Archive for March, 2008:
Skateboard Round-Up March 31st 2008
March 31st, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Jonathan Young
I’ve decided to pack a punch of news into one post everyday now so that I can do the “collecting” once and spend more time on digging deeper for interviews, new parts of the site, getting more photography into the site and some more tid-bits I won’t mention here. So let’s put it down for you:
- Jimmy Cao is the latest recruit at the Berrics.
- Guy Mariano is officially back on Royal Trucks.
– Sebastiaan Vijverberg has joined the ranks of the international Osiris team.
– Rick McCrank has teamed up with animal rights activists Peta in an advertisement to voice both his and Peta’s point of view about not eating meat. Difficult standpoint here as the age-old discussion can easily flare up again about not eating meat but having no problem having a pro shoe with leather in it…I won’t start this discussion as I have not had a chat with Rick McCrank about this subject.
Fallen Footwear presents – Ride The Sky video trailer
March 31st, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Jonathan Young
Fallen Footwear has been busy lately and the are planning to release their video this spring going by the name of “Ride The Sky” and featuring skating by Josh Harmony, Tony Cervantes, Jamie Thomas, Brian Hansen, Matt Bennett, James Hardy, Gilbert Crockett, Billy Marks, Tommy Sandovel and Chris Cole. The trailer shows some scenes of what is awaiting us with some big-ass handrails, gaps and ledges with some 70’s music underlining the smooth filming perfectly. Take a peek right here with the YouTube version or watch the better quality version on the Fallen Footwear site by clicking here.
Dune Skateboards deck give-away contest – Deadline April 4th 2008
March 28th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
Andre from Dune Skateboards kindly sent over a deck for me to give away to you. To win this board you’ll need to get your camera out and send in a specific type of skate photo. Read on to find out what the topic is and where to send the picture to.
A new deck is always something nice to have. Good pop, new grip, something new to start off with. Dune Skateboards has sent me a deck to give away and I had to come up with an idea which will make you use your creativity to win the board. As I just started up the Photography section of the Europeskate site this week, I want to jump start it with a little contest.
So, what do you have to do? I don’t want to see skaters on a picture, no, I want you to go out and take what you think is a gorgeous shot of a skate spot, transition, pole, curb, whatever – anything that is skateable or in your dreams skateable. But NO skaters. I want to see what you are seeing when you are walking or skating around and you see a spot and maybe, just maybe you are the first person to see it. You know that feeling: you start imagining how you could do some tricks there and that’s when you need your board. That’s what I want to see, so here are the rules listed for you:
Entry rules
1. Only ONE picture per person for the contest will be judged.
2. Your picture has to show a skateable spot.
3. Send your full name, home address, camera equipment used for the picture and a short description of your shot.
4. Deadline for entries is April 4th 2008
5. Send your entry to 
All entries will be judged by myself and a small group of friends without knowledge of the names of the entries. The winner will be announced April 7th 2008 and a selection of the top pictures will appear on the site.
Make sure you visit and support the guys from Dune Skateboards, they also represent a few other companies which have good products.
VOX Footwear’s Black & Blue Volume Three review
March 28th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
I am for sure not always the first person or site to put up news about new videos or whatever – but that’s not really the point now is it? Vox Footwear have put together the third volume of it’s Black & Blue series and it easily does the job of getting me itchy to skate. This volume is divided up into six different parts which are offered stand-alone or in it’s beautiful entirety…the only problem is that the download takes a lot of time so you might want to check the smaller ones.
The Vox team starts it off with a good mixture of fast street tricks and tough as heck tricks in more than a little bit deep pools. Some of those things are almost ridicoulously deep like the full-pipe shown (anybody know where that is? Is it also the Shanghai Skatepark?) and the Shanghai park has some really large transitions which look like a lot of fun but it takes a fair amount of cash to get there first. Too bad for now, I’ll stick with the European spots, there are enough here.
The team also visited Japan starting it off on a vicious and non-forgiving cement block with a very small piece of transition on it and a narrowly built metal bowl, speeding through it with ease just to move on to a variety of smaller parks to do demos. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a large selection of tricks being shown in this part as well which will get you dreaming/thinking as well …my favorite was the backside kickflip to backside nosepick in a very tight trani by an unknown skater.
Just yesterday I recommended a party coming up in April here in Hamburg which will support a DIY skate spot project and the VOX team shows their own DIY spot created as a cement transition to a street barrier with a pole running at the top, perfect for grinds, slides and blunts which are delivered picture perfect.
