The Etnies Team Do The Works

As Part of their European "Recognition Tour" the Etnies team are in the country this week making only two official demo stops. This past Sunday's event at The Works in Leeds and still to come, Saturday the 30th of May's visit to Bay 66 in London. So although there will inevitably be many random street and park sightings to come over the next few days, this was one of only two chances to guarantee seeing a "star" in the flesh.

"Is he here yet?" - This question was on the lips of every kid in the Works on Sunday. Ryan Shecker is who they were on about, perhaps the biggest name in skateboarding right now and he, along with Sean Malto and the rest of the Etnies team, were due to arrive any second and these kids were getting anxious to see their idols! The excitement levels were running high...

The team were scheduled to arrive at around 1pm, but by the time I found myself enjoying the sun in The Works car park a good hour and a half before the guys were due, kids were everywhere - eager in anticipation for two of the hottest names in skateboarding right now. As 1 o'clock came and went, you could see just about everyone in attendance straining to see through the dusty window of the park, hoping to catch a glimpse of the team bus as it strolled up - dearly hoping it would turn up! They needn't have worried...






About 15 minutes after they were due to start, virtually every kid in the building sped into the new mini ramp room as whispers (I say whispers, more like shouts of "HE'S HERE!!!") quickly spread that Sheckler had appeared and was warming up. Eager to catch as much skating on film as I could, I quickly ran through - through to find Sheckler being mobbed.
It was like Justin Timberlake had just walked into an all girls’ school - Sheer bedlam! After signing shedloads of autographs, posing for "bro-down" photos and generally being an all round good egg with the kids, Sheckler finally got a chance to skate. On to the main room it was!

As we made our way through, kids everywhere were in a daze. As Sean Malto, Jose Rojo,
Tyler Bledsoe, Devine Calloway and the rest were subjected to the same enthusiastic welcome as Mr Sheckler - namely autograph based pandemonium! It was quite amazing that anyone managed to get a skate, but skate they did.

Now, let me tell you - Sunday was hot and I don't mean "ooh, it's kinda warm". No, I mean bloody hot - It was like a sauna in there! It was fairly obvious that this demo was gonna be a short one,
I just didn't realise how much stuff would be landed in such a short amount of time. The thing is, The Works has seen most of the best skaters in the world grace it's wooden floor and, with the amount of ridiculously talented locals, it's nigh on impossible to find something that hasn't already been done by someone else, switch.
So nothing "new" was likely to go down but if you watch the vid of the day and I was to tell you that all of that came from a 45 minute period before Jose Rojo tweaked his ankle (which brought an end to the proceedings) - you'd realise just how good these guys were! From Sheckler's first try Bs 360 ollie over the big hip to flat to Malto's first try gap nosegrind on the big driveway - the etnies team shut it down. The beasts!

After the brief demo the guys took it upstairs for signing sesh and the chance for every kid to get themselves a photo. I thought about venturing up to get some of this on film but when I noticed the queue was over 200 people long I realised it wasn't gonna happen! So I made my way outside, back into the beautiful sunshine to go have a skate of my own - sadly I knew there’d be no chance I'd be landing so much stuff in my next 45 minutes!

If you missed out this past Sunday, get yourself along to Bay 66 on the 30th - you certainly won't be disappointed!

Oh yeah, contrary to popular belief (and I was one of those believers) - Sheckler is sound. Amazing at skating, brilliant with every single kid and seemingly a genuinely nice guy that has time for everyone.
Well, you live and learn!

Alex Winstanley.

The Four'N Legion Tour

Get yourself down to the Stoke Plaza on the 7th of June and see what must be the tour of the summer, the Fourstar Clothing Four'N Legion Tour. Featuring the likes of Brian Anderson, Tyler Bledsloe, Mike Carroll, Mark Gonzales, Rick Howard, Nick Jensen, Sean Malto, Guy Mariano and Lucas Puig, this ones gonna go off!
The flyer says get there for 2pm, but get there early for music, trick comps and freebies and of course, park position, this is one not to be missed!

