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…
October 5th, time to say bye to the summer, because winter is very rainy in the Basque Country and the sun and summer are so valued for us.
“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
Steve Bailey and Roberto Alemañ head down to Baja with Leticia and hit up some backyard pools, have a run in with corrupt police, ride horses, drink margaritas, and have some good times…
It was the second time these kids organized this event and it was already twice as big as last year. A really nice sunday afternoon with loads of good vibes!
I planned a quick roadtrip to central California with my mate Scott Standley. He got a hold of some of his homies to see who was in. Kieran Reilly was down to get out of So Cal. I borrowed my sisters SUV plus some camping gear, grabbed a couple kiwi dudes along the way and headed north.
These things have been around for years. Jerry Bundy and I rolled around the water in the bottom of one, three or four years ago, and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to bail the foot or so of scum out of it. I’ve heard that others have made the same decision….bail it, take one run…screw that!
Confusion Magazine – Issue #7 – now available! Featuring interviews with Josh “Skreech” Sandoval (USA), Koekie (Belgium), Morph (New Zealand), Scott Bourne (USA/France), Javier Mendizabal (Basque), Lennart “Lensen” Efsing (Germany)
“I’ve been doing concrete work for about fifteen years. It was just a job and had never occurred to me to use my knowledge of concrete for skateboarding until I met the Vagabond crew.” – Gene Boles
Belgium based company Concrete Flow under the head surveillance of legendary Michel ‘Mike’ van der Ouderaa has just finished a nice kidney pool on the French atlantic coast 300 meters from the beach in a little seaside town called Mers les Bains.
In September of 2010 Richmond DIY’ers lead with the concrete skills of Bernie Mcgrew took it into their own hands to finally build for the skaters of Richmond, VA a city with no skatepark. Starting with an 8 foot (2.4 meter) deep kidney swimmer bowl, the Lost Bowl now boasts a lot of other tranny around the decks of the bowl. The Lost Bowl continues to expand with the help of tons of skaters from RVA and there is no stop foreseen in the near future.
Any given friday, a session like this could be going down at the Buena Vista square pool south of Santa Cruz, one of the longest running “backyard” pools in history. This pool has been skated by generations of legendary skateboarders. Most sessions these days include not only the old school pool shredders and underground legends, but also unknown new school pool riders that fearlessly roll in to the deep end and attack the “lip” as if they’ve been skating pools their entire lives, which quite probably they have. This pool is definitely harder to skate than it looks. Hopefully it will remain empty for another 30 years for following generations of pool skaters to shred without too much fear of the cops showing up and busting it, or without it being filled in with dirt like it has numerous times over the last 30 years.