Anyone who follows Latvian skate scene will recognize Niklavs Vetra when they see him. He is one of the scenes most recognized characters: slim, four-eyed ripper with a beast pop. While Niklavs is in the limelight, his competitor, Jefgenijs Kostirko, is one of the scene’s more enigmatic figures. Nobody really knows who the man is. “Who the heck is Jefka?” is a question that still remains unanswered. However, as you might recall, best game last year was the one with Jevgenijs in it. The man has some mean moves.
Miks Grantiņš rarely misses a trick on flat in a game of skate. Neither does his young and constantly focused opponent, Martiņš Reitups. Although Miks has been skating as long as Martiņš has been alive, the odds of either one winning are pretty equal.
Coming tomorrow – Niklavs Vetra vs Jevgenijs Kostirko
Making skate videos is never done to win a game, to win a gold medal, or to beat a fellow skateboarder. Probably people with that kind of mentality rarely make it till the premiere day. Making a video is hard and if you are not in it for the love of the process, you won’t make it till the end. You got to love that shit to pull through; it has to mean something to you. That’s why people who make vids are exceptional passionate lunatics deserve respect. Thanks to their work we have these little time capsules that can remind us of rad days once had.
Besides reminding, most of us, about those good old days, the night of Pis Taisnak! premiere became such a day it self.
The crowd is in
Small KKC cinema has never seen such an overload of viewers. The cinema, originally designed to fit in 30 people had something close to 70 – 80 maybe. This serves as hint to get a bigger venue next time.
Graņa and ChapoNauris and Edgars VonKalns! The Liepaja MafiaProbably telling us to Fuck OffRob all dressed up. Rare sight.Best day ever!
If making videos (legit full-length videos with parts, editing and good music) was easy, we would have premieres every month. However, we have got the opposite: one premiere a year at best. Premieres are great events where we meet friends, have a drink and talk about skate videos. And this was exactly what we did at Pis Taisnak! premiere. Check out the recap below and go make a video with your friends! Enjoy.
SkateTV was a Latvian skateboarding show that was made between 2009 till 2012. During that time, Rudolfs Henčels and Eduards Nehajenko (producers and hosts) released 9 episodes of SkateTV. The show focused on the local Riga skate scene and at the time was the main skateboarding information source. As there was not so many Latvian skatevideos back then, the show was popular and viewed by everyone in our small Latvian skate circles.
After a seven year pause, during which Eduards moved to New Zealand, the duo reunited to make 10th episode of SkateTV. To celebrate this event, we made a small documentary about SkateTV. Enjoy.
All episodes of SkateTV are still online and make a good history lesson in Latvian Skateboarding ——>https://vimeo.com/skatetv
Kristofers Ozols and Fricis Štrauss are like two peas in a pod. They don’t seem to be so similar at first, but try spending some time with both of them and it becomes more evident. The two have a similar spacey vibe that is quite amusing to be around. Moreover, Firicis was Kristofers’ skate coach when Kristofer was starting to skate. And it shows. The way Kristofers skates embodies some of Fricis’ principles and philosophies: go fast, have fun and don’t think much. Kristofers even manages to take in to the next level.
Prepare for a slightly different experience in this game.
Thank you everyone for tagging RajonTV on insta and using #rajontop10. Helps a lot to find new clips. However, we still are looking mostly for street clips, and in this Top10 we managed to get all street features. We will probably switch to winter mode soon, so keep your clips coming.
One month left this year and we will be moving into a new crazy decade of Olympic skateboarding and a decade of athleticism in skateboarding. However, if all of that Olympic stuff is run by people like Justinas Ivoška (The president of Lithuanian skateboarding Federation, who opens our top10 this month), than everything should be fine.
We ditched the links for a couple of months, but, since this months there are somethings to share, we are bringing them back.
First of all, we would like to send Happy Birthday wished to our good friends over at Commune DIY! They are the most dedicated, selfless and inspiring skateboarding organization in the Baltics. If you still somehow don’t know about Commune, be sure to check their page, or pay them a visit to see their work first hand. In a nutshell, Commune DIY is the biggest skate hub in the Baltics. By housing multiple organizations and brands under one roof, they managed to create a strong community that pushes skateboarding in Lithuania in a span of only five year. We wish all the best to Commune DIY and of course good health to everyone who is involved!
