Slept On-Gosha Konyshev

July 06, 2009 @ 1:09 PM

For almost ten years there was a small kid named Gosha skating around the Victory Park spot in Moscow. With a sketchy kids style trying to skate weird spots doing weird tricks. Always the smallest and the funniest on all the trips, but cocky and getting some beating from everyone all the time. Always dressed in a way of his own, in some odd clothes that were to big for him. Consuming all the worst food you can think of, in giant amounts.
But haven’t seen this kid for a while now, were has he gone I wonder.
There’s a new young man from nowhere skating at Victory Park a lot, lately, named Gosha as well. With a nice style and a big bag of tricks. Very friendly, and easy to be around with. And laughing his ass of on all the stupid things around him, just as small Gosha used to do.

There is no real reason why he started skating, just a call of his heart from the start.
‘When my older brother went to buy his first snowboard, he took me just to dangle along. I was 9 years old. There in the shop I saw a skateboard, and asked what that thing was, “that’s just to roll down the street” the guy at shop said, though I’d never seen anyone doing it, I knew straight away that’s what I wanted do. So I got my first board for the New Year. It has 8.5 inch wide, and my foot was way shorter than that. But my bother was skating it for some time, before I could get my hands on it.’

His brother Eugeny being a famous snowboarder made a big influence on Gosha’s skating from the start. Taking him to all the famous spots, to see famous skaters. Pushing him overcome his fear a lot, “Hey, you got to jump on this ledge, or we’ll have to give your board to that kid over there, look he can do kickflips”, and 10 year old Gosha would give him the finger when he turned his back.
“Once he made me enter a miniramp contest, when I couldn’t even drop in. He said that he knows that they’ll give me a Casio G-shock watch, as the youngest contestant, he made it up of course, and I hated him for some time after that”.

For some time there was nothing attractive in Gosha’s skating, and the only thing that drew attention to him was his youth. He never had tricks that he could be recognized for, like many kids have, like that kid has fantastic frontside flips, and that one only skates switch. Gosha skated everything bit by bit. And when he got bigger and got more power in his pop, he already had a strong base in all terrains, be it transition, rails, stars. And that gave him the opportunity to skate almost every spot he wanted, but there was no interest for him in doing another tre flip down a ten stairs or crooked grind on a rail. Now he skates spots that not everyone one will skate, or doing tricks not everyone would think of.

Gosha always was a local at the Victory Park spot, though it’s more then an hour Metro ride from the place he lives. This year I think he was the first to get out of the indoor park in Spring, and when none followed him, he just went out skating to Victory park all on his own. But at the same time his not that kind of guy who sticks to one spot for life, always down to check something new. Always stressing on filmers and photographers if they can’t go with him to document what he has in mind: “Hey, we wasted another perfect day, just because of some useless stuff you had to do!”.
Gosha has a new love besides skateboarding - music. Yea every kid at his age fells in love with music. But it’s not hip-hop or punk rock as most of his friends are in to. He knows all about the “Russian Rock” of the 80’s which isn’t popular at all, nun of you will never hear what’s playing in his ipod daily. He’s really keen on it too, knows everything about it, all the bands and all the history, everything.

Given a good opportunity by his sponsors, Gosha already travels a lot but remains eager to discover his own city. “There’s so much to do here in Moscow, that we never see or paid attention to, all the areas have so much to offer. We hardly know one third of all the spots there are in Moscow, but it’s so hard to find some new ones, the city is enormous. The other day we went out of the city to an area right next to it, there is bicycle track there, with perfect asphalt and some crazy downhills, that place is there for a long time, almost no one ever skated there. So much fun.”