Lots of Updates Here for You
The really, really, really, BIG update.
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Chapter 1: Intermot, September, Munich, Germany
I should at least mention that I was around. The Intermot is one of Europe’s biggest motobikes&scooters tradeshow. They had a really nice outdoorpark where everybody was able to ride on the newest MX bikes. But they wouldn’t let me do it since I got no driver’s licence for motobikes. They also had a smaller parcour for kids. It was really fun to watch those little ones riding their tiny bikes. They also had different kinds of shows going on. They had a trail show there and an FMX one. Riders like Kris Brock, Basti Wolter and Steve Cussins were around. The niveau was set pretty low since there were no real pros around. I also met Jake there which was fun.
Chapter 2: BoomBoomHuckJam, October, San Diego, California
I think this is what most of you expected me to write about. It took quite a while to finish it if you want to know why just check out my postings on the message board.
Some time by the end of September I wrote Tony an email because I got my own band now and I wanted to know which band-name he’d prefer: Blood Runs Black, Loaded With Sin or The Cherrybombs. He replied:
Cherrybomb is definitely the best. Have fun in the Zurich rain…
Our tour starts in a week – holy shit. 24 cities in the U.S. Check out
www.boomboomhuckjam.com if you’re interested.
Stay raw,
Tony
I immediately checked it out and I was simply amazed. Tony put a huge event together. Just take the best skateboarders, FMX and BMX riders in the world, a halfpipe that costs 1mio US$, some of the best punkrockbands alive like Social Distortion, Devo or Face to Face et voila you got the BoomBoomHuckJam (which is quite a goofy name, I think…)
I called up Sandra and asked her if we should go there. She was up for it. Together we put somekinda plan together how we could get there. I emailed Frank and he was up for letting us stay at the Coolgrrrls headquaters. Tony agreed on an interview so we could sell it to some German mags. So we went to LAX on the 18th of October where Frank picked us up. He showed us around town and pretty much around everywhere in Orange County within such a short time. We also went to the Lucky 13 headquaters where we got to know Bobby and he showed us the whole place. It’s really amazing. It’s huge. They produce their stuff there completely by themselves. And the whole interior is designed like the graphics on the shirts; kitties, swallows and skulls everywhere. I want to work there! Then we were also allowed to grab some shirts and stickers which was way cool. On the second day after our arrival Frank took us to Webster‘s memorial. He died in that horrible terror attack in Bali, Indonesia. If you want to know further details just check out Frank’s own update. It was very emotional and a lot of surfers and friends showed up. (btw: hi sean!).
I could go on forever like this, but maybe I should cut it short. My highlights:
Shopping:
The hello kitty store, the electric chair, ron jon’s surfshop, vans store, the orange county fleamarket (there are a LOT of grrreat places to go if you got money to burn, I got broke within one week)…..
Eating:
The mexican restaurant close to the pier in Huntington Beach, the mexican one in San Diego and Frank’s BBQ.
Places:
Laguna Beach (beautiful beach, very clean, very nice town), Melrose (very arty, a good place if you need some inspiration), San Diego (a very very nice city), Newport Beach,… actually I like all the places I been to. We also went to Hollywood, Costa Mesa, Venice Beach,… we went like EVERYWHERE.
Things I’ve seen so I can show off:
The walk of fame (I’ve seen Johnny Cash’s star and the one of Lassie), the new Jackass movie which was simply hilarious (and it’s not yet in the cinemas overhere in Europe so I can really show off). We also went to the Vans skatepark where we met Steve Caballero. The Vans park is so sweet. I love love love it. There is a very nice halfpipe, a lovely streetcourse, a couple of really good miniramps, a pool and an outdoorpark. We went to the Getty museum, we been to some party where Sandra got to know two guys. They invited us to their pimp’n’hoes party. Well, everytime I tell my male mates overhere about the outfits of the girls at that party they all envy me. Hehe. And we met that super nice girl from Newport Beach: Jessy! She rocks!
Things that impressed me:
The public toilets are very clean, everybody from ages 5 to 50 is wearing fox racing gear shirts, super cool cars EVERYWHERE (pontiac, chevy, ford,…. all those really old, really hot cars), motoX riders, surfers, skateboarders EVERYWHERE….
