The ‘Brazil’ Category:
A Few Words With Pedro Barros
February 26th, 2010 / 2 Comments » / by Jonathan Young
I feel quite lucky to have been able to hook up with Pedro Barros and his father Andre once again after being able to get an interview with Pedro last year. He’s exactly the type of skater that makes me want to continue skating whatever I encounter – bowls, vert, street, it doesn’t matter. Watching him pull off what he tries with his smooth style in every terrain is just eyecandy and his easy-going attitude with people around him keeps my sympathy for this extraordinary skater at a high. Read more…
South Americans Dominate At The Nescau Skate Contest 2009
December 22nd, 2009 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
It has been a few weeks since the World Cup Of Skateboarding Nescau street contest at the Copacabana in Brazil. If you haven’t heard yet then I’ll tell you: Milton Martinez out of Argentina took first place with Lucas Carvalho going with second and Rodolfo Ramos ripping to third. The street course did have some unusual contest obstacles which makes this video good to watch – and Portuguese is just such a beautiful language!
DC King Of Sao Paolo 2009 Results
December 10th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
Just last weekend DC Shoes held the second DC King Of Sao Paolo contest and the winners are…
Final Results
1. JP Dantas Anjinho
2. Gustavo Malagoli
3. Thiago Lemos
4. Jose Martins Zezinho
5. Carlos Iqui
6. Luiz Apelao
7. Denis Silva
8. Jhony Melhado
9. Gauber Marques
10. Murilo Romao
11. Dhiego Correia
12. Douglas Molocope
13. Heverton De Freitas
14. Mailton dos Santos
15. Alber Leandro
» check out the DC Shoes website…
Vista Skate And Art Magazine From Brazil
December 9th, 2009 / 2 Comments » / by Jonathan Young
The web is packed with information, videos, pictures, social networks, interviews´- you name it, you can find it and about 20 times more than you can ever consume and that’s a really bad estimate. We’re being flooded with information and yeah, I’m contributing to the flood, regurgitating information that you can find as well and sometimes I do ask myself if all that I am doing is for any good.
Hell yeah! Plain and simple, we all decide for ourselves if we are going to just have friends online, spend our time in chatrooms and believe we are cool if we have over 1000 Twitter friends. I don’t care about that – the possibility to use the means of communication are fantastic and when I find a goldmine which has it’s roots all the way over in Brazil (Vista.art.br is the website I’m talking about here!), I just love the web for what it has to offer! The people behind this website have put together a great mix of skateboarding, art and music and from what i can barely understand due to the language, it even looks like they have a print mag going (??)…click on the picture below for an online Flash mag packed with animated pages, pictures and a bunch of videos – just plain good work here!
DC King Of Sao Paolo December 5th and 6th 2009
December 4th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
Late as hell with this piece of news but still want to reach out to the Brazilian skaters who I see are following Europeskate – this weekend the DC King Of Sao Paolo is taking place at two famous spots – Praca Roosevelt and Praca Abelardo Rocas. 50 of the best reginal amateur skaters will be battling it out against each other to win the crown and 10,000 dollars. This will be the second time it takes place in Sao Paolo, check out some of the action from last year’s event…
Pedro Barros on Pocket Pistol Skates
October 29th, 2009 / No Comments » / by Jonathan Young
Great to see good things coming to good people. Pedro Barros (interview with Europeskate right here) has proven in the last months that he is a skater to reckon with and that at the young age of 14!
Just this morning I came across a video which introduces Pedro to the Pocket Pistol Skates team – he’s still listed as an amateur but he’s got a board…anybody want to clear us up on this topic? I’m writing to Pedro and PPS today to find out. Whatever it is, good team to join with guys like Remy Stratton, Ben Schroeder and Lee Ralph! Enjoy the video!
» check out the Pocket Pistol Skates website
Pedro Barros talks with Europeskate
March 29th, 2009 / 22 Comments » / by Jonathan Young
With the majority of skateboarders around the world not having access to vert ramps or even skateparks in their home towns, it’s quite obvious for me that the number of new top vert skaters is going to be a lot less than what we see happening in the street with incredibly talented skaters popping up everywhere.
Some calls have been heard lately that vert skating is fading out, all of the pros are getting older and barely any new blood is showing us that a new generation is coming. Well, that isn’t all true and there still are quite a few talented vert skaters out there. One of them has been showing his skills worldwide and at the young age of 14, he can already put his talent to the test against the top amateurs and pros skaters anywhere.
