did you and your band did the soundtrack especially for the video, or you picked up some songs you guys already recorded before? 1 or 2 songs we already had, but the rest was written especially for the video. I’m very proud of it but I know not everyone digs it. But to me, it’s a good sign if not everyone likes it ;-) Can we expect to watch another project like this from you soon? Haha, no fucking way! You post on a blog, quite often, citynotfall.blogspot.com. From outside, it seems the swiss scene is doing well lately, with new stuff coming out like AJVT, That Noise, etc... What’s your point of view about it? Yeah, there is a lot going on! AJVT is the bomb! It’s so cool Spanks gets so many people involved! And just photos, no stupid text like the shit I’m writing here ;-) That Noise is good in the sense that it really tries it’s best to cover all of Switzerland and not mainly Zürich. I totally respect that. But in my opinion they are always too nice. Some of the clips they post just aren’t that great, which is ok, but then they shouldn’t say how good it is when it’s not... But I have mixed feelings about everything coming out. Some stuff is really cool but so much just looks like copied shit from other skaters. Like the thousands of wallies and no complys in Dickies trousers that are cut too short... I prefer when people try their own tricks and styles instead of copying someone elses. But maybe I’m just being a dick. I guess it’s cool people are out there making clips and getting them noticed. Are you also involved in the upcoming skateparks projects in Bern? Like Bernside? Or Reithschule? No, I don’t have the time to get involved. I’ll help if I can (maybe make a clip for the Bernside project), but I can’t get too involved. But I’ll definitly be there to help build Bernside if that day should come. Ok, last question, where are those clips we filmed at my place gone?! The one’s from the trailer to the Versus video? Those are somewhere on my harddrive I guess. Do you want them? That’s it, that’s all already. Thanks for your time, passion, dedication Nick. Let’s skate together soon! Cheers! Any last words? Sorry for my long answers... Keep it up Jey!
Hello “Le Dude”! How are you since your little trip in France? I am a bit fucked but Charly and i could skate 3 bowl in one day… Then at night time in St Jean de Maurienne we could enjoy “la fête de la musique” with the drunkin’ YCM crew. it was so much fun!! classic as always!! Unfortunately we didn’t see you guys getting busted! Hahaha... Alright, let’s stay classy, let’s talk about your Bernside project going on in Bern... What is it exactly, and who’s involved behind it? Apparently bernside came up a couple of years ago… I guess it was you and mini-michi who wanted to build a DIY spot aka “Bernside” down at the Aare. Around this time we were very keen to do some kind of guerilla project. So we started to build some wooden construction in our back yard, but somehow we never managed to fulfill our idea. However, after some time passed I still was looking for a good spot to build a bowl. Then somehow I found the perfect spot down at the Aare next to the Gaskessel in Bern. It was a cold day in winter as we were driving to Bäronxx, I talked about the idea to the guys in the car. suddenly Marky-fresh hocked in and said that he knows the guys form the Gaskessel and that he’ll talk about the project with them… Soooo and thats how the story actually begins. The gaskessel crew was stocked about the idea. So we formed the best chaotic Anarchy-Team as you could imagine… If you want to do a project like this you just want to have this guys to work with... We got: - Marky-fresh as our connector and creative thinker. - Cyril “the journalist” as our ghostwriter, critic voice and communicator. - Grufe as our architect and bowl designer. - Miro as our young-blood skateboard shaper, surf pro and bowl builder. - Fäbu as our it-specialist-crack and beer slave. - Charly as our bowl planner and builder. - And Mischler as our creative head and graphic designer. Further we got heaps of support from Mäder-män, 3D construction work, Nick filmer and editor and Jan project documentation.
Skateparks are popping out like mushrooms pretty much everywhere in switzerland since a while now. How come, Bern, as the capital, still doesn’t have anything decent to skate after all those years? Yeah, it’s a petty!! But don’t ask me… It’s kinda like going on a toilet without having toilet paper!! I mean you can do it but it’s more fun to have some… Do you have any connections with this other project under the bridge in the Reitschule? Yeah, we are in contact with Pablo and his Reitschule project. We are so glad that they actually got the permission to build it. Unfortunately there is still some money missing to do it. Hopefully they will get it together soon. Where are you at right now? Writing papers? Or already building stuff? As we need a permission for bernside we did a lot of planning during the last year. we draw plans, were writing papers and talking to the politics. There are so many thing we had to organize and it’s not finished yet. This is only the start of it. But I guess we are on a good way. Fortunately we already could build some stuff down on the gaskessel area. We already made a gnarly bank and a curb. It is so amazing to see how everybody is motivated to do something. I heard you guys are about to make some skateboards to raise a bit of money... Can you tell more about it? Yes, there are several projects running… One part is that we got 50 skateboards sponsored from Radix-Shop in Burgdorf “thank you so much for this generous present. this is just amazing!!!”. So actually we’ll have some Bernside graphic skateboard soon. The second part is that we are doing our own DIY Bernside cruiser skateboard “thanks to Tomoya for your passion and pressing the boards!!”. We gonna sell the limited cruiser boards in a crowd founding we’ll set up soon.
Can we expect to have some golden pool coping to grind down soon? I mean, it’s switzerland! Or maybe holes everywhere like in your famous Gruyère?! If Sac À Gnôle plays at the opening we gonna put on any coping you want!!! We even gonna grind Colin’s mum!! Hahaha… No serious, we really hope that Bernside is gonna work out well… But we can’t be euphoric without having this permission signed yet. No, I mean seriously, are the plans already done yet? In those kind of projects the plans are never done. thats the good thing about DIY there is a lot of space left for those intuitive mind impulses who are popping out of nowhere. So once we start building we can work on the details. Hit me up when you are about to pour some concrete for the bowl, I’m fucking in to help you out. Until then, wish you all the best. Good luck. Cheers mate. Thanks for everything, see you soon! Jey, thank you for your inspiration and passion. We really really hope that we finally can create our reality. See ya soon!! Cheers Bro Le Düde