Gabriel og Bjarne
Let’s face it shared parts are a dying breed. Obviously in recent years some filmers have made valiant efforts at keeping the dream alive, and Pekka is one of them, but with ‘full-lengths’ getting shorter, the standalone straight-to-the-Internet parts dominating the video landscape, and this ‘me me me’ era social media has plunged skateboarding in (whether we like to admit or not), it’s hard not to reminisce fondly of the days when of all your favourite skaters’ Transworld parts would come with an almost equal amount of footage from supporting acts we were just as eager to see footage of.
Now obviously this ancient tradition stems from two skaters being close friends, predominantly skating the same city, having the same sponsors, going out with the same filmer, etc., so in that respect Pekka’s latest piece isn’t that unusual. On the other hand, thinking back to the duos that shaped the genre, in a lot of cases their skating had a similar vibe, or at least they skated similar spots with a loosely similar approach. Flo and Alex were both combining crazy manuals with tech hucking, Jerry and Louie were both on a mission to make skateboarding look at fun as possible, Rick and Mike were both effortlessly flowing around SF and LA, and so on. But in this case, Bjarne’s and Gabriel’s skating are as different as it gets. Obviously Rob G was burly, powerful and charged full speed at what was in front of him, which is not exactly the same as doing switch flip front blunts, but still. Here it’s a case of someone with GT-esque board control, hitting at all sorts quirky banks and effortlessly balancing long rails, in a way that always feels extremely measured, mixed in with someone who’s completely unpredictable from the moment he pops his tail to the moment he rolls away on a snapped board. Both are doing mad shit, and you can’t stop watching either of them, but it’s for completely opposite reasons. It makes no sense at all, but then somehow they meet in the middle (as in Oslo’s Rådhuset three-stair ledge), and suddenly it makes all the sense in the world.
Kindly supported by Vans 🙂
