My son Thomas called me at home and told me there was a spot that he thought we could build on. It turns out it’s this neighbor kid Lucas’s house. I really didn’t like this kid much. It seemed to me that they were always fighting, but I rode my bike down there anyway to see what was up. It turns out it was a piece of property that his Grandpa gave him.
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 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.
Confusion Magazine – Issue #8 – out now! Features with Frank Shaw, Sox, Lovenskate in Basque, DIY skate spots including Bluestone (Australia), Port Land (Switzerland), PFK (Japan), a music feature with Mike Neider from Bl’ast, an artist feature with Zombie Stu, a scene report on Cadiz, Spain, Hot shit, product reviews, zine reviews, video reviews, a Ramp Jam in Belgium and so much more.
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”…
This is the third year that we (G’nassis) organized the Malinas Machinas event in Mechelen. The first year we didn’t really knew what we were doing, but we knew that we wanted skateboarding, bands playing and the bowl filled up with water for a pool party. And that all ended up super good, so we decided to do it again the next year in pirate style.
“A lot of people have been down here. Some come and don’t want to skate. Some are scared to drop in. Most struggle to find speed, and all will eat shit at some point. I’ve seen a lot of heads bounce off the concrete, mine included. Some days I’ll have a skate and the bowl will kick my arse. People will come with their boards, but will leave with hippers, swellbows, bruises, cuts and of course covered in dust.
My bowl was a case of I wanted something to skate. I built it, I skate it.” – Swampy