Paarden Island spot hunt 3

I'm pretty tired and haven't been shooting photos the last couple of weeks. Got one photo today. So here it is, for your amusement, or not, I couldn't care less.

Rousseau Loubser - Gap ollie

The next couple of weeks are also going to be tough times for skating. But if anything comes up, it'll be posted here.

I would've landed it, but...

I’ve forgotten how much fun it is skating in a big group. Big enough so you can have a sit down and just watch some skating, but small enough not to stand in line to skate a spot.

We were a crew of six skaters on Saturday; Cobus, Fuzzy, Konrad, Karabo, Guillaume and I. As usual we started out with a warm up session at the plane’arium. Speaking of, these days there is a definite line of jurisdiction between the part of the planetarium that the museum guards and the part that the CCID patrols. You can literally walk across a line and will become completely invisible to the respective guard patrolling the other part of the park. Crazy.

After a good warm up session at the plane’arium we headed to the CPUT to run some laps with security. We started by skating a five set which almost everyone ollied and Fuzzy landing a perfect 180 down. I attempted flipping it, but after committing to it, I ended busting by elbow to the point where I wanted to vomit. But I don’t skate for Baker, so I don’t get paid to be super doper hardcore, so I kept my Arnolds double breakfast inside me.

Rousseau Loubser - Kick Flip to Epic Fail

After security gave us all psychological cavity searched, we headed off to a ramped loading dock at the foot of a hill. Cobus landed a clean 180 of it before we were told to “move along” again.

Cobus Engelbrecht - 180

 After all this trekking we all felt like nomads and decided to leave the CPUT grounds. The rest of the crew skated the parking lot across from the technicon while I sat and licked my wounds. Fuzzy landed a kerb Ollie to five stair pop with his lighting fast footwork while I snapped some photos. After looking at the photos I took, I’m contemplating starting a blog called “lessthanaveragefilmersblog”, sorry Fuzzy.

Fuzzy - Ollie

 This was the end of the day and we all went our separate ways. Special thanks to Guillaume and Konrad for coming out.

We work for this city

Fussy, Cobus and myself decided that a skate would be the best day to spend the Sabbath. I hooked up with them at Civic Centre which was supposed to be holy ground these days with all skaters being chased, but since there were about 15 guys skating, I guess this is not entirely accurate. Or maybe they were skating barefoot, I didn’t pay attention. I tried flipping the now skatable stairs that lands on the curb that they were busy working on. The disappointing thing is that they re-built the sidewalk with the harshest bricks ever. So whenever you bail, big chunks of you board would just fly all over the place. Guess the bergies will be making fire with Canadian maple tonight.

Next we hit up the loading docks and roof/bank next to the freeway coming from Paarl’s  side. Cobus landed a nice nollie shuv into the bank and Fussy did fastest damn lines down that roof and off the docks. I did a kick flip down the loading docks and into a big puddle of oil.

At this point you may wonder where the photos of all these claimed tricks are. I deleted them all. I filmed a sequence and wasn’t happy with it so selected “delete all frames”. Bed News. I deleted all the photos on my camera. Joy.

We decided to have a wind down session at the Plane’arium. Was fun and I at least got a nice photo of a tre flip down the lowest “big” stair. 

Rousseau Loubser - Tre Flip

Speaking of, did anyone notice that the big crack in the run-up on the lowest stair was mysteriously fixed. Probably not, because all you daredevils are too busy doing double nollie heel shuvits down the white wall on top of the stairs. Well we fixed the crack, you’re welcome, douche bags.

We work for this city

Picking up change in Maitland

After skating Paarden Island for two weeks we decided to go in search of greener pastures, Maitland Industrial. First thing we noticed was that Maitland Industrial was probably between 10 and 97 times more crusty than Paarden Island. Run ups and landings are so bad, it was the first time I wished for some SA paving to skate.

After trying for about 30min, I landed a fakie flip down the loading dock and ended picking up some change. About 40min later I landed another one, also picking up some change. Would landing a trick twice, but picking up change every time count as one clean landing. The answer is no, definitely not. But at least you can go buy yourself a cream soda for the disappointing drive home with all your newly acquired “klein geld”.

Rousseau Loubser - Fakie flip

Weskus mini road trip

A couple of weeks ago I had to drive to Saldanha for my niece’s christening. I asked Loucas if he would join me for some company and a skate and he happily obliged. Good man. I was keen to show him some of the spots that we used to skate growing up, and some spots that we didn’t skate, because we had no talent.

The first spot we hit up was the hull of an abandoned boat in the harbour. Because of its bright yellow colour shooting photos was a lot of fun, even though your eyes would start to bleed after staring directly at it for too long.

Loucas Polydorou - Tail sliding the submarine

The next stop was an abandoned water reservoir on top of the “koppie”. The spot is so crusty; no run up, no landing and it’s like skating on grip tape (if your wheels were also made of grip tape). Loucas managed to pop a nice lofty ollie complete with JP du Preez sunglasses on.

Loucas Polydorou - Ollie

Finally we went to check out the newly built skate park in Langebaan. The park’s design is lacking to say the least. There are no definite lines to flow and is definitely not what the kids in the area needs. Well, at least they have a park. Loucas killed the park, while I did 50-50’s on the lowest of the low curbs. Sorry, no photos of them.

Loucas Polydorou - Back Side Smith

All in all it was a good little trip, did some good skating and had a good time. Makes me want to go check out other small towns, sure every town has something interesting to skate. And if there’s nothing to skate, at least we can cross off another town where someone told us “Boetman, jy gaan jou nek breek met daai ding.”

Paarden Island Spot Hunt - 1

We hit up Paarden Island for the first time last week Saturday. We found some good spots and security is so melow. The security gaurds of the buildings are really friendly and they actually watch you skate and cheer you on. Completely the opposite than the ones in the city. We were on our way to skate the planetarium earlier this week, and a security gaurd wouldn't let us walk through a parking lot with our boards, while everyone else was doing as they pleased.

Karabo Makenna - Board Slide

Rousseau Loubser - Front Side Flip

Paarden Island Spot Hunt - 2

Cobus and myself went on a spot hunting mission in Paarden Island yesterday. It's to hard to skate in Cape Town these days, being chased away every where, and moving further away from the CBD seems to be the right thing to do.

The first spot we found was a painted ledge that Cobus spotted. Cobus gave it the boardslide treatment while a bergie looked on, see if you can spot him.

Cobus Engelbrecht - Board Slither

Next we found a flat bed next to a loading dock which created quite a good gap situation. I kickfilpped the gap, but wasn't very happy with it, and thus decided to try a trick that I've never even tried down a sidewalk. I tried for more than a hour to varial heelflip the gap, but in the end I took the easy way out and broke my board. I'll go back there and get it though. Maybe with a Familia, I heard from a very reliable source that they don't ever chip...until they chip.

Rousseau Loubser - Varial heel

All in all it was yet another successful Paarden Island mission. Thinking about it now, I prefer being chased away from spots which then forces you to go exploring. If we didn’t go exploring and skating new stuff every day, we would end up being boring park skating hippies. And I’m no damn hippie.

Hosh!

I wanted to start documenting the life and times of a small group of skaters who are less than average. Too little attention are payed to skaters that aren't very entertaining (or afrikaans people blogging in engels). This blog is thus for the overlooked skater, the one who entertains no one but himself. Maybe if you suck enough, you will find yourself in this blog one day. Enjoi