Jante – 5:34
Video by Fritte Söderström.
Photography by Sam Ashley.
Words by Axel Lindquist.
Simon Hallberg, boardslide to fakie.
It feels like every person I meet tells me I should go to Georgia. That’s not true. Only every person who has been to Georgia tells me I should go there. Like, really urging me to go there. Yet while it’s said that word of mouth is the most reliable and effective type of advertising, every time I ask people about details of their visit, why I should visit, or what for, I get similar kind of vague and airy answers. Something about how it was “nice”, and that they had a “good time”. As if the visitors had to leave out some esoteric knowledge dedicated only to those who have made the trip. And while I’m no stranger to street-preachers trying to convince themselves by urging others to join, it’s unexpected from family and friends. At first, I thought that maybe there was a language barrier, that specific details like names of places and restaurants got lost in the scripts of the Georgian Mkhedruli alphabet. Or maybe they’ve actually found an elaborate way to gatekeep Georgia, inviting people unconstructively, like how grown men managed to balance public image and women-free skateparks for some decades. From the little I know, Georgia is a pretty easy sell: Cheese bread, good wine, fascinating history, nice people and warm weather. What’s not to like? But, with that being said, what I just described could’ve just as well been Italy or pretty much any other southern European country. I’m just exposing my ignorance for a chance to be wiser. Pretty much everything I know of Georgia can be read on Wikipedia, and the only specifics I’ve managed to elicit are from the article for the Puri video, Where have all the flowers gone?. Now, having been asked to write this article, I thought that this time, finally, I had a good chance to have someone elaborate a bit on their visit. After all, the Jante crew had spent ten days there – to skate and document their visit. A group of nerds and storytellers, perfect for the task of recounting some local places, events, people, personal trivia. I mean, it’s the Caucasus, inhabited by Amazons and the prison of Prometheus. It shouldn’t be that hard to give me something.
Tom Snape, frontside halfcab kickflip.
I made sure to book a table at a Georgian restaurant back in Stockholm, ordered Khachapuri and Natakhtari to get in the mood, and I sat down with Fritte, Vincent and Simon, and started asking them about the trip. It did start off pretty promising. With gleaming eyes, like some jolly labradors, Vincent and Simon looked at me, smiling, “Oh, it was great!”… Silence. A lot of different kinds of spots apparently, followed by, “We should go back there.”
I realised where this was heading, and my hopes of retaining interesting information, or at least somewhat relevant trivia, were soon dashed. They sang karaoke at a Thai place, and I could not really care less. They gave me nothing. It was like listening to a five-year-old talk about his day at the museum, for him only to describe how his friend spilt juice in the cafeteria. Fritte had developed some gnarly back pain from all the filming. Sam Ashley was in a good mood and wanted to eat and drink all the time. Uber was really cheap, apparently, so it was easy to miss out on spots. The most intriguing detail I got was Vincent telling me that in Tbilisi it’s common to build the water pipes above ground, resulting in pipe-rail kind of spots everywhere. That, and that Tbilisi apparently has a lot of cool stray dogs, that’s what I got.
Instead, I decided to hit up skateboard legend, today Tbilisi ambassador and Jante’s spot guide for their trip: Roman Ivanov. If you haven’t already, look up Roman’s skating online. Though me and him just wrote in a chat online, I’m instantly met with more substance than from all three skaters of flesh and bone in front of me. Yet, when asked about the local skate scene of Tbilisi, the answers are again short. That it’s basically just a couple of guys skating, with a lot of street spots for themselves.
Gustav Tønnesen, frontside 180 fakie undergrind.
Roman: “Talking about the local skate scene is not that hard for me because I see it every day. I love all things about it, but it’s hard. Like, here skateboarding I think is starting to grow right now, because of concrete skateparks. But they were all built in like the last five years, and in just Tbilisi right now there are around 20-25 skateparks. So you see more and more new kids that wanna learn how to skateboard, and maybe keep skating. So the skate community is growing here, and also the level of skating. I see it all every day, and it feels like now it can get better and better! But it only feels like this because you always want the best things to come.”
Simon Hallberg, alley-oop fakie 5-0.
Low industry – high spirit, kind of?
“Haha. Spirit is kinda tired as fuck every day. But yeah, I think that’s mostly due to the lack of industry here. Like, if locals are getting good and it seems like it’s time for some skate shop to give them some free boards and to start working with you – it’s not the way here. Maybe some discount, but rarely. There are some offices of Vans and Red Bull here, but they don’t really care about skateboarding. I wish they would start working with the skaters… In the right way.”
Tyler Surrey, frontside hurricane.
The Jante guys were hyped on the local scene, and hyped on how hyped you were.
“Man, actually it was the best birthday gift in my life. Like they all arrived a day after my birthday, and for the following ten days I was like in a skate movie every day watching those guys working on spots that I was showing them. They were getting some footy every day, whatever day it was, rainy, extreme wind or perfect California sun. Those guys… Those men! For real, those ten days are forged in my memory as one of the best times in my life! Like, every day was a great session, whatever the spot or weather. But what I liked most was how the guys were skating on the first day, in the main warm-up plaza, where our Puri ledge is standing. How they communicated with all the local kids and people around, it was so good to watch. How the guys were sharing time with them all, talking, waiting, suggesting something, showing them something – much love for it! And what Tyler filmed at the spot is like woooow. It hit the brain so hard. On such a small and difficult spot! Can’t wait to see it all in Fritte’s video.”
Vincent Huhta, gap to frontside tailslide.
Do you get a lot of skateboarding visitors to Tbilisi?