Ryan Petanshiski and Tyler Surrey (I honestly can’t say that I’ve heard of them so U’ll have to do some homework to find out more…) take it to some “natural” banks, the streets and some bowls and just generelly shred everything to bits. They have their bag of skateboard tricks and then some, that’s for sure.
And to let you off the hook and my talk, just enjoy Peter Hewitt’s and Justin Strubing’s complete control of their bodies, boards and anything in between them – just plain good. And that goes for the entire video, good work yet again from the VOX team.
Hamburg’s Flora concrete bowl support party April 4th
March 27th, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by Jonathan Young
With skateboarding getting bigger and bigger and more and more mainstream companies trying to make a buck out of the hype it is good to see skaters coming together to build up their very own skate spots by raising some money, chipping in and doing all of the work themselves.
Several of these DIY spots have been popping up around the world (La Caverne and La Baissine in France – Pontus Alv’s bowl which was destroyed twice close to Malmö,Sweden – Black Cross Bowl in Basel, Switzerland – or the mother of all DIY parks = Burnside) and one that especially interests me is the the so-called “Rote Flora Bowl” in Hamburg. Put up just last year with the help of local skaters, skate shops and Minus Ramps, this DIY project shows yet again that if you really want to get something new to skate, you can always try to do it yourself. This surely worked out great.
To get things rolling again in 2008 for new parts of the concrete park to be built, a solidarity party and evening skate session will be held in Hamburg, Germany April 4th at the Haus 73 cellar in the Schanze area (just right beside the Flora bowl). Definitely going to be a blast for all of us that can make it and a good contribution for a great cause – more transitions! Check out the map to find your way…
Keeping the personal touch at Europeskate
March 27th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
I just see the need to put more energy into talking with you, the readers, with skaters, with photographers, with companies dealing with skateboarding to offer us all more information and worthwhile experiences while spending time on the site. And selfishly speaking, I would be stupid to just collect news…I started this site to keep up with what is happening in skateboarding and to have possibilities to meet and skate with new skaters. So I’ll continue with some new areas turning up and hope to hear your feedback.
Skateboard photography gets a place on Europeskate
March 26th, 2008 / 5 Comments » / by Jonathan Young
Diving into an area so diverse as photography as pretty much a complete beginner (okay, I believe I can set a shot up and take some nice pics both automatically and manually but quite with very basic set-ups…) isn’t the easiest of topics to set up on a running blog. Skateboard photography is one of those topics which have been inside my head for months, even years, and I just haven’t gotten around to putting down the foundation on the site, formulating the words, reading the discussions available online – basically not getting around to doing it. But now that is going to change…
Photography has accompanied, yeah almost shadowed skateboarding since the very beginning of skateboarding history, growing with the technology, skills and creativity of the users and now has gone pretty much mainstream with digital photography allowing for faster viewing, incredibly cheaper photo shoots than earlier and a faster learning curve. This doesn’t mean that it is necessarily easier to create and compose a good photo – definitely not. And with the amount of new equipment coming out on the market it is not all that easy to find the products you need without buying items which don’t fit your needs.
So this is the reason for this new part of the Europeskate site – for me to learn, for us to share ideas and experiences, links to discussions and a platform to present great photography and photographers themselves. Starting it off is a discussion on Flickr about whether to use a Sigma 10-20 or 15 Fisheye, check it right here…
Polar Bear Club’s new album “Sometimes Things Just Disappear”
March 25th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
Back again to checking out new and old bands and records for you, I came across the band “Polar Bear Club” out of Rochester, USA which have grabbed the attention of many across several platforms on the web and started up a heated debate as to how good/new/different they really are. The comparisons with Hot Water Music can be understood as the set-up of a lot of their songs do sound quite similar as well as the gruffy or smoky accented vocals of lead singer Jimmy Stadt.
But I’m not writing this to take them apart: I personally like the mix of punk riffs, fast and slow vocals, the occasional chorus and plenty of melodies which made me want to listen to the record more and more. The latest record “Sometimes Things Just Disappear” is a good listen, not the record I would say you have to go out and by , but it is a good listen. Try it out and let me know what you think. You can listen to a few of their songs on the MySpace website presence of the band.
Band site: http://www.myspace.com/polarbearclub
Record Label: Red Leader
March 18, 2010: jekimigh
March 7, 2010: austin hughes
March 7, 2010: TNT Skateboarding
March 6, 2010: alex
