Words by Guilherme Camargo and the Enthulo DIY crew
Photography by Allan Carvalho, Guilherme Camargo & Nat Alves
1st obstacle:
It all started with the classic desire to skate during work breaks and being tired of always following classic skate park projects, me and @caminhodeconcreto, a long-time friend who, at my suggestion, joined the construction of skate parks throughout Brazil. Since I already had experience in building skateparks and was the only one who had a car (Volkswagen Kombi) that was big enough to carry the materials and my tools, he introduced me to his friend @Keone who knew of a magical place like the island of Floripa. This place is no other than under the bridge that gives access to the island of Florianópolis in Santa Catarina, Brazil. @keone, a resident of Florianópolis, a producer of skate part videos, called his friend who is always with him, @padilha, our videomaker and our future treasurer. So @caminho and I called @panorama, our long-time friend who was still living in Florianópolis, forming our initial team of five people with the focus of reusing an abandoned 12m x 6m flat in the city center which was used for drug use, garbage and shelter for homeless people. We raised 500 reais (brazilian currency) between us (around 90 dollars). We took sand from the spot we were building, put it in the kombi and took it to the site to make the concrete with the construction waste (rubble, or entulho in portuguese) that was in the area and we piled everything up so that we could make a ramp to walk on. As we were building the largest spot in the city we had scraps of coping so I took some leftovers that wouldn’t be used there and we made a quarter. With the police visiting a day before the concreting, we finished the preparation the next day.
Photo by Alan Carvalho
The following day, in the middle of concreting, an undercover police officer came and said that we would be committing a crime. We explained the situation of the place and in the end he ended up collaborating with the idea. After the police officer left, we finished the concreting and stayed there the rest of the day finishing the obstacle. After I got home, I posted a photo of the day with the obstacle and an invitation for anyone who wanted to help with the next obstacles – the doors would always be open, and then I went to rest. The next day I picked up my phone and saw that the photo had resonated throughout the city. Great skaters came, such as Jonny Gasparotto, Pedro Barros, Vi Kakinho, Matheus Guerreiro (who makes the coping blocks for the skate spots in Brazil) and were willing to help with the idea, as well as other local skaters such as @pit @slide @gustavogentil @jamaica (a great friend and colleague who had already done other DIYs on the island), among many other local skaters and admirers of the movement. After this push, we saw that we had potential, a good team that was already formed and several other people who joined in the plan to make that place a special place for skateboarding. We decided to create Entulho DIY so that we could have our own identity and a donation box and an Instagram page to publicize the work days and videos related to the place – and of course, skateboarding at the spot – all this to build a completely non-profit organization, counting as our only payment, the fun of riding on the walls that we built ourselves.
2nd obstacle:
for the second obstacle, as we saw, the creation of the page and the separation of roles worked out, as @padilha was in charge of the treasury and controller of the account and image capturer, @Keone was the video editor and administrator, helping with the work when he could, @panorama in the commercial part, capturing and selling DIY products from Entulho in bars and markets in the city, in addition to helping with the work, @caminho my apprentice, and second in command in case of my absence from the works, I was in charge of the teams work, working more on the construction and logistics of the plans to be concreted, as I have more experience in building spots than the others, as well as being the owner of the van where I stayed for a few days on location, and the owner of the electrical machines that were used to make the obstacles.
Soon everything was organized and we had already raised three times the amount invested in the first obstacle. We had 1,500 reais in the cash register thanks to Pedro Barros’s help of 1000 reais, totaling around 300 dollars. We had planned to make just another ramp the same on the other side, but since we had more money I suggested we make a corner to increase our speed. The guys agreed and so we did it. It rained and we ran out of sand in the middle of the concreting, so I had to go to the construction site of the big spot in the city where @caminho and I worked to get some more sand to make the concrete mix. We put what we needed in the van, wrapped it in tarp and took it to finish concreting. We stayed polishing until 1 am, so I ended up sleeping on site with the van and a concrete mixer inside the car so that it wouldn’t be stolen at night. The next day @jesus came to wake me up early with coffee and cookies. I had some joints from last night so we had breakfast there, and in the middle of breakfast a guy came up and asked if we were taking care of the parking lot under the bridge because there would be a gay pride parade that day. Then I immediately had an idea to make more money for our DIY project. So I looked at @jesus and replied to the guy: “Of course, I slept here waiting for this day, but I said I could work with them. I explained that we were building there. So I stayed there working as a car guard at the gay pride parade to raise more money to build more. At the end of the day, I made about 350 reais, about 70 dollars. With the extra money, we bought the tiles to simulate a swimming pool and make our colors black and white, which means equality among all. So we finished the second obstacle.
