Tag: justin sommer

The day started with a video from Berlin and it is ending with one. Independent Trucks sent their European team to our lovely home town of choice.

Meet Tom Knox, Eniz Fazliov, Doobie, Vincent Milou, Ulph Andersson , Nassim Lachhab, Justin Sommer, Kai Hillebrandt, Denny Pham, Roland Hirsch & Leon Charo-Tite.

This year, we haven’t really seen too many tour edits. We all know why. The Independent team went to Paris in between the first and the second Lockdown and took things serious. Maybe that has something to do with their TM Steve Forstner!? I heard he is a really serious man.

Featuring Vincent Milou, Nassim Lachhab, Barney Page, Robin Fournier, Justin Sommer, Blake Johnson, Charlie Munro, Doobie, Daan Van Der Linden, Tim Debauche & Marius Syvanen.

This was the best event since your last event together.

London Lee, Wassertorplatz, 2019

And with that introduction, we would like to welcome you to the recap video for our Wassertorplatz invitational table tennis tournament. The idea started last year after /// teamed up with us for our first ever non-skate tournament, in fact, it was a table-soccer or Fooßbal competition.

Won in style by the ever-competitive Felix Lensing and his friend that night sparked a series of ideas of which taking back our Anchor for at least one day was a part.

Mr. Lensing and his teammate after a dominant performance.
Mr. Lensing and his teammate after a dominant performance.

Now, ever since they changed our famous skate spot into a playground area we have been veiled in black and to be honest the “Platz” has changed a lot as well. When we went to shoot the trailer for the event it was literally riddled with weeds. Needless to say, the new locals had not shown it the love we had :(…

So what better to do than to return and give the place “a years worth of love” in one day! And even though the city and some of the people didn’t seem to want us there they accepted us showing up this day to celebrate the place we love.

Of course, we adapted to the changed plaza and organized a Table Tennis tournament as well as 2 best trick sessions, recreating the rooftop ledge especially for this occasion.

The people came out and celebrate we did and truth be told the platz, the cops and the people living around wtp the place all showed up (the cops blessed us by not showing up) and celebrated with us.

A very special thank you goes out to adidas Skateboarding!

Enjoy the video and we hope to all see you at our next competition.

Read all about the loss of Wassertorplatz as a skate spot here.

During the second edition of SKTWK we had the honor of hosting a very special contest as part of the whole event. Now you might want to know what kind of games we chose to play and the answer is BINGO! a geriatric favorite must likely currently being played in a nursing home near you!

There where multiple prizes, things like a professional full body massage, trinkets but the most valuable prize was by far the honor to shoot a Place Magazine – Snapshot Recap! That prize and in turn duty fell on the shoulders of Simon Klinkertz.

Simon turned out to have a capable eye and some strong shoulders that allowed him to get the job done in style! So, here it is our very special SKTWK Recap.

Simon would like you to know:

A very big thank you to SKTWK, Place Magazine and all the people that attended the event in Düsseldorf.

Paul Herrmann gets the honor of closing off our year with his best of 2018 montage. The video features some of Berlin’s finest and some of Germany’s best.

To be honest, it is nice to see that young filmers still wait to “build” montages instead of filming for a couple of weekends and then “just putting it out” in a sub-par fashion.

Surprises are nice and we believe in the fact that every skater can have something to add to a montage. To draw a parallel, in a band not everybody can be the lead singer, some people might be drummers or they might not even play any instrument but still, they are an important element of the band.

 

In “bestof2k18” Herrmann manages to show us all the bits and bobs behind his “band” and we hope you enjoy the results.

 

Last Saturday marked the start of a new series of skateboard events throughout Europe, the Snipes Squad Up competition kicked off in Berlin.

From all over Germany, they came, groups of skaters ready to compete for the 10.000 prize purse. And to everybody’s excitement, it wasn’t just your usual suspects, Crews like Seoul2k and Europe Co. competed as well. Together with the locals from Märkisches Viertel Snipes managed to create an eclectic atmosphere that made for a good day of skating.

Check out the images and catch the vibe.

If you have ever been to Berlin chances are you have heard somebody scream HACK HACK! But what is Hack Hack and what does it mean? What are those videos popping up with Hack in the title, and who is behind them? The answers to those and many other questions were answered when we connected with Farid Ulrich and Vincent Heller.

Interview by Roland Hoogwater.

What is Hack Hack?

Farid
That is hard to define! While we were traveling through South America people often asked us the same question… How did we explain it again?

Vince
It is a vibe Hack Hack is the moment that you get hyped to do something. It originated in Bar 25 it where we were looking for motivation to do something. Along the way, the word trickled out of the bar, onto the streets and into skateboarding. It was a joke and it has turned into somewhat of a saying.

What was the first Hack moment you can remember?

Vince
Bar 25… that must have been 2010, I think… That is when the first Hack happened.

It made me think of Hakken a high energy Dutch dance style from the 90’s.

Farid
Ah… Do you mean those people with track suits and shaved heads?

Yes! (illustrates dance)

Vince
That suits the meaning of Hack too! Those guys were certainly hyped!

Back to Hack Hack, how did you guys get the idea to make videos?

Farid
We sit together to edit, smoke and try and make the best of the footage. Two heads have more ideas than one.

