Events

Barn Burner 2011 took place in Seattle last weekend and Andy Roulston was on site to capture the atmosphere on and off the course. This article marks the upbeat for our Barn Burner coverage, stay tuned for more over the next few days!

Over the past couple of years, the Tri-State Area (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) has lost too many indoor skate parks to count. From Hackettstown in New Jersey to the infamous Academy Skate Park in Connecticut; we have lost too many indoor parks due to lack of funding and support. We have endorsed endless hours of blading and hard earned cash to spend late Sunday nights lacing tricks in local parks. Kids grow up in these facilities and inevitably they have to watch the place they were raised in get torn down to the ground. One of our last surviving indoor Skate Parks in the Tri-State Area is Shield's Skate Park in Flemington, NJ. Run by Mr. Shields himself, the park has gained a large community of rollerbladers from all over the Tri-State Area. Bladers assemble every Thursday night for a balls-to-the-wall session of stunts and filming/photography sessions. The park certainly favors rollerblading with a huge half pipe, tons of round coping, and creative transitions. Amazing skaters such as Franco Cammayo, Erick Rodriguez and Dave Lang (and so many more) have thrown down some of the most unbelievable lines I have ever seen.

For the first Chosen Few competition of the season the "Rockillers" have teamed up with ACHOSEN-FEW.COM to bring everyone a "Kick Ass" street event to kick the series off. The main organizers for this competition are Alejoh Candelo, Iain Mcleod, Winston Wardwell, Quinn Feldman and Colin Mcleod.

Last Saturday the first round of the Dutch Championships took place in Rotterdam. Adil Farhouni from Almere won this first round in the senior category. The winner in the juniors division was Tasheed Zaalman from Rotterdam. An overall ranking will determine who will become the new Dutch Champion after two more events, held in the next four weeks. This Dutch championship consists of three rounds at three different places in the Netherlands. The concept is unique since all the competitors get to skate together for a couple of minutes, which gives them more time to impress the judges.

This year I attended the March madness 2011 at Shield Skatepark in Flemington, NJ where the only thing that came to mind was "Go big or go home". With every pressure of getting to the top and keeping your spot for the ultimate WRS this year, there was no lack of disappointments. Everyone from beginners to advance showed massive innovations that built this sports to where we are today.

There are only a few rollerblading competitions in Austria. The Rollinz is by far the biggest of them all and gives rollerbladers all over the country the opportunity to meet and of course to battle each other in the nicest skatepark Austria has to offer. Rollinz 2011 went down on the 5th of March this year and the event lived up to everyones expectations and beyond!