This years Concrete Carnival consisted of two legs which was pretty fortunate as most of the first one was rained off! The only benefit of this was that the prize money was rolled over to the second part up in Bridlington, read on:
Bridlington’s Gasworx skatepark is a real credit to Marc Churchill and Gravity who designed and built it. It’s one of those parks where you can easily ‘get gnarly’ or equally just cruise about. Most people seemed to like it anyway.
One thing weird about his park is that there’s only a handful of local skaters as their scene is hugely bike based. As it turned out a lot of the locals had opted to attend Leeds festival! So it was kind of weird in that there was no real crowd just a bunch of mates having a session with their mates filming and shooting photos, one of their mates MCing and one of their other mates handing out some cash and prizes. When I say it was a mellow affair it would be an understatement, only Rumble in the Jungle in Goa was more relaxed! Saying that though the skating was probably better for it. No snaking or comping just a really rad session where everyone got paid at least something!
Saturday was a local kids comp where there was about 20 of them all getting stuck in. Porno Paul offered encouragement for those who were a bit shy at first and in the end every young gun there was entered, even two girls that could barely roll down the bank. They were all rewarded with goodies from the sponsors which will hopefully encourage them all to keep rolling. As the weather looked a bit moody I decided it was a good idea to run a little best trick comp just in case Sunday got rained off again. The plus side of that is that most of them had some beer money!
Being the good boy I am I had an early night whilst Rob Smith, Macca and the Gyppo’s headed out raving in Hull. It sounded fairly messy and the resulting video footage of one of their crew ‘on the job‘ is probably best forgotten!
Sunday started off wet but as the sun came out the Messiah of Bowlriding Felix appeared after a long train journey and we knew it was on! The ‘street’ comp went down first. Regan’s pop impressed everyone whilst tyreman, Manhead and Nordberg cruised round picking up £20 notes on the way. Adam Howe really shown out with a large bag of tricks and amazing consistency, he won the ‘overall’ title and walked off with an XBOX 360 for his efforts.
Next up was The Mens event as I’m sure Munson views it! The bowl jam. It was so nice to just sit back and watch a rad session in the sun with everyone having a laugh. Early on in the day a line had been spotted and Sweeney was ‘nominated‘ to try it (I thought Darryl had bagged best line with his transfer sequence here). Aaron had to frontside ollie out the bowl over about 6 foot of platform and land in the down slope of the pole jam. Of course he did it but it took a while! Had he not stepped up to that challenge he may have given Ben Raemers more of a run for the title of best overall. To be fair Raemers was on fire all day, not bad considering he was saying he probably wouldn’t skate due to a nagging ankle injury.
Carl Wilson pulled my personal trick of the day with a perfect kickflip to b/s smith grind out of the blue. Kevin Plasterer McKeon didn’t seem to up for hurting himself after a heavy night out and Macca and Rob Smith didn’t even get their boards out the car. I reckon the bowl ‘comp’ went on for about two hours but no one seemed to want to stop! It eventually wound down once Andy Scott had nailed a transfer that was eluding him and Aaron rode down that pole jam!
Thanks to all the sponsors: Vans, Oakley, Skull Candy, Matix, Eastpak, Relentless, Xbox, Protec, Creature, Indy and Cliché. Also thanks to all the staff at Gasworx and everyone who made the trip.
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