Some time ago we got an e-mail from Charles Lanceplaine who lived in China at the time. He created a documentary film “Shanghai 6” about skating in this very foreign (to us in the west) but often skated city. So in his mail, he explained that he had started traveling and he spent some time in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. The point of the mail was the video above but we also wanted to know something about his time in the Netherlands so we asked him to tell you about the time spent in the country that gave you Gouda cheese.

Intro by Roland Hoogwater.

Film, Edit & Text by Charles Lanceplaine.

After spending a decade skating and filming in China, the idea of relocating to Amsterdam was like making a choice to live in an alternate reality. These places seemed like polar opposites: China has marble for days, while Amsterdam was just crust… Or so I was led to believe.

It was hard to find any detailed info about the spots or the scene before arriving in Amsterdam. From what I gathered, everybody would rather go to Rotterdam to skate and go to Amsterdam just for the good times.  To my surprise, after hooking up with local skaters like Tjerk Oosting, Aaron Tiekink, Hugo Snelooper, Mitchel Linger, and Frederick Walker, I finally realized how underrated this city is. Apparently, for years there weren’t many great spots, but a plethora of good ones have popped up in the past four to five years.

After my epiphany, I decided to put together “In The Dam”, to try and correct some unfair biases about my newly adopted city.