Lithuanian Fully Ghetto gang released their 2019 video which we posted recently. Also earlier this month the collective shared their Druskaninkai beach resort video. Good summer vibes in that one.
Our friend Aleksandr Hlabov (Sanya) put together a nice phone edit with him and his posse skating streets of Talllinn. A lot of familiar faces in this one.
Speaking of mixtapes Meelis Erm put together an edit of his indoor clips. It seems that he learns new moves everyday.
I haven’t seen anybody get hammered before/while playing football or any other traditional sport. This proves once again that skateboarding is not a sport. Check out HUJAKFLIP edit from Liepaja’s improvised indoor skate park.
Riga’s Pis Taisni (crew? gang? organization? life style?) are about to premiere their latest video offering — Pis Taisnak. The premiere is set on 7th of December at KKC, entrance from 20:45 – 21:00. See you all there.
This December we are going to celebrate New Years as well as the end of a decade. We are going to switch from 2010s to 2020s. Quatersnacks, the best skate blog in the world, made a list of most important parts and videos from 2010s. We strongly recommend to check it out.
To finish off, here is a throwback to Tallinn crew from back in 2009. Samuel Oja does the cleanest ss flip in this one. A good inspiration! Have a nice December eceryone!
Skateboarding makes wonders indeed and can blend the unblendable. If it wasn’t for skateboarding, our home boy Dimon Deda would have never met Andrejs Poikans. However, here they are in the same room doing the same thing. The two polar opposites – Deda, notorious deep rajon native and Andrejs, a civilized aristocratic skater boy – are playing each other in a friendly match of skate.
Who will win? We put our money on both of these fellas! Andrejs goes fast and gracefully performs his tricks (and we like that shit), whereas Deda jas a unique bag of tricks including his classic fs shovit.
This week Latvian skateboarding’s old-timer Edijs Aizstrauts is playing a young gun Tomass Vilks. Edijs has been around since the beginning of 2000s and Tomass has recently got into skating. Well, we try to give everybody a chance here as well as gain good experience and bond with others.
Dimon Deda is playing Andrejs Poikans in the next episode. Stay tuned!
Our good friends from Lithuania continue the tradition of annual video release. Just like back in the days: you film the whole year and put out the results in winter. This is what Fully Ghetto boys deliver every year for some time now – a dope vid in the end of the season. Last year they had Needle in the Heist which they also premiered in Riga. Their new offering is also their switch from crusty SD footage to crispy HD. Domantas Antanavicius is an electronic music enthusiast and it shows in the vid. The video is filled with fitting range of sounds from Hip Hop to dreamy electronic tunes. We asked Domantas to answer couple of questions about his latest work.
How is this video different from your previous pieces? This video is different because every year we were releasing “part” videos and this year we had lots of changes. We made the video shorter, but it showed more what our upcoming videos and full films will be about. FullyGhetto was always only showing skateboarding in the videos and whats happening with skateboarding. This year we started to think broader. Think about what we are more about and that our skateboarding comes with others things as well. I started to geek more on videos and cinematography in general, so i think it reflects on the video. As we grow older, more things need to be taken care of. So I stopped pushing the “film every year” kind of thing and just go with the flow.
Is this video a promo for a bigger piece?
Yeah this video is a Promo for our full film that is coming sometime in the future. There will be more footy and more videos that hype me and the squad up. I didn’t put out all of the footage in. Best bits are saved for the full video.
Where is the video filmed and how long did you work on it? This video is filmed around Lithuania mostly Vilnius and Kaunas. It took us 4/5 months to film it.
This vid is your first HD video. What made you switch from SD? i was always astonished about video quality, but not the actual quality, but how it affects the video as whole. Because you need to change the way how you film or see a certain things. SD videos are still there. We are filming with our tape camera, and I have a small Handycam too that has mini dvds. We are not switching permanently. We are only doing different quality filming and putting them out in separate videos or in one.
