diy

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!”

West Covina Pool – southern California

Mike had this one going for a while and was one hell of a host. You can only imagine the look on the landlords face when she came by to show a potential renter a room and saw the pool drained! Lots of Action went down at this gem in West Covina. Rhino from Thrasher came by with crew including Grant Taylor and the scored a cover for the 30th anniversary issue. The night before Mike got the boot this session went down. Johnny Abernathy, Ben Butler, Erik Peters, and Robbie from pedro.

Skatepark of Ayacucho – Peruvian concrete

When I arrived in Ayacucho, I was invited with Bruno (Concrete Dreams) and Benoit (BRUSK) to build a mini-ramp for Mama Alice, a dutch NGO which works with children and wanted an infrastructure for teenagers. I used to organize concrete skateparks workshops in Belgium, and we did the same here (http://www.brusk.be/home/spip.php?rubrique19). I met a girl and decided to come back and try to live my life here. It was four years ago now, my Peruvian child is two…

Mr. Wilson Bowl – Kassel – Germany

Ever since I started skateboarding, it was not only about standing on a piece of plywood, but also about using all kinds of readily available material to shape your surroundings in order to be able to skate them – that’s what skateboarding to me is all about. The more skateparks that are being built, the harder it gets to deliver this message to the kids. It makes a huge different if you skate something that you built with your own hands. A homemade ramp can be all shitty and bumpy but it doesn’t matter because you designed and constructed it yourself.

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.

Porte de la Muette: Paris Concrete Bowl

How can a Bowl be transformed from a certified piece of shit into a deep and sweet reason to visit Paris? Skater wise naturally you’d say that it is alway good to ride those smooth sidewalks they get here and to jam (sometime literally!) into the traffic of the big avenues. But after sometime you can be bored of some of the humans living in Paris… ego trip on any levels can be really disturbing for a good ride. And you suddenly realize that there is nearly no tranny in town, this fact finally leads you to leave town in search of a good pool to fill your addiction to adrenalin.

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.

Wollmatingen pool: Konstanz, Germany

The bowl is located in Konstanz. The construction company is Bowl Construction from Switzerland (they also built Hard, St. Gallen and München Hirschgarten to name the good ones).