Roll-icking times

Two upcoming skateboard events guarantee
good clean drunken mayhem

SKATER DAYCARE:
Shredder Mike (middle) with friends, ShazamFest ’07

by LUCAS WISENTHAL

Does this summer’s festival season, with its music, comedy and movies, seem curiously devoid of skateboarding? Two events happening next weekend, July 24–26, should remedy that.

The first is ShazamFest, an Eastern Townships music festival now in its fourth year. Though not solely a skate event, skaters are invited to session an elaborate mini-ramp set-up throughout the weekend. There will also be a contest on Saturday, July 25, put on by Mike Townsend and the Valoiz Boys. And few skaters would say no to three days of music and riding five interconnected mini-ramps.

And other stuff too. “I really embrace the idea of carnival,” says organizer Ziv Przytyk. To that end, alongside music acts like Psynlangwage, Kaliroots, Coral Egan & Charles Papasoff and Pete Möss, Przytyk has lined up performances by the Dead Dolls Cabaret burlesque troupe and the Eastern Townships Wrestling Association, as well as circus workshops and art exhibits. “We go from hip hop to jazz and rock ’n’ roll,” Przytyk says. “It’s not things you usually see together on a bill.”

The festival is held at his family’s farm in Way’s Mills (2722 Chemin de Way’s Mills). “It’s a crossroads of people who wouldn’t necessarily meet in everyday life,” Przytyk says. “We’ve been throwing parties there since I was a little kid. I wanted to share it with more people because it’s a pretty magical space. It’s a natural amphitheatre with a river running behind it.”

But despite the festival’s diversity, some things remain unwelcome—like rollerblades. “That’s the skaters,” Przytyk says, laughing. “They built the ramps; they can make the rules, sometimes.”

Not that Shredder Mike and company are an exclusionary bunch. ShazamFest’s contest, the Jam@Shazam, includes divisions for girls and those aged 12 and under. And during the festival, you can expect to see them schooling the young’uns, or just watching over them.

“I call it skater daycare,” Przytyk says. “Early Saturday morning, there’s usually, like, 30 to 40 kids running on the ramp, and all the skaters holding their heads with hangovers from the day before.”

Amateurs on deck

At the same time, the fifth edition of AM Getting Paid, a skateboarding contest that, as its name implies, remunerates amateurs financially, will be underway at the Taz skatepark (8931 Papineau).

Promising $10,000 in prize money, the contest draws amateur skaters from across North America, most of them sponsored, some already well-known from magazine and video coverage, and all hoping for their names to grace signature boards and shoes in the next couple of years.

The contest, organizer Alex Bastide explains, is “an opportunity [for them] to make a shitload of money so they can focus on skateboarding” rather than, say, where their next pack of Top Ramen might come from.

For skaters from Montreal and other cities on the periphery of the skateboarding industry, AM Getting Paid offers something more: “a huge chance to get noticed,” Bastide says. In addition to big-name Canadian ams like Ryan Decenzo and Magnus Hanson, teams like Zoo York and Deathwish will be in the city, and the skate media will cover the event.

This year’s format will give the ams a better forum to showcase their skills, Bastide says. Instead of a couple of solo runs, riders will go it alone only once, for 45 seconds. Then the course will be divided into quadrants for four five-minute-long, eight-skater jams. “Each skater is going to have a lot more time to do more technical and harder and crazier tricks,” Bastide says.

The course itself is a speedy one, and though it includes street-inspired obstacles—rails, ledges and the like—the event favours well-rounded riders. “Someone who just knows how to skate street and has no transition skills—good luck,” Bastide says. “You’re definitely going to need transition skills to win this contest.”

But as most competitors know, in skateboarding, killing contests does not a career make. At the end of each day, the enterprising pro prospects will hit the scene for a few related events, including the Montreal premiere of the video Right Foot Forward on Sunday, July 25, at Salon Officiel (351 Roy), 9 p.m., and many more that have nothing to do with skating.

“You don’t exactly want to be the guy who’s going to go back to his room and go to bed at 8 o’clock and then show up all fresh the next morning,” Bastide says. “No, that is not skateboarding. Skateboarding is about a lifestyle, and that lifestyle also involves partying and picking up chicks.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE
SHAZAMFEST.COM AND
AMGETTINGPAID.COM