Grindhouse Tour 08 - Be-Mag
A story about: 9 individuals, 1 van, 3655km, 7 towns, sex, drugs, lost rings, pain, friendship...
The main focus of this text is about the madness of touring - not the tricks - you'll be able to see all the skating that went down in the upcoming tour DVD/Edits.
Hannover
The first stop. On board: Timm Kitzlitz, Maik Lojewski, Patrick Smith, Daniel Prell, Bruno Willemark, Martin Darnardi, Andre Lepszy, Tim Beckhold, Felix Strosetzki our Photographer and Tom Fratzcak our Filmer from Arkon Media.
Sunday: Some of us had a huge hangover from Felix's birthday party but that couldn't stop Timm from killing a ledge to gap with cab topside everything. Skating a self build quarter Bruno got stuck at a rusty nail. 14 stitches later he was back on his feet.
This evening we drove to Münster, which brings us to one of the biggest problems of this tour. First you skate, then you drive to the next city, check in the hotel or worse youth hostel, party, sleep 1-2 hours and get kicked out of the room by an unfriendly cleaning woman and at 12 and you're supposed to skate again – anybody? Can you see the problem here?!
Münster
We Started the session in the newly build concrete skatepark, where we met a whole bunch of smiling faces as well as good friends. At the second spot, a rail in a Garage, Smith laced a nice truetopsoyale, Maik did backroyale to sweatstance and Daniel Gourski showed everybody that he can switchup. Later Bruno lost his wallet, when we found it in the van he was already calling the police. In the meantime Maik successfully landed a 180 “handplant” from a natural bowl on the street while Daniel back royaled an impossible square rail, which was just around the corner. After we got kicked out at the next Spot, right after Bruno did a fishbrain all the way round the curved ledge, we went to the last spot. It was a huge square rail. Smith and Lepszy topsouled it. Daniel won a chickenburger for frontsiding it because Smith bet it was impossible to frontside that rail! The police only showed up twice because the owner of a nearby restaurant thought we wanted to destroy the rail, but he had no permission to force us to leave, so the police asked some of the people around if we were rude or displayed bad behaviour but the crowd told them that were very careful and polite so the police stayed a few more minutes and enjoyed the session.
Andre Lepszy had to leave after that but before leaving the tour due to his holiday plans Lepszy decided to miss 2 trains and arrived home way too late.
Rotterdam
We arrived at 2 am – the problem was that all the important shops closed at 1 – from where would we get our coffee now? By the way – this was probably the worst “hostel” ever. You may ask yourself why we call it the worst Hostel ever? Ever tried to sleep in a kid size bed together with 8 stinky and snoring guys while you aren’t allowed to open a Window?
We met up with a bunch of Rollerdamn's finest Locals, like Lamri or Giorgio our Teammate, at the first Spot and had a great session. Maik Ao Topsouled a Curb to 360 over the board walk while Daniel and Tom caught some food.
The second spot we skated was a quite interesting bank/wallride thing. Kind of difficult to skate, a local stunned us with a sick fishbrain. After royaling the gnarly thing Maik lost his emo-piercing and left us in search of a piercing shop.
Everybody enjoyed the next spot, a nice rail down some stairs, Smith, true kindgrind, Bruno trutopporn with 2 fucked up hands, Maik ao backnugen to soul, Martin cab topsoul 270 nugen.
After the session Prell woke up in the van and decided that it was about time for a zerospin negative mistral. Tim, juiced by this trick crossed 2 streets to get enough speed for a huge 540 gap. He had to jump 2 times till he finally succeeded in hitting his head hard enough for 3 weeks of paid holidays. After a visit in the skatepark we skated another Bank to Wallride Spot and Maik decided to Topsoul to backsavanna a long curverail. Then we finally hit the road and partied till we arrived in Frankfurt.
Mainz
Our Hostel was in Frankfurt this time but as Frankfurt is boring we decided to pick up a little taste of Amsterdam. But we didn't skate there, no, we did anything else except skating. We had the time of our lives but after 4 hours we went back to Frankfurt where we spent the next day terrorizing the Grindhouse shop.
The next day everybody was quite hurt and tired – Martin and Maik skated a nice Session together with all the locals, while Daniel and Timm slept in the van. After the second spot (steep down ledge) was been killed by Timm (360 miszou) and Martin (ao topside everything) we got kicked out by a super important caretaker. Before we left to Stuttgart, Prell woke up, just in time to kill a hard droprail with rocket makio.
Stuttgart
Another shitty hostel. Daniel and Timm refused to leave the hotel in time and the lady at the reception wanted them to pay for another night. Unwilling to pay the two of them climbed with ninja like stealth out of the window. We met up with the locals and the Slackline guys at the main train station and went to the first Spot where we had a really good session skating a Curb and two Slacklines!!! Daniel murdered the second spot, a really nice rail and Smith killed the already dead rail with a super clean true makio. Daniel and Stuttgart's Lee skated a slackline to droprail spot and because we were only 3 hours too late we decided to skate another flat rail spot and leave way too late to Nürnberg.
Nürnberg
After visiting the red-light district we slept for one or even two hours before an extremely friendly hostel employee asked us to leave – immediately. As this was the last day it was about time to shoot some team pictures. None of us was really able to skate and everyone was kind of happy when he could go home and spend a night of sleep without snoring, farting or coughing people, without being waked by unfriendly hotel employees, a quiet night, alone... in his own bed.
A lot more things happened during this tour, some illegal, x-rated or simply not appropriate for a larger sane audience. We're all proud and happy about the experiences we made – Thanks Grindhouse for making this possible. And always remember; never piss in Burger King cups when the driver is a rollerblader.
Tour soundtrack: Bushido – Eine Kugel reicht, Robyn – Cobrastyle, Britney Spears – Piece of me