Rouen King Of Wood
October 01, 2008 @ 4:32 PM
The last weekend in June of this year saw a lot of action piled up over the space of one weekend. Copenhagen, Ravenna, Game Of Skate Finals in Prague and the King Of Wood in Rouen, France all lined up over the same 72 hour period. We elected to cover new ground this year and head to the North of France for what is probably the biggest domestic event in the country. Numbers were swollen by the nearby presence of the Battle Of Normandy, one of the now- ubiquitous King Of The Road copies which all seek to deny being just that.
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RUBEN RODRIGUES- BS FLIP
C1rca, Element and Metropolitan were certainly well represented as well as the party in a can which is Austria’s Yama crew, who rocked up in the Mystery Machine and kept the metal chords ploughing all weekend long.
The event was split between street and bowl, but a word first of all on the street course- gnarly. Bookended at one end by the biggest, steepest bank configurations available which were interspersed with sub- banks, stairs- to bank and all sorts of dangerous pitfalls.
So who was having it then? Ruben Rodrigues was. Big 360 flip the whole funbox I couldn’t ollie. Pirkka Pollari was, to the tune of a one man demo down the small double set and a fat backside bigspin the big flight for contender in the best trick.
Muki Rustig was- despite judging he frontside ollied the biggest stone hubba (stone hubbas indoors are a nice touch). Joseph Biais and Adrien Bulard were gangster all weekend- Bulard with a backtail on a flat ledge and into the super big bank after a faceplant on the same, frontboard kickflip out(!!!) on a handrail, switch backside heelflip the big double set after 360flipping them too.
The other guy who had it in street and in bowl was Sam Partaix, who frontside bluntslid the big hubba (well gangster) and slipped out of the landing on a nosebluntslide on the same (gangster in itself). Bowl was a weekend- long dogfight between Ferit Batir and Guillaume Mocquin, with Seb Daurel, Morgan Fabvre (how good is that guy?) and Julien Benoliel fanning the flames too.
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Guillaume Mocquin is a natural. Soma staffers Fred Demard and Bertrand Trichet had a good nibble at the bowl too- crail slide over the beathbox from an editor? Not this one. Soma rules.
The evenings saw a couple of small parties, Kevin Metallier got punched by a bouncer, but otherwise there was not much extra- curricular shenanigans to report. Chloe, Cedric and the guys from the park are keen to make King Of Wood a more international affair going forward and they may have to on the poor showing from France’s domestic brands- no Logo, no Rare, no Plex, no Anagram, no Trauma, no Cliché, no Antiz teams were present and they missed out.
The park itself is good enough to host a major event, but more planning into the planning, catering and scheduling wouldn’t go a miss, and given the location of the park in the middle of an industrial estate, a beer outlet would have been nice too.
Many thanks to Chloe, Cedric and the Carhartt crew
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