Bon, je sais que je vais de nouveau me faire détester pour cet édito, mais vous avez vu l’interview de Lacey Baker à propos de l’industrie du skate ? C’est marrant de l’entendre pleurer, que le skate est trop sexiste, etc, et ensuite, d’apprendre qu’elle et ses amies, ont créer une marque, uniquement pour les filles... ? C’est vrai, qu’une femme, qui ne gagne pas autant qu’un mec c’est ridicule, moi aussi je suis pour cette égalité ; mais plus ou moins à “performances” égales; parce qu’elle soit jalouse de Nyjah Huston, je veux bien, mais bon, elle ne skate quand même pas tout à fait au même niveau non ? Car des gamins qui skatent comme elle, il y en a des millions, et ils n’ont pas “la chance” d’avoir autant de sponsors qu’elle... Alors, elle est où l’égalité au final ? Bref pas grave, en tous les cas les filles, ne vous sentez pas obligées de ressembler à Lacey, ni même à Leticia (Bufoni), pour faire du skate hein, pas des soucis. Et si vous déchirez tout sur votre passage, vous obtiendrez gloire et reconnaissance, sûrement même plus facilement que n’importe quel mec. En attendant, shut up and skate !
Versus Skatezine & Plus #128 Cover: Pascü / Airwalk / Montpellier Up there: Old Smoky / Cut Back / Asturias Left: Cyru / BS 50-50 / St Georges d’Orques
Another expensive issue for free - nov. 2016 versus-skatezine.ca / jeremyversusdurand@hotmail.fr
The Szaber Bowl (& Hangar 646)
interview
with Marcin Baca Duch
Sometimes, I hate myself for the time I waste in front of my computer; but sometimes, I end up finding stuff like this: a link to the amazing good looking Szaber Bowl DIY. Then, it’s ok, it all makes sence again! There are still some great stuff out there! I unfortunately didn’t had the chance to visit them yet, so I decided to contact them for a short interview; Here is it. Enjoy. DIY or die! Hey guys, don’t get me wrong, but, as a typical french idiot, like I am, when I think about Poland, I don’t immediately think about a fucking amazing DIY bowl... How did you guys, in a country, with a pretty bad economic shape (I mean, which one isn’t lately anyway...), made all this happend? Yeah! Thank You for kind words about Szaber Bowl. It’s a long story, and when I’m thinking about it right now its ridiculously unreal. Background situation is that in Poland we have no skaters owned company which build good skateparks. Infrastructure around my city is really bad. Most of guys are more street skaters, and DIY movement is pretty small. In Warsaw, which I am from, on late 2013 there was absolutely no bowls. It was frustraiting, so I decide to change it. Skateboarding is about frienship, and connection with different people, so DIY was the easiest, and funniest way to make the dream come true. There was an
empty building under one of the bridges in city centre, perfect place for concrete DIY. It was winter, 2014, late evening, my friend, me, two showels, and plan to build epic bowl from trash around the place. You can imagine, we drank some beers and think about future lines. It was -10 degrees out there. After few weeks a lot of people started to interest in our project and that was the correct way to achieve it! How long did it took you to build the entire thing? It was about year, but if I count day after day of work, we made it in about 2,5 month Did any of guys crew already had some building backgrounds before starting all this? I mean it looks fucking professional! A lot of people that helped us, previously did some normal house renovation, but never concrete DIY ramps. It was something new for all of us. Most of our knowledge is from internet, I’ve got tons of inspiration from Confusion, skateDIY site, and my skatetrips. The hardest thing was to collect materials to build. We need to demolished some walls, and search for everything that could fill the place under the concrete. You need to remember that bulding anything in this abandoned place is a little bit illegal, so we need to be careful all the time. But a lot of people helped. Back in the days we had no idea
about concrete finishing, even tools was DIY, so Szaber Bowl is not perfectly smooth, but still it is very good to skate. Now we trying to build better and better, with different tools and techniques. It’s super fun, and we’ve got a lot of satisfaction, and motivation while skating it. I’ve a little bit of basics, concerning wood constructions, and concrete too, but I never worked with styrofoam. How is it? Would you recommend it? We used styrofoam in our new project for Hangar646 (big trampoline park in Warsaw, with megaramp on matrace landing). They asked as to build small place to skate, under their megaramp. It was a commercial project, but with DIY soul. The place is big, old airport hangar, open area, where people playing day by day, so we can’t use dusty materials. Building site need to be as clear as possible. Styrofoam is light, and easy to move. First we built machine to cut the styrofoam, and then we just skulped the spot like a skulpture. Our crew was only 2 people, sometimes 3. We used big blocks of styrofoam, instead small slices. Now we know slices are better, because you can just put it like pyramids, instead cutting all the time. I definately could recommend styrofoam for indoor. I even think that this is the future of indoor parks.