Skate the Sky Melon Grab Film: A Live Performance

For the first time, skateboarders will be skating in the turbine hall of the Tate Modern to create a work of art. This is part of UBS Openings: The Long Weekend, an annual festival which is running this weekend.

Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer West will create a new film live at the Tate Modern by uniting an unlikely mix of ink, film strips and skate-boarding. In this unique event, titled Skate the Sky Melon Grab Film, West will build on her previous experiments with everyday materials such as pepper spray or Axe body cologne used to physically manipulate celluloid. West will stage a performance in the Turbine Hall for which a team of skate-boarders will traverse ink-covered film strips, their wheels scraping into the celluloid and marking their movements in complex and psychedelic patterns. This live event will be followed by a screening of the films created plus a selection of West’s earlier films.

If you want to go down and take a look at art in the making, then get yourself down to the Tate Modern this Friday at 7pm. In the meantime take a look at one of her previous films and see what all the fuss is all about.

Manhead Shows You How It's Done

If you're new to the wonderful world of skating, then Sidewalk have compiled an essential beginners guide, called the Back Pocket Beginners Bible, which you can get hold of in the latest issue of Sidewalk magazine. Not only that, but they've also put a whole host of videos on their site, showing you how to do everything from basic ollieing all the way through to more advanced ramp tricks such as a frontside Rock & Roll.
Best of all though, the very talented fella showing you all this is none other than Josh Young, AKA Manhead, from our very own Route One Skate team! Below is the first video, showing you how to ollie, so if you want to see more, get onto the Sidewalk How To page right now!

Tony's Back, With More Plastic For Your Lounge!

After seeing his domination destroyed in the last couple of years by EA's awesome Skate and Skate 2 games, Activision and Tony Hawk really needed to pull out all the stops with their new game and the video below is the first look at it.
Tony Hawk: Ride looks to do just that and it's bringing a new toy to the party - a deck controller!!! Quite how it's gonna work is still a mystery, seeing as the buttons are on the side and anyone even slightly chunky will snap it in next to no time, but we can only wait and see. Might be amazing, might be shocking, only Tony knows!

The Blind Video UK Premiere

With the upcoming release of the new Blind Video getting close, Route One's Southampton Store was asked to put on a preview of the video this week and pulled it off in fine style.
Hosted in the Orange Rooms Bar, the evening kicked off to the sounds of DJ Rich "Richie Rich" Ashworth playing out an eclectic mix of hip hop, beats and funk. Due to a mix up, the London premiere had to be cancelled at the last minute so this really was going to be the UK premiere of the video.
With an eager audience suitably lubed up on lager and mojito's, Southampton store manager Andy Mills took over to introduce the video and push the last few raffle tickets before the video took centre stage on the projector.
As you can imagine with a team as experienced as the Blind team, big things were on the cards in this new video, and the crowd weren't disappointed. With stand out sections from regulars James Craig and Ronnie Creager, the video bolsters some seriously sick skating. But it was Danny Cerezini and Jani Laitiala that have really pushed the envelope and came up with two seriously show stopping sections, with Jani's section taking the top spot and the final place in the video.



With the video drawing to a close, it was time for the raffle giveaways courtesy of Leigh & Sami at Dwindle. It was more like a pirates treasure haul up on stage, as not one, but two signed decks, a team deck, T-Shirts and trainers were up for grabs.
Top prize of a signed video graphic deck, a tee and trainers went to local hooligan Tom Hayball who looked stoked on his first place prize.


Music continued into the night as the cocktails and beer flowed throughout. With DJ Rich back behind the decks, local legend and two times "Secret Wars" winner Gustav Balderdash created a unique piece of artwork for the night and entertained the crowds through till the close of an awesome premiere night.


Massive shouts have to go out to Danny at Orange Rooms for helping us host the night, Leigh & Sami at Dwindle, DJ Rich for playing and entertaining everybody all night, Gustav Balderdash for his creative flair and all the Route One staff for their help in arranging the night.

