Tag: kerem elver

Some would say it was bad luck and some would say that it was meant to be this way. Here is an explanation by Dan himself why the new video is called unfinished:

“Due to harddrive issues in the past, a lot of the corresponding footage got lost. This is the fragment of THE UNFINISHED VIDEO from 2017.”

Featuring Manuel Mayr, Johannes Schirrmeister, Tabo Löchelt, Stephan Weimar, Sascha Scharf, Niklas Stube, Juan Carlos Aliste, Kerem Elver, Roland Hirsch, Banden B, Molly, Valle Ott, Kanya Spani & Quirin Staudt.

Let’s keep it as short as the name – A new one by Dan Schulz feat.: Oliver Weismantel, Sascha Scharf, Banden B, Franz Zechlin, Farid Ulrich, Sami Harithi, Dustin Bialas, Patrick Rogalski, Sascha Daley, Arthur Kiviliov, Kanya Spani, Kerem Elver, Panos Loupis, Daniel Ledermann, Lukas Bigun, Marco Kada & Tabo Löchelt.

If you have ever been to Berlin chances are you have heard somebody scream HACK HACK! But what is Hack Hack and what does it mean? What are those videos popping up with Hack in the title, and who is behind them? The answers to those and many other questions were answered when we connected with Farid Ulrich and Vincent Heller.

Interview by Roland Hoogwater.

What is Hack Hack?

Farid
That is hard to define! While we were traveling through South America people often asked us the same question… How did we explain it again?

Vince
It is a vibe Hack Hack is the moment that you get hyped to do something. It originated in Bar 25 it where we were looking for motivation to do something. Along the way, the word trickled out of the bar, onto the streets and into skateboarding. It was a joke and it has turned into somewhat of a saying.

What was the first Hack moment you can remember?

Vince
Bar 25… that must have been 2010, I think… That is when the first Hack happened.

It made me think of Hakken a high energy Dutch dance style from the 90’s.

Farid
Ah… Do you mean those people with track suits and shaved heads?

Yes! (illustrates dance)

Vince
That suits the meaning of Hack too! Those guys were certainly hyped!

Back to Hack Hack, how did you guys get the idea to make videos?

Farid
We sit together to edit, smoke and try and make the best of the footage. Two heads have more ideas than one.

Vince
I film more than I edit because I noticed I don’t have the patience to just sit there. At the same time, Farid has a good feeling for what works.

What was the first Hack video?

Farid
The first Hack video we did was Hackelona, after that, we released CopenHacken and Hack Hack is our third video.

Vince
I started filming during our travels, I always carried a camera and I started playing around with it more and more. So the video happened when we started taking the camera along for our Berlin sessions. So instead of documenting our travels, it became more of a day to day thing.

The funny thing is we did not plan to make a full length, we just started to edit footage, linking certain things together. After a while, we watched the result and thought ” Oh..this works maybe we should create an actual video.”.
So then we made parts, separate from one another and then we tried to fit those parts together. It was kind of like a puzzle.

I got a flashback to Radio Skateboards “Radioactive Kids” when I watched the video. It showed me a kind of Berlin that I did not think existed anymore.

Vince
That is exactly what we wanted, documenting our lives in Berlin and by our I mean all that cross our path.

Farid
When you see the video you have to keep in mind the fact that these people are not all in the same crew. Vince and I just move in between crews and documented what we saw.

Vince
In the end, we turned it into one big Hack family.

Farid
We did not want to compromise, we wanted to show the people we liked and have them skate to the music we liked!
Often I work with people when I make a video part so it was important for our project to reflect us.

So, It is not like watching a homie video, it is a scene being documented.

Farid
Yes, plus the people that visited the City.

Did you show Hack Hack to people in South America?

Farid
We did, we watched it multiple times and it took me back in time, back to these places. It was a real good feeling! Hack Hack!

What about the footage from that trip, Will there be another Hack?

Farid
It took me some time but yesterday I started checking the footage from that tour and there will be something. At the same time Joscha Aicher and Daniel Ledermann are staying with us so maybe one of them will jump down a building or something.

Vince
The next Hack will be a video focused on South and North America, that will take us some time, with editing and all.

Farid
International Hack

Or Hackernational

Vince
It will be called something like that. First I want to focus on editing and summer in Berlin, I will pack my camera in my backpack and we will see what happens. Maybe this winter we will make the final Hack videos but who knows.

Farid
I just want to say we are not interested in being clean or great filming we want to show our lives and if there is a glitch somewhere we will include it, watch it and laugh about it.

