Monday the 3rd of December marks the day that we launch the third part in our ongoing “Creating Lines” series. This one focusses on “Roffa” mainstay Marc Bolhuis and his Boombap movement. Let him explain what he did with the topic of change and how it affected his view of the Dutch metropolis.
Intro by Roland Hoogwater.
Text,film, photos & edit by Marc Bolhuis.
When “Creating Lines”, asked me to make a skate edit about ‘change’ and what has changed in skateboarding, it immediately crossed my mind that skateboarding is such a personal thing for people. So, it is hard to say what kind of change everybody could relate too.
Recently I released my first full-length video called ‘BOOMBAP’ and ‘Metamorphoses’ is the first project that I released since the video. In BOOMBAP I wanted to portray the city of Rotterdam in the way I always saw it, coming from a village nearby I was mesmerized by the big buildings, busy streets, and grittiness that this city has to offer. In the end, Dirk Middelkoop came up with the idea of doing something about the architecture of this city. Rotterdam, for the most part, is a pretty new city because it got bombed in WW2. But there are some buildings left from the old days, buildings like our City Hall for example. We did some research on which “skate” spot is the oldest and which place is the newest, and from there we added everything in between and to make the edit in a chronological order.
It was really interesting to find out in what year some of the spots were built. I really had no clue that some of these spots have been around for so long. I was also surprised that some spots were built in the same year but look so totally different from one other architecturally.
Last September we organized ‘Creating Lines’, a three-day event that took place in Rotterdam. We highlighted and discussed notable changes and differences between the older Dutch and more specific Rotterdam styles of skateboarding. We did this in an attempt to bring skateboarders of all different generations, sorts and areas closer together.
A big part of the Creating Lines project was an exhibition about Rotterdam’s skate history, a premiere of our full-length skate video ‘Momentum’ and various panel discussions about the history and future of skateboarding in the Netherlands.
‘Momentum’ consists of five main video parts, made by various talented Dutch filmmakers. They were given 6 weeks to make a short video, in which they had to incorporate the theme ‘change’. Besides having a part in the video, Jan Maarten Sneep also managed to glue together the entire thing. He spent many hours watching and editing classic Rotterdam skateboard footage to create several Memory Screen montages for the video. These videos showcase the changes in skateboarding throughout our history. All the main parts of the video will be shown right here on Place Skateboard Culture the coming weeks and the full project can be found via our socials.
Intro text by Martijn van Hemmen.
Filmed,edited & text by Jan Maarten Sneep.
Tim Zom, Frontside Bluntslide, Photo Bastiaan van Zadelhoff.
Part 1:
SUPER ZOOM ELECTRONIC 010
The making of SUPER ZOOM ELECTRONIC 010
With change being the topic, I focussed on the change in video cameras over the years. After having filmed for a number of years with various HD cameras, I went back in time for this project, back to the VX-1000 from 1995, and the Canon Super Zoom Automatic 1014 from 1973. I didn’t use these cameras in the traditional way instead I utilized the technical possibilities of 2018 and combined them. For example, I recorded the VX images on an SD card instead of tapes, and I used my phone to film through the viewfinder of the Canon 1014.
I had purchased this old Super 8 camera some years ago, during the making of The Bombaklats video to be exact. But after I received a number of bad cassettes, I did not have that much confidence in using it anymore. Partly because when filming with the VX-1000, we regularly film the tricks with our phones through the viewfinder so we can watch a clip back without overusing the camera. Via that technique, I came up with a new idea. I attached a phone case to the super 8 camera so that I could film through the viewfinder and it worked! Meanwhile, we are on Duct tape prototype number 4, and the images are sharper than ever.
The Super Zoom Camera in action.
This spot, right next to Rotterdam Centraal, is inspired by Dirk Middelkoop in the Boombap video. He does a line there in which he comes from behind the pillars and does a big Fs Blunt on the curb. I always thought that looked so sick, Robbin de Wit agreed.
The first time we went to this spot together, while Robbin was checking out the spot, it started to rain a little bit – no worries the spot has a roof over it- but not even fifteen minutes later it turned into a huge storm, the hailstones poured past us, and the streets filled with water in no time. We were dry, happily covered, but skating was no longer a possibility. It turned out to be quite the storm, later on, we heard that this storm caused a lot of damage to the city of Rotterdam.
A couple of days later we went there again but now with a larger group. I, myself would never think of trying a back noseblunt on something like this but you can always ask Robbin to do one. It took him a while to figure out what he wanted to do at the beginning of the line but once he did it did not take that him long to make the line. Ziggy (Schaap) was there and made this lovely picture! The spot, the trick, and everyone in the background.
