First month of the new year is over! I hope you guys had a good time and are used to the number 19. For this month report video we don’t have much to show. Our man Pavel Berezjuk has sent some clips over from sunny Barcelona. He also had a birthday in January, so this report is his little birthday present! Some extra clips from Mr. Armandos skating in boots and our young friend Valters Luriņš made the cut as well. And, of course, as usually links below will provide some insights into what January 2019 was like in our part of the skate world.
Right as the year started, our Broke Lad Nomadic Static. Filmed in London over the summer of 2018 with a bunch of local heads and appearances from some Latvian expats such as Edgars Berzins, Emils Sviklans, Martins Horns and Pavel Berezjuk.
Clockwise camp started the year with a video release as well. Third voice over commercial with the whole crew skating the over at G-tiim skate park.
You know like skate mags have news sections where the they announce who is riding for who and who has changed sponsor. Well, Estonian ripper Kristo Oismetsswitched from Adidas to Vans.
Lithuanian Commune DIY put out an interesting video over at Facebook showing how much work is put in recycling boards.
Don’t know about you but I am more of an evening skater. Well, ex gangsta skater Richi Dunkul is the opposite for him early morning sessions seem to work out fine.
Kristaps Horns made a compilation of his clips. The dude is in his 30s and still ripping and learning new shit.
Fricis blasting a kickflip in Liepaja.
Edgars Kalns, Liepaja’s skate scene enthusiast and boneless expert, started a skate club which you can follow on instagram. It is called @skrituldeli. They made an indoor park in Liepaja too. We have sent our correspondent Fricis Štrauss there, but, apparently, the park was so good he didn’t have time to film the report. So no footy except this facebook video with locals and Kalns himself ripping. Also there was a instagram post that summarized what they were up to in Liepaja.
RajonTV x Temps Mortjanuary contest is over. At the moment we are debating over who gets the prize. Hopefully, we will get to a consensus till tomorrow. Big s/o to all applicants you guys are the best!
Remember King of Tallinn where Tubin killed it? A full movie with all clips from the event has surfaced featuring all teams, all tricks and all the high jinks in between. S/o to the organizers for making such a fun event for everyone. The event is open to all skaters and is not limited to Estonians only. So, if you are interested, then get a team together and hit up King of Tallinn instagram page for the 2019 event. Also this year the organizers are moving the competition to Tartu. So now it will be called King of Tartu and it takes place from 1st to 4th of August.
The final game of round three is here. Emils Metlans is playing against young Clockwise skateshop ripper Rudolfs Rorbahs. They both have lots of tricks and are capable of coming through. The winner gets into the finals, so the stakes are high, very high.
THE FINALS ARE ALMOST HERE SEE YOU ALL ON 9TH OF FEBRUARY AT SPOT CENTER 20:00 WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A SKATE JAM AND FINAL GAMES
Our game of skate championship is the longest contest in Latvian skateboarding. It takes approximately three-month to go from the first game to the point we are at now. And we are happy to announce that the games are slowly coming to an end. This week we have two of the final games from round 3.
In this game Kaspars Polis, the Saldus Saldie representative, is going to play against Niklavs Vetra, Clockwise skate shop pop master.
Once again our Estonian skate allies set themselves on an adventurous journey to a destination less traveled by the Baltic scenes: the vast and far-reaching Russian Federation. Under the supervision of our long time friend Antti Sinitsyn, the crew, consisting of Egbert Pahhomov, Mihkel Vahermaa, Enric Garriga Panisello, Hendrik Hundt, Hans Lange, Martin Kuum, went on a week-long vacation to the cultural capital of the big bear—Saint Petersburg. It is a city considered to have more European vibe than other countless Russian cities, and with its shores washed by our trusty Baltic sea, it must have something familiar that we can relate to. Well, for starters, the city has a lot of ledges, “it is a ledge mecca” according to Antti and we can definitely relate to that. We talked to Antti Sinitsyn about the trip and about the city, so if you ever plan to go to Saint Petersburg the following interview might be a good travel guide for skateboarding in Russia.
Hey, Antti! Well done with the video. I really enjoyed it, and the music was really good. Thanks to you, actually! You suggested Kedr Livansky’s music for my video, but her songs didn’t really match the flow. But I stumbled upon a NYC radio show where she was DJ-ing and one of those songs made it into my video. I think the song is from 1997 or 98… anyway, it’s been a while since drum and bass-ish music has been in a skate video.
That is cool, never know where ideas might pop out. So as I know you were the organizer of the trip, did you have to convince your friends to go? It is Russia after all and people are bit scared of it.
