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
I first checked out Scheisse Manelli back in 2006 at the Jury Room in Santa Cruz. Advertised as “skate punk” from Germany, I had to go check them out. Classic hardcore punk ‘n’ roll with humorous songs about skateboarding, rebellion, and running from the cops. I asked the singer, Samuel el Action for a CD after the show, to review it in my old magazine, Concussion. For the next five years, every time they were playing in California, I was in Germany, and every time they played in Germany, I was in California. Finally, five years later, we were both in the same city at the same time.
Etnies Skatepark’s new shark pool drew 500 skaters Friday night for the annual Hallows Eve Bowl Contest. The fourth annual event featured competitions in four divisions. Everyone wore costumes and the crowd was treated to live music by Killing California and skate rock legends JFA.
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….
…I am flat broke and live day to day. People think you design a shoe, or a frame, they see you in films or TV commercials, they see you on the covers of magazine around the world, they see your book of poems and they think that guy must be loaded, but its just not the reality of what’s happening especially in skateboarding. Sometimes I don’t even believe it. I look at my life, my accomplishments and all the places I have seen my name, and face and I go fuckin nuts…. why the hell am I broke??? But that’s not the point, the point is to be driven, to love what you do and do it, and that’s the joy I have in my life.
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.
October 1st was a momentous day in Cologne with the opening of the first concrete bowl in Germany’s fourth largest city. Built by IOU Ramps and the local skaters of Cologne, the OWL BOWL is located at the NorthBrigade Skatepark, which has been open since the 1980s. Skaters from around Germany showed up for the opening party which was graced with sunny skies, which at this time of the year is a treat, as there was just as much chance the rain would shut down the event.
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.
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).
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…
Finally, in Cologne, Germany, at the NorthBrigade skate park a new concrete bowl is being built!
Out Of Stock is a skatepark exhibition / art show about the past to the present of Stockwell Skatepark, in South London.
The opening show is at Stolen Space, August 18th, 2011 (this Thursday).