Robbin De Wit, Backside Noseblunt, Photo Ziggy Schaap.
Combining art and skateboarding can be very tricky and a lot of projects often slide into the trap of making artistic versions of skate obstacles. Opperclaes created multiple public installations based on certain keywords that they saw connected to skateboarding and skateboarders.
“The project ‘Character Type’ was an intervention in the city of Rotterdam in September 2018 and bridged the gap between public art and skateboarding. The words are a homage to a skateboarding state of mind.”
Together with furniture designer Jeroen van Sluis the project came out quite nicely, to say the least.
Our favourite thing besides the skating is the fact that they first turned words into images and then images into sculptures that were then used to make this video (images) again.
But as always, don’t let us influence you to much see for yourself.
One of the many benefits of being from a small country is that it doesn’t take a long time before you are in another country. Belgium, Luxemburg, France, and even Denmark are all relatively short drives away. But even though countries like Germany are close, crossing the border makes everything look and feel slightly different. From the colour and build of the houses up to the food, everything is similar but not the same. Me being from The Netherlands but residing in Germany noticed these things when I first came here. But as time goes by, we start to accept our surroundings as they are and stop seeing things we were fascinated by a year before. So it was great to see this video pop up and notice the excitement Wouter, Pascal, Robbin and the rest of the Skatestore team must have felt at times.
Intro Roland Hoogwater.
Text Wouter Molenaar.
Photos Thomas Wieringa.
Video Marc Bolhuis.
During this Skatestore tour through Germany, we drove around, skated lots of spots, travelled to new places and drank lots of beer… A trip like this sounds like an ideal skateboard vacation doesn’t it? It was my first trip with this group of people, and we travelled to the German “Ruhr Area”, which was a pretty new place for us all. The Ruhrpott consists of a couple of old industrial cities like Dortmund, Essen and Köln. We had some excellent spot guides in the friendly folks of the Obtain Company, and they served up one spot after another. During the trip, all eleven of us stayed together bunched up in an Air BnB located in Bochum (one of Nordhrein-Westfalen biggest cities). Even though things where tight we ended up giving Sebastiaan Vijverberg his very own room because he snored too loud and we needed our beauty sleep.
Woetoe.
U already know.
Pascal Moelaert.
We started most of our days quite early and chose a daily diet consisting of iced coffee, beer and pizza. Because of the proximity to one another, we picked a new city to skate every day, and to our surprise, we got to skate many well-variated spots in all of the cities.
Wouter Molenaar, Frontside grab.
Wouter Molenaar, Ride on Smith Grind.
As far as the skating goes, I remember some pretty crazy tricks going down pretty fast! For instance, Wouter de Jong jumped on this kinked rail that no one else wanted to touch and Shajen 360-flipped a rather large set first try. Every day we all tried our best to stack some clips. Another great thing was that we didn’t stress, sometimes we stayed at a spot for hours just because we could, other times we got kicked out tremendously fast. Either way, fun was being had the whole time. To answer my first, only and most important question; Yes, it was the ideal skateboard vacation.
Shortly before Marc Bolhuis’ new full length BOOMBAP is going to be premiered on March 9th at Rotown Rotterdam he just released another 4:32 min appetizer.
Featuring Wouter de Jong, Yannick Witvoet, Dirk Middelkoop, Marc Bolhuis, Remco Stolze, Maikel Jas, Nassim Guammaz, Faries Prins, Tim Zom, Jan Maarten Sneep, Alexander Belhadj, Rob Maatman, Sebastiaan Vijverberg, and Robbin de Wit.
Marc Bolhuis, out of Rotterdam, is working on a full-length called “BOOMBAP“. He’s already released four minutes of footage as a promo. Featuring Wouter de Jong, Yannick Witvoet, Donny Janssen, Alexander Belhadj, Remco Stolzen, Sebastiaan Vijverberg, Robert Joosten, Dirk Middelkoop, Jan Maarten Sneep, Wouter Molenaar, Tim Zom and Nassim Guammaz.
Holland’s Skatestore team went on a trip through Europe for two weeks. From Amsterdam to Berlin, to Warsaw, to Budapest, to Vienna, to Prague, using only trains. Watch these Dutch guys skate in Berlin and Warsaw in part one of their Station 2 Station Tour video.
Featuring: Shajen Willems, Sebastiaan Vijverberg, Robbin de Wit, Wouter de Jong, Lex van der Does & Jeremy van der Eijk.
Photo by Thomas Wieringa
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