Actually I didn’t have to convince a whole lot. I’ve been to Moscow and SPB before, so I just told them that it’s chill and not a horrible place to be. Quite the opposite, it’s a rather pleasing place to visit! Of course for most of them it was their first trip to Russia, so some skepticism was there but half way through the trip they already wanted to make plans for next year to go to some place where normally skaters don’t go. Preferably some ex-soviet country.
Photo by Hans Lange
I am guessing other ex-soviet countries might not be as mellow. How was Saint Petersburg for you as a skater? It it true that it has a European vibe? Yes, SPB is very different from Moscow and Russia as a whole and currently those are the only two Russian cities I’ve been in (want to do the trans-siberian pretty soon). Most of the time I felt like I was in Paris or something. At least the central part of SPB is very clean, renovated and looks amazing. And not just the architecture, but also the people: everyone is very fashionable and very friendly. Clearly people are very culturally intelligent there. We only got kicked out once and it wasn’t even from a spot, per se. It was a parking lot that lead up to a spot and the parking lot attendant let us roll up from there for 30 minutes and then was like “Can you please leave now?” Mostly people enjoyed the act of skateboarding, stopping to watch it and nobody seemed to care at all about vandalising public or private property. Cops walking by, waving and smiling. It was very strange! Well, they don’t call it Venice of the North for nothing. So all in all, very modern city, very trendy people and gopnik sightings were at a minimum.
That is so sick. Good insights. What about the language barrier, how did you handle that? Egbert speaks good Russian, so if things got a bit more complicated, then he would step in and translate. Most of us know simple stuff, so buying beer or ordering food or buying metro tickets wasn’t a problem. With younger people you could also speak English. But talking Estonian on the streets of SPB definitely got some attention and people would ask where we were from and after understanding that we were from Estonia they would be really thankful that we chose SPB for our small vacation trip. I guess they don’t see a lot of European tourists there, especially young skateboarders.
That’s interesting. Did you make connections with some local skaters? There is a big scene there, isn’t it? Yeah, we saw a lot of skaters at the main plaza spot. Not that much when we were on the streets. But it’s a big city, so I am sure they were all skating the many other granite and marble plaza spots scattered around SPB. Or maybe they just know other street spots that we don’t know about. We mostly stayed in the centre part of the city and the only spot that was further away was the one with the statue of Lenin. That place was like 10km away from the city centre and upon arriving there it still seemed like the centre! That city is crazy big so I am sure there are a lot of skaters, but statistically it’s unlikely to bump into them. About the connections: We mostly kept to ourselves but of course talked to some guys. Actually met one really good skateboarder whose name is Dima Rodionov. I strongly advise to check him out. He recently had a cover for Solo skate mag and you can find him on the internet or on Instagram with the username “zekkomar“.
Photo by Hans Lange
That is sick, what a great encounter. So did you guys went full skate mode or you have some breaks with cultural stuff? I found a nice Air BNB in the city centre that could fit the seven of us. Stayed for four nights and the total cost was only 800 euros! For seven guys!
Now there are a lot of cheap places in Russia. A bunk bed hostel type of place would have been like maybe 20 euros per person for four nights, but it was a vacation so we opted for a nice apartment instead. If any Baltic skaters want to go to SPB then I would highly recommend this apartment: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/16060504
Yeah, about that cultural stuff… man, we were so hyped about the spots that we just skated. The only cultural place where we went was the Winter Palace and just took some photos outside on the square. But as the saying goes (that I just made up), if you’re a skater, you see a lot more culture than a normal tourist! I knew some Soviet style bistros, so of course we had some pelmeni and tarhun. Found out they sell Swisher Sweets in Russia. You know, that blunt cigarillo thing that all the Three Six Mafia guys smoke? Visited a hip craft beer bar also. But 95% of the time we just skated. Didn’t even party. After a long day we had some beers at our apartment, talked about stuff and everybody did a 30 minute stretch routine and went to sleep. That might sound a bit lame, but most of the guys are pushing 30 or over 30, so it’s pretty much mandatory if you want to stay functional. Enric took an ice bath every day and had some kind of weird horse balsam that he rubbed on his feet. Made the muscles hot and released tension.
This is so cool, thanks for the advice too. Yeah 30 means everything is getting a bit harder. In the video you skate a lot of ledges too, can we assume that SPB. Is a ledge mecca? Yes, SPB is a ledge mecca. Dima explained, that SPB is a very flat city so there aren’t any big gaps or rails or stairs. And since nobody really visits SPB for skateboarding, then all the ledges are nice and crisp. You know how the MACBA ledges are so round that sometimes you can’t even lock into a 50? Yeah, none of that in Russia! SPB is also a very skate-to-every-spot kind of city. Sidewalk surfing is a must!
