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November Links

November is a dark month, time of illnesses and upbeat existential crisis episodes. The only things that can wake you up and motivate to live in November is hot morning coffee. In case you don’t drink coffee we suggest a dose of YouTube videos, mostly of motivational content.

Cover Photo by Kaspars Alksnis

So one morning in early November, a life was saved by accidental discovery of a video series called “12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson”. Imagine the surprise when one of the rules for life, this respectful gentleman described, was entitled: don’t bother children while they are skateboarding.  More surprisingly is the fact that Mr. Peterson, who is professor of psychology in Toronto, understands skateboarding much better than we skateboarder do. If only more people were like that, including ourselves. So next time someone bothers you when you skate instead of arguing with them you can try to explain higher reasons behind your actions. 

Moving to Lithuania now. Titas and Jagminas, two friends from Vilnius made a video called Amber, which is not available on Youtube anymore, you can only watch it on Facebook now. Later they announced that they start a clothing brand called no hype. They have one long sleeve at the moment which is called Amber. Get it while it still costs 20 euros. We asked Titas to talk about the brand a little:

We are basically just two skaters from Vilnius who decided to make our own brand. My name is Titas (@surfsupboi) and my friends’ name is Jagminas (@veruccci). The name of the brand is basically ironic, it’s about the feeling where you don’t have any hype to skate. 

Good luck to no hype boys and hope we hear from them soon.

More Lithuania. A crew called Fully Ghetto from Lithuania released their full length video called “Nothing to Something”. Which is banging and definitely a must watch. You can find it on Youtube or Facebook.  We talked to the guy behind Fully Ghetto – Domantas Antanavicius:

So the name FullyGhetto basically says it all. We are a crew from Lithuania, Kaunas (not the capital Vilnius) and we don’t have half the things Vilnius has – we don’t have an indoor park, our street spots ar limited, we usually are broke and we always are searching how to make or save money for big things (or big parties). Our biggest FATHER is Communediy, they give us boards, help our crew to expand and motivate us to do what we are doing and don’t stop. The best thing about our crew is that everybody has a different style and charisma but we all are Ghetto and we do almost everything together apart from skating. So the video is filmed in five months, we stacked more dumb footy not only tricks and you could say that this video is a “guide to how to survive in Kaunas”. Kaunas is the most Gopnik city of Lithuania, we eat kebabs, dumplings and drink beer, sometimes it is not really safe at night, and our city is based of guys wearing three-stripes and random fights, crazy drivers. Our spots are rough as shit (in Lukas Matusevicius part he did a hippy jump and i even put a slow-mo on what shitty flat ground he was rollin on). 

Big up to the Fully Ghetto crew! Looking forward to more videos and ghetto life!

More from our neighbors this time Estonia! Lauri Taht video called EOS featuring most of your Estonian friends and acquaintances.

You can also check out Eha Juniors video from Estonia we don’t know much about. One trick that really stood out  to us was when a dude put a board between two walls and … okay you need to see it is hard to explain.

Arguably the most productive skater of Estonia, Meelis Erm and his sidekick Siim were not sleeping in November. They released a video called Go out and Skate where they skate curbs in slow-motion to rock music which is later switched to unbearable modern rap. Mental as always.

BTW Meelis gets the trick of November award by doing this trick. Congratulations man!

Some Latvian stuff. Karlis Bogustovs and Madars Apse skate some glass obstacles in this video.  All of the obstacles are made from glass by Karlis himself. Tight!

“Hello guys and I am stoned” – this is the opening phrase of the new video series by Riga based crew – Trank Boys! Trank boys skate gtiim skatepark in the first episode and video description promises that more exciting material is coming. So let’s stay tuned!

You have probably seen Edijs Aizstrauts win Niks Kolosovskis in a game of skate earlier this week.  It was definitely a hard pill to swallow. If there were Skate Gods most of us would become atheists after watching this game. Anyway, it is just a game of skate and while we are trying to figure out how Edijs won he answers with his annual video part. Ender by the way is filmed by yours truly.

The last part of Klavs Laivenieks’s video series Broke Lads also came out this November. You can spot Pavel Berezjuk, Edgars Berzins and Martins Horns in this video. Big up to Martins we really enjoyed his clips! Hope Klavs can make a separate part of only Martins skating. We will try to catch up with Klavs and interview him for the site next week.

This month Free Skateboard magazine featured an article about an Amsterdam based crew called Booticelli boys, our fellow Latvian skate homie Rihards Bondars got a photo in the article as he is a member of the crew!

Rihards Bondars – gap to backlip. Photo by DVL. Copies of freeskate mag are available at Clockwise skateshop

How many Latvian skateboarders were featured in European skate mags, apart the obvious, right? We are really stoked for Rihards! Later in November the first full video by the Booticelli Boys: Sound of success surfaced the web. So check it out, Rihards has a part in it at 11:13. But make sure to check out the full video, which also features the likes of Pillo’s Glen Fox.

What ever you think of Richi Dunkul be sure to check out his latest part in a Spanish video called – Tutankamon Skate video. For those of you who are younger or don’t know the guy – basically Rich was an ultra gangsta skater from Riga. He was sponsored and all that. He was into some sketchy shit (like a real gangsta) and later he left Latvia for good. Now he travels around Spain and probably surfs as well. Not a gangsta anymore.

