The 'Your Mum' Tour - 08/01/19

We were set for a 10 day tour through Europe starting in Hamburg for the Ipunkt competition on Dec 8th. Then heading to Amsterdam for Dre's birthday, Salzburg to session Ignition skatepark then finally Winterthur in Switzerland for the Xmas battle. The group assembled was Dre Powell, Don Bambrick, Stefan Horn, Nick Wood repping for Remz and myself behind the Sony HD. Aragon was going to be joining us in Switzerland. Billy O'Neil was found wondering round Hamburg airport like a fish out of water (see what I did there?) so we adopted him and he became a permanent and very welcome member of the tour. The 6 of us loaded into a 5 seater pimped out Mercedes courtesy of Red Bull and Horn, this badboy came equipt with Sat Nav, DVD player, Xbox 360 with wireless remotes, drinks holders designed to fit Red Bull cans perfectly and more Red Bull than we could drink the whole tour. Nice!

Hamburg city has apparently the biggest red light district in the world, so after a load of cheap beer - that's where we headed. As you would expect from the biggest red light district in the world there were prostitutes a plenty, they approach almost everyone that walks down the street and we amused ourselves by seeing how far we could push their boundaries - it turned out to be pretty far and we left laughing after they didn't even flinch at some of the most outragous suggestions we put foward!

The Ipunkt comp went down well. The park was nicely laid out and a good turn out of people made for a good atmosphere. I got a load of sick clips here which you'll have to check the podcasts out to see, some of the highlights being Horn's fishbrain stall on the vert wall, Jacob Jaul killing everything and Billy O'Neil getting nasty to take 2nd place just behind boy wonder Julien ?? who spun 5's to every trick and barely missed a thing all day.

Next up Amsterdam, everyone was juiced about this stop! For a start it's Amsterdam, it was Dre's birthday and it was purely to chill and have a good time - we didn't even have an agenda or event to go to! After a 5ish hour drive, we checked in and went out to sample some of the city's delights and celebrate Dre's 24th! Needless to say we had a crazy night chilling in coffeeshops, drinking in bars and walking round the infamous red-light district. There is a load of funny ass footage from the 2 nights we were there and I think Cypress Hill's 'I wanna get high' will be a good song for that podcast! Apart from a couple of dodgy geezer's trying to mug us in a back alley we had an amazing time!

The FRIC winners

After Amsterdam we had a 10 hour drive to Salzburg. Luckily I was the biggest so I got shotgun, but everyone else reminded Billy it was his fault they were gonna be riding 6 in a 5 seater, cramped in the back and we headed out. It was somewhere about the 5 hour mark into this journey and possibly fuelled by the litre of Rum and litre of Yaegar that got downed that the 'your mum' jokes started coming out. It started as a free for all but ended as an all out battle between Fish and Nick Wood, New York vs Santee. It was brutal and hilarious and carried on literally for the rest of the tour. Even throughout my entire time at school, college and the rest of my life put together, I've never heard so many 'your mum' jokes as on this tour. Every night at the end of the night for a good 3 hours Nick and Billy would be at it, and when you thought it was over, it would start up again twice as hard!

Don Bambrick FS Torque

Salzburg is Horn's hometown and his friends Roli, Gabriel and Lucas were kind enough to put us up for the nights we were there. Salzburg is a cool city and it snowed the whole time we were there so it looked like a Christmas postcard. We hit up the Ignition skateshop and park. Though the park isn't the biggest, it's one of the most fun parks to skate, probably cos it's built by rollerbladers so everything's got round coping and slide's like a motherfucker! This is where I probably got the hottest clips of the tour. Don Bambrick got nasty on the down box with fakie 360 alleyoop grabbed makio's and tonnes of other combo's, Dre bashed the most stylish 450 royale I've seen in a while (and I think the royale was switch) and Horn got tech with disaster mute to true top acid's 3 out on the box. Run that through in your head…yeh. Nick was charging round the park like the shaved head Mexican he is and Billy got into a switch battle with Don that you would never have believed was switch if I hadn't just told you. Some Austrian rapper twat called Mike Black stole my phone so if anyone knows of him or see's him, please punch him in the face for me. Nick Wood is a madman and got the only street clips of the tour, he walked out the house in the morning with his skates on (cos he'd burned holes through the soles of his shoes in a previous bout of debauchery and they leaked) skated on the icy cobbles and jumped backside on a rail just out Gabriel's house. Then laced a concrete block to rail to drop into a carpark it turned out Horn had been planning to do for ages but was waiting for the weather to ease up.

Billy O'Neill

We hit the town the second night and the Austrian weather provided us ample entertainment in the form of snowballs, which we threw in each other's faces. Hard. A good night was had by all in the club except the random Austrian who got knocked out by the bouncer and woke up to the whole pub chanting a football song in an attempt to help him regain consciousness.

We got the Winterthur quite late the next day and went straight to the park. The park was in a nice set up with all kinds of other facilities like rock climbing, volleyball and pool tables. We met up Aragon who had already been there killing it for hours, so we had a quick skate then retired to the hotel's 24 hour bar for the rest of the night barely managing to avoid being thrown out for various reasons I assure you wern't our fault...

Horn busting out some crazy spin trick

The comp had a good turn out, the hot dogs and beers were flowing and the main rail was getting the beating of a lifetime. After a slowish start the crowd started getting behind the skaters and the atmosphere grew throughout the day. For me, Aragon and Fish skated especially well during the comp busting ridiculous tricks and oozing with trademark steez but it was local hero Cyril Daniel who took 1st with some crazy tricks including fakie 630 royale down the rail and alley oop soul gap 720 to flat along the long rail. I could go on about a load of tricks that went down but your best bet is to watch the upcoming podcasts, they will tell it like it was. Congrats and thanks to Studi and Rolling Rock for putting on a sick event!

The afterparty was a 20 minute walk in what must have been minus 5C with strong wind but it was well worth it - everyone was in high spirits boozing and dancing like idiots, the Ignition guys were taking over the dance floor and absynth shots were being sessioned! What you may already know about Don Bambrick is that he's a fucking sick skater and likes to smoke a lot of cigarettes. What you may not know is that he's also a raging alcoholic and is the primary reason I didn't go to bed that night, passed out in the airport, missed my flight the next day and my liver still hurts.

Thanks to Razors and everyone who we chilled with and hooked us up on tour and especially Horn, Dre, Don, Nick, Fish and Aragon for a wicked time!

Cheers,

Tags: billy o eill don bambrick dre powell horn nick wood stefan horngacher stew game