Photo by Hans Lange
What about the video? Are you happy how it turned out? There are these weird glitches I never saw before in your vids After 5 months of production and editing I can say that yes, I am happy with the result! It took at least 2 months to find the song and another 2 months to find the right visual concept for the video. We all know and use those VHS glitches, it’s great and all and works really well with skate clips, but I am always looking for a way to make my videos a bit more, dare I say, innovative? For example my video from 2017. It doesn’t have an innovative visual style, but choosing jazz for music made it stand out a lot. With the SPB video I had this idea to use digital glitches instead of VHS glitches or for example, film lightleaks. You know, the red and yellow stuff if you expose your film to light? These small glitches and interventions work great in skateboarding videos to bridge skate footage with b roll and sometimes to emphasize something to get the viewer’s attention.
Anyway, the colorful pixellated stuff is a free overlay that I found, but some of the clips look really broken. Like back in the day when you would download stuff from Kazaa and it would look all fucked up? That’s digital glitching and the act of making clips look that actually has a legitimate word for it: datamoshing.
At first I tried to do it by hand, so to speak. You would open the video clip on your computer as a coded text file and just start messing with it. Deleting code, writing random stuff etc. Another way to break clips was to open up video files in an audio program and manipulate the data by adding some echo, reverberation, phaser and other audio effects. But the process was tedious and the results were random. Most of the time you broke the clip so bad, that it wouldn’t even work. And if it did work, then you had to convert it through 3 different video formats etc to get it into working order for Premiere. It was a nightmare! So finally I was like fuck it and bought a 99€ plugin that did the exact same thing in After Effects. The perks being that you could control how much you want to break it and if you didn’t like the results you could just re-do them on the fly.
The VHS glitches give you an illusion that you are watching a bad VHS tape with some skating on it. I wanted my video to look like a fucked up DVD disc or a shitty Kazaa file. Same principle, just using an imitation of a newer format.
The song is also a strange choice for a skate video. This being a trip to Russia, naturally I wanted to use Russian music. I asked you about some Russian artists and you suggested Kedr Livansky. She makes some really great music, but I couldn’t find a song that fit well with the visual flow. So randomly I listened to a DJ set from Kedr at NYC and the song I used was from that set. So thank you Kedr! This drum and bass-ish song is from 97 or 98, so it really has that proper raw quality to it. I think it works great with the visuals! It’s a 6 minute song so I had to cut out about 5 different chunks of the track to fit my 3 minute skate clip, but in the end, it fits perfectly! Fun fact: I almost used this song for the video.
Just recently Karlis Bogustovs and Jevgenijs Kostirko were budies working together on a common project to bild the biggest BOX in Riga, and today they must oppose each other in a game of cold blooded SKATE. Good thing that games of skate don’t damage friendship otherwise a lot of skaters would hate each other.
GAME COMMENTARY
In the pre game interview Jevgenijs called Karlis buldozer. It was just a joke and it is not his real nickname; however, it really fits Karlis’ manner of skating. And it probaly will take a buldozer to stop Miks Grantiņš on his path of destruction. We will see how it goes, but chances are high that Karlis and Miks are going to meet in the finals.
RajonTV Game of Skate Championship is back! We are proud to announce the start of round 3 which is going to have four battles. The best have made it here and now it is time to find out who will be fighting for the Champion Title on the final event!
Round 3 is going to include the following games: Kaspars Polis vs Niklavs Vetra
Rudolfs Rorbahs vs Emils Metlans
Jevgenijs Kostirko vs Karlis Bogustovs
Kristaps Judris vs Miks Grantiņš —> the game we are going to start with!
So, without further, here is the first game of the third round.
Game Commentary
Well, Miks got through without any damage once again. He is in his killing mode at moment: flawlessly destroying his opponents one by one. There is an element of luck however, if Kristap started the game, or had a chance to show his tricks, maybe it would be a different story.
While Miks is on a killing spree here is a little video reminder of how good Kristaps is. Bet you have forgtten about this, or for younger genereation, have never seen this before. Shits bonkers
Cover photo Marcis Ruiķis ollie at Imanta skatepark. Shot by Egons Avots
It is the foundation to everything. The coolest trick outhere. The first thing that gets your jaw drop. When you see it for the first time you can’t believe it. You learn that there is no glue or special shoes and that just adds more excitment to it. It is unexplainable yet super simple. The learning process is like natural selection – you either learn it or quit forever. As you master it a hole new world opens in front of you. We are talking about the fundamental skateboarding trick – the ollie.
For this article we talked to couple Latvian skateboarders about their experience with ollies. Everybody has some interesting stories about the way they learned their first tricks and this section is pretty much about that.
