The Almost team have just left germany on their Impact Tour and collected some footage from their demo at the Skatehalle in Berlin for you to watch here. Press play for footage of Chris Haslam, Youness Amrani, Daryl Dominguez and Willow and get hyped on their visit from 5pm next Friday 25th January at BaySixty6. Details here.
Put the evening of Friday 25th January in your dairy if you are near to London as members of the Almost Skateboards team are scheduled to be making a visit to BaySixty6 Skatepark for a demo as part of their Impact Tour.
Chris Haslam, Willow and Youness Amrani will be in tow for a free entry session from 7pm with special guests for a night time session in the Capital. Share this news today and spread the good word.
Here’s one from the vaults. Watch Vaughan Baker, Franklin Stephens, Alan Rushbrooke, Harry, Olly Todd, Pete Helicar and Toby Shuall repping the Unabomber team from 1999 skating the old bus station skatepark in Norwich. It says on this video description that this was the 1st and only demo featuring all of the original team members. (Paul Sylvester was there but injured.) Nothing like a blast from the past.
Press play and note that Alan Rushbrooke features in Monster Network’s Lords of the Swords edit here. Have you voted yet?
Funny things are a happening in Washington DC right now. Following the news this week that Dag Nasty have reformed (the original ‘Can I Say’ line up), Dischord Records have announced that they have re-issued the original Rites of Spring demos.
All of this has come, no doubt from the forthcoming ‘Salad Days’ documentary that is currently being put together by Scott Crawford in the US, a film neding funding for completion right now but is much anticpated in the hardcore scene.
Dag Nasty will play on 28th December at the Black Cat venue in Washington and the Rites of Spring demos that were released on casette only in 1984 will get its first official release on October 23rd from the Dischord website.
The Supra team are on tour in Europe right now but will not be in the UK on this one unfortunately. Watch their demo at Saint Sulpice in Toulouse, France though featuring Keelan Dadd, Boo Johnson, Erik Ellington, Tom Penny, Terry Kennedy, Spencer Hamilton, Stevie Williams, Lucien Clarke and more.
Habitat team riders Silas Baxter Neal, Austyn Gillette, Marius Syvanen and Brian Delatorre get amongst it at The Indoor Skatepark Community in Portugal.
Bay 66, London
Wednesday 30th June
Photos by Pip and Stan
Arriving in a tour bus so impressively colourful it bordered on the ridiculous, the Nike SB team you’d think the team weren’t simply going to turn up and just skate Bay 66. Except that’s exactly what they did, but then it’s also exactly what they didn’t. You see, when you’re dealing with the likes of Cory Kennedy, P-Rod, Shane O’Neill and the rest of the Nike flock, just watching them skate and have a blast is much more exciting than any pre-meditated things they could have possibly had in mind.
Chilled-out unpredictability was the theme of the night, as the team started out on the funbox and just not stopping from there. Cory had a lot of fun, pulling out the hammers as if they were penny sweets and throwing nollie front foot flips and nollie inward heels as casual as less-reputable dork tricks like an -amazing- benihana, all stomped down smiling. Shane O’ Neill had his back in a similar cap with some ludicrous stuff for someone who supposedly cracked a rib at the CPH. Could have fooled me, Nugget was on some stylish THPS trip, with a 360 flip nosewheelie on the awkward snake-shaped manual pad and a first-try 720 flip on the hip. Sure it took him a little longer to film it, but landing something like that while just cruising around isn’t messing about.
Every time P-Rod dropped in the camera-carrying massive threw themselves in his direction, his absolutely relentless delivery of trick after trick after trick, just got progressively sicker each time. The height over the funbox was pure jokeshop shit, P-Rod has the moon gravity cheat built into his shoes I’m sure. How about a switch front blunt first try? Backtail kickflip out down the hubba? The goods were coming through like no tomorrow. Daryl Angel came through and was the only one to really hit up the – admittedly enormous – drop ledge, mach-ten baby!
The highlights were from Ishod Wair (on a high fresh from delivering the best First Try Friday that’s ever been filmed at The Berrics) and Younes Amrani who both hit everything in sight. Ishod’s catch was felt by every member of the audience who all shared some vicarious radness, and Younes’ manual madness was exactly that, madness. There competition for best trick wasn’t a small one, but I think Younes’ nosegrinds along and down the ledge took the entire biscuit tin.
The UK squad held it down with the best of them too, Korahn Gayle did his thing, Chris Jones killed it with a huge tailslide, Snowy laid some smooth-jams on the funbox and Smithy smashed up both the funbox and the hubba.
Wieger just cruised like he owned the joint and occasionally dropped a few high-speed bombs, Salazar took flight on the ski jump and watching Lance Mountain skate anything is nothing short of magic.
Bay 66 was going off louder than a bomb, but ignoring the hundreds of people and the giant Nike SB tour bus outside it really was just a regular Wednesday session. Cory Kennedy had a game of SKATE with about 40 kids and there wasn’t a frown to be found. Good vibes, amazing skating and a bus covered in birds. Same time next Wednesday yeah?
