I woke up at 1 p.m. and my first thought was "DAMN! I missed so much of the event!" and I started getting mad at myself, but then a relief came... since there's gonna be so much happening till late night, it was definitely better to get one night of proper sleep, as much as my organism needed, so I could live through it in good shape!
Ate some breakfast, brushed my teeth and went to the halls the event was already happening just to find it's way more interesting to talk to people and meet them than just to watch people skating (which I did as well, of course). Bought a pair of new bushings (the gum barrels You put inside board's trucks, that have a huge influence on stability) and suddenly, I started doing tricks I've never done before! This place had an aura of longboarding, like double or triple exp gained at every try, and I loved it :)
Met many interesting people - and one of them, pictured above, is Manoli Markakis, a longboarder from Greece, who makes those tiny, beautiful piece-of-art boards - and he says he's a really bad at doing this business, he sold about 10% of them and gave away the other 90% at the event ;-) so if You want to support his work, visit his store (for real, buy one! etsy.com/shop/WoodbarByMarkaki...)
Talked to people I've met yesterday, drank lots of water (counted in gallons per hour, really), did some tricks outside, got a tan from incredible summer sun, rode my board barefoot for a while to massage the feet... It was a great day without any (!!!) negative emotions - even when my polish friends came to me saying they broke my board and it turned out not to be a joke! Mateusz jumped on it and the top layer of wood and glass fibre cracked and it was almost impossible to ride it, I didn't even care - instead of crying, I dismounted trucks and wheels from it, borrowed a board from Alternative and took a marker to gather autographs from people I talked to, from everyone! and turned the board into my ultimate, one in a kind memory of the event like a t-shirt on a teenage camp.
And after the event finished, non-sponsored longboard dancers got their medals and prizes and we closed the event hall, the party moved to Area 51 skatepark (on the opposite side of the street) and IT WAS SO AWESOME! I have never seen an indoor skatepark earlier, but this baby was HUGE and really nice! We've skated there for an hour or something more, while part of the party was taking place outside it, and when they closed the skatepark about an hour after midnight, we've moved with the party to our hotel's bar and garden, where we stayed until 3 a.m. :D
Since I was (as always) one of the last men standing and still had some spare energy when everyone was going to sleep, I decided to keep Lotfi Lamaali and his friend company on their way to the hotel, then pushed back to our hotel and went to sleep after a mid-night shower.
#portrait #outdoors #saturday #product #evening #toy #handmade #street #city #people #board #festival #man #business #gift #one #longboard #daylight #skateboard #april #offense #adult #religion #wear #keychain #pendant #manufacture #pendent #longboarding #drag-race #mini-board #sycld
