Tag: Giorgi Balkhamishvili

This clip shows Kummer brothers and their crew don’t land everything first try, sometimes they might not land it at all but, they don’t half-step! Giorgi might be the closest thing Europe has to Sammy Baca, from 27 times to 2000 tries the dedication is real and the respect is earned!

This was the best event since your last event together.

London Lee, Wassertorplatz, 2019

And with that introduction, we would like to welcome you to the recap video for our Wassertorplatz invitational table tennis tournament. The idea started last year after /// teamed up with us for our first ever non-skate tournament, in fact, it was a table-soccer or Fooßbal competition.

Won in style by the ever-competitive Felix Lensing and his friend that night sparked a series of ideas of which taking back our Anchor for at least one day was a part.

Mr. Lensing and his teammate after a dominant performance.
Mr. Lensing and his teammate after a dominant performance.

Now, ever since they changed our famous skate spot into a playground area we have been veiled in black and to be honest the “Platz” has changed a lot as well. When we went to shoot the trailer for the event it was literally riddled with weeds. Needless to say, the new locals had not shown it the love we had :(…

So what better to do than to return and give the place “a years worth of love” in one day! And even though the city and some of the people didn’t seem to want us there they accepted us showing up this day to celebrate the place we love.

Of course, we adapted to the changed plaza and organized a Table Tennis tournament as well as 2 best trick sessions, recreating the rooftop ledge especially for this occasion.

The people came out and celebrate we did and truth be told the platz, the cops and the people living around wtp the place all showed up (the cops blessed us by not showing up) and celebrated with us.

A very special thank you goes out to adidas Skateboarding!

Enjoy the video and we hope to all see you at our next competition.

Read all about the loss of Wassertorplatz as a skate spot here.

During the second edition of SKTWK we had the honor of hosting a very special contest as part of the whole event. Now you might want to know what kind of games we chose to play and the answer is BINGO! a geriatric favorite must likely currently being played in a nursing home near you!

There where multiple prizes, things like a professional full body massage, trinkets but the most valuable prize was by far the honor to shoot a Place Magazine – Snapshot Recap! That prize and in turn duty fell on the shoulders of Simon Klinkertz.

Simon turned out to have a capable eye and some strong shoulders that allowed him to get the job done in style! So, here it is our very special SKTWK Recap.

Simon would like you to know:

A very big thank you to SKTWK, Place Magazine and all the people that attended the event in Düsseldorf.

Design is often based on other design, how many Ferrari shaped bedsheets or My Little Pony shaped birthday cakes have we not seen in our life?

So when Nike remastered the Janoski for its 10-year anniversary they also looked outside, they probably looked at animals, the sky, cement patterns, but in the end, I believe they simply looked out of their Beaverton office window onto the parking lot and there they found the answer sitting in the swooshes own parking lot.

(disclaimer: this might not be factual, they might have just found pictures of the car on the internet)

Photos by Danny Sommerfeld.
Text by Roland Hoogwater.

The story continues below…

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The Volkswagen Polo “Harlekin’s” story connects to the Janoski in multiple ways. It was in 1994 that the German company wanted to draw attention to their newly-updated Polo model but the problem they had to solve was:

“How do we get people to look at the newness?”.

The answer came in all colors! They devised a special showroom model of the new 6N, this model would breathe NEW! But this model was only meant to show off in the showroom it wasn’t available to the public… Well a couple of the showroom models actually did get sold afterwards and those cars began to create “word of mouth” on the streets and when the streets are talking the people at VW were listening.

1995 swings around and featured in the catalog is the now legendary VW 6N Harlekin as demanded by the public and in 2019 a similar story can be told about Nike SB’s Janoski shoe. Like the Polo, it looks similar but it is not quite the same, from little leather linings to the tape on the sole, everything has been tweaked for ’19 and that is where the two stories meet.

The story concludes below…

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Fast forward to the 10th of May, Denny Pham, Jan Henrik Kongstein, Peter Buikema, Leo Preisinger and myself find ourselves driving around Berlin in a VW Harlekin wearing the Janoski Harlekin, we are putting both through the wringer for the next 2,5 days.

