BOMBAKLATS: Rob Maatman and Shajen Willems
Rob Maatman – The Bombaklats
I’ve known Rob since the beginning. We come from a small town in the east of Holland, called Deventer. When I had only been skating for one and a half years, I met his little brother Jelle at Burnside skatepark. He didn’t have a skateboard, so he wanted to try my board. I taught him to drop in. Miraculously he did it on the first attempt. A week later I was at the park again and Jelle came up to me and asked if Rob could skate my board, Rob himself was too shy to ask. I let Rob ride my skateboard a couple times.
I went to Morocco for four weeks and when I got back I saw that he could do boardslides down rails in only four weeks of skating; then I knew how much talent he had. Since then we’ve been skating together all the time. I had to keep up! It didn’t work out though; he was learning five tricks a day. This guy is made for skating. No one has seen him do the tricks I’ve seen him do. For me he was already a pro skater six years ago; I hope his sponsors will see this one day. He can do everything!
– Rachid Addou
Shajen Willems – The Bombaklats
Shajen is one of the realest, coolest guys. I used to look up to him when I was a young‘un hanging out in the city of Rotterdam. We used to ride for the same skate shop back in the day. He’s always been the chill, laid-back dude that he is today, only better. Like fine wine Shajen is only getting better with age. He’s always down to go skate, he knows what’s good, and he never stays down, he’s always getting back up, that’s something I really appreciate about him. Shajen is always in a positive mind state. That’s why I like to skate and chill with him. He’s still so underrated though… In my opinion he deserves way more; people don’t know yet what he’s capable of. Soon they’ll know.
– Nassim Guammaz
Filmed and Edited by Sami El Hassani and Jan Maarten “Sneep”