Marcis Ruiķis
When we started skating we would simply roll off small stairs and curbs. Actually at first we did’t even know that ollies existed, but somehow we learned them by going up the curbs. We would just raise the front truck and then press on the nose so the back truck would come up as well. After doing it many times and then doing it faster and faster it somehow turned into an ollie.
Some time later we met an American skater called Justin, he was in Latvia with some church or something. We asked him if we were doing ollie the righ way. He said: “Yes”. He also did a kickflip which completely blew our minds. Cool thing back then was that every session would end with an ollie contest. We would stack up boards and just ollie them to see who can go the highest, you rarely see that nowadays.
Listen to full conversation with Marcis below. (in Latvian)
Ed Gaba and Spank
Mystic shit. Photo by homie from rajon
It happened on a rainy day somewhere in 2002 or 3. Me and Spank were chilling at my place, and doing a 2003 rainy day default activity: playing THPS2. We were not as much playing as watching short clips of pros over and over again. It was actually more interesting for us than playing the game. We sort of made a mutual agreement that Andrew Reynold’s clip was absolutely the best. We got more and more hyped as we watched it and couldn’t sit any longer; something had to be done, that generated hype had to be released somehow! We had one shared complete at the time with my trucks and Spank’s board from T-Market (nowadays Maxima). After it stopped raining for a bit, we grabbed that board and rushed outside. Even though we kind of skated already, neither I nor Spank couldn’t do ollies. But the excitement level was high and a feeling that something was about to happen was definitely there. Spank was super confident he struggled for sometime and popped his first one. I was shocked and jealous at the same time. How the fuck did he do it? I tried as well but didn’t make it. After that we started to skated more and more. But I can’t really remember my first ollie at all. I can remember Spank’s ollie but not mine. Later we met Didzis local who had the highest ollie in the rajon. He would ollie three boards no problem. He was our ollie mentor.
Niklavs Vetra
Everyone probably knows that I love to ollie and I love to pop up to ledges, rails, stairs or whatever. I have never trained my ollies or thought about the correct technique really, pop just kind of came to me one day. First ollie for me came hard, I was 11 years old when I got my first board and at that point I used it more to roll down a small hill next to my father’s house. I did not think about trying tricks on it until son of AinarsBagatskis (a famous Latvian basketball player), who’s name I can’t remember, and who lived right next to my house, showed me the basic movement for the ollie. I think it took me 2 days to finally land one. After that I was hooked!
Photo by Kaspars Alksnis
Afterwards, my second skateboarding mentor was a good friend of mine, at that time, Reinis Cukurs, he taught me the basics of skateboarding in general, first skate videos and everything, and of course helped me improve my ollies. I don’t remember any milestones, but with him it was the first time I managed to cruise down the street popping off and on curbs, I remember the hype!
After that my first real ollie milestone happened at Dzintaru skatepark, where I managed, I think, to pop over 4 or 5 boards from a supper small kicker, that was the moment I understood that I can ollie higher that most other skaters. I remember, that it was Toms Berzins birthday that day, shout out to greenhood, NEED, and my brother out there living in Berlin!
Now about the ollie! Like I said, I have never trained my ollie, but I think squats, and pushing on a board or riding a fixie bike helps you, because you train you leg muscles with all that! The only thing, for me, that helps me pop higher is to put my back foot further on the tail, almost on the edge, (push me to the edge, all my friends are dead), because I feel like you can do the popping motion faster like that, and therefore you can ollie higher as well. But I don’t know, test it, maybe it works, maybe it does not. It is important to feel comfortable on your board, be its master, so you can take notes of what works for you better and what doesn’t.
What is the meaning of ollies in my life, you ask? It is everything I NEED AND WANT IN LIFE! It opens more possibilities while skating, it boosts your ego, but the down side is that everyone will always look at you to do something when there is pop involved!
Karlis Bogustovs
When I wanted to start skateboarding all I needed was to be able to move around with the board, just have that cruise control. When I got my first proper “Roces” (rollerskate comp.) skateboard, it wasn’t what I expected. It was difficult to do the things I had imagined. But somehow I managed to get my board on a curb the first day. I remember it was raining and the Ollie took me a few hours. After all the efforts, an old lady was passing by and said something like: “good job girl!”I had long hair then, and the people who categorized genders by the length of the hair were still alive. It’s a rare phenomena these days. But my Ollie got developed over time; I even did get some local records. The craziest Ollies were from first year of skateboarding. When I was skateboarding for about 10 months, I already had landed an Ollie from third drop of “Uzvaras” monument and 11 stairs from the 11th trams final stop (near old Riga). That was something! Then I wouldn’t know what was going to happen during these attempts, but for public preview I have two of my most crazy incredible Ollie stunts to tell a story about.