We didn’t do that alone, of course, we invited some Nike riders and Berlin locals to test it with us along the way.

To be honest the car has had a bit more mileage than the shoe but both held up quite well during our time even though Leo had his doubts about the car.

After the 2.5 days we concluded a couple of things:

  1. Denny Pham skates like he is playing THPS.
  2. The “new” Janoski looks better than the “old” Janoski (look closely).
  3. Jan Kliewer can shove his board like it is 1991.
  4. Jan Henrik like all people in Norway is hella tech.
  5. Michael Mackrodt drives a car the same way he skates.

Thank you for the support Skatedeluxe and Nike SB <3

Last week we celebrated the start of the 10-year anniversary of Nozbone’s Benchmark contest. Starting in Berlin and concluding last Sunday in Paris. And a sun-filled day it was. It felt like spring had hit us again for a day, which turned the day into somewhat of a festival.

With the mood set, let’s get into the skating. It was culminating in some amazing skating by people like John Purcell, Hugo Corbin, Giorgi Armani, Farid Ulrich and Nozbone’s own Marc-A Barbier who, in the end, took home the win.

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We think Nike SB, Civilist, Nozbone and À Propos magazine did a great job this year and we hope to be back next year.

It has been a while since a Skateboard Magazine from Europe released a full-length video project with the magazine at once. Our issue 61 comes with a 19-minute film, all filmed with a VX and Hi8. In times of Instagram and extremely fast ways of having your footage being released, we as a team got together and worked on this video for about four weeks.  Thaynan Costa, Hugo Maillard and Willem van Dijk came for a visit and every one of these guys killed it.

A big thank you to everyone involved, besides the lineup above this video features: Tjark Thielker, Timo Meiselbach, Nils Brauer, Jan Hoffmann, Paul Röhrs, Giorgi Armani, NSVC, Alex O’Donahoe, Peter Buikema, Deniz Bulgurcu, Daniel Pannemann, Roland Hoogwater, Valentin Cafuk, Alex Raeymaekers, Mats Edel, Jonas Heß & Danny Sommerfeld.

Filmed and edited by Peter Buikema.

Header-Photo by Henrik Biemer, Hugo Maillard BS Lipslide.

 

 

The colder days are just around the corner in Northern Europe, and thus, the same applies to Berlin. So shortly before we are switching our clocks to daylight saving time, Nike SB, in wise foresight, called together their Europe team to have a last session at Project DSS.

Featuring Hugo Boserup, Casper Brooker, David Jakinda, Jacopo Carozzi, Julia Brückler, Joscha Aicher, Hyun Kummer, Farid Ulrich, Sami Harithi, Justin Sommer, Giorgi Balkhamishvili and Jan Kliewer.

Photos by Dennis Scholz & Leo Preisinger

You probably have seen the parts of Marca Barbier, Maceo Moreau and Michael Mackrodt on our site already. Now this is the complete full length project about Europe’s three popular metropolises coordinated by our friend Thomas Busuttil. Very worth watching!

Featuring Remy Taveira, Kevin Rodriguez, Roman Gonzales, Tom Knox, Jake Collins, Jarne Verbrugen, Didrik Gallasso, Joseph Biais, Vincent Coupeau, Denny Pham, Dennis Busenitz, Kyron Davis, Marc-Alexandre Barbier, Maceo Moreau, Michael Mackrodt, Yoshi Tannenbaum, Harry Lintel, Edouard Depaz, Giorgi Balkhamishvili and so many more!

When we came up with the idea to make an issue about the different approaches of how to portray or depict a person’s identity and character, we thought about the possibility of psychoanalysis early on. More precisely, we considered the method of personality tests seemed to be an interesting field for our concerns.

A person who, on the one hand, is primarily specialized in analyzing people, but on the other unfamiliar with our subject and the world of skateboarding, would probably offer a whole different perspective on a person’s character than interviews usually tend to do.