Vince
I film more than I edit because I noticed I don’t have the patience to just sit there. At the same time, Farid has a good feeling for what works.

What was the first Hack video?

Farid
The first Hack video we did was Hackelona, after that, we released CopenHacken and Hack Hack is our third video.

Vince
I started filming during our travels, I always carried a camera and I started playing around with it more and more. So the video happened when we started taking the camera along for our Berlin sessions. So instead of documenting our travels, it became more of a day to day thing.

The funny thing is we did not plan to make a full length, we just started to edit footage, linking certain things together. After a while, we watched the result and thought ” Oh..this works maybe we should create an actual video.”.
So then we made parts, separate from one another and then we tried to fit those parts together. It was kind of like a puzzle.

I got a flashback to Radio Skateboards “Radioactive Kids” when I watched the video. It showed me a kind of Berlin that I did not think existed anymore.

Vince
That is exactly what we wanted, documenting our lives in Berlin and by our I mean all that cross our path.

Farid
When you see the video you have to keep in mind the fact that these people are not all in the same crew. Vince and I just move in between crews and documented what we saw.

Vince
In the end, we turned it into one big Hack family.

Farid
We did not want to compromise, we wanted to show the people we liked and have them skate to the music we liked!
Often I work with people when I make a video part so it was important for our project to reflect us.

So, It is not like watching a homie video, it is a scene being documented.

Farid
Yes, plus the people that visited the City.

Did you show Hack Hack to people in South America?

Farid
We did, we watched it multiple times and it took me back in time, back to these places. It was a real good feeling! Hack Hack!

What about the footage from that trip, Will there be another Hack?

Farid
It took me some time but yesterday I started checking the footage from that tour and there will be something. At the same time Joscha Aicher and Daniel Ledermann are staying with us so maybe one of them will jump down a building or something.

Vince
The next Hack will be a video focused on South and North America, that will take us some time, with editing and all.

Farid
International Hack

Or Hackernational

Vince
It will be called something like that. First I want to focus on editing and summer in Berlin, I will pack my camera in my backpack and we will see what happens. Maybe this winter we will make the final Hack videos but who knows.

Farid
I just want to say we are not interested in being clean or great filming we want to show our lives and if there is a glitch somewhere we will include it, watch it and laugh about it.

Farid
That is exactly how I filmed my last trick. I was playing around and got the idea to manual over the tracks.

Vince
Just a Smoked out idea!

Farid
And an hour later it was done.

Vince
I think for a lot of people the Hack experience feels like a break from sponsored life. No main spots just hanging out and looking for the next spot. With a high chance of drinking a beer at the end of the day.

Thank you guys and HACKHACK!

This video part shows you the fruits of the shelter, a place to evolve your skateboarding to the next level. The difference is most kids can’t take that next step and take those tricks to some of those imperfect streets spots. These guys obviously transcended that and did some of their best stuff to date.

Thus we want to give a little shout out to Max Obert for his tre-flip down the double set and Justin Sommer’s Rewe line and fs flip over the Warschauer tracks, great stuff guys!

I met Justin Sommer the first time when he just started skating. So due to we both always have shared the same local spots in Berlin, I had the chance to kind of follow each and every step of his career in which taking part in the Tampa AM contest might be the biggest step up to now. Moreover, Snipes organized a little sort of documentary to give an insight of how this whole one-of-a-kind experience might have felt like for Justin.

A while back we premiered Paul Herrmann’s video “Welcome to Franki”, at the same time we introduced his video column for PLACE. These raw cuts are a part of that series and they provide you with a great behind the scenes look.

Featuring highlights by Philipp Oehmige, Justin Sommer, Timo Meiselbach, Kalle Wiehn and much more

Finally, Dan Schulz’s Berlin based independent skate film Oh Snap is going to be premiered on December 3rd. Here is the official trailer, which provides a good foretaste of what is to come! Oh Snap!

Featuring Pascal Reif, Justin Sommer, Joscha Aicher, André Gerlich, Tim Bornemeier, Quirin Staudt, Valentin Ott, Patrick Rogalski, Ilja Judizki, Michel Funke, Philipp Oehmige, Farid Ulrich, Danny Goodman, Roland Hirsch and Daniel Ledermann.

The colder days are just around the corner in Northern Europe, and thus, the same applies to Berlin. So shortly before we are switching our clocks to daylight saving time, Nike SB, in wise foresight, called together their Europe team to have a last session at Project DSS.

Featuring Hugo Boserup, Casper Brooker, David Jakinda, Jacopo Carozzi, Julia Brückler, Joscha Aicher, Hyun Kummer, Farid Ulrich, Sami Harithi, Justin Sommer, Giorgi Balkhamishvili and Jan Kliewer.

Photos by Dennis Scholz & Leo Preisinger

Valencia is one of the most beautiful cities of Spain and next to Barcelona and Madrid it has always been a popular destination for skateboarders from all over the globe. Thus, also for the REELL gang that had flown in their global and German team: Cristian Sanchez, Julian Lorenzo, Herique Goncalves, Samuel Beyer, Justin Sommer, Lenni Janssen, Jakob Dohse and Sebi Hartung.

https://place.tv/tag/justin-sommer