Yes, it has been a year since the first RajonTV Game of Skate Championship, and we are back to find out again who is the Champ! We gathered some of the best skateboarders (that we know), some of them are rookies to this game, some played last year, some might not know that they are going to participate. Unfortunately, the last year champ Madars Apse couldn’t participate due to an injury. Good luck to Madars, he will be back in season three!
We know that the following months are not going to be suitable for outdoor skating very much, it is going to be cold and painful sometimes. Therefore, RajonTV Game of Skate Championship 2 is going to have two extra letters! Instead of 5 letters we will have 7. Two extra letters for warm up! The letters are going to be R.A.J.O.N.T.V instead of S.K.A.T.E. We strongly believe that this might make games more exciting and fun.
Cover photo by: Laura Sokolovska
Video is in the end of the post!
On 15th of September we held the second annual RajonTV contest called – Around the Block. The format is simple: get together and go skate around the streets. This year we had more people than last year! We didn’t have a poster, we didn’t have a proper plan, the police kicked us out and it started rainning. Despite all of that the event turned out great. The meeting point was Griziņkalns, we had a sheet of plywood with us, so the first spot was an improvised euro gap up some stairs.
Checking out the gap. Photo: Anton JegorovArturs Nesaule flew up with a 360 flip. Photo: Anton JegorovWe had Lithuanina braljukas over! Gs from Fully Ghetto crew! Juicy ollie inthe bank! Photo: Anton Jegorov
Next spot was the rail that Arturs Bahurcevs, Richi Dunkul, Lev and Spank skated back in the day. Classic shit. This spot didn’t see any action since 2010 probably. Fricis just jumped right into it, with this first try crooked grind.
Photo: Anton JegorovThis was not Deda’s spot. Photo: Anton JegorovAndis Ivanans – Smith grind! We were stocked he did it! G! Photo: Anton Jegorov
Obviously the residents were not hyped on skating, the noise attracted attention and people were looking out of their windows and yelling at us. One of the residents came out, it was mildly pissed off lady, but after a “friendly” gesture by Fricis, boardslide in front of her face, she was raging and it was impossible to negotiate a one-more-try deal with her. We were threatened by cops, called idiots and blah blah we moved on!
Fricis just would be Fricis if he didn’t boardslide right in front of the face of the lady that was kicking us out. Photo: Anton JegorovRandom spot on the way to the surprise spot! Juicy with a wallride! Photo: Anton Jegorov
We skated to the next spot which was a surprise to everyone. The spot was brand new, brought to reality by the mastermind Fricis and with a little halp of his friends. The spot is basically three benches: you can do lines there, skate from one bench to another and so on. Usually this place is occupied by drunks and bums, so we kind of brought some diversity to it. Fricis instaled three metal edges, so benches are skateble now.
We had a grand opening ceremony for the new spot Photo: Anton JegorovDeda cut the red line! Spot is open to skate! Photo: Anton JegorovMiks Grantiņš test the benches Photo: Anton Jegorov
It was fun while it lasted, the karma got us! Another pissed off lady held her promise about the cops and did call them after all. Two cops arrived and politely asked us not to disturb peace and not make noise next to the loudest and busiest street in Riga. We had to move on. But the benches are still there and you can go and skate them. Send us a clip if you film something there!
The next spot we went to was the recently discovered mini Wallenberg at some school on Tomsona street. The clouds gathered, and it was rainig a bit. We had people do some ollies and couple half-ass kickflip and heelflip attempts. No one was really feeling it. It seemed that the day was done… until Deda showed up.
Deda ender! Photo; Laura SokolovskaMVP! Photo: Laura Sokolovska
Same as last year Deda closed the event with his signature moves. Fs Shove is easier than an ollie to this dude. Deda finished skating these stairs as it was already rainig in full. Everything and everyone was wet, however the spirits were high and hype was real! Thanks to Deda! The MVP! Clockwise skate shop had a Fully Ghetto board prepared for the ripper of the day! Guess who got the board!