We saw sooo much in such a short time and we had sooooooooooooo much fun. Thanks to Frank coz he took soooo good care of us. But I think I should start know with my report on the BBHJ (if you got some more questions concering my time in CA don’t be shy and email me). Thanks to a lot of margaritas and beers time went by very quickly and on Thursday, Oct. 24th Frank, Sandra and me hopped in his Jeep and drove off to San Diego. When we arrived at the San Diego Sports Arena, everybody was there except Tony but he showed up just when I started complaining. Unfortunately he didn’t have much time as all the athletes had to do their practice now. They had only one hour to prepare for the show. When the will call office opended eventually (we were waiting about 2 hours in front of it) a nice girl called Kristine showed up and she took care of all us press people. She led us to some kind of lobby with little tables and chairs around them. We were then supposed to choose a table, make a list with people we’d like to interview and she’d bring them to our table. I mean… hey… what was that? I didn’t expect that?! I thought it would be just like always you’d walk up to the guys and ask them if they were up for an interview spontaneously.. but nah.. everything is a little different in the US. So when she asked me who we’d like to interview I’d go like „uhm… just everybody…”. Then she left. After a few seconds a BMXer called John Parker showed up and we talked a bit about his wife and the show. He felt a little out of place just like I did so that was kinda nice. Then Kristine showed up again and with her an all-over-tattooed guy called Ronnie Faisst. I realized that I had seen that face before. Jake, me, Ronnie and Mike Cinqmars put a fire-extinguisher out on a loaded BMXer in Zurich about a year ago (read the whole story in one of my earlier updates). When I told Ronnie about it he laughed and could remember the whole thing pretty well. After that we did an interview:
After that Tony enterd the room and set next to us. We chatted a little and then we started the interview. Unfortunately I can’t post the whole interview here but I will post it as soon as it’s published in Germany. But here are the Q&As the coolgrrrls wanted me to ask him:
What do you think of girl skaters? Who is your favourite girl skater?
My favourite girl skater is.. uhm…Vanessa Torres… is that right?
Yeah.
She’s good. She‘s got good style. She’s young and she’s got the gift. I think a girl like her can really push girl skating into the limelight. You can see what’s possible at a young age. She can compete with the guys.
Will you have a girl skater as part of your entourage?
Maybe. I think if,… I’m not sure about it in this setting. Coz there’s not a lot of really good girl vert skaters but if we did the skaterpark tour again there’s gonna be some we would incorporate but honestly I don’t think we’ll do a skatepark tour again.
Frosted flakes or lucky charms?
Frosted Flakes.
Uhm… why does it say Marlin here, Frank? I think it should be Marylin Monroe since Marlin is a fish…. so Marylin Monroe or Madonna?
Uhh… gosh… I think Madonna. She just changes her looks so much. And she’s still alive.
If you weren’t a skater what do you think you’d be doing for a living?
Uuh. I don’t know. I’d probably be sitting behind a computer doing videoediting or webstuff. Something 9 to 5. Boring.
How’s becoming a father changed you?
Uhm. It just gave me a different sense of priorities and maybe just realized that there is more in life than just riding a skateboard
As I already said, I’ll post the whole thing later. But for those of you who can read German you can check out the link below and have a little look at what it looks like in whole length and full effect (but unfortunately in German):
www.unclesallys.de
After that we left that place of strange encounters and went to see the show. First of all Sandra and me wanted to buy some beers and we had little cultural difficulties. In Germany we have this very popular drink which is called Radler or Alster. The English word for it is Shanti but nobody (except Diane) seems to know it there. So I was like:
„I want a shanti.”
„A what?”
„A shanti. Half beer and half sprite.”
„Half beer and half sprite? Are you sure?”
„Yeah.”
So, if some of my American readers doesn’t know that drink yet, check it out it’s really tasty and refreshing. Frank and me watched the show at the press area while Sandra was down stairs, next to the ramp, taking pictures.
At first they had some kind of group sessions so the skateboarders (Tony Hawk, Andy MacDonald, Brian Howard, Bucky Lasek, Sergie Ventura, Lincoln Ueda and Shaun White) showed some tricks, then the BMX guys (Mat Hoffman, Dave Mirra, Kevin Robinson and John Parker), then the Moto guys (Ronnie Faisst, Mike Cinqmars, Carey Hart and Dustin Miller) and Rick Thorne hosted the whole show. After thshowing their vert skills they rode the big jump ramp. Shaun White did some really nice melon 360ies and Kevin Robinson almost killed himself when he tried a backflip. After the break DEVO played on a seperate stage while the riders did a freeridesession in the vert ramp. When DEVO played Tony’s favourite song „gates of steel” he got heated up and tried to do a 900. He bailed the first 4 or 5 attempts but when DEVO played the last part of the song he threw one down. The crowd was cheering, he was happy, we were happy, this was going to be a great night out. Then they had the grand finale when all the riders did some tricks in the vert ramp (all at the same time, of course) and the moto guys flew around them. It was a little to confusing for me and reminded me more on a popcorn machine then on a sports show but it was very entertaining. After the show we headed back to Huntington Beach with Frank „the cool uncle” Davern.
