Professional D.I.Y. in Hörup, North Germany
It’s been pretty much exactly a year when I talked on this channel about professional … Keep reading
It’s been pretty much exactly a year when I talked on this channel about professional … Keep reading
Starting to write this article, I wondered about the term ‘professional d.i.y.’ which has been quietly existing for a while now. I mean, since the serious skatepark building business nowadays seems to be in the hand of skateboarders pretty much isn’t every project kind of professional d.i.y.? Well, we as skateboarders do it ourselves (just like the whole industry used to be), if we get paid for it or not, it’s bloody d.i.y., isn’t it!? We take matters into our own hands, this is something we should be really, really proud of and continue to do so.
In late summer we started a very special project in the basement of our store in Cologne. We had that space of approximately 60 square meters and thought of building a little bowl area down there. We had small experience from our DIY projects in Berlin, Münster and Wuppertal. But this project was special.
Down in a passway, where junkies roam and people pee, skaters from Bonn brought some ramps to skate on the Saturday before Christmas. Welcome to the Pissrinne (peegully).
Hamburg has always been an epicentre of the german skate scene, but as far as concrete skateparks go we’ve been like 20 years behind the rest of the world for ages. But those days are long gone now and during the last year alone we’ve had some kind of concrete explosion with six decent new parks having been built mostly courtesy of Minus-Ramps
Ever since I saw Pontus Alv’s “Strongest of the Strange” I wanted to build some skate stuff myself. The film blew my mind // great skating, artwork and DIY, but especially the short moaning scene. It sounded all so familiar to me: no time, no spots to skate, no motivation.
The BIG OPENING of this new epic skateboarding and subculture paradise is on August 30th 2014. There will be a sick skate jam / best trick session, a photo exhibition (25 years of skateboarding in Kassel), a few bands, an after show party and of course lots of friendly, crazy, hard partying people from (hopefully) everywhere in the world.
I guess most skaters’ dream is to settle down at some point in their lives on a property with a little bowl in the backyard, or at least some kind of private shredable terrain such as an indoor miniramp.
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.
The hall existed since around 2008, after the owner of the house allowed skateboarding in the empty building. It all started with small basic obstacles, like curbs. Nothing special, because nobody thought that we could stay for such a long time there.
Ever since the old funbox in Hagen-Haspe got torn down the park needed a new main obstacle. With the Help of Klaas Kleinschmidt, from the Skateboard e.V. of Hagen, Ur-Haspe local Andre Neubert, and myself, we got the chance to give the park a little make over.