“As I see it, it’s not so much. Like it was a couple of years ago, some guys from Kazakhstan were here. I think only the Levi’s skate crew back in the day, and Patrik Wallner with his “Visual Travelling” project, were here. It’s not so hard to come to Tbilisi, and prices for rent and to eat here are not so high for a good quality service. So, I wish so much for more crews to come here, feel all this, see it live and get some bread on those still virgin spots… Believe me there’s a lot of them here and they all are like cinema!”
Axel Berggren, ollie nose tap frontside revert.
What should one know before going?
“If we’re talking about skateboarding, it’s like a hidden treasure kind of place. Because of the landscape and different styles of architecture here, you’ll find all kinds of spots in one city. It’s so chill and mellow. People here, if you care for them, like if you both share skateboarding, greet them and say hi, they’re gonna support you until the end, which can lead to a trick on private property and drinking their homemade wine in their backyard. Like, it’s insane to see that just a random person, who does not even skate, can support you for no reason. So I want more skateboarding crews to come here and take part in this small local scene, and have a great time like we all have here! It’s cheap and interesting, good, clean service at places or cafes, a lot of interesting ways to travel and see some stuff around Georgia. Summer is hot, but it’s the best time to come anyway, also spring and autumn. Winter is good too, but more dead.”
Simon Hallberg, crooked grind.
And what’s your experience of the skate scene in the rest of the Caucasus region?
“There is one, but not quite as many people as there could be. I think it’s all about the culture around you – if it’s accommodating or not. For example, I was in Armenia not so long ago, and I loved the way it looked. It’s quite a good place to be for a couple weeks, see something new, travel around and skate. But for skateboarding, it is not the greatest in my experience. I met almost all of the local skaters, there are not many, but the guys are so good. A couple of the guys have a ‘must-see-it-live’ level of skating. Felt blessed to be skating with them out there those days.
Then I visited the one and only concrete skatepark, and man, it’s the most shitty place in the world. It’s as terrible as a skatepark can be, and when I heard the price for this park… I couldn’t believe it. There are a lot of police and private property in the city. People are a little bit aggressive around you, always like, “What the fuck are you doing?”, or, “Hey, stop that noise!” or “Go somewhere else!” and other classic anti-skateboarding things. And almost everything is made from a soft stone material that is easy to break and that doesn’t grind or slide at all, no matter how much you wax it. Maybe it hurt my mind, because I came straight from Tbilisi, where everyone is so welcoming and supportive around you in the streets. So I think it’s the main difference between the countries, because Azerbaijan is almost the same. I have not been there for like ten years, but I met some people from there, and from what they were telling me it sounds like nothing’s changed. There is this one story that is too good. So they were planning the first concrete skatepark, a big one, near the sea, like a dream place for an all-Azerbaijani community. They had been waiting for it for a very long time, and it seemed that it was going to be great. So the park was planned near the biggest shopping mall of Baku, and the main thing about Baku is that they host Formula 1 almost every year, like in the city centre. It all becomes a racetrack. So when they finally built the first and only legit concrete park, a good park, not perfect but not like the Armenian piece of shit skatepark, it was located on the parking lot right next to a premium-class restaurant, attracting car people practising drifts near the restaurant. Now the skatepark is closed because of the skate noise. They don’t care about the noise or bad air from the cars, but the noise from skateboards… Now the skatepark is under security 24/7 and nobody can use it. So it’s like a fucking monument to money wasting! What I was trying to say with all that is that these places are good to visit, to see, experience and skate around as a tourist, but living there as a local skater is hard. Much respect for the Azerbaijani and Armenian skateboarding communities. Someday it will all work out, or maybe not, nobody knows.”
Nisse Ingemarsson, ollie.
What happened? We’re not even talking about Georgia anymore. Back at the restaurant in Sweden the discussion has drifted from haphazard details to completely irrelevant personal quarrels. Apparently there occurred some friction between the guys during the trip, on how one should approach life and skateboarding, between the two camps of check-grabbing clout chasers and satisfied laissez-faire bohemians. Now, while that sounds like a super interesting conversation, trying to qualify a life to be satisfied with, discussing it weighing different sets of values, I can’t figure out how this is to enlighten me about Georgia and Tbilisi? My mind starts drifting and I find myself musing about how every wheel that rolls spins but not every wheel that spins rolls, and similarly, while every intriguing detail about the trip would contain some information, not every piece of information from their trip is necessarily very intriguing. I thank Ghmerti that one of the best attributes of skateboarding is that it speaks for itself, and that the Jante crew are, after all, some of my favourite skaters and filmer. Vincent, Simon and Fritte will probably do a better job of showing Tbilisi than talking about it. And for any kind of information, I’m left to defer to Roman on this one.
Tom Snape, switch backside 180 to 5-0.
And besides skating, what should one see, visit, and experience in Georgia?
“Oh man, the first thing is the traditional Georgian cuisine. It’s insanely tasty. Next one is the nature around the city. In such a small territory, there are a lot of cool hiking places, hills, forests, national parks, lakes and waterfalls. It’s wow, I’m telling you. By car, it’s from one hour to maybe three, maximum. Nature is the key! But it’s so hard to speak on… It’s kinda a secret that I don’t want to spread. If you want to know the answer, you must just visit Tbilisi and see it all live!”
Finally I can lean back in the plastic knitted chairs of Tbilissis Corner in Stockholm, plates and glasses empty, sweating the thought that we’re supposed to go skating. I now understand there is only one thing I should know about Georgia: I should go there.
Simon Hallberg, backside tailslide gap-out.