First one was in “Žurku midzenis” a ghetto spot behind “Domina” shopping center. It’s not a perfect spot you would skate every day, but the run-up was quite good. We were going on a regular photoshoot with Mārcis Ruiķis as a photographer, Egons Avots as mentor and trainer and Toms Bika as filmer. Krišianis Kalvāns was skateboarding that day as well. Firrst we skated the regular flat gap over some stairs you can see in the video. And then somebody noticed that big gap and said it was possible. I had to give it a try and after that I was just going for it. What I remember was that I went of track for a while, almost wouldn’t make it because of too many attempts. Then master Egons came over and started teaching me flatground f/s biggies and made me forget about the problems I was having with the ollie. Soon after I did it and it was so easy that I thought what the fuck was I doing there. Mārcis gave an advice to do a kickflip, but I was done for that day. Now I regret it, because I had no real damage to keep me from it and now the spot is gone. It was 2011, right before the apocalypse.
Second one was a couple of years later, after the apocalypse. The spot was there for a while, I remember passing it by on one of the “Wild in the streets” events. I wanted to get it, but didn’t want to make it the last event of the day, so I skipped. We came back, in early autumn, this time I don’t remember the the group or who was involved in this. Mārcis was the photographer as usual and Jānis Dzirnieks was the filmer. We were filming for the monthly Boards.lv episodes back then. I had no problems with getting ollie anywhere I needed, and if there was a launch ramp, it would be a bonus.
Luckily, this spot had a small lunch ramp, but this launch ramp was merely a curb cut made from regular Latvian cobblestone. So it’s really small and easy to miss. Best part of the spot is that you can get as much speed as you need on the asphalt and the landing is large enough to feel safe enough. And it’s a tram station, the whole reason the spot is there is because of the station, that’s why you have to fight all sorts of traffic, people, trams and have to watch for cars, because if you shoot out while landing the board has a 50/50 chance of surviving. I don’t remember how long did it take, but not much. Aaa, Maksims was there too. He was just chilling, probably saying: “ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!” That was very popular back then – laughing for health.
Raitis Helmanis I learned how to ollie the same way most skaters did, jumping down a curb. I learned how to ollie at the Salaspils bus station. It wasn’t hard at all, since I had learned the technique from the best video game of all time — THPS2. When I got bored from jumping down the curb I started looking for something higher. Tha eventually led me to jumping down 3m high things, basically anything which had a nice run up.
Photo by Mārcis Ruiķis
Those who remember me skate, know that I really enjoy jumping down stuff and this was how I stood out among other skaters. The biggest thing I have ever ollied was Dole’s 14 stair set. First time I saw these stairs it seemed that I can’t get that far and it is impossible. But as always all you need is one try to understand that you can do it. It took me three tries to ollie Dole’s 14 stairs. I remember feeling fantastic after doing it. I always felt great after doing something I was scared to do.
Buried is the latest video offering from a young Vilnius brand called Chess. We have mentioned them in our news couple of times already. So if you have been following, you know who these guys are. Buried is their heated up, excitement filled, devilish video with a smart soundtrack, nice colours and smooth editing. The spots are diverse and span across some European capitals concentrating mainly in Vilnius. There are no strict parts in the video as the whole crew skates together, but the guy who steals the show and has the most rad trick is, the young prodigy, and our favorite LT skater – Klevinas Litvinas. His skating is so good it makes you think that he might have some deal with the devil himself. He skates big stairs, jumps on all sorts of rails and does it all with his own signature style. Watch it for your self, the video is in the end of the post. But before you do that we invite you to get acquainted with Titas Mackevicius, one of the main guys behind the video and Chess.
Hello Titas! Congrats on the video! As far as I understand you are the brains behind it all, right? Thanks! Yeah I did the main part of editing and filming, but there’s also a section in it filmed with a different camera by @veruccci and @kar_nizas that they edited themselves.
Okay, can you tell us about Chess and how did it came about? It’s the same brand me and Vilius Jagminas (@veruccci) have been running since the summer of 2017. It’s just that we changed the name to “Chess”, cause we believe it doesn’t raise any unwanted associations (we didn’t like how “no hype” might be misinterpreted as a reference to hypebeast culture and so on, rather than a reference to skating) “No hype” is also a pretty negative name, so all in all, we think “Chess” works better. We’ve released 3 pieces so far, and we are now working on a photoshoot for the newest sweatshirts and fanny packs that were available @14skateshop at the premiere. We’re still pretty small, but we do the brand for ourselves more than anyone else, so its kind of hobby at this point. We are planning bigger things in the future, though we are still learning for now.