To lessen the ease of the task a bit, we chose a test person with a very unique appearing character: Giorgi Balkhamishvili. I have personally known Giorgi for a very long time now. We grew up together – I can only barely remember the times before we entered one another’s lives, and we always have remained very close friends. I would argue that Giorgi has a character that is very complex and thus hard to read, especially for someone not knowing him. Even today, although I have known him for so many years and am prepared for every unthinkable quirk of Giorgi’s infamous “five minutes,” he still manages to surprise me from time to time, causing me to ask myself once again if I really know him as well as I think I do. The funny thing is, I always have the feeling that Giorgi secretly enjoys these moments when his actions confuse people, particularly his close friends. Having said this, I was really curious about what this whole experiment would result in. I was interested in how the questions would look like and how precisely one would be able to draw conclusions from the answers.

The personality test we used contained 100 questions that one had to answer with one out of five levels of accuracy, from very accurate to very inaccurate. The questions all followed a similar pattern – They were rather short and aimed at deciphering, or revealing, different character traits: “Do you seldom daydream?” “When you hang out with a group of people, are you bothered by at least one of them?” “Do you know how to get around the rules?” “Do you have a dark outlook on the future?” On top, there were some cognitive ability questions included as well: “Miriam and Adam went fly fishing and caught 32 salmons. Miriam got three times more than Adam. How many did Adam get?” Due to the fact that the test was kind of more a self-assessment, the psychologist included a personal interview at the very beginning in order to get some background information on what sort of context Giorgi’s later answers would be based on. The whole procedure took about three hours and Giorgi patiently answered each question truthfully.

From my point of view, the result was amazingly close to what my own impression of Giorgi is. Moreover, which was less surprising for me than for the analyst, Giorgi’s personality results indeed ended up differing quite a bit from the so-called “average” person. But no worries, at the end of the session, he was allowed to leave the building without subjected to a white straightjacket!

Intro by Paul Röhrs
Photos: Danny Sommerfeld

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Meeting Giorgi Armani
by Roos Cornelius, Psychology (Bsc), Philosophy of Social Science (BA)

I first met Giorgi Balkhamishvili on the 29th of May, in Berlin. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and countless amounts of pollen were wafting from tree to tree, declaring the end of Spring just as I arrived to the place where we would meet.

Giorgi told me he moved from Georgia to Berlin with his parents when he was only six months old. Growing up un a creative environment (both his parents are artists) and with the streets of Berlin as a background, he discovered skateboarding at the age of twelve. Although both his arms were bruised when we met, he described skating as a weightless feeling of endless possibilities. He was sure to let me know, before making a jump, he sometimes taps three times on the ground with his skateboard to prevent him from falling too hard. Giorgi also told me about how he does not drink alcohol, but that one time he drank four liters of beer in one night just to win a bet. Most interestingly, Giorgi admitted that he likes to play with the idea of being in prison – a curious desire for someone who has never even committed a felony… At least, as of yet. One might wonder what character could be behind such thoughts. In the following section, I will attempt to capture a glimpse of Giorgi’s personality.

Results with handwritten comments

Inside Giorgi Armani
by Roos Cornelius, Psychology (Bsc), Philosophy of Social Science (BA)

To assess Giorgi’s personality, I used an online personality test. Just as most personality tests, it focuses on the basic dimensions of one’s personality, such as extraversion, honesty, and emotional stability. Although a personality test is never flawless, this semi-scientific inventory is designed to be objective. Hence, the results may not necessarily be flattering to whom the data concerns. What secrets could it reveal about Giorgi’s personality?
First of all, the test indicated that he possesses some very admirable character traits. His results show that he scored exceedingly high on modesty. This means his personality bestows him with a humble attitude, both toward others and toward his own accomplishments. In addition, Giorgi scored high on compassion. Compassion is characterized by the ability to recognize the emotions of others. The result suggested that he might be sensitive to social conflicts that exist in his surroundings. Giorgi’s results also indicated that he has a strong capacity to feel sympathy for others.