As I promised to publish an interview with Tony on my page here’s an exclusive one which I did after the whole BBHJ tour:
Would you say the tour was a success?
Definitely. We even sold out a couple of shows at the East Coast. Most of the athletes didn’t want it to end as opposed to being sick of travelling (like we usually are).
Was it like you expected it to be?
Better. I thought the shows would be repetitive after a while, but the riding continued to improve over the six-week period.
Where was the best show?
Boston. It was our biggest and loudest crowd.
Where was the biggest turn out?
Boston – 12,500 in attendance.
Did you enjoy the Social D performance?
Very much. Every show with them was a bundle of energy. Even though we did five shows in row, we never lost our enthusiasm.
What was your favourite band on the tour?
I have to go with Devo because I grew up listening to them and I never got to see them live before our tour.
Did Carey Hart’s girlfriend, Pink, show up?
She came to a couple of shows and even rode the bus between cities.
Was she cool and all raw?
She is cool and she can definitely hang on the road.
Sandra and me spent the rest of our time in CA with what we like most of all. Shopping, shopping, shopping, drinking beer and eating Mexican food. Thanks again to Frank for EVERYTHING, to Andy for showing us LA, to Diane, to Jonas from the Lonely Kings (although we didn’t make it to the show in Santa Cruz) and everybody how came to see us.
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Chapter 3: Night of the Jumps 2, October, Oberhausen, Germany
Sandra and me flew back to Munich on Oct 26th and it turned out to be a really rough ride as we had some kind of a hurricane blowing over Europe. 26 people died, fortunately we survived somehow. Just one week after our arrival we went to one of Europe’s biggest FMX events, www.ifmxf.com. A lot of really good riders showed up. Even Mike Metzger was there and Metal Mulisha Jeremy Steinberg. As I knew the Metz was around, I knew I was going to see my first back flip on a moto bike ever. I was all excited. But then bad news came our way. Mike did 6 backflips before the show started and bailed the last one. The thing is. You just can’t bail a backflip on a moto bike. So Metzger smashed and got a serious concussion. He couldn’t take part in the contest and I was really pissed. But whatever. The level was set very high especially because that crazy Australian Dayne Kinaird was around. He does combos (!!!!!!!) on a moto bike. I mean, combos like: shaolin bar hop to cliffhanger to whatever. It was sick! So sick! I almost forgot my disappointment about the missed back flip. Dayne won the contest which was really no surprise. But the rest of the riders were really good as well. Especially the high jump contest turned out to be one of the most entertaining parts of the show (usually it’s the most boring one) as the two riders just seemed to have rockets in their turbo mufflers and they just couldn’t set up a winner after both aired a height of 8, 20metres. So both of them won. After that we went to the obligatory after contst party which was a lot of fun but I guess we were all too tired so we couldn’t party that much.
Thanks to Quirin, Hannes, Clemens, Niki and Lukas for showing up.
Chapter 4: Resistance Tour, November, Munich, Germany
www.resistancetour.com
As you can see I was on the road almost every weekend. It was an all-girl-weekend. That was a lot of fun. Sandra, Melle, Carla and me drove from Essen to Munich to spend a few days with stuff that we luv. A great HC show, shopping and party.
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The line up was:
Biohazard
Agnostic Front
Hatebreed
Discipline
Born from Pain
Unfortunately Death Threat had to cancel their appearance but it was fun anyways. My personal favourite was Agnostic Front. They just got some cool songs. You can also check out one of my earlier updates where I already reported on them. Biohazard got a new guitar player (again). I don’t know, how often have they changed their guitar player now? 5 or 6 times? The audience liked Hatebreed most of all. I also met Jake there and the after show party almost ended up disasterous again (remember my ISPO update) but fortunately we didn’t drink vodka & whiskey triple shots this time.