Sweet New Schaeffer Edit

Here's a new edit of the Route One Team's youngest member, Schaeffer McLean. He's only 5, but still pulling off tricks that leave most adults quivering in their boots and we reckon this is his best vid to date. We've said it before and we'll say it again: This kid is going places, remember the name!
Check out the previous posts here and here.

SNUB23 Hits Up Our Brighton Store Again

Check this out, SNUB23, he of the new Fracture range fame, has been at our store front again, applying his trademark artwork to the doorway and it looks frighteningly good.
This time it's the Flinch graphic and you can get your hands on it via the link above in T-Shirt or deck format. Sweet stuff.
Click here to check out the previous door art, sadly now gone forever...

Loving your work SNUB23!

StreetFest, London Town, May 24th...be there, it promises to be one of the events in 09' not to miss.

Featuring music, live art, films, hair and fashion shows plus fixed gear biking, rollerblade and skateboard demonstrations, all from some of the UK’s top collectives, StreetFest will be ten hours of innovative showcases.

Building a modern day community of collective creativity StreetFest is a new breed of festival where the onus is on promoting and merging creative talents. StreetFest is taking it back to the ‘old skool’, by blending the spirit and soul of those nostalgic rocking block parties, with creative flair and modern trends. StreetFest actively involves visitors in the day’s events by creating an interactive experience!



Live painting:
10 artists including Sichi, Andy Seize, CODEFC, Hicks, Miss Led, Drunkpark, plus the VST crew.
Sports showcases:
Including Fixed Gear London, Lovenskate, Kingdom all on a 32 foot half pipe.
Secret Wars:
England vs Portugal, 3 artists vs 3 artists.
Music:
Courtesy of RHiL and Holic.
Plus:
Food, drink and entertainment throughout the day.
StreetFest will be held in the pioneering surroundings of TRANSIT (entrance on Clifton Street, Shoreditch, EC2A).

R1 & a few of the team will be checking out the sights & sounds, so we'll hopefully see you all there.

War of the Thistles 2009 - An Eyewitness Account

So, here I am again - sat at my computer feeling very much worse for wear from an amazing weekend and now I have to try to convey the events that took place through the medium of the written word. This should be fun. Well, to be honest, if it's half as much fun as this weekend was then it'll be a blast - lets get started!

The War of the Thistles event has become something of an annual tradition over the past few years. Spawned from the inspiration of the success of War of the Roses, the Scots decided to get in on the action and the weekend has gone from strength to strength each year. Much like War of the Roses the event is held over two days at two parks - Dumbarton (just west of Glasgow) and Aberdeen (Proper up north - I'm a Yorkshireman and it's still a six hour trek from mine!) and is attended by skaters from all over the country. So, we thought this year we'd get in on the action!

As you may well be aware, the Route One team consists of skaters from all over the country and I have to say that I pitied Amir the most. Travelling from Brighton to Aberdeen is one hell of a trip and props to Amir for being his usual jovial self and not letting the (literally) thousands of miles get to him! The rest of us still had fairly long journeys (Leyden excluded) but I don't feel I could complain when Amir never did.



Basically, we all met up at The Works skatepark on Friday afternoon. By this point a number of the team had already been travelling for over 6 hours, so we all got straight in the van, onto the
M1 and began our journey north. I don't know if you've ever driven to the west of Scotland before but the picture postcard scenery of the border towns is just breath taking. HANG ON - this is a skate article and I'm gushing about how pretty little white cottages surrounded by mountains are. Sorry! In future I'll stick to hardcore tales of shredding and the like. Ok?

So, we made the journey in reasonable time and arrived in Glasgow at around 10pm, bound straight for the Etap Hotel. Etap Hotels are amazing - dirt cheap and uber basic without being ghetto - can't go wrong. Now at this point I could start to detail the ensuing evening and had it involved strippers, drunken brawls or coppers then I would have done. As it was we went to Nando's and then to bed. A feat that was to be repeated the next night, although Nando's was forsaken this time for a traditional Glaswegian Chip Shop - Ooh, we're such hard partying rockstar types us you know!
Probably better that I just tell you about the two days of skateboarding then eh? All right, go on then...

