The skateboarding during Snipes’ Berlin Squad up contest, made young and old scream and shout. The Salty Boys ended up taking home the prize purse and everybody got a champagne shower. But a lot of other good stuff happened and that is what this video recap is for.
The newest Supra output is really nothing to sneeze at! The whole team came together and even Tom Penny has some footage. Lucien Clarke might be my favorite appearance followed by Oscar Candon who closes it out with an incredible part along the lines of go big or go home!
The German Huf team flew out to Bangkok to what they thought would be a nice Airbnb apartment and some good weather and some nice looking spots. Things turned out slightly different, first they were thrown out of their apartment, second the weather was so hot that they had to pick their battles and only skate the spots they really wanted, and thirdly the spots looked great but they were quite rough making you wonder how the guys still managed to produce so much footy in such difficult conditions.
Video featuring: Louis Taubert, Alex Ullmann, Stephan Pöhlmann and Nils Brauer.
Photo by Florian Hopfensperger
FLVR Series just presented us with their newest video featuring Tetouf and some others. The focus of this video lies on the style of ones hands a both interesting and classic topic. Enjoy!
It is no secret that we love Franz’s skating, he is one of those people who just has his own way of doing things. We met him in paris during our cruising sessions and he surprised us many times with his skating and his demeanor. Surprisingly Franz is not French and even though his name might suggest that he is in fact German he told us that he felt like he was neither. He is a natural on the board and it shines through both in this clip and in our Paris issue.
Photo by Augustin Giovannoni
Bobby is having a great year and so are his fans. Mr. de Keyzer has had a lot of output on multiple platforms, some more serious than others but all done in style. We only have one question, why do most videos set in Spain feature “Spanish” music? We would like to suggest using that concept for every country you visit, if you go on a trip to Finland score it to some Finish music, a trip to turkey would look good set to some turkish music and of course a trip to Germany would have to feature Nena’s 99 Luftballons! All jokes aside wouldn’t that open up new world of music for us all to enjoy?
Not much going on on the European front today so we checked out what our Canadian colleagues were up to and this Nolan Waller’s part is what we found. Nolan delivers a sweet but short part featuring one of our favorites Dustin Henry the whole thing is well worth a watch.
What happens when you send a Ozzie skate team out to Japan? The security guards come out, you sing karaoke and you film a great video. The Pass~port visual department deserves some extra credit for this one, great fucking work mate!
It has been kind of silent around the Pop guys. After a footage heavy start of the year the weather has cooled everything back down. Now they return with a short but good clip containing a strong contender for best nosewheelie trick of the year. Go check it out, put a warm sweater on and go skate!
The people over at the Poetic Collective just released a new video. As the title suggests the video mixes black & white with colour skate footage. The video starts of with a monologue by Marcel Duchamp and from that moment on it is easy to see that we are dealing with a project that has strong conceptual roots. The Poetic Collective ask us to not only take some time to look at, listen to and think about this video but they also make you wonder about Duchamp aka the person that speaks after each section floats over into the next.
Our friends over at Live Skateboard Media teamed up with Josh Roberts to create this clip. It features Milano Centrale as the stage for the likes of Leo Valls and friends to play on.
Tristan Funkhouser surprises with a second Part in the currently released Substance video. Next to his first part in the video he also already had a full part for Baker two weeks ago. So it is not just that Tristan released three full parts in just one month, moreover each one of them is provided with incredible skateboarding and Tristan does not seem to slow down.
If you don’t know about JP Blair you ought to! He has been responsible for some of the best videos out of NYC. 4myset is his newest offering featuring some of New York’s finest like Dick Rizzo, Josh Wilson, Mark Humienik, Chachi and many more.
Photo by Matt Roberge
Adidas has joined the rubber toe cap bandwagon but somehow they managed to do it in their own inimitable way. The team is skating the shoe a lot, Puig’s insta feed has been full of clips of him skating this shoe and it is our opinion that if the team is skating a shoe it means that the shoe is good.
https://youtu.be/YDJU_pwbL3s
Isle ventured out to visit the Bel Paese that is shaped like a shoe they came back with a lot of good footage.
Check out the article version of Isle’s trip over at A Brief Glance.
Huf just introduced three new ams: Matt Gottwig, Dick Rizzo and Jake Anderson. All three of these guys have been waving the Huf flag for a long time. Finally they got the nod and it is easy to see why.
Supra is killing it lately! A couple of days ago they released the second installment of the Supra dispatch tour / documentary series and now they hit us with nine minutes of NYC bangers. Their consistent video output, the diversity of both the team and the product have solidified Supra as a mainstay in the world of skateboard footwear.
go check out:
Erik Ellington, Jim Greco, Lizard King, Dane Vaughn, Oscar Candon, Boo Johnson, Sascha Daley, Lucien Clarke and Pat Rumney skating through New York.
Photo by: Ryan Allan
Our love for Mr. Vellrath started right here in the Place office. If you have ever had the pleasure to meet Sebastian you know that he is an upbeat type of guy who has a deep love for skateboarding. When he walked in the office this morning we all congratulated him with his 7th 30 something birthday. As he walked up the stairs he told us “If Florentin Marfaing can still drop parts past his 30th so can I”. Well 2016 will be a better year, if Sebi makes good on that promise! But until that happens we still have all these blasts from the past.
https://vimeo.com/65346552
https://youtu.be/hJg77VFEtrk
https://youtu.be/3r98HuWg0NQ
Sebi even has his own MTV Cribs Ballin!