Who are we talking about? Pedro Barros. Just watching him skate makes me grin because he’s already well on his way to being one of THE top skaters in the next years to come. And what is even better: he took the time to send a bunch of pictures and answer are interview questions. Read up about what Pedro has to say and if you can see him live, do it!
To get this interview started, tell us who you are, where do you come from, which teams you skate for.
Pedro Barros, I come from Rio Tavares, it is a suburb of Florianopolis – an island in the south of Brazil. People know it as a Rio Tavares Mother Fucker R.T.M.F. I ride for Drop Dead, Volcom, Red Bull, Vans, Indy, Evoke, Type-S, Khiro and R.T.M.F.
When did you get started with skateboarding?
Actually since I know myself as a person I have been skateboarding. My dad said that I skate since I was one year old, but I can’t remember.
You belong to the new generation of top (vert) skaters that are pushing the limits. How does it feel to be one of those skaters other skaters look up to at such a young age?
I don’t like much of the idea to be target as a vert skater because I do skate much more bowls then vert, but I love vert too and I love to be in contests with all the guys I know around the world. About the feeling of being a top pro, for me it doesn’t matter if I am the top or not, it’s only good because you get invited to go to some contests in America.
Where do you like to have skate sessions? Any special spots/parks/ramps in the world which you really like?
Rio Tavares Mother Fucker is my favorite ever. I have the Hi Adventure Bowl where I skate, my back yard vert ramp and the new bowl all in the same area. I love to skate with friends anywhere. In California I like the Combi Pool, Chickens pool, Runs Pool and Bobs house. In Brazil I like also the vert in the Roca bowl and Swell.
Which skaters do you like to session with? Do you have any skaters you think are just great?
My local boys here are who I skate with most of the time. Rodolfo Ramos, Wagner Ramos, Leo Kakinho, Mureta, Mad, Kosake and others. Besides these guys normally when I travel I love to be skating with Lincoln Ueda, Nilton Neves, Bob Burnquist, Danny Way, Jimmy (california local guy), Jordan Price – there are many that it’s hard to remember all of them. Jake Phelps (Thrasher Magazine) is fun to be around, he always makes me do something different.
How did you get started with riding the Mega-Ramps? Can you describe the feeling you get riding down the big ramp, jumping the space between the ramps and then blasting out on the big halfpipe? It must be mad!
Bob is the Guy. He showed me the way to do it, he permitted me to do it. I’m glad because it is the most scary shit of my life!!!! I always think that I can die on that shit, but when I finish the session I feel great! (Europeskate comment: Good to hear that the skaters that actually have the guts to skate this monster of a ramp are impressed by it as well!!)
So what is your favorite trick (any terrain)? And are you working on learning something new?
540s are my favorite, but I want to do them all. Every trick is sick.
Do you feel any pressure skating at such at high level, traveling and skating for sponsors?
Not at all. For me it is all like playing a game. It is always fun. My dad is the one getting more pressure, he is the one dealing with the sponsors and the traveling shit. All I do is have fun.
As so many videos are out there and many being released, will we be seeing you in any new videos coming out soon?
I don’t know. I do a lot of things here in Brazil, but out there in America where the most videos are, I didn’t have time yet to be on one of these.
Do you have any favorite skate video parts that you like to watch?
Any think with Runnie (Rune Glifberg) and Bob is crazy to watch.
Tell us how a typical day in the life of Pedro Barros looks like!
hehhehehehhee, surf in the morning, school in the afternoon, skate after skate and be around my friends and family every single day.
What are your plans for the rest of 2009?
Pro Tec Pool Party, Europe, Maloof Money Cup, X Games and some of these big contests that we have here in Brazil.
That’s a wrap. Big big thank you to Pedro Barros and his dad Andre for this interview. Keep it up Pedro, it’s just great to see so much talent and style on a board. All the best for the future and we really hope to meet up some time soon in Europe!
Pedro Silva Barros on the Mega Ramp!
November 28th, 2008 / 5 Comments » / by Jonathan Young
This is why I just love skateboarding and photography – you will never reach a point in time when you can say, that’s all folks. I’ve seen it all. The mega ramp is one of those topics in life which just help me remember why being alive is so much fun.
