The Skate park jam 2016 went down at the Shangilia Skate
park in Nairobi, Kenya by Skate-aid.org on the 9th August from 2:30p.m. Those
who came early were given Neff watches for keeping time – they were passed out
by Daniel Gluche. This all happened as I was travelling to the there.
I decided to help out in the smooth running of the contest; I
hadn’t skated for 2 weeks give or take. Meanwhile, at the park there was good turnout
of skaters and some spectators. Not like in the previous contests where only a
handful people had arrived early. After a relatively short time, the skate jam
breakdown was established. The participants who were playing, the judges namely
Jack from the Uganda Skateboard Union(USU) and Ben from the Skateboarding
Society of Kenya (S.S.K) and two of the volunteers Tanguy; He was initially a
judge then he chose to film the whole event instead. From inquiring from Timothy
– the time keeper, he was recovering from past injuries.
Afterwards, came signing up of all the participants all 12
of them. Among them was Gilbert visiting from Uganda part of USU - well who
doesn’t know JB, he’s so entrenched in the group that his Kiswahili is almost
parallel to that of “wenyeji” meaning the inhabitants of Kenya. To break ground,
we agreed(JB, Daniel, Ben, Jack and others) that each person will be given 60 seconds in the first run to do their
best runs in the park - on any obstacle, sort of like the flow category in the
street league About Street
League ; This was done twice. Then the judges were to give the max score.
That’s when commotion
commenced; Ben had his own way of scoring the participants whereas, Jack had
his own way. This lead to a lot of confusion which was quickly resolved by
Daniel. The ones who did reasonable lines and won in the tie breaking game of
S.K.A.T.E leading to 6 finalists.
Later, the Obstacles were defined in the next part of the jam,
however, those who were late and were still eager to participate had a chance
now. This was a breather for the judges since now it was just looking for the
best trick right? Not quite, it was even more harder because the number of
people were taking part increased.
So this is how it went down. 5 minutes on the London gap; do
your best trick over that obstacle. After ollies, boneless’, failed attempts.
Kelvin Maina landed a Tre flip over there and seized a win for that obstacle. Next,
came the manual pad. More variety here, again Kelvin won it single handedly
with a K-grind. Nonetheless, someone interrupted JB in his run which led to a
broken thumb. This is not cool.
The Big rail followed
– this is where Bjorn Hallberg did a FS boardslide last year. Boneless 180 to 50-50
grind, Backside 180 to boardslide subsequently, came a half cab boardslide; it
topped any other trick done there. Is it me or is Kelvin, just unstoppable in
the park. What if he had come early? Couldn’t wait to see more of his “beasting”.
The Big stair
thereafter, that was the scariest place to land trick though Mark was the most
interesting dude. Here’s the word sum it “shredittilydead” was probably his
mantra since he tried the same trick over and over to no avail. Everyone
cheered him on; he almost landed his pop shove it there. Sam tried a frontside
180 which would probably would win that category; he ran short. George, the “switch
master” tried his boneless 180 and held the crown there.
Then, came the Bowl.
I’m not too good at identifying tricks there except nose pick Indy grab – I consulted
Daniel to confirm done by Gilbert. What you expect from a Uganda skater.
After figuring out who won on each category by the judge -
currently Daniel; they quickly announced the winners and they were awarded. As
prizes were passed out, someone jumped from the big stair to grab a t-shirt.
Boy was he courageous second only to Kratos from the video game series God of
War.
Finally, I’d like to thank Skate-aid, Daniel, the volunteers
Tanguy, Timothy and Pierre, Wall street skate shop(Lyon, France), Blaze supply,
Anitz skateboards, Neff, for their support and equipment which were disseminated
to the winners. We are looking forward to working with you, now and in the
future. Also, I’d like to recognize our friends from the Uganda Skateboard Union
for coming to the event and helping us here and there.
Written by Shuyin Ben
Edited by Rocker Mwaxx and Shuyin Ben
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