Another interesting hint we may take from the test results concerns the fact that Giorgi scored curiously low on honesty. This indicates that he might be prone to mislead others, especially those who represent considerable authority. This also suggests that he tends to be less troubled by rule-breaking behavior. He might also be considered more creative, since he is less concerned with following established rules. Giorgi also scored particularly low in the realm of conscientiousness. His results implied that he has a tendency to live in the moment and to act on what feels good. He does not pay much attention to detail and probably has a laid back attitude in general. As a result, some might perceive him as a little careless, maybe even disorganized.
Lastly, Giorgi scored remarkably high on boldness. Boldness represents the ability to face uncertain or even threatening situations with confidence. His results suggested that he is able to face uncertain circumstances with emotional stability. Some emotionally stable individuals may go as far seeking out thrilling situations, because they perceive these situations to be less threatening than most people.

To conclude, I would say Giorgi has a creative personality that tends to avoid rules, but one that yearns to take risks. His character consists of qualities that seem to be ever in search of the next jump, the next thrilling moment, before looping back touching solid ground again.

The test that was used for this article is part of the online SAPA Project, initiated by William Revelle (Northwestern University, Illinois). The test can be found on www.sapa-project.org

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The test was quite intense. I had to think about questions that I usually wouldn’t have bothered myself with. In the end, I had the feeling that my hair had turned grey. Ain’t shocking. – Giorgi Armani 

The Nike SB Shelter is especially influencing the younger generation of Berlin’s rippers. Emerging talents like Giorgi Balkhamishvili and Justin Sommer could improve their skating to a whole nother level there. During the very harsh and frosty winter they both met up at the Shelter every day and astonished everyone with their impressive skills, which is the reason why Nike SB lastly decided to let them enjoy the honor of filming a Spot On clip together with cameraman Mark Nickels.

Photos by Dennis Scholz

Giorgi_BS-50_Up-ScholzGiorgi – Bs 50-50 up

Justin_OnefootOllie_Frontboard-ScholzJustin – Ollie North to Frontboard

 

In einer neuen Folge #Mondays feuern Farid Ulrich, Denny Pham, Danny Sommerfeld, Giorgi Balkhamishvili und viele weitere Akteure durch den Nike SB Shelter. Besonders freut uns der Auftritt von Alex Siegfried, der sicherlich einer der most underrated Skater in der Republik ist. Auch Martin Gregor aka Monkey gibt ordentlich Gas, wie sollte es auch anders sein. Clip ab.

Eine neue Folge Shelter Mondays aus Berlin: In den letzten Monaten war einiges los in der Berliner Skatehalle – im heutigen Edit sind neben Denny Pham, Juan Carlos Aliste und Klaus Bohms auch wieder ein paar Locals aus Berlin dabei. Checkt Giorgi Balkhamishvili, Eric Ehrhardt, Patrick Rogalski und viele mehr im Mondays #5 Video:

Vor etwas mehr als zwei Wochen ging in Berlin der Nike SB Light up the Streets Event über die Bühne: Ausgerüstet mit Mini Mag Lites ging es für über 200 Skater per Board durch die City in den Gleisdreieck Park, wo ein perfekt ausgeleuchteter Picknick Table im Mittelpunkt des Geschehens stand. Hier ist der Clip zum Spektakel, mit dabei: Danny Sommerfeld, Farid Ulrich, Giorgi Balkhamishvili und viele mehr:

Best Trick Session 1 – Danny Sommerfeld, Bs Nosebluntslide to Fakie

Best Trick Session 2 – Giorgi Balkhamishvili, Fs Crooks Bs Revert

MVP – Farid Ulrich

Tech, Stufen, Gaps und Handrails. Giorgi Balkhamishvili aka Giorgi Armani hat das volle Paket im Repertoire, wie dieser Part beweist und der aufmerksame Leser eh schon weiß. Action speaks louder than words – in diesem Sinne: Click Play!

via Red Bull Skateboarding