КИНОТЕАТР.
ON THE ROAD
Chris Weeks
(above)
climbs a pole
during a trip
to Leningrad
in 1989.
Visits by
American
street
skaters have
influenced
Russian
skaters to
dream of
grinding and
ollieing
every thing
in sight.
LETTER FROM LENINGRAD
Every year at the end of June in
Leningrad there are competitions called
"White Nights. This means you can
skate all day and all night, because in
this time, there is never darkness, only
twilight from 1 to 2 a.m. There are no col-
ors, everything is gray, even your skate.
Then the sun rises and you come home.
Now in Leningrad, there are thou-
sands of skaters, but the manufacturers
cannot keep up with their demands.
There is a lot of terrain, but there is a
lack of decks for streetstyle and our guys
cannot do tricks. Some time ago, people
from California visited Leningrad: Chris
Weeks, Hank Scotch, Oden Connolly,
Monika Bushan, Rey Banatao, Adam
Krohn and Rami Aburomia. They showed
us streetstyle and presented some decks
(that now are all worn out).
So, our guys took instruments and
made decks, bent tails, poured trucks,
and made wheels, and now everyone
skates on self-done products. We even
made jump ramps by ourselves. But in
winter, snow destroyed the wood ramps.
So Serdey Sinodalov became a welder
and made jumpers from metallic sheets.
He and others welded a big ramp and
mini-ramp. Those iron monsters will be
monuments to skating even after we die.
Our fellows have worked and our girls
have trained in slalom, Lena Sinodalova,
Katia Krylova, Nataly Gafarova are great
slalomers and should place high in the
world championships. Lena had four first
places in slalom on "White Nights 91,"
Now we all are training: girls in slalom,
Dima Beliaev together with Kolia Yemel-
yanchik in freestyle, and I. We are going
to show good results at the World Cham-
pionship in Turin, Italy, this year.
Next year the Leningrad Skateboard-
ing Federation will organize "White
Nights 92. We invite everybody to visit
our magnificent city. Six kinds of slalom,
ramp, freestyle and nice streets are wait-
ing for you. You will have tours over the
Neva River and its canals with tens of
bridges. Our guides are waiting for you!
Anatoly Matsukevich
SCENE SLOVENIA
World Wars One and Two carved up the
spoils of a planet for the conquerors. The
capitalists took the West and the commu-
nists took the East. But over the years, the
totalitarian style of Soviet/Lenin govern-
ment has eroded as populations grew
weary of repression. At the same time, citi-
zens of democracies remain apathetic as
constitutional rights are being erased.
The situation recently came to a boil in
the Soviet Baltic states and the Yugoslo-
vian provinces of Slovenia and Croatia,
which were once their own countries. To
this day, Croatia struggles against outside
forces to maintain independence. Slovenia,
however, seems to have succeeded in its
bid for self-government.
While the world was reading about the
struggles in the headlines, an article about
Slovenian skaters appeared at Thrasher.
All hell was breaking loose around these
Slovenian skaters while they expounded
on modern moves like handrails, impossi
bles and tail grabs. So without any further
adieu, ladies and gentlemen, meet your
fellow skaters from Slovenia.
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
On December 23rd, 1990, over ninety-
two percent of Slovenia voted in favor of in-
dependence. The Slovenian National As
sembly declared independence from
Yugoslavia for the Republic of Slovenia on
June 26th, 1991.
The next morning, federal army troops
closed Slovenian borders with Italy and
Austria, ocuppied strategic airports, radio
and TV stations, and deposed the demo-
cratically-elected Slovenian leadership.
Poe LL
The federal army (previously called "The
Yugoslav People's Army) showed unex-
pected brutality towards Slovenia by bomb-
ing and destroying non-military objects. It
thus lost all credibility among the people
and caused instantaneous revolt. The peo-
ple renamed it the "occupant army."
The aggression of the federal army had i
been expected. The highly motivated and
well-organized Slovenian National Territory
Defense reacted with quickly constructed
barriers of cars and trucks. Using light
weapons and excellent tactics, the National
Territory Defense stopped the army.
Psychological effects were disastrous for
the federal army, and after a few days it an-
nounced its decision to leave Slovenian ter-
ritory within the next three-month period.
