So today started with a mission: walk to the skatehop in our neighborhood and get a new nut for the cruiser board, use the skateshop's tools to put new wheels on @r4topunk's board, and grip and assemble the board that Afroskater gave me.
We brought a deck for Rato, who brought his trucks and wheels from home. his wheels were so tiny so vlad grabbed a set of wheels from his house that were much better. Today we bring rato from in front of the computer to the skatepark, where skatehive memories are made.
We also had another special skatehive guest on the session! Can you guess who it is? I wont tell you because he prefers anonymity. Vlad and i were about to turn two coders into absolute skate rats!
There is a skateshop near our house so we take a walk towards it in the morning.
The entrance to the skateshop(s) is actually this mini mall thing called Galeria River. its like an indoor minimall kinda by the beach. most of the shops are like surf, beach, and skate oriented.
All of the shops are tiny in there, and there are like 6 skate shops lol. some of them are the "same" owned by the same people but some others are not and i was told that even a couple of them are sworn rivals.
alright so what i immediatly noticed is that all of the skate gear in all of these shops totally sucks. the shoes, the trucks, and even most of the decks are weird off-brand stuff that you couldnt pay me enough to try and actually use to skate.
Seeing this in real life has put a perspective on brazilian skating that i never had before. They are not able to get legit skate gear here. Im honestly surprised that anyone here actually skates because to get good gear is MORE expensive than it is in the united states, and their currency is worth 1/5 of what ours is in the US.
You have to be an absolute DIE HARD skate rat to be a skater in brazil! and that i fucking respect.
These skateshops are just a series of mini rooms that have the same exact gear... all off-brand stuff- Ok i am exaggerating.... they have SOME toy machine, baker boards, maybe like 5 sets of wheels. We came here to use their skate tools lol, which they were barely able to provide. One of the skateshops had a actual phillips screw driver! ...Instead of just the tiny version inside of the unit skate tool.
The dude who worked at the one with this mini ramp in it- said he had heard of Hockey and FA at a trade show in Miami. He knew Hockey is the best, but explained they are way too expensive and no one in brazil would be able to afford them. Hockey and FA decks would cost like 700 R which is like $100 usd after the fees required to import them.
The vibe is totally there though with these shops... super hardcore 90's vibe and the old heads running them have probably been working these shops for a long while. Its hard to run a skateshop in the US even, with the presence of online shopping.
One of the kids who works at one of these shops-- has a dad who works for the BR government, who has the ability ship stuff (Girl boards from america to vlad) without the import tax (called the "Lion" because thats it's logo and its always hungry and you cant escape it lol) so @xvlad's lucky and also feels guilty because the shops don't make any money off him when he does that lol.
So upon setting up my new board from afroskater, i was a little suspicions getting it for free, and the reason he didn't want it: because it "didn't have enough concave"... Since I only ride hockey, which has tons of concave, I wasn't sure how this day was gonna pan out.
Looking down at my new.... Sector 9? is that what it says? Wait, isn't that a longboard company? haha Afroskater said it was his company and he was testing shapes. the paint job was obviously hand painted by him but why choose the name sector 9 ? like whats that even supposed to mean? i could see like area 51 or something but what is sector 9 even a reference to?
On the plus side- it DOES have a color scheme that matches... You guessed it!
SKATEHIVE
lets GOOOOOO
We were finally ready but dudes were hungry so:
Vlad decided to max out on a big pile of chinese food lol
I decided to buy the whole gang lunch because total was like 30 bucks for 4 people. its so fun to be able to ball out and buy lunch for everyone sometimes.
We called a taxi and threw our boards in the trunk. But I didn't throw mine too hard because there was a giant yellow tank in it.
Inside the taxi I asked the dudes what that tank was, and they said it was called something that translated to Propane. Its cheaper than gas so brazilian taxis just use tanks of compressed propane even though its like having a bomb in your trunk lol.
We got to the park and were immediately greeted by this local legend, Leo Lopes. The dude shreds and got some clips in our edit.
I set up the camera on the hip and we got down to business.
Rumored as the "most respected skater in rio", Marcello vibes with our session and gets down with a wicked nollie nosegrind on the bank-to-ledge.
i piece together some crap on the hip and vlad picks up the slack:
Marcello Gouvea, who did the nollie nosegrind on the bank to ledge is another OG older dude probably in his 40's. i love how the super old and super young dudes who skate in brazil are totally gnarly.
Then I broke my new board.
Then a synchronicity occurred: the new homie Leo had a brand new 8.25 board in his trunk of his car or maybe at his house which he biked to, to get for me, his pro model for Nostalgic 90's, the same company that @ionirmera is pro for.
The board was made out of maple and had a decent shape better than the sector nine. I was stoked. But i was even more stoked because @vaipraonde was on the session and was able to walk me though using @pixbee to buy the board from him using HBD!
So i bought a board with HBD from the dude at the skatepark. so fucking sick. (technically speaking, Vaipraonde bought my HBD from me, by sending BR to Leo)
Boom. he got paid in brazilian Real. @pixbee is an app @vaipraonde made where you send HBD or $hive to it and it sends the recipient a PIX payment, which is like brazils Venmo. Vaipraonde has to have enough $R in his pix account to cover it so he had to put more in for but but since he gets a small fee for the service he was down. i sent 45 HBD to pixbee and pixbee sent Leo the 300 $R. i also got paid 45 HBD this same day from my hive savings interest so it was like a free board thanks to hive. SO sick.
The session was cut short due to rain- we would have kept skating- that park is really fun at night. Behind is is a lake, that learned is freshwater not saltwater even though there are barnacles growing on the rocks so i wasn't sure.
They said it wasn't the cleanest water so calling it freshwater was a little inaccurate haha. I also noticed there was a street sign for the botanical gardens that @mengao mentioned i should see. i still want to see that. i'm going to make an effort to, even if i have to alone.
that was our adventure for the day!
and then i bought the dudes dinner using HBD again lol
LETS GOoooooooooooooooo
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