Here’s a picture which floated into my email box a couple of days ago and after finally opening it up I got this great picture of 13 year old Pedro Silva Barros doing a massive backside air on the Mega Ramp in Sao Paolo – yeah, the same ramp which took out Danny Way. 13 seems to be the number right now, my son is turning 13 tomorrow and I started skating vert at the age of 13…umhhh, 23 years ago…
Featured Photographer – Allan Schmidt
May 27th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Jonathan Young
Allan kicks off the collected “Featured Photographers” effort here on Europeskate in which all photographers presented get their own profile page. Allan also started writing a guest column for Europeskate about skateboarding in Brazil. Enjoy!
Make sure you check out his Flickr gallery page to keep up with his work right here >>
Who are you? Tell us a little bit about yourself (age, what you do in life, where you live)
My name is Allan Di Pace Schmidt, I sign my work only as Allan Schmidt. I´m 26 years old, born in São Paulo, Brazil, but currently I live between Austria and São Sebastião in the north shore of São Paulo state.
I´ve been working in the past years as an independent graphic designer but also did some side jobs to earn the bread.
How did you get into photography, especially skateboard photography?
Since I was a kid, my father always had cameras around, he wasn´t really a big fan of photography but knew how to handle a camera pretty well. When we moved from the countryside to this beautiful place on the coast, in 1996, I started to try my father´s cameras out and realized that I enjoyed that a lot. 3 years after that, I went to college in São Paulo city to study tourism and it didn´t take long till I bought my first analogic camera, gave up on college and started a technical photography course. After graduating I went for a 2 year photography course in a nice art´s school, which I made it to the end of the first year.
By this time I had a job as an apprentice in a photographic studio. We mostly shot still stuff like furniture with big format cameras. Man, that was crazy!!! Working under pressure, deadlines, massive production. The assistant and me would stay sometimes up to 60 hours awake working. We had like 2 hours to sleep while the films were in the lab and then back to work.
I´ve been into skateboarding since I´m 10 years old and i still do it in a almost daily-basis, of course had my ups and downs but I´ve always kept on skateboarding, so the transition from whatever the type of shots I was taking into skateboard photography was natural.
It was in 2006 when I decided I had either to go pro or give up on my lifestyle, settle down, and find a regular job. Well, I´ve decided to go pro. I´ve been trying hard since then to get as much in contact with photography and skateboard as I can so I can learn more and more. This is a never ending learning process!!
What type of equipment do you use for your photos? (outside shots, night shots, indoor shots)
Today my work platform is totally digital. I shoot most of my stuff with a Nikon D80, 2 Nikon SB-24 flash units, Tokina fisheye and Pocket Wizards. Although I also have an old analogic Canon FT with a couple of cool lenses and a Holga which produces some really artistic shots.
I almost don´t shoot indoors, but if I do, I tend to use a Manfrotto tripod for the camera and the almost mandatory softboxes for portraits. I´ve got a couple of homemade for that purpose.
Do you have any special “tricks” which you like to use for certain types of pictures?
No tricks, It´s clean game bro!! Just kidding.
No, I don´t really have tricks, but I am about to try a new technique, which is to use a polarizer filter while shooting under midday sun. The filter holds the light down in about 1 up to 2 stops, which sometimes is all you need to freeze that moment. And remember, you don´t need top shelf gear to get top shelf jobs done. The folks back in the day used to use their minds before to use a camera.
If you could get any new equipment for free, what would you love to have?
For how long can I keep on going here??? Man, there are so many things in my wishlist, that I don´t know where to start from.
Priorities now are to get an extra Nikon D300 body and the super famous 70-200mm 2.8 telezoom. Then I will be satisfied for the moment with my digital gear and I can start getting a Hasselblad, medium-format lenses, light meter, a couple extra strobes, battery packs, a couple extra pocket wizards, some softboxes…
What is your opinion on post-processing, especially enhancing pictures?
It helps, but it shouldn´t! We should be able to get what we want out of the camera.
What are you currently working on and do you have any projects planned?
Well, I have a photo to be published maybe this next month in this magazine www.switchskate.com.br, I gotta get my website´s design ready and launch it still this year, I´m writting some articles here on Europeskate and we´re talking about maybe getting my own column on the website or something. Besides that, riding pools as hell and shooting people (I´m talking about photos).
Allan Schmidt on the map >
Brasil is blessed!
May 19th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Jonathan Young
Allan Schmidt is Europeskate’s first guest writer and I’m proud that he is bringing in some good background feelings and information about the Brazilian skateboard scene. Allan himself is a skateboard photographer who was one of the first featured photographers on this site. Be sure to check out his Flickr site, he’s quite good! >> http://www.flickr.com/photos/allan_schmidt/
Have you ever heard of a guy called Bob Burnquist?? Me neither! That could be the reality if Brasil didn’t have something special…
From upcomers to real legends, Brasil (Portuguese way of spelling) has always been a large nest when it´s comes to skateboard talents. But why not India? Or Russia? Or China? Or yet any other large and not considered “first world” country at all??? There could be many reasons for that, but the fact is Brasil starts with an advantage.