Is there any story or reason behind the name Chess? How did it come up?
I think it’s just ironic, naming a brand that centers on skating something that is as far from skating as you can get. We like to make ridiculous associations as well, like with the world, working as a chess board of some sort, with something watching over, controlling each individual chess piece that is us :D. The notion of chess clubs is also something very cool, for example, there’s this ghetto ass place in Vilnius, where you can always find a huge group of old people, just chilling, playing chess outside. I find it very close to what we, as skaters, might look like to the average person. Sitting around certain places in the city, just having fun skating.
This is so sick! Tell a bit about your self, how did you start skating and what motivated you to become more that a skater (to film and start your own thing)? I started skating in the summer of year 2014 I think. I’ve always been fond of skating, but I never thought I could do it myself… Then, a classmate of mine suggested we start skating, and I was stoked! I started learning tricks, meeting new people… Most of my best friends and memories have come from skating.I started filming very soon, I think the first clip I filmed was me ollieng up a two stair with a go pro. It’s just been a part of skating, and I was the fortunate one to have a camera. I also always liked design and film so… it kind of just came naturally. The homies I skate with motivate me as well, the level that they’re starting to reach is amazing, it makes you want to make something of it, to give them the attention that they deserve. People like Kelvinas and Vilius are also always nagging me on to bring my camera and film, so they are extremely self motivated as well. I’m actually often lazy when it comes to bringing the camera to the sesh, so they provide the necessary kick in the butt to make things happen. Over time, I progressed through different cameras, making edits as we got better and better at skating. I think just sticking to what you do and trying to outdo yourself every time works very well.
It is good to have motivated skaters, makes thing happen. What inspires you as a filmer? Local influences, global influences?
Locally, filmers like Saulius Petrosius were really inspiring. The part he filmed for Deividas Sereicikas is amazing, very beautiful. Theres also the Fully Ghetto guys that are sick. They’re very friendly and fun to skate with. I feature some of them in my videos as well, and we are growing closer together now that Domantas and Dovydas are living in Vilnius. I also remember watching a Gatis Valters Rajon London video a few years back, I liked it a lot and it had an influence on me. Globally, my largest influences are William Strobeck, Bronze56k, Dime and videos from Paris (The Blobys: Dougrez, tomoreilly for example)
What about Buried, how did that came about? And is there any story behind the name of the video?
The word came from the first song in the video “Dead and Buried” by Alien Sex Fiend. The idea behind it has to do with the entire skate scene of Lithuania. It’s about the fact that there used to be a huge scene in Lithuania, before any of us youngsters started skating, but it fell apart. Lots of great skaters from Lithuania either left the country or simply quit skating. When me and my homies started skating, we didn’t even know about this older generation. However, from what Siom Sonkinas, the owner of @communediy, tells us, what is left of the scene now is only a fraction of what it used to be. Hence the name, “Buried”, as in, there’s a deep history in Lithuanian skateboarding that is buried, and it is our job to uncover it. I greatly respect all the people at @coreindoor @commundiy and @14skateshop for making things happen these past years, there’s loads of new young skaters popping up and things in Lithuanian skateboarding are looking great. The future looks promising!
Kelvinas Smith in Berlin in a Chess shirt. Photo: Arnas Skominas
Does chess have a team or something like that? Obviously Kelvinas is the front dude, who reps Chess?
The homies I skate with rep Chess: Kelvinas, Vilius, Normantas, Arnas. There’s also the younger guys that are starting to rip like: Vejas, Kernius, Lukas, Acas. But we don’t have a set team. I film whoever I like, be it their style, or maybe a cool trick they have. I like when edits don’t emphasise separate parts, but show the skating of a group and let the viewer do the work of getting to know each skater for their different styles. Theres different people in every one of my videos, because I don’t meet everyone as often and consistently, but its important to me to include everyone I like! You will also find that, for example, Kelvinas belongs to Fully Ghetto as well, but I don’t think it matters that much, we are a small community, and we should embrace the connections that we have!
That is great! Just like it should be. Can you tell about your merchendice you said you had three pieces so far, do you make designs yourself?
We have made and released a long sleeve, hoodie and a t-shirt since we started. Now we have a new sweatshirt and fanny pack. We collaborate with Vilius when generating ideas and I make the designs. Vilius is starting to make designs as well though, for example, the new fanny pack design was done by him.
What’s up next for Chess in 2019?