How did you got the inspiration / motivation to build the Szaber Bowl? Did you visit any other DIY before? I’ve skated few DIY’s around Europe, but I think the biggest inspiration for Szaber Bowl is just the place where it stands. I’ve spend a lot of hours fuguring out lines and possibilities, somethng easy, something hard. How to take a lot of speed without hitting pilars, how to build it with materials that we’ve already got there. I’ve did sketchy 3d project to mesure out some details, and for better imagining whole place. I wanted to go fast, smooth, and very loud on the copings. I’ve seen some beautiful pool coping pictures as well. Did you also made it yourself? It was one of the biggest goals of Szaber Bowl. Because earlier in Poland no one build, and use coping blocks, and for me the noise and texture of these, was way better, than anything else. Paradoxically it was cheaper than metal pipes. We locked ourselves in a garage on whole night, and prepare wooden forms with plexi, and pcv pipe elements. Than we pour first concrete blocks, and make it smoother with gypsum. Last stage was to make silicone forms using this blocks, and give it to local concrete company - they pour us all elements we needed. We’ve got 6 forms, and it took about 2,5 months to prepare everything.
DIY spots also often mean “Locals only” kind of vibes... Is it the case at your place? Szaber Bowl is a hard place for beginers. Poolcopings hate scooters and metal pegs. It’s more “only skateboarding” place, than “locals only”. Usually if You want to skate it, you can try, it’s not a problem. We like “new faces” and usually people who come to Szaber knows the difference betwen DIY and normal skatepark. They like Szaber’s atmosphere, and often offer some help, or at least respect our work. The case is to make it bigger and better, meet good people, skate and have fun until someone decides to demolished the building. So if you want to help? You’re invited! Any other new projects in mind already? Szaber Bowl DIY stands since 2014. This year we built first commercial park. Now we’re started association through which we hope to get more projects to build for municipal in the future. Keep your fingers crossed. Our second plan for now is to get money for our DIY, so if someone want to help us, please write to us on facebook! Our city goverment can’t give us money for DIY because of the building status. It’s complicated, and underground crowdfounding is the only way to build our place!
Alright, that’s about it boys. Wanna say thank you to someone? Big thanks to all the people who take a part in Szaber Bowl project! You’re amazing! Also Big up to Milosz for teaching us some concrete finishing techniques, and to everyone who support DIY movement! Cheers! Can’t wait to visit you and try out this beauty myself. Cheers boys!
thanks a lot for the photos: @szaber, @mrdworld, @mduch, & @buka
Somehow, Versus made it in Thrasher again... I won’t lie, it’s a pretty fucking amazing feeling everytime. Crazy, I mean, with all the great other zines around...?! Why Versus again?! This shit sucks isn’t it?! Will never understand I guess... Anyway, I’m fucking stocked everytime! Can’t imagine how does it feel to get the cover! So yeah, Nico (the Versus #115 cover boy), Oli, & Hans, you’re a little bit in Thrasher thanks to me as well, so, I guess it’s fair to say, that you own me (at least) a beer now right? Oh, and about the no address kind of thing... Yeah, why? That’s pretty simple... Because I’ve none! But I’ve great friends. Isn’t that way more important than having a brand new huge flat screen in the end? Whatever, thank you all boys.
Versus ads? What? Yeah boys and girls that’s about right, Versus is about to take over the whole industry business shit. No Nike, Converse, Adidas, Puma, New Balance prostitutes. No Street League competitors. No Olympics athletes. Just supporting pure raw random skateboarders. With the support of Jonathan @Confusion, we will success in no time, that’s for sure. Yeah, he was kind enough to let us put an ad in his magazine. We are more than thankfull. Alright, actually, to be honest, we are not interested in business at all, we’re just trying to sell a couple of boards to pay the printing cost of the shitty zine you’re reading right now. So if you want to keep on reading this crap on paper, please go there: https://www.facebook.com/versus.skatezine www.versus-skatezine.ca jeremyversusdurand@hotmail.fr Cheers!
Big ol’hard cover book like in the good ol’days. Big Brother with a brain. This book, filled with kind of a “best of” their website articles is really fucking sick. It’s a must have. Only minus point? It’s sponsored by Converse... I thought you guys were 100% “ads free”? Anyway, it’s always great to read Marc Johnson’s interview talking shit against big corporated companies over and over again...
Dylan Rieder RIP 1988-2016