We finished the day at our beloved Lokal House, with a session on some funky constructions made out of left over materials from Mind Work Ramps. Again Fricis was the mastermind here.
Dane – pole jam melon grab.Juicy – Wallie 180 on the man ramp Mark
Shout out to everyone who showed up and helped us organize this event. Clockwise skateshop for giving prizes, Lokal house for allowing us skate at the parking lot, MindWorkRamps for giving us some material. We would like to thank our cool photographers Laura and Anton, as well as Patriks for beeing the host and Armands Izenkevičs! See you all next year! And here is the video. Enjoy
Pernova 2 is a new video straight from Parnu, Estonia. Featuring local rippers skating local spots. Guys skate it all: plazas, which are surprisingly really considering Parnu is a small city; shitty spots, which are pretty obvious for a small city; and even the boarwalks on the beach, which prove that creativity thrieves in Parnu. The city of Parnu is not a big, however, the scene there is live and kicking with roomies Meelis Erm and Mikk Eeskivi keeping it exciting and funky. If you ever in Parnu hit these guys up and go skate with them. For now let’s enjoy the video.
Featuring:
Siim Volkmann
Sander Stimmer
Edvard Gaba
Mikk Eeskivi
Meelis Erm
Marko Padernik
Cover: Aleksandr Tubin, Photo by 42010dept. VIDEO PART IN THE END OF THE POST!
Summer is over, and as the first September days pass some of us already feel that sense of regret. “I could have skated more” says your inner lazy bones skater, or, “I could have filmed more” says your inner skater who still hopes to film that mega video part. What ever the case, if you blew you blew it hard, as this year summer was the hottest summer in ages. And if you had some plans than this summer was the best time to make them happen.
Homies from Straight Forward skateboards were productive this summer. You can argue that partying doesn’t count as being productive, and yes it doesn’t it is the opposite of being productive. However, as long you film all parties and make a movie about them you are on the right productive track. The movie is going to be called “PIS TAISNI” – the most popular phrase in Latvian after Pimpa and Saldejums. And here is the teaser. It is said to come out in December. Going to feature some gnarly shit and homies skating. Video is filmed by Mr.Armandos on a Hi8 camera. Let’s wait and see how it turns out.
Meanwhile there was a contest in Klaipeda, in what looks like a new park. Here is the video where we can see the usual suspects from Lithuania.
And another contest video, now from Vōru, Estonia. The Skateboarding games! They had a game of skate, bowl jam, street jam, death race and fireworks in the end!
In the end of the month King of Tallinn took place, which pretty much is Baltics version of Thrasher’s King of The Road. The only difference is that anyone can participate. Event was four-day long, teams had to complete trick challenges and do some random stuff as well. Clips were supposed to be uploaded to instagram and the judges later on had to count the points. Rajon also requested a special challenge to remake two lines from our 2016 video RAJOON Estonian Voyage. We had twobrave guys how tried our crazy lines. Well done Gs. Next year we won’t be so lazy and will try to get our asses to Tallinn and participate as well, contest looked like hell of fun.
The results of the comp are going to be announced soon but as we watched the contest it seemed that Aleksandr Tubin won the whole thing! The dude was killing it like crazy, almost every video from his team 42010dept featured Aleksandr doing some gnarly or tech shit. So he is the King of Tallinn in our eyes. We even made a REMIX clip of all his King of Tallinn tricks. Hope 42010 guys are not pissed at us using their footage without asking, and hope the song we used is not offensive, still don’t speak Estonian you know. Stay safe and have good September!
One clip from Lithuania, four clips from Latvia, the rest is Estonians leading the freaking game with friendly Satan Aleksandr in the lead! We could have posted only clips of Aleksandr in this month top 10. He was on a path of destruction during King of Tallinn event. 100% MVP! If you would like your clips to appear in #RAJONTOP10 make sure we see them, put a hashtag #rajontop10 or tag @rajontv, make sure it is filmed in the streets (or DIY spots) and make sure you are from the Baltic states. September is here and from what we have heard it is going to be warm, so get those last minute clips!