3rd obstacle:
this time we wanted to make a different obstacle in the middle that would connect the flow between the corner and the quarter, so we came to the conclusion of doing something similar to the China banks. We left the brick wall and removed the bench to put a pump bump. Since I had already marked the bricks on the concrete before, I immediately welded a metal grid to form bricks to mark the wall. We prepared Entulho for two weeks, I placed the wooden forms and made the pump bump radii to mark the concrete and have a reference. In the WhatsApp group, @pit sent a message saying that at the construction site where he worked there was a guy who could deliver a load of sand to be paid for later. We thought it was great, eight cubic meters of sand to be paid for later, we ordered it, but in the end we lost contact and it was never paid. On the day of the concreting there was a lack of concrete and we had to fill it with stones. In the end, I bought a bag of cement that was missing and it worked. Everyone left at midnight and I stayed there waiting for it to dry and my coworker @matheusmaurante arrived at 1 am. We stayed there until 2:30 am on a Sunday polishing the concrete and the next day there was concrete in the work. We managed to complete the obstacle with difficulty and, like all other concreting operations, the police visited us, who we were always able to talk to.
4th obstacle:
now the DIY with three elements to maneuver was missing the continuation of our small quarter, so we decided to connect a corner with metal coping. As we were in the final phase of the city’s skate park, two great friends came to help, @alexandredoors and @skateParaguai who I met at the beginning of our careers as a skate park builder at the largest skate park in Latin America in Porto Alegre, the city where I grew up. There I helped a few times with their DIY called Zenaide DIY. So for the second obstacle, as we were on duty, I instructed the Entulho crew to organize the stones at the same height as the quarter, forming the corner. When we arrived to make the black concrete and put in the rebar, everything was ready and we had little work. @matheus and @henrique made a good connection in the welding work to connect the coping and we started the concrete that day. We only used five bags of 50 kg of cement. The obstacle was the fastest and without problems. There was material left over. The concrete dried quickly, it was hot.
My birthday: On January 9th, we had a meeting with everyone who participated in some way in all the obstacles. Among the crowd were skaters, musicians, graffiti artists, videographers, supporters, all with the intention of celebrating and having fun for the hard and good work we did in such a short time. The crowd organized themselves with generator instruments. @pit, bassist of the band @budang, skater and DIY worker, led the way and called the crowd together with the drummer @espiga. @jamaica had a generator and guitar. Despite the rain, we held the session with a band playing live on the new obstacle, which gave all the initial flow that was needed. This was the first small party of the spot.
Zenaide diy and Entulho diy:
Since I had a group on WhatsApp with @alexandre and @skateparagay and @matheus they called me to go to Porto Alegre to help them in their spot called Zenaide DIY. @slide said he would go too, so I sent a message to the Entulho WhatsApp group that there would be another space and @caminho spoke up and said he would go, so the three of us went. We traveled at 6:30 in the morning from Florianópolis to Porto Alegre but we took a five hour break where we all slept inside the kombi, which I used as a bed room for leisure or emergencies like in this case. We rested and continued the trip. When we arrived at the place everything was already organized by @alexandre and @skateparay It was a big and fun obstacle to make but it was hot. They were redoing some entrances and modifying the flow of the DIY. But since all the organization wasn’t our part this time, we helped, but enjoyed the powers of the magic mushrooms we had picked up in a small town on the beach on the way to Porto Alegre. We did the work together and happily made the second connection between Entulho diy and Zenaide diy
New Year’s party and return trip: after that we decided to go back to a city on the way to where my father lives [my father serves ayhauasca]. My friends were curious to do an ayhauasca ritual, so two friends @beto and @thiaguin got in the van to hitchhike towards Florianópolis, leaving five in the car for the end of year parties. After the ritual we stayed in the city for five days waiting for New Year’s Eve so we spent New Year’s Eve in the small city celebrating the construction and everything we managed to create together.
My personal life before the loop: After all the progress, experience, several videos I saw of looping and their constructions, and of course many psychological trips, I came to the conclusion of the measurements that ours needed to have because people were asking for a high wall to do better maneuvers with more difficulty, so I thought about the loop in the corner because it throws to the sides exactly where we had walls to return to the flow. So, as it was the beginning of the year and I had a tight schedule because I had scheduled a three month job in Bahia Norte, Brazil with @spotskateparks and I needed to finish the paperwork to be hired by @mindworkramps, where I had been in contact for three years, until the day came to go to Europe to build. It was the perfect plan. I would have three months off to make the loop, which would be the change that would make a total difference in terms of technical level for Entulho and for my construction career I had already made in Brazil. So, after finishing, I still needed to finish my travel documents and hold an inauguration and farewell event for a while to close with a flourish and go to this new experience with a good resume.
Photo by Allan Carvalho.