More clothes, more videos, more skating!https://vimeo.com/309855752
2018 is over and it is the first year in a while that we might miss. A lot of shit happened in the world of skateboarding in 2018: full length videos made a comeback, people started to address controversial topics a lot more etc. We are living in an interesting time; Jenkem even called 2018 a golden year in skateboarding. What about the Baltics however? In our little isolated world, did we have a golden year too? Let’s take a look (in no particular order) at some of the most memorable moments in Baltic (mostly Latvian) skateboarding, as well as reasons why we need to remember 2018.
We didn’t have a single indoor session the whole summer! Don’t know about you guys, but I usually don’t go swimming in early May. However, in globally warmed up 2018, on 13th of May I was swimming and filming in trunks without any problems. May was the start of summer and it almost didn’t rain at all the whole month. For us skateboarders the weather is the most important thing, and this year skate gods were merciful to us.
Most Riga heads hang out at one spot
Every capital city in the world has a spot that everyone crashes and chill skates forever. In case of Riga it is the beloved no-go zone, Barix, where only selected local and, pretty much, any foreign skateboarders can go to. The ease of skating there has also made it the main filming spot for Riga heads. As seen in Pis Taisni,the only Latvian street video to come out this year, locals spend hell lot of time in the Barix, which had its own section in the video. As years pass and we get more and more spots around the city, the main local clique of Riga skaters is still held hostage by the most pleasant concrete desert that is the Barix.
P.S. Nick Garcia and Pat Duffy skated in the Barix this summer!
Mr. Boga still does strictly heelflips
Our first video contest – R.USH HOUR (supported by Tikari, Clockwise and Converse), where dudes had to film parts at G-tiim, was taken by Arturs Bogdanovičs – the focused, sober, heelflip enthusiast. He did 10 heelfip variations and got the win. Some of those were completely mind bending and only manageable by Boga’s heels. Let’s hope has he got some new moves for 2019 R.USH HOUR!
The year of the no budget contest
This year we attempted to make a local Dime Glory Challenge (Unreal Tournament) and a local Copenhagen Open (Around the Block) and both events turned out to be succesful. Unreal was the shit! We got all three Riga skate shop (Boards.lv, Tikari, Clockwise) to support it, we had some funky challenges, we had an all day party and no budget. Second annual Around the Block contest was a blast as well. Again a complete no budget event fueled only by enthusiasm, hype and beers. Deda stole the show again, same as in 2017, with a closing gap session in the rain, proving that he performs best in extreme conditions.
Viljandi BASH – the best get together of the year
2018 was the perfect timing for RajonTV’s first trip to Viljandi BASH. This year the event was taken to the next level, and it was a pleasure to witness all the radness. The event was organized really good with all of the side events and extra activities: the game of skate, video premiere, gladiator challenge, and of course the parties with concerts and stuff! The best thing was that Baltic skaters got together and had a good time. Looking forward for Viljandi BASH 2019 for sure! Our recap – here!
Project C unlocked new skate destinations
It is still pretty exotic for Baltic skateboarders to go to exotic countries on a skate trip. While skateboarders in the rest of the world do travel far and wide, it seems that the Baltic crews, due to small or no budgets, tend to travel in close vicinity or not at all. We rarely hear about skate trips, let alone outside Europe. But in 2018 a group of Estonian skateboarders tackled one of the most visited skateboarding destinations since Barcelona, they went to China! Freaking China! It is not like no one has ever been there, it is just that no one (from the Baltics) has taken a whole crew to go and film a video there. Like a real skate trip. The crew of Estonians has put together a video titled Project C to showcase their adventures China. The video was shown at the above mentioned Viljandi BASH. Hopefully this tradition will continue and we will see more great videos like this. We talked about the details of the trip with Kristjan Prik earlier last year.
Transworld skateboarding posts a RAJONTV video
It sounds a bit cheesy, but for our small scene this is a big deal. To get approval from one of the worlds most prominent skateboarding media websites is rad as fuck! Thank you for that.
Fully Ghetto Gang comes to Riga to show their video
In 2018 Fully Ghetto, the gang we mention a bunch around here at Rajon, released their third video titled “Needle in the Heist”. It turned out to be a pretty well put together piece with the whole crew intact, nice songs and great atmosphere. Fully Ghetto guys even came over to Riga to show their video! Which is pretty sick and unique in way for the Baltic skate community. This is a step towards making Baltic skate scenes united. Last time we had a good connection was probably in the heydays of Arturas Jendovickis and his video projects. Arturas’ Difusion video had Artur Bahurcev, when he was already Nilov, Richi Dunkul, and a part from Pavel ‘Spank’ Berezjuk (unfortunatelly not online).
