D.I.Y. Skateboarding
A few years before we found the place where we built todays little skatehall paradise including germany’s first indoor concrete bowl and a big wooden street / flow section, we had a much smaller skatehall, just a few hundred meters from our current place.
We had this small skatepark in the early 90s where we built skateable obstacles. Some neighbors complained about the noise and the city people tore it down. We didn’t have a permit to build anything but that didn’t stop us because there was no other skatepark anywhere near. We ended up building several different parks but every one of those were destroyed by the city of Helsinki….
We were cleaning up the mess of the Malinas Machinas on monday and the brewer (Frans van Craenenbroeck) comes to me and he says: ‘I bought a café with a hangar in the back. Can you come check it out and see if it’s possible to built a skatepark in there?’…
Getting old sucks. One has to get a “job”, “be responsible”, hang overs get worse, healing after slams take longer and other lame “adult” like things. What doesn’t suck about getting old: Friendships grow stronger, one can start drinking any time of the day…
The people from Vigo, Galicia searched for a place to skate indoors for more than a year.
Nestled in the Griffith Park area (Hollywood Hills), where hiking trails welcome hundreds of people a day, Bronson Canyon ditch has been the destination for any skater who visits southern California and more specifically, Hollywood. But like the Hollywood movies that have emerged over the years, someone decided to do something new and exciting with a location that has been untouched for decades. Clayton Graul and his crew have recently taken the DIY approach to Bronson Ditch and have added some creativity to its legendary status.
In the summer of 2011 the news that the beloved BLACKCROSSBOWL was to be destroyed came true and plans were soon put into place to find a new space to build. After some intense dealings with permits and raising money the Basel crew, motivated as ever, started digging, laying iron and troweling concrete in the waste land around the port area of Basel.
Concrete is the material on which the people that try to govern us have founded their emperor of fluxes, temporary idols, bi-dimensional prophets, heroes without swords. We have grown while playing with it. While drawing in three dimensions imaginary curves and corners, we have shown our own independence from the “legal” idea of space, our own autonomy in respect to the experts’ “professionalism”…
October 5th, time to say bye to the summer, because winter is very rainy in the Basque Country and the sun and summer are so valued for us.
Graveside, appropriately named, sits next to a real grave yard and is in all essence a hardcore bowl to skate. The location is beautiful but still raw.