Slovenia now waits for international recog-
nition and formal independence. Peace and
freedom remain our main hopes.
SKATE SLOVENIA
If you walk through the Slovenian cities of
Ljubljana, Kranj, Maribor, Radlje ob Dravi or
Bled, you will soon notice groups of skaters
on streets, near schools, in parks, on plat-
forms and elsewhere. You will find a host of
launch ramps, even some mini-ramps and
fun-boxes. And, if you ask, skaters will
show you the way to the sport centers and
skate pools, too.
For these boys, skateboarding is not only
a sport or fun, or love, it is a way of living
and thinking, the theme of conversation,
the dressing mode, an obsession, the only
thing that is really important. Their jargon is
full of original English words and expres-
sions, and nobody cares to translate them.
If you put your finger on the map, you will
find Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, mid-
way between Vienna and Venice. A popu-
lar-gathering place for skaters in Ljubljana
is the wide esplanade between the sky-
scrapers of the Ljubljanska Banka (Bank of
Ljubljana) and Iskra Holding (Electronic
Company) and Ivan Cankar (cultural cen-
ter) building. The skaters meet when
school is over and stay until late in the
evening. They perform different break
necks, like ollie flips over three stairs, im-
possibles, 360 ollies, wallrides and other
breathtaking follies.
There is a place dedicated to skate-
boarders at Tivoli Sport Park in Ljubljana,
with a three-meter mini-ramp, a funbox and
a bank. You can find a lot of handrail possi-
bilities (and a lot of trouble-makers always
trying to persecute skaters) in Trnovo, Mur-
gle and BS-3 districts, and also near the
Clinical Centre. Competitions are held quite
frequently in Kodeljevo sport park's pool.
Style, slams, degree of difficulty and time
are a few of the relevant elements.
Sport Centre in Kranj is equipped with a
pool built to satisfy skaters' needs, but they
complain the surface is too rough and pro-
pose additional surface treatment, concrete
grinding, polishing and painting.
There is a pearl lake with an island in the
middle in Bled, a world-famous tourist cen-
ter in the heart of Julian Alps. The skaters
meet on the esplanade near the shopping
center and compete in Ribno on a mini-
ramp built of polyester.
The club in Radlje has good relations
with clubs in Vienna and Munich. Its
skaters visited this year's skateboarding
competition in Münster, Germany, where
Tony Hawk proved to be world number one
in technique and innovation.
Facilities for training and acquisition of
equipment are available to members of the
SK8-Core-Club. The club issues a newspa-
per, prepared plans for a skatepark and
organizes skate-nights in K4-club with half
pipes, videos, fun and music.
Slovenian skaters excel on many west
ern moves. Handrails, 360° ollies, late
shove-its and one-footed nollie tail grabs
are just a few of the tricks Slovenian
skaters perform. Marco Jazbinshek, seven-
teen is an overall winner. He excels on
handrails, mini-ramp and street. He is a
skater with brains and enormous energy.
Miha Karner, sixteen, is a silent boy with a
beautiful style. He has real promise and
prefers performing his beloved figures on
the street. Next and close to him is Primoz
Jambrek, fifteen. He is a complete, modest
and very reliable sportsman who also loves
the street. All Dzafic, eighteen, is the best
in high ollies. He ollies even over seven
decks positioned vertically (over 84 cm
high). Jan Porekar, eighteen, likes allies
and wall-rides. He is silent and his ap-
proach to skating is philosophical. Jan
Borko, thirteen, is an intelligent skateboard-
er with a strong will to permanently improve
his techniques.
There are hundreds of good skaters all
around Slovenia. It was not possible to
photograph them all and include them in
preparation of this article, but they all form
the Slovenian skateboarding scene.
The great popularity of skateboarding, a
large number of skaters and a strong de-
sire to advance assures that the Slovenian
scene will became more broadly known in
the near future. -Mitja Borko
A platoon of
skate rebels
(left) defends
Slovenian
sovereignity.
Marco
Jazbinshek
(top right)
yanks an
Indy air,
Ali Dzafic
(above)
floats an
ollie above
Slovenian
turf. Marco
Jazbinshek
(right)
cranks an
ollie out of
the Kranj
skate pool.
32 THE MAGAZINE