d.i.y

The Beauty – DIY Zürich, Switzerland

After finishing THE BEAST this fall, for all of us it was as clear as a backside air that we needed a winter residence to pass this cold, ugly swiss winter. So please say hello to THE BEAUTY!

As we had finished the first building step, THE BEAUTY was ready for her first action filled night. A “MOTÖRHEAD ONLY” playlist, a bucket full of cheap, heated red wine and a good crew of friends was all we needed for an epic session.

Praca Duó Project, Rio de Janeiro

Mattias Nylen is a gnarly bowl and vert skater who works part time building concrete parks in Sweden. He recently flew down from Malmö, Sweden to Rio de Janeiro and has been renovating the Praca Duó Project, currently with a “shark fin”. “My friend Fabio in Rio showed me his local bowl which was super slow with some weak mellow trannies and asked if we could do something about it. So we built a vert extention and it turned out really nice but we still didn’t have much speed to hit it so we decided to build a taco thing to carve and pick up speed for the extention. While we put up the bricks for the structure we took a break had some beers and I got the idea, “let’s make a hip on it so we can still carve it.” So what was gonna be a taco tuned into a sharks fin. It was real hard work with very basic tools, all hand mixed but a lot of locals helped out, even the tranvestite street whores wanted to help mixing hahahaha. The thing works well and is real fun. If you are in Rio go to Praca Duó in Barra da Tijuca. Check it out!”

Malmö DIY – Sibbarp Skatepark. 2011

Malmö DIY was the 3rd annual event at the Sibbarp skatepark in Malmö, Sweden. It’s not about the Sibbarp skatepark being D.I.Y., it was build by CONCREATURES, a skatepark construction company ran in Sweden by Dave Toms and Jezza from Australia. The D.I.Y. event focuses on things like grip tape workshops (hosted this year by Zarosh) and other small skater led organizations that are doing their own thing, big or small, without corporate funding. BBQ, bands, Servant shoes for sale on the hood of the Servant van.. you know… no corporate bullshit. Just a small skate event, everyone having a good time, with some full on skateboarding action.

Mellowpark: DIY Berlin

A short view on the Mellowpark bowl project in Berlin, Germany. With helping hands of the locals the bowl was finished in the spring of 2011.

Campo Cuatro Casas: Baja, Mexico

The first time I heard about this magic place called “Cuatro Casas” was in 2009. I met my good friend Jose Noro in San Francisco for a one month road trip with the classic recipe of not having any fixed plans other than to skate, meet old and new friends and to generally see and experience as much as we can. – Lars Greiwe

The Maya Pool (DIY Backyard Pool)

I think it’s a dream of every skater to have his own ramp at home. Sure, I have my own ramp at home. Sure, it’s a crazy big ramp, half bowl half mini ramp, etc. But sure its not a pool….

Channel Street DIY: San Pedro, California – shut down?

Caltrans is gonna shut down Channel Street for a year and do construction on the freeway for the freeway expansion. Already in the works is a new project at Peck Park that the local kids and the makers of Channel are helping design which they are trying to get done as soon as Channel closes which will be sometime next year.

DIY Willits – California

This is a home made pool with obstacles around the deck, somewhere in the wooded mountains of Willets, CA. The pool is real good – an amoeba with a death-box in the deep, shallow stairs, and pool coping all the way around… except over the shallow stairs where there is river rock mortared in for coping (up the ante!). This pool is not the easiest pool to skate. I have skated backyarders that are easier, but it is great nonetheless.

Skate Rebel Resistance

If you haven’t heard, there’s a war going on outside. Skate rebel armies are waging a guerrilla offensive against corporate colonialism. You see, after the Cold War ended the architects of the New World Order decided that they owned everything. The smoke had not yet cleared in Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan before they built a mega state anchored in D.C. to buoy the interests of corporate fascism. They called it “free trade” and capitalism, but it was socialism for the world’s wealthy. Its supporters high jacked the media and sponsored a propaganda campaign to roll back any gains made in the arena of civil rights over the last century on a global scale. The New Order promised…