Another day and another really really nice session at the famous LNB. I think this event happened in the beggining of June or something. The main reason for this event was that Mr Madars was in Latvia and he had a tour around the land to show the nature and the cities to his traveling friends and the last stop was Riga. Or maybe the reason was just to celebrate skateboarding. Never mind. The event was super cool. The first thing was the best trick out of the mini kicker which i didn’t film. Why? I don’t know. But i saw Armands do a pop shove-it tail grab. After that there was a long jump and high jump thing out of the kicker. That also was pretty dope. Then the race around the Library. That I missed. Then the tricks down the 5 set and the mini rail.
That was super fun to film. Because everyone was going in doing some fun stuff. Specially this guy from Sweden (Josef)! He killed it on the mini rail. That was something really really nice. And to finish off the day everyobe skated the 9 set and the rail. Some good stuff went down on that thing that day. Niklavs was skating it like a flat bar it looked so easy for him, he did everything first T. Sokis surprised me whit the bs 5-0 that was insane. And for sure can’t forget about the guy who was just skating the stairs not the rail. We all know him as DEDA, it was his first time skating a stair set as big as that. But he managed to do his signature trick fs shove-it. Everyone was super hyped about that and that was the end.
Intense days is a video magazine created by RajonTV and supported by Clocwise skateshop. Episode 5 is mainly footage from 2017 autumn and winter. The episode will take you on a little tour around local skate parks – Agensklans, Barona park, Valga indoor and Old Monster parks. Enjoy!
The summer is slowly coming to an end, get it while it is still here.
Project-C, a video about an Estonia skate gang going to China, is finally online! We talked about the video and the trip with Kristijan, and we went to the premiere in Viljandi, and now the video is here for our viewing pleasure. We can analyse it, pause, rewind and nerd the fuck out as much aswe want. The video features the likes of Siim Sild (the author of the video, and the guy who shotguns beers left and right (which we back 100%) ) , Kristo “Kusti” Õismets, Samuel Oja , Silver Jõesaar (the guy who did bs noseblunts back in the day), Kristjan Prik and Toomas Seppänen (the guy who didn’t land the laser flip (only that day)). Congrats to the crew for making it back alive and for making this awesome video! Enjoy!
Some time ago we posted one more Siim Sild’s video Onko se…?
Back in the day Simple Session was a big deal. It was the closest place where we could see pros skate, also the place where we could skate with pros, party with pros and pretend we were pros. Even though it is a more BMX centered event, every winter the Baltic skate scene would gather for Simple Session get totaly wasted, and trash some hostel in Tallinn. It was exciting as hell! Some dope shit went down all the time, for instance in 2005 Madars got second place, same year when Salabanzi got first! Salabanzi! (can’t find the video for this but it happened) One year Toms Gabliks did this. It was crazy. Now it is still fun, maybe a little less exciting though. But we are always hyped to see locals participate, they continue their annual tradition of not getting into the finals. And now Simple comes to Riga. Second summer in a row, and we went to check it out. Good thing it was for free.
Produced by RAJON MEDIA CREW
Big thank you to the camera man – Levs B. Major shout out to Jarmo Kangro!
This year Ghetto Games fest didn’t include skateboarding. The budget was cut at a last-minute, and we didn’t have the same action like years before. For instance last year we had tons of cool people visiting us: a huge Finnish delegation, Baltic homies, Belarusians and even some pros from Brazil (still trying to figure out what were they doing here). And this year the whole skate budget was redirected to something else, probably basketball or something like that. Anyway, homies didn’t want to cancel the annual trip to Ventspils, and a no budget contest was organised in the street BMX park on a rough asphalt. Big up to Tikari skateshop and Krishjanis Kalvnas for making it happen. Here is an awesome video recap.
The destiny of Ghetto Games is unknown, will it happen next year? Who knows. Maybe it is time for a change, maybe we need to make our own games? Ghetto Bird Games?
