Behind the Scene: Rollfest Report

What term comes to your mind when you think about a summer-week, full of parties, rollerblading, around with most of the rollerbladers from your country and even foreigners? Would you call it a Rollerblading vacation? Or maybe a one week contest? No, the only appropriate name for it is Rollfest, cause there is nothing similiar in our industry to this event that is held every year at the Polish sea. Rollfest has been around for 6 years, at the beginning it was just a little idea, from a group of Polish rollerbladers on how to spend some time together, skate and party. It were a “dark times” at polish rollerblading, since there were not many who stayed and rolled, just a few skaters after the late 90’s rollerblading boom. Since then, Rollfest was constantly getting bigger and bigger. Every year skaters from all over the country came to have the best time of the year. In the past editions of Rollfest, many foreign skaters came to chill with us. Gonzo, Ricardo Lino, Mathias Ogger, Adrien Wallace were just few of them and I haven’t seen them complaining, even when they were waking up after rough, drinking night.

This year`s edition was definitively the BIGGEST! I don’t even know how many skaters took part in it, but our (camping) was full of skaters and there were many more people sleeping in other places. When we arrived the weather was perfect, our sleeping place was next to the beach and we even had our own Bar on the beach. The first afternoon/night was off course filled with vodka testing, some of us remember less, some more. Tuesday was an street session day , nice Jam went down, leaving Kojot (Remz, hedonskate), Gufi (Infinity), Ciapek (Inspin), Misiek(Cropp) and Husky with the titles of “the best skaters of the day”.Of course the celebration of that was tight and the temperature between us and the owners of camping was getting higher. Wednsday was the day of Inspin (polish skateshop) Jam, that took place at the Skateplaza. The winner was Fisha from Wroclaw, doing 36 hardspin top acid on the big rail,Ciapek with 3 switch ups on a very short rail and Gufi who did a 540 kindgrind on the same rail. Off course skating was NOT the most important thing we were doing during those days, our time was filled with chilling on the beach, swimming and some serious drinking, day by day. At Thursday we did something new. We have organized rollerblading-knowledge contest in our beach bar and main sponsor was Hedonskate. About 20 competitors and about 10 different categories (Movies, rumors, music, industry, teams all sort of rollerblading oriented questions. With big screen and projector where movie-like questions were displayed, lot of vodka and cheering audience Basza and Oley were happy to conduct such ‘different’ contest for the first time.

It was something that has never been done before, I think, and a lot of people gave us good feedback about it, so watch out for even more challenging Knowledge Contest next year! Of course afterparty was awesome. Friday was just a chill day, so we could regenerate our bodies for the upcoming saturday contest, but there were some problems becasue at the end of the day, some of us were kicked out from the camp. In the evening we went for a D&B concert of our friend who happens to be skater and owner of the Creeper wheels at the same time. It turned out that he is well known D&B DJ at the polish music scene and got a lot of props from the crowd. Saturday was the day of the big contest. People were killing every obstacle at the Skateplaza, especially people from Latvia. From the beginning, my bet was on Dimitrij Sokolovs from Latvia and I was very happy when it turned out that he won. He was skating fast, jumping high, getting tech and doing everything very solid. Same thing with the second place – Jakub Olejarz – fast, consistent and great style. Third place went to our young and gifted Gufi , who is always full technical skater, doing tricks like disaster 36 top soul over plastic street barrier to the big handrail – that’s just Gufi. Best trick title went to Lukasz Wolski (36 hardspin top acid). Contest went nuts, but the biggest thing was still waiting for us – afterparty. Imagine 50+ skaters walking through the center of the biggest polish resort, singing “who let the dogs out” ! The city was ours. We did some nice “bridge jumping” show. Whenever you looked, skaters were all around and that’s basically it, cause the next thing I remember was waking up on the beach, voiceless, without some ofmy clothes. Sunday morning was all about running away from our camp-site, fastest we could, cause the owner was really pissed of.

There were thousand of things I’d like to write about rollfest, thousand of stupid laughs but there is just not enough room here, so the only solution is to come and see by yourself how it feels to be part of ROLLFEST. I’d like to thank Pawel Komosa and “Green” association for organizing this event, which proves me every year, why I love rollerblading.

Text: Adam Olejniczak
Foto: Grzegorz Niechaj
Edit: Radosław Kojtych