Farid
That is exactly how I filmed my last trick. I was playing around and got the idea to manual over the tracks.

Vince
Just a Smoked out idea!

Farid
And an hour later it was done.

Vince
I think for a lot of people the Hack experience feels like a break from sponsored life. No main spots just hanging out and looking for the next spot. With a high chance of drinking a beer at the end of the day.

Thank you guys and HACKHACK!

I’ve literally been going on skateboard tours for half of my life now. Ever since I got my drivers license back in 1990, I have constantly been on the road in search of skateable terrain, regularly leaving my hometown with a trunk full of equal-minded skateboard folk.

The first tour I remember saw me and two local homies going North in my tiny Fiat Uno. Not only did we put many miles on the Uno during our adventurous three-day stint into the unknown, we also slept and cooked in it. That kind of road life was absolutely normal to us back then; mostly because we didn’t even think about it. We were inexperienced, hyped on riding Canadian maple boards, and still healthily ignorant. The entire tour had nothing “professional” about it. No strings attached. No trick-manual or to-do-list.

Laif-Draasch
Laif Draasch – FS Boardslide

Nevertheless, I did bring my camera on tour to cover our 50-50s, boneless-ones and early grabs for an upcoming issue of the Zine I was publishing at that time, called Read and have Fun. That was not only the name of my DIY-magazine, but our overall motto back then: To “have fun” skateboarding. We still knew nothing about the concept of ABDs (“Already Been Done” tricks) and other media politics – probably because they just didn’t exist back then. We were just a couple of Freebirds. Absolutely.

Many years, and several ”Freebird Tours” later, I gave up some of my freedom for voluntary captivity by starting my own skateboard company. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that I was about to get my wings clipped. In the early days of company ownership, everything still seemed to be just fun and games. Nothing ”professional” about it. All sessions – no meetings. No pre-book line catalogues. No Fall/Winter collections. No Spring/Summer season – to us, that was just ”Skateboard Season“.

mob-skateboards-alicant

Now fast forward 15 years. Fast forward to today. I still make a fly-by-night living by selling skateboards, but after 15 years of doing this professionally, I know which way most of the cookies crumble in the skateboard marketplace. They crumble mostly at the thin line between caring and not caring. As a skate company, you have to be in the peoples’ eyes, ears and brains – which ultimately will lead you into the comfort of their open wallet. That’s how you make a living selling almost anything – including yourself if you’re a sponsored skateboarder. You need to show off your brand. You have to get people hyped. And one way to reach your target group is by going on a skateboard tour with your teammates.

As opposed to Freebird-style touring, there is actually something professional about it. Here’s the set formula behind how skateboard company tours work: Travel to exotic destinations and get the adrenalin-fueled action covered. Bring home still and moving images. The bigger the stunts, the better. Then get your tour featured in a major magazine. Ten pages. No less.

alicante

Simultaneously, blog, post and Instagram the shit out of the footage you and your team gathered. Edit some video clips. Make sure to keep them under three minutes. Release them within the next two months in conjunction with blogging the second tries and alternative angles on tumblr. Then wait a month – and do it again. And again. And again. It’s like you gotta stir ‘em good if you wanna move ‘em!

cpt.-cracker

People know me as Captain Cracker, and I have never have been a captain known to exploit his own crew. I’m not out there pushing the performance of my team overboard for the sake of publicity. Probably because I’m still clinging to that feeling I had back when I went on those early Freebird trips. Good times over bangers. BBQs over ABDs. But for a skateboard company owner in the digital age, that kind of sentiment is quite romantic. Nothing but an analog luxury, if you look at it from the modern business perspective of things. The omnipresent Internet of today is a multi-headed Hydra always ready to toss its wireless tongue relentlessly at the potential customer. The Internet is the major player in almost every business now – and in order to stay in the Game of Skate you, as a brand or branded skateboarder, have to feed this hunger.

alex-ullmann-wallride
Alex Ullmann – FS Wallride

You have to supply for the demand for anything by everyone. Your brand has to stay afloat in those social timelines, blogs, posts and Google rankings – otherwise you’ll be sinking to the bottom of the digital quicksand and, ultimately, slip into digital oblivion. Millions have already become hooked, so millions of us are feeding that beautiful beast on a daily basis trying to stay within the highest favor of its audience. We all want “Likes” by the thousands, let’s admit it…

Ullmann
Alex Ullmann – FS 5-O

The online world is the Golden Calf of the digital age. Most of us just haven’t yet realized that we have begun to worship it almost above all else. This ignorance of reality is what puts the pressure on us all to perform in the digital realm. We put on a performance, an act, trying to stoke the wireless masses. And in the process, we tend to forget all about just having a good time exclusively by and for ourselves; at least every once in a while. Myself included. In 2013, after a King of the Road-style tour for a major skateboard magazine, I found myself feeling that this had definitely been my last skateboard tour.