We have new section on the site called R LIKES! It is like a blog where we are going to post skatevideos from around the world that we like with little reviews!

Hope you guys enjoyed this month’s links and we can slide into the next month with style!

 

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Game of Skate Championship: Round two/Game four

The man who makes tricks look proper: Niks Kolososkis; is up against the underdog of all underdogs:  Edijs Aizstrauts! The legend has it that they have already played a game of skate 10 years ago at some mysterious comp and Edijs won. Let’s see who is going to get it this time!

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Around the Block

As skaters we learn to know whether it is wet or dry outside without even looking out of the window. In the morning when you wake up, you just lie in bed and listen to the cars pass by. They make sort of a wet sound if the asphalt is wet, so you know it is going to suck right from the start of the day. In the middle of November though, it doesn’t really work because it is almost always wet by default. But if it didn’t rain for a day and the sun is shining, you might assume that some spots are dry despite the wet sound and puddles everywhere. There is also a thing like skateable wet. You know what I am talking about? The ground is wet but you know you can skate it. So with all of that it mind we went to skate outside and film some quick clips with Arturs Bogdanovičs aka Mr. Boga.

By the way Happy 18th of November everyone! 

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Game of Skate Championship: Game Eighteen

Today we have our mate Miks (eS game of skate champ 2000forever) and Sandis (the guy who wants to play skate with you all the time – no video prove that). We really wanted to see these guys in the finals but it didn’t work out thanks to Deda’s lucky hand. Instead we have these guys in the finals of the first round, which is also great.

This game illustrates a valubale lesson: skating really fucking random and unpredictable. Like life, you know?

The matchup for round two is coming tomorrow! We are planning to post it on our facebook page! 

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Game of Skate Championship: Game Sixteen

Another game of skate (or how we now call it game of skate’n’slide) is here. Krišjanis Kalvans the real owner and creator of Gtiim skatepark is playing against young and fearless trunk boy Robert Potašs. Who is gonna skunk who? Let’t find out.

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October Links

October is over! A cold, wet and shitty month! Ok, in the beggining it wasn’t that bad, it was pretty warm and you could even hang out naked outside like Aleksis did.(???)

Photo of the month. Arturs Nesule – Hippy Jump. Photo by Arturs Pavlovs

Riga.lv a government organization made an article and a video with a title “Skateboarding is freedom” featuring some of the well-known Riga skaters. Pretty funny to see a cheesy video like that especially with Armands and Fricis in it. Best part of that video:

We would also like to thank Riga.lv for making a Russian version of this video for Deda and other Russian skaters in Latvia. From everyone at RajonTV we thank you!

Barona park keeps attracting tourists and we had a visit from these Lithuanian fellas. We also met Martinas the filmer čuvak and he said he is going to release an edit soon so watch out for that shit.

More shit from Lithuania. Kaunas based crew Fully Ghetto released a new video. They had a teaser for it on Facebook. Our reporter Deda went to the video premiere in Vilnius, he reports:

“We were chilling at the Kablis restaurant, we didn’t order anything. A lot of people were passing by and saying hello to me and I didn’t know who they were. Later we went to see this video, I don’t remember much, some dudes did some 50s on ledges and other cool shit, it was great. Can’t wait to return to Vilnius. ” 

Girl that skates harder than most guys, Iguna Skujina, is now supported by Clockwise skateshop. She put out a video recently. Congrats Inguna!

We start a new thing called trick of the month. October’s trick is this fs wallride by Mikhel Vahermaa from Estonia. Woooo Hoooo congrats man!

Don’t be a kurwa and support the locals: Vote for Karlis Bogustovs and glass skateboarding in this Baltic Youth Artists contest. Vote for our dog Martiņš Neimanis at RadioSVH. 

Very rare video from Parnu just surfaced the web! It features everybody’s favorite skate duo: Meelis Erm and his skinny sidekick Sim, along with some other locals. Meelis skates some mossy spots and young Sim chills in Bond and Marlboro sweatshirts, a true Humana Generation© kid. Whatever you think about the skating in the video you got to give it to them, they skate, make videos and keep skating rad.

Madars and Kristap’s game of skate was pretty sick and is the best game we have had so far. Despite the game being so awesome, we received some negative comments from the viewers about the reason why our respectful judge Toms Bika didn’t count Kristap’s ss tre and made him redo it. Mr. Bika explains:

“The trick didn’t count due to the fact that the rider rolled up a quarterpipe, he had an opportunity to execute this maneuver in a location with no distractions, yet he choose not to.”  

Toms Bika is professional skate judge and he knows better, so don’t argue with him.

London-based Latvian Klavs Laivenieks puts out the first video in a  series called Broke Lads, filmed in Barcelona and London. You might spot our homies in the video Spank, Martins Horns, Fricis, Lukas. As well as the notorious Edgars “Berjoza” Berziņš. Make sure to check it out, the editing is awesome and filming is on point! Klavs you are the man! 

If you are upset that we didn’t mention your incredible achivements in this post, make sure your achivements reach us next month! See ya pacani!