Obstacle 5: to make the loop, we needed basically everything. We had no materials in our DIY kit. The gravel we used was already too dirty. The need for materials was great. However, we had raised around 5,000 reais from donations and the sale of t-shirts. This was a good resource to start with, as we had a very high number of donations when we were active on social media. So I started to organize the first materials: wooden sheets, wooden bars, rebar, soil, cement, sand, and gravel. We started by making a concrete base for the circle with rebar that would later connect to the loop, and soil to mold the walls. The first base of the walls was already at the height of the other obstacles. The base of the circle was hollow. I cut the radii to make the concrete forms for each part of the obstacle. I poured three concrete layers: the first for the bottom of the loop, the second for the top, and finally the ramps that connected to the other concrete layers. With the shapes cut out and in the correct place, we began to mold the bottom of the circle. We added rocks and sand, molded it and made black concrete, and tied rebars to make the connection with the top of the circle. Then we concreted the first part. We had a few people, but each time the number of people helping out with their love for skateboarding increased, making them want to be there. After this concreting, people really saw what we were doing. We received help from Pedro Barros again, this time with around 2,300 for a pair of sneakers so that we could put them in our raffle, in addition to several donations from all over Brazil and especially from Florianópolis.
With the wooden formwork ready and the concrete for the ramp underneath dry, we partially positioned it on the first day. On the second day, I started reinforcing the formwork for the top ramp while the other guys picked up rocks and dirt to build the walls next to the height of the circle. We tied the rebars that connected the two parts of concrete. That’s when I called the guys from Zenaide DIY and told them that it would be a historic day if we did it together, because it would be the first loop made in a DIY in Brazil. They really liked the idea and came from Porto Alegre to Florianópolis to help us and celebrate again. We finished the rebars with connections for the corner walls, and the walls were high enough thanks to @pakutino and his gang and many others. The next day, we successfully concreted the top part, and in the middle of the concreting, we successfully unmolded the top part while it was still wet to give it a finishing touch. Soon the guys from Zenaide DIY arrived, in a car with five people, including @alexandre, @skateparagay, @monique, @junga, @dudums. There were about 20 of us there, plus five with them. People kept coming to help. The city’s bar gang, the roller gang, the skater girl gang, and several different groups from the city came with the same goal of helping to finish the loop. The last day would be the hardest because it was our biggest concreting day. We didn’t have a big concrete mixer, so most of the concrete was mixed by hand. We couldn’t delay the last day because we would lose the time that people would be there. People traveled from other states in Brazil to be there for the last concreting day. Nothing could delay this day. Nothing could go wrong. We almost ran out of cement, which we ran out of money for and I had to buy at the last minute with my own money to be able to finish the obstacle. We spent until 2 in the morning polishing it. So we made a bonfire with the remaining wood to celebrate the end and eliminate the traces and measurements of the loop.
After this day, we waited two days for the concrete to cure, then we went to do a small test to see if we could do the loop. Then @jonny, as he had already done this type of obstacle, started doing it backside and frontside. He inspired me by showing me that it was possible. So I managed to do the loop backside and frontside. Then @pit, @slide, @gustavo, @reich, @lucca also did the loop that day, doing the first session of the new obstacle. We wanted to throw a party when we saw everything ready, but we still needed the pool coping and the tiles to finish the obstacle. However, we didn’t have the money to buy the tiles, so we had to do a raffle to raise more money to finish the obstacle and organize the opening party. We raised 1000 reais from 100% skate, a Brazilian skateboarding magazine, plus donations totaling 2500 reais. We managed to finish the obstacle with a lot of effort, five days before my trip, one day before the opening event. When I finished laying the tiles, I looked and saw that there was still a small part to be concreted, where we didn’t pay much attention and ended up losing it, so I had to redo that part and I did it on the last day of preparation where I had already been sleeping for one day. I slept the second day in the rubble under the bridge to give the final finishing touches in the morning before the event. On the day of the event, I was sanding the joints of the blocks and applying varnish so that the tricks would run along the edges. With everything ready, I almost missed the start of the party because I went home to take a shower and slept for an hour because I was tired from work and because I hadn’t slept well inside the van for a few days. With everything finished, we held the event, which was attended by great local bands such as @budang @jovensateus, @cartaoro, @decursodrama, @joelhosgelados, led by @pit and @espiga, who organized the entire sound system. When I got there, everyone was already riding in an opening session with great Brazilian pro skaters along with the local workers, live music, drinks fairs, and @entulhodiy t-shirts and sweatshirts being sold. The feeling was amazing when I arrived and saw everyone there – over 100 people at the spot that day, all celebrating real skateboarding together, where each one helped a little to make it there. Without all this help, we certainly wouldn’t have been able to make the loop, but we also created a plan based on what we had, so it ended up working out. I’m in Europe working, in contact with @pedro Sabino and the rest of the team for the second stage of Entulho, but I’m going to surprise them because I’ll have to go there to renew my visa, which expires on January 25th.