Thanks to Rosi from Ballroom concerts! Check out www.ballroomconcerts.de
Chapter 5: The Bones &the Spook, November, Duesseldorf, Germany
I went to see two of my all time favourite bands. The Spook are kind of a Misfits like band. They also dress up in rags and put white make up on. Their shows are always very entertaining and except that they are great guys, good friends and a lot of fun to hang out with. Check out http://www.thespook.de
The main act were the Bones. An all punk’n’roll-party-band. Very energetic, very good looking and just wild. They are friends of Lisa Darling so maybe you just check out her page and find some backround info about them. Or check out their website: http://www.bonesrocknroll.com
Bones Interview:
How’s playing in Germany? Do you like it here?
Yeah, hell yeah. It’s a fucking great time.
What was the matter with Boner? I heard all kinda different stories.
Yeah, we had to take his brain out because he was so drunk. Then we put it in the microwave and left it there for a couple of days. Then we had to wash it but now it’s back in place.
Did you put the same brain back in there or maybe another one?
Well, he’s got a small one.
A small one?
Yeah, a really really small brain. We couldn’t find any smaller one than that so we had to put it back in.
About what size?
Oh, the size of a peanut.
(Boner disturbed the interview at that point and said that his penis looks like a raisin. Whatever.)
Do you think your sound on the new album developed in any way? Is it more straight forward rock’n’roll or more punk?
I don’t know. I don’t know. We…uhmm.. we have always been doing kinda like the same stuff. Punk’n’roll. I mean, we been like this for many years and in the end it’s the same shit but different songs. At least we had a bit more time in the studio this time. It took more time to produce a better sound, you know.
Do you think your live sound is more energetic? Is it better live?
It’s always better live. You can never put that on a record, you know. Because you can see us beautiful guys at the same time.
Was that Motörhead cover a request of your bass player? Cause he looks a little like Lemmy.
Yeah. Without the warts.
Yeah.
It was kinda like a tribute to Ramones and a tribute to Motörhead. Two bands that we really like, you know. And yeah, he looks like Lemmy.
What are your recent plans? Bigger tour? New record?
Now we gonna get drunk cause we’re leaving to Switzerland in two hours. We are on tour at the moment with Die Toten Hosen and they got a day off so we got to play anyway. We wanted to play Düsseldorf. And tomorrow we meet up with those guys in Switzerland for 2 more shows. We already did 6 shows with those guys all over Germany. Now we’re going to Switzerland for 2 shows then we’ll go back to Sweden for 3 weeks cause we want to spend some time with our girlfreinds before Christmas because we’re on the road on Christmas as well with the Toten Hosen.
Do you like those guys?
Yeah fucking great guys. Yeah really nice guys. I mean, I have been listening to those guys for like 15 years or so.
Does the audience accept you?
Yeah, actually they really do. It’s kinda like a big party every night. It’s a little strange to play in front of thousands of people every night but the people are fine with it and they give us a really good time. They are really nice to us. We’re having the time of our lives, you know. And even more free beers as well.
Ok, thanks.
Chapter 6: Meet&Greet with Tony Hawk, December, Cologne, Germany
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THAT was just soooooo fun! It was 1am when my phonebell rang and I was just like „who the hell is calling me up at 1am on a Tuesday night?”. It was Sandra. She was like: „Hey, do you think it is possible that Tony is in Cologne on Thursday?” I didn’t know. I emailed him and he said he would be there but he would be there only for a couple of hours. Sandra told me that you could win a personal skateboard training with him thru Einslive (a local radio station) and guess what. I won. So I went to Cologne on Thursday and we met up at the Dome sports skatehall. I got there too late but he was still around. One of the reporters accompanied me to the backstage area where she introduced me to Tony. Of course, we already know each other so we hugged and he asked e what I’d be doing here. When I said I won this. He just laughed for 4 or 5 minutes and then we chatted a little. It was really funny. Well, we didn‘t really skate together. It wasn’t possible because they had build up a really shitty somewhat skatepark in the backstage area. They had two small jumpramps, a curb and a rail… nothing that I could make use of. Tony ollied the jump ramp but that was it. After our „date” Tony did a demo in the vert ramp (but the vert ramp was too small and he almost killed himself) then Activison gave me all kinda Tony Hawk’s pro skater 4 stuff. A t-shirt, posters, whatever,… I gave most of the stuff to my friends. Except a big paper exhibitor (I don’t know if that’s the right expression but I’ll send in a pic) that’s decorating my room now. It was really a lot of fun and very spontaneous.
Rock on, girlies!
-Sabine Schenk
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