From all of us here at Place we wish you a very happy birthday and many more to come! With that said we will let sebi rap this thing up.
Photos by: @Hustlehoff
Text by: Roland Hoogwater
Canada, Oh Canada, why are you so special? And why RDS FSU (Red Dragon Fuck Shit Up) is a video for the ages…
For some reason Canada and Canadians for the longest of times never got the shine they deserved. I mean, obviously we are all very happy that Canada supplies us with their Canadian maple, so we can buy and skate fresh seven-plied pieces of wood.
At the same time, these days Canadians are often on the butt end of the joke. Now this joking about the great country above the USA is something that I as a European just might not fully understand. Sure, Canadian skaters are known for being into some things that were kind of special or weird, things like: a fondness of really long white T-shirts, fitted hats, super tech skating and stink-leg tre flips. But at the same time, Canada produced amazing skaters like Rick Howard, Mark Appleyard, Keegan Sauder, Wade Desarmo and only recently Bobby De Keyzer.
Canada also has a great history when it comes to making skateboard videos. The Dime MTL Crew has been putting out great material and before that, Green Apple made Supper’s Ready and Video X, which inspired Peter Sidlaukas to create the Bronze 56K videos. But still, I feel we often forget one of the greatest skate videos to ever come out of Canada: The Red Dragons 2002 release RDS FSU. So let’s talk about this classic, and why you should care about it as well.
Let’s start at the beginning. Some of you might be familiar with Red Dragon, a brand that has not changed its image or clothes one bit since it first came on the scene. Big red logo shirts, board shorts and a bro-tastic party atmosphere are still very much at the heart of the company’s products and image. You could argue that the Red Dragons might not move in-sync with the current time, but you could also argue that they are staying true to what they know and love.
I first came into contact with this Canadian phenomenon through their first video, RDS FSU. Some of you might not have had the pleasure to watch this video – you can find it below – so I will provide you with a little taste. The video starts of with the typical epic slow motion intro, but instead of showing you the classic Zero-esque skateboard hero, we see a couple of rollerbladers getting ready to skate a very big double set. They are rolling up to the set and are about to try something gnarly, as the shot fades into showing the rollerblader trying a backside 180 air. The moment the blader slams his head into the concrete, the music instantly changes to Kernkraft 400’s “Zombie Nation” and the Red Dragon party starts.
To me, this is the perfect opener to a great skateboard video. First part belongs to Ryan Smith who is skating to Guns N’Roses, a great song. After Ryan’s part ends, the video moves into Moses Itkonen’s part. Moses is a scary-looking fellow who likes to fuck with anybody who’s trying to ruin a good skate session, but besides being quite the alpha male Moses is a very esteemed performer of the noseslide. If Quartersnacks had been around in 2002, Moses would have been a contender for their Noseslider of the Year award.
Now let’s fast-forward to Rob Sluggo Boyce’s part: Sluggo is a muscular gymnast, snowboarder, break dancer, and vert skater who’s intro consists of a phone call from the filmer announcing that they edited his part to the Backstreet Boys. Boyce’s answer is short: “If you edit my part to the fucking Backstreet Boys, you are fucking dead!” During this phone call they show images of a shirtless Sluggo flexing topless. Then the music fades in: Backstreet’s back alright! This is one of the greatest parts by a vert skater, on top of that, it is possibly the best part in the video. The first time I saw his section I had to rewind my VHS tape multiple times to finally come to the conclusion that he did a backflip to fakie on vert!
Whilst Red Dragon is a clothing brand, the Red Dragons started out as a crew, the evolution from crew to brand often brings about a change in the vibe a brand has, RDS FSU however shows this crew type of feeling that many skaters know and love. Before Skatemafia had us throwing up gang signs, we had skaters like Colin McKay throwing up the Red Dragon horns. When I recently met former Red Dragon team member Chris Haslam, he told me a remarkable story: Chris was visiting a gallery opening where he met a deaf person, the guy ended up showing Chris some sign language, as it turns out the hand sign for skateboarding looks almost exactly like the Red Dragon hand sign.
Now, of course we can’t be sure what the origins of this are, but I choose to believe that the influence of the Red Dragons made it all the way into the sign language.
As one major takeaway from reading this article, the sign for skateboarding is quite easy to learn:
1. Fold both hands into the Red Dragon horns position; basically a “peace” sign with crooked fingers.
2. Lower your arms till you are at stomach height.
3. Imagine your hands now symbolizing both the trucks on a skateboard.
And the second takeaway of this article, is check out RDS FSU. The video also shows some of the skaters’ struggles and Canadian pride, whilst at the same time making fun of themselves. I’m not going to summarize the whole video for you because that would defeat the purpose of you actually checking it out.. Go see it, RDS FSU is truly a video for the ages!
A little rumor, when I recently met up with Red Dragon Ryan Decenzo he told me about his wish to make a new RDS FSU video so we might see another Canadian classic soon!
by Roland Hoogwater
Photo: Danny Sommerfeld