Element Crew in Moscow
November 11, 2008 @ 5:00 AM
Bas doing what Bas does best: fs flip down a gap. It’s by the Victory Park - the massive public plaza commemorating the Soviet victory over the Nazis in the second world was, or the Great Patriotic War as the Russians call it. The area is one of the best spots I’ve ever skated anywhere in the world. You could see it from the window of the 2000 / month flat that Kenny Reed rented a couple of years after this, where Puleo went a bit off the rails and punched through an old antique wardrobe. It didn’t end well for Kenny, who got kicked out in the end, lost his deposit and had to get rescued by Andrey Artukhov. It could’ve been a lot worse, as Kenny had signed a lease for the whole year, let’s see, that’s 24 grand right there…
Careless Soulet urinating in public. There was another incident another time in St Petersburg, where a friend of mine did that and got nicked by the milice. I think they only charged him about 20 euros in the end, but that’s probably more than what Jean-Marc had for the whole week, so good job there were no pigs around this time. In fact I remember he ran out of money at one point, called his mom with his last coins that only lasted long enough for him to shout “Mom, I’m in Russia, I have no money, call me back!” “I can’t believe she didn’t call me back” he said after a while. Good old Phil, who was the Element team manager at the time, set him up with some buckwheat and baked potatoes for the rest of the trip though.
Janne Saario tailsliding a tall ledge with an awkward run up. We got chased out of the spot by some football fans another time we went back there. Those dudes looked rough. I bet you can get your head kicked in by football fans anywhere in Europe, but Russia is not the place where you want to end up in a fight. A skater I met the first time I went to Moscow went to prison for two years for a bar brawl and came out a broken soul. So it goes.
The October Square Lenin monument and Jean-Marc on the nollie heel. It rained a lot on this trip and I think might have been raining right here. It was definitely pissing down another time, when we were here with Soy Panday and Tom Lock, the same time Kenny had his flat by the Victory Park. There’s a museum around the corner from here where they keep all the 20th century Russian art. It’s massive. It’s insane. No one goes there. We walked through empty halls with walls stacked with some of the greatest works of art ever created, and no one is interested. Those guys in Russia in the early 20th century did stuff that no one had ever done before, they were so excited about the brave new society they were building, the work is so full of energy and belief. 5 years later Stalin took power and the artists that had hoped for so much from their new world they had helped create got strangled and silenced by it. From about 30’s on, the art is all about social realism. There’s a little gloomy painting in one of the halls that shows a Soviet destroyer firing towards the Finnish shore during the Great Patriotic War.
Bolshoy Theater again, Philipp Götz on another flip. He knows how to do those.
Albina takes a swing while Jean-Marc is working on the bs tail on the rail earlier
Götz and a fs flip down the flower gap. Bas hit his head on this session, I think.