The ”Mission Manual”, the book containing our daily challenges for this tour, was the essence of what I had begun to dislike about the status-quo of skateboarding. Always try for the impossible. Not because it’s so much fun but because the gnarlier it gets, the more “likes” and followers your content will be generating. Until ultimately, it will go absolutely viral – get insanely hyped throughout cyberspace – and satisfy millions of people momentarily with a little bit of something.

denkie

So when Archie, our team manager, mentioned organizing another skate tour, I wasn’t exactly all gung-ho about it. I even had doubts about going at all. I didn’t want to see the boys smashing themselves to pieces again for hours on end trying to land that one trick – the one that had never been done before at this spot. ”Can’t we just have stupid fun for once?” I asked myself and then thought: “Yeah! We could, but it would NOT go over so well in the magazine feature of the tour if we didn’t even try to stoke the shit out of the skateboarding world with our performance.”

mob-alicante

”Why not?” the Freebird twittered in response from the left half of my brain. ”We’re fucking skateboarders. We can do whatever we like!”

So that’s what we did! The team and I agreed on going on another tour under the premise that we would keep this tour strictly about having a good time. Thus the title, “Good Times in the Front, Kicktail in the Back!” That was our motto, all the way to Alicante, Spain. And look at us now: Here we are! Full tour feature in a major magazine! Ten pages! No less! And all we did was have some simple stupid fun, just for once in a while.

kerem-elver

Watch out for the footage of this trip – edit dropping tomorrow!

by Cpt. Cracker
Photos: Danny Sommerfeld

When we arrived at the Nike Store located at Ku’damm, we had our iced coffee’s ready. The sun was out and spirits high up. Nike gave us the possibility to do the city tour that we always wanted to do. Not once did we drive past tourist traps like Unter den Linden, but we got to see skate tourist locations like Kulturforum and others. Our hosts were telling us about the ABD’s, while at the same time hollering at almost every person we drove past.

Three spots were on our menu – when we got to the first spot (Spot der Visionäre) the show really seemed to start. Not just for us as skaters but for all to see.
The best thing about the Nike SB bus tour was that it not only showed skaters around the city, it showed other people the many ways skaters use the city. Win-win situation.

Winners:

Spot 1: Valentin Ott (Spot der Visionäre)
Spot 2: Casper Brooker (Gleisdreieck)
Spot 3: Quirin Staudt (Nationalgalerie)

Ist wirklich alles so schlecht? Ist unser Ruf am Boden? Was wird die Zukunft bringen? Wir wissen es nicht, doch sind auf unserer Recherche durch die Skateboard-Republik über die Berliner Biermeile gestolpert. Auf dem Spielplatz deutscher und internationaler Braukunst haben Patrick Rogalski und Kerem Elver ihr Unwesen getrieben und mit ihren Skateboards ordentlich Stimmung gemacht, im vorbildlichen Sinne der Völkerverständigung und Nächstenliebe. Na dann, Prost!

PLACE 048 ist ab sofort im Handel oder online erhältlich.

Unsere Nachbarn östlich der Bundesrepublik lassen nicht oft von sich hören, umso mehr wundert man sich dann, wenn auf einmal ein Schinken um die Ecke kommt, der sich definitiv nicht verstecken muss. „Grey Area“ ist ein Skateboard-Film von Kuba Kaczmarczyk und Pawel Piotr Przybl aus Polen dessen auf-die-Fresse-Soundtrack und VHS-Sequenzen einem zum hin- und herschaukeln auf der heimischen Couch bringen. Es folgt der erste Part von Danijel Stankovic aus Schweden.



„Voll Bock“
ist der erste Part des MOB Skateboard Videos mit allem was dazu gehört – Skater, die sich auf den Hosenboden legen, Geld, Frauen und Waffen. Mehr Bock.

Kyle Walker hat einen Part raus, der sich a) gewaschen hat und b) ihn absolut auf die Karte als Super-Newcomer setzt. Definitiv der beste Full Part des Wochenendes.

Im Sommer ging es für die Amerikaner und das deutsche C1RCA Team quer durch Deutschland. Die Demos wurden mit Bratwurst und Bier gefeiert und Gerrit Piechowski hat das ganze verfolgt,festgehalten und für euch die Highlights mit Musik verpackt. Viel Spaß bei der Brat’s & Brew’s Tour Part1 mit u.A. Walker Ryan,Robbie Brockel, Windsor James, Kerem Elver und Florian Westers.