Saturday, as I said earlier, was held at Dumbarton's Unit 23 skatepark. You may well have seen footage of the behemoth of a bowl that resides there - well, to be fair to the guys that run the place, that is far from all that's on offer. The place is jam packed with all sorts of random and traditional obstacles and this led to people skating everything - quite hard to film! The early part of the day saw the usual tech heads warming up on a relatively small flat bar - well, if you call flip crooks and tre flip lips warming up, Whilst the more transition based skaters tried to get to grips with the bowl - or in the Scots’ case just rip it a new one right from the off.


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As the day progressed, various sponsored and unsponsored best trick jams were held around the park. Although the skating was ridiculous and shed loads of cash and prizes were handed out, this isn't what the day really seemed to be about. Basically these events are just a great way to get very large portions of the UK skate scene together in one place and let everyone skate together. If you watch any of the videos made of this event (or WOTR) you'll see sessions going off on obstacles that never had a best trick comp held on 'em - it's more the buzz and the lads feeding off each other - basically the best skate session you've ever been to - the prizes are a bonus! Not that I should belittle them as Avid, Lynskey and Amir all won multiple prizes over the weekend but the rest of our guys (and every one else for that matter) still skated hard and had a blast regardless of whether they won cash or got filmed - true hardcore skate rats!

The Sunday, held at Aberdeen’s Transition Extreme, went of exactly the same as the day before. The park is absolutely amazing and the skating was going off everywhere. Rye Gray was filming an amazing looking sesh over the big hip with Tom Harrison, Mike Wright, Dave Davies, Lynskey and the like putting down proper tech manoeuvres with frightening consistency. Meanwhile I was busy filming Avid, Stu Graham, Benson and Ronnie Callow session the brand new wippy bank to wall with gap (confused yet?!) contraption. The thing was hard just to rock fakie (and I love skating this kind of thing) yet these lot knocked out some bangin' tricks that just shouldn't have been possible. Soon they were joined by Mark Burrows plus a load of others and an impromptu session became a big spectacle - ace!

With a park called "Transition Extreme" you know the place is gonna have an amazing mini ramp and bowl and boy, does this place deliver. The mini is, well, far from mini (Over vert capsual anyone?) and the bowl has to have it's own set of safety instructions! Not that these things mattered to Stu Graham, Benson, Kerr McLaughlin, Teabag and just about anybody else that has Celtic blood running through their veins. I mean, trying to describe the carnage is just not gonna happen but I'll try. 100mph fs smith grinds, switch frontside rock and roll boardslides, near crashes, Rob Smith attempting a 540 and landing sat down on the coping! It was amazing. Sadly it finished on a sour note with Rob appearing to break his arm attempting a "round the world" to fakie (that weird early grab trick Daewon does at the start of the third section in Cheese and Crackers) in the deep end of the bowl. He completely had it and it's a real shame for the lad as he'd skated his proverbials off all weekend and that would have shut down the event a treat...


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At the beginning of this article I said I had to try to convey what had happened over the weekend through the medium of the written word and I have to tell you that I think I've failed. Not because I'm particularly poor at writing but more due to the fact that without the vocabulary of someone in the region of Will Self or Stephen Fry, it is just about impossible to begin to describe just how ace WOTT was. To be honest, I should probably precede the word "ace" with one beginning in "f" and ending with "ucking" - you'd definitely get the picture!

All in all I'd just like to say "GET YOURSELF TO EVENTS LIKE THIS". Not only are they the lifeblood of British skateboarding but they are such a good laugh to go to - just try and get a second set of eyes so you can witness the beautiful chaos in all it's glory! Props go out to Skateboard Scotland and everyone who made this event possible,
I'll see you there next year...

Alex Winstanley - Route One Team Manager.

War of the Thistles 2009 - First Look

As you may be be aware it was the War Of The Thistles over the weekend, and Team Route one was there in force! We've got a write up on the way, but while our team manager sleeps off the rather hectic weekend, you can satisfy your demands by checking out this video. There will be more footage with the full write-up, so don't go far...

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