Tag: Kenny Reed

For Transworld’s recent Cinematographer Project Patrik Wallner and his as well-knwon as well-traveled crew featuring Denny Pham, Walker Ryan, Michael Mackrodt, Laurence Keefe, Kenny Reed and Phil Zwjisen (who, by the way, is also going to have an article in our upcoming print issue) chose Japan to be the country to explore. Since seemingly whole Asia is kind of a home game for Patrik you may have high expectations for this edit for sure! If you are interested read the full Transworld interview of Patrik here.

Kirill Korobkov manages the Russian skateboard brand Absurd and is one of the contributors for Place Project Russia. He is a well-known figure in both the Russian and the world wide skate scene. He traveled the world with people like Kenny Reed, Keegan Sauder, Jonathan Mehring, Jack Sabback, Patrik Wallner and many more. During our trip to Sotchi, I found out that Kirill was wearing a very special item of clothing, a brown and tan flannel shirt. I was curious and asked him, if he could tell me what the story about his flannel button up (shown above).

It’s a shirt from Van Wastell, not his pro-model shirt but an actual shirt he used to wear. I met Van a long time ago (8 to 10 years ago) when we did a tour traveling with the Trans-Siberian Railway. This trip happened about two years before, I did the trip with Patrick Wallner (Visual Traveling project). The trip with Van was about a month long and during this month we all became really good friends. Van was an amazing guy on and off the board. He was endearing himself to people where ever he went even though, he couldn’t speak Russian.
By the end of the tour we all got matching “stick and poke“ tattoos of a mirrored R. This Я has a special meaning, it means “me” and at the same time it is the symbol for “railroad”. The funny thing is that Keegan wasn’t exactly an experienced tattoo artist so the first tattoos looked totally different from the last ones. Luckily, I was last to get it, so mine looks perfect.
Actually Van gave the shirt to Kenny Reed at first. He had it for a while until I visited Kenny once in Barcelona. Kenny was living a chaotic life at that time and he was afraid to lose the shirt and that’s why he gave it to me. Since that moment I’ve been wearing the shirt from time to time.

Unfortunately, Van tragically died in Berlin about three years after the tour. For that reason, wearing the shirt became something really ritual to me since that accident happened.

Schermafbeelding 2016-02-04 om 10.12.07

Kirill and his Я tattoo.

All photos by: Alexey Lapin
Interview by: Roland Hoogwater

Von Patrik Wallner ist man ja mittlerweile einiges gewohnt – zumindest was außergewöhnliche Reiseziele angeht… Gibt es eigentlich Länder auf dieser Welt, die Patrik noch nicht bereist hat? Hinter den Iran, Aserbeidschan, Georgien und die Türkei kann er jetzt jedenfalls auch sein Häkchen setzen, denn dorthin hat es ihn mit seiner Truppe um Denny Pham, Lawrence Keefe, Kenny Reed, Michi Mackrodt und Phil Zwijsen zuletzt verschlagen… Orte an denen Skateboarding nicht wirklich präsent ist und doch stattfindet. Superinteressante Doku mit starken Bildern, die man auf jeden Fall gesehen haben sollte! Wow!

What can i say… skateboarding has once again taken us to a bizarre part of the world. Never thought we would be filming tricks in downtown Tehran, Iran if you asked me a couple years ago. Very pleased to present ‘The Persian Version’. Enjoy a journey from Iran to Turkey via the usual land transportation in our continuous trek zigzagging around the Eurasian peninsula.

www.visualtraveling.com