Der Monday Mix startet diese Woche mit einem Clipfeuerwerk. Wir haben das Wochenende zu einem “Best-Of” verpackt und übernehmen somit für euch die Suche nach den Fundstücken der letzten Tage und Stunden. Den Anfang machen Franzosen in Converse Tretern.

Das DECE Vid präsentiert den 2. Trailer und lässt, u.A. auf einen Brian Delatorre und Yaye Popson Part warten.

Zurück in die Vergangenheit mit Antiz und Julian Dykmanns, der seit kurzem nicht mehr für die französiche Company fährt. Die Jungs hauen zum Abschied seinen 1. Part raus.

Wir bleiben bei den Klassikern, genauer gesagt eher amerkanischer Geschichte. Blind Skateboards zeigt Ronnie Creagers und James Craigs Part, aus dem Rodney vs. Daewon Round 2, in einem Blind Sunday Fundays auf Transworld Skateboarding.

Tas Pappas bekommt ein Guest Board auf Cliché Skateboards und feiert dies, mit einem Part in der Vertikalen.

In Deutschland gibt es 2 Neuzugänge zu verkünden. Zum einen ist Steven “Stevie” Schmidt neu auf ERGO Clothing und zeigt euch, wie man in der Trannie Spaß haben kann..

..zum anderen fährt Alexander Hasert jetzt für den Wasted Box Skateshop in Köln.

Wir bleiben in der Bundesrepublik. Das amerkiansche Circa Team hat Bier und Bratwurst ausgegeben und zeigt euch vorab diesen Teaser, bevor der eigentliche Tourclip erscheint.

Zwar kein Bier oder Bratwurst, dafür aber eine Delikatesse für die Augen. Small Wheels cruist durch den Garvanza Skatepark, mit Leuten wie u.A. Austyn Gillette, James Craig und Ben Fisher.

Den Abschluß macht heute Nassim Guammaz, der in der DC Embassay zeigt, auf welchem Niveau man in Europa mittlerweile skatet.

Damit wünschen wir euch einen schönen Start in die neue Woche.

Marius Pierenkemper aka “Schneekind” aus Münster hat im Rahmen seines Abschlussfilms im Bereich Mediendesign die “Sk8 & Die” Dokumentation fertig gestellt. Protagonisten um Filip Labovic, Kerem Elver, Flo Westers oder Julius Dittmann beleuchten heutiges Skateboarding aus gesellschaftlichen Aspekten.

Es war für den gesamten Tag 90 % Regenwahrscheinlichkeit angesagt und dass gestartet werden konnte, war eigentlich schon ein Wunder. Am Ende gab es für den heutigen Elimination-Samstag drei Heats von sieben, denn nach mehren Regenpausen war schlußendlich gegen 16.30 Uhr Feierabend. Morgen geht es dann an dieser Stelle weiter, außerdem wird es den Bowl Contest geben. Fürs erste gut gerippt haben auf jeden Fall schon mal Robin Wulf, Jost Arens, Yannick Schall, Denny Pham und Hendrik Kaczmarek. Wir haben für euch ein paar Highlights des Tages zusammen gefasst.


Filmed and edited by Julius Krappe


Skatepark Hemer Overview – leider mehr grau als sonnig heute.


Dass Jeremy Reinhard von der Party letzte Nacht noch gezeichnet gewesen ist, lassen wir an dieser Stelle unkommentiert.


COS Crew – Mirko Holzmüller, Skatemedic Sönke, Tobi Hunger und MC Luther bei einem der unzähligen Nieselchecks.


Alex Mizurov wäre der nächste Starter gewesen, hätte es nicht geregnet. Morgen dann aber.


Vladik Scholz back on track.


Kerem Elver


Yannick Schall und Stig Breu


Robin Wulf und Wilko Grüning


Und dann war Schluß – auch für Alex Ring und Patrick Rogalski

Der Mob hat für 2013 sein neues Video “Voll Bock” angekündigt. Das wir nicht lachen, das schaffen die nie! Schon gar nicht mit Fahrern wie Danny Sommerfeld, Laif Draasch, Valentin Cafuk, Johannes Schön, Harrie Hachenberger, Alex Denkiewicz und Kerem Elver. Was hat sich Cptn. Cracker nur dabei gedacht? Iwan macht auf jeden Fall schonmal einen Anfang und vielleicht hält er ja doch durch. Wir wünschen es uns und freuen uns schon auf den Streifen, Digger.