Coldest game of skate finals
RajonTV Game of Skate championship, so far the best thing this website has produced, is at its second season’s closing. And in 2018 we had the finals of the first championship. That winter we had an exclusive access to Prisma parking lot and somehow even managed to pull of the final games there. There is no heating obviously or even walls, yet a lot of people showed up to watch the games, cheer and drink beer, despite the freezing cold. Madars closed the games and took the title of RajonTV Game of Skate Championship! There is no better person to get it! Those ice swims probably helped a bit, though. Watch the championship games here.
Madars still a G
Classic spot, classic trick, perfect execution. Photo by MarcisRuikis
And again on the Madars note. This year we had some dope shit done by the Latvian pro G Madars Apse! He started the year by bringing his homies over for a tour around Latvia which ended with an epic LNB sesh, he had a full Thrasher interview, he was nominated for SOTY by Thrasher too! And in the end of the year Madars came out with a rad, strong part in Element Peace video! He really stepped it up in this one, with some unique moves like that ollie on a bar to ollie of it, or boardslide shove-it boardslide? Especially stocked to see Riga spots in that part as well. Madars kept us all hyped the whole year and we thank him for it! Thank you Madars!
This month Rajon Report edit features some legendary Latvian skateboarders. You can spot well-known faces such as Karlis Bogustovs skating in The Spot center, and Eduards Nehajenko skating in sunny New Zealand! Edit also features some of Riga’s most promising youngsters – Valters Luriņš, Kristers Kalniņš and Martiņš Reitups alongside their mentor Kristofers Ozols, who sent us the footage. Major shout out to Andžs, and Raul who sent us clips from sunny down under. The rest of the skaters in the edit are your same old locals: Ed Gaba, Kaspars Gobiņš, Kaspars Polis, Rudolfs Rorbahs, Arturs Nesaule, and Arturs Bogdanovičs.
And now it is time to wrap up the last month of 2018.
Not much happened in December. Latvian skate scene was blessed with a Straightforward skateboards’ movie Pis Taisni. Which is definitely the video of the year in Latvia. Congrats to Armando for putting in the effort!
Our neighbours in Lithuania had a bit more video production going on this year. As you probably remember we had a Fully Ghetto video recently, which was rad. Also Lithuanian homies from No Hype which is now dubbed Chess VLN premiered their new video Buried on 28th of December. It is not out yet, but promises to be sick as it features our favorite Vilnius skater – Kelvinas Litvinas. Pretty excited and looking forward to watch it. Maybe Chess guys will come over to Riga to show their vid here?
Staying on that Lithuanian note. The Kablys Game of Skate, an obvious parody of RajonTV Game of Skate Championship, which is a parody of Battle at the Berrics, which is a parody of eS game of skate, which is a parody of simply skating flat, has just finished. In the finals Fully Ghetto Domantas had to play against Lithuanian late 2000s child prodigy Gytis Bliusvas. Gytis, an AOG (almost OG aka too young to be an OG but is soon to become one), showed some consistency against traditional timeless G tricks like nollie bs heels and nollie fs heels, but what Gytis was not ready for was Domantas’ 2015ish trendy sex changes. He sneaked them in between the regular tricks so noone could notice and Gytis was like: “WTF? We didn’t do that back when me and Arturas were killing da game at WB park!”. But Domantas didn’t care about that AOG stuff as soon as he had a chance he threw another sex change in the mix, this time with a one foot innit. Good thing all mighty shy judge asked him to re-do that shit and “Taisnība uzvarēja” as Latvians say. Gytis had his turn and he did what he did. Watch the whole game here!
Lithuanian Kablys Game of Skate is nice, but let’s be honest, those guys have no chance against Latvians in RajonTV Game of Skate Championship, pff not a single one! We just wraped up the second round and the following people are officially in the third round: Karlis Bogustovs, Niklavs Vetra, Kristaps Judris, Kaspars Polis, Miks Grantiņš, Emils Metlans, Rudolfs Rorbahs and Jevgenijs Kostirko. The championship is going to continue first thing in January! Stay tuned!
December is the time to put out some stacked summer clips. Here is a summer edit from Aivo Jeez (?) with a nice pop tune and familiar Estonian faces. There is also a funky video of the Surf House skateshop team skating in a warehouse. Be carefull with that forklift guys!
To wrap up December 2018 links we bring you the latest video offereing from BrokeLads. Our good friend Klavs Laivenieks has spent his holidays skating and filming around the streets of warm and friendly Malaga and here is the result – Mañana video! In Spanish mañana means tomorrow, which is like a joke among Spaniards who are though of leaving work for tomorrow. Also Mañana is a dope bar in Malaga, run by a Latvian family with our homies Rob and Edgar in charge. BrokeLads have probably spent quite some time in Mañana bar.
Keep it safe everybody! Be wise, don’t mix drinks and Happy 2019!