Brasil is blessed! The fifth largest country in the world with 8.547.403km² has predominantly tropical weather, vegetation going from rain forest to small desert regions, no natural threats such as hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, violent earthquakes, tornadoes, and a very fertile earth where everything grows. About the country´s beauty, I don´t think we need to talk about it since it is famous worldwide. Although something very interesting happens with the population.
Brazilian people are a product of many years of immigration, starting with the Portuguese introducing Africans slaves here to work and also having some of their own coming to live here. Then came the Dutch and the Spanish to explore the land a bit more and finally, during and after 1st and 2nd world war, we received massive amounts of immigrants consisting of Italians, Germans, Greeks, Japanese, Chinese, French, English, Austrians, more Spanish and Portuguese and a couple more nations. Ahh, almost forgot! Our native Indians are a part of this miscellaneous group of course. So, what makes this land so blessed?? Diversity I would say!!!
In my opinion, this big blend of cultural, historical and geographical facts are responsible for Brazilian people being so laid back, open minded, flexible, creative and happy! Lots of people have kept their traditional familiar habits and are still passing them on from generation to generation. I for example have German, Italian, Lebanese, Yugoslavian and native Brazilian blood, at home we still follow a couple of German traditions and apart from that, my first name is English, middle name Italian, last name German but I was born in Brasil.
After the slave ship, the closest we got to having a repressive system was a couple of years of dictatorship, which ended in the 60´s. This has given us a lot of freedom, opening our eyes and minds and helping us to be creative. Our system doesn’t restrain us, helping to see opportunities where the others mostly don’t!
If we talk about skateboarding, these characteristics are so important to succeed because skateboarding is all about creativity, flexibility, having no rules! It’s to think outside the box, something we were born and conditioned to do. According to research realized by Datafolha in September 2006, around 3,200,000 households have at least one inhabitant who owns a skateboard. Rumors have it that skateboarding is the second most practiced activity (just to not use the term sport) in whole country just coming after soccer (of course).
Skateboarding first arrived here in 1965 and since the 90´s it has grown a lot. In an age where internet and television are so accessible, kids from basically anywhere can see and learn what’s going on in the whole world, but still a question always comes to mind.Why isn’t the Brazilian skateboard industry stronger?
For the people here, Brazilian goodies such as decks, wheels, trucks were always a synonym of inferior quality. I for example, apart from the hardware, don’t have a single part in my skateboard which is produced here, just because I find the North American products to be more durable, lighter and better designed giving me the performance I expect. It seems like the market has been heating up since 2004 with new brands showing up, new magazines, videos, products and so on, but we still don’t see so many people being well paid by Brazilian companies. Neither do we see enough space for media professionals, forcing the folks out there to fight for a living and sometimes almost selling their soul.
Now there is an international big company invasion going on with names like Element, Circa, Volcom, Nike shoes, DC shoes, Emerica and so on putting teams together, opening stores in fancy neighborhoods, promoting events and injecting money and high-quality stuff into our market. It makes me wonder why aren’t the Brazilian companies up there yet. What do we still need to get there? Since some companies here were established 10 years ago or longer, why didn’t they reach that level of quality? In my opinion, there’s a big lack on athletes support! The guys running some of these companies don’t see that the athlete is this sport’s soul. They just want to get more without giving.
As a skateboard photographer, I already had people asking me to give away my photos, so they could use it in some kind of publicity, others refusing to pay a minimum price to have high quality material to use. The athlete is the company’s image and should be their most valuable asset. I have a friend who is at his soul a skater, maybe the most humble guy I’ve ever got to know and he does the gnarliest stuff out there. Someone truly gifted! He told me many times that he couldn’t go out shooting because he had no deck to ride or no money to take the bus. That’s so (sorry the term) fuckin sad, so much talent and no support, however, as soon as he gets a new deck he just wants to shred!! International companies already saw our value, the potential of our market and they started to come more and more.
I think we´ve come to a crucial point where either the national companies will step up or they will soon die.
Part 2 of the Brazil report from Allan Schmidt. Read it right now…
August 27, 2010: Ricardo Batista
August 22, 2010: Jonas Wedelstädt
August 21, 2010: bill Danforth
