More Brotherhood
July 11th, 2008 by Kilwag
We’re looking forward to more progress at Brotherhood Plaza in Stockholm Sweden. I may have had a Swedish girlfriend for about 15 minutes once in the 90’s, although I ‘m not sure she’d agree. I’d like to see something like that here. (The DIY street plaza, not my Swedish pretend ex-girlfriend. She said she was some sort of youth sailing champion. Elena, where are you? No, don’t answer that, I’m married with kids.) I did hear back from David Krug, the man behind Brotherhood. He shed a little light on the D.I.Y. street plaza project. There’s a lot of photos on the official site, but not a lot of actual information. In fact I think his short email says more than the official site, at least in English.
From David Krug:
Thanks a lot!
hopefully some more publicity can one day get the city or companies to pay the material for a big plaza, i have so many drawings that we havent afforded/had time to build yet.
As a note a lot of the things on the plaza me and other skaters were not allowed to build ourselves because of a city official that was against us building it as a diy. The city owns the land and payed most of the material so at that time i could just make drawings of everything in detail choosing the exakt materials, bricks, colors and placements and then be there to watch the builders put it together and correct them when doing mistakes (a lot of mistakes).
That was pretty frustrating since the contractors were crazy expensive and didnt care about the place or skateboarding and acted like small children when told something was not made by the drawings or agreements.
Any skater would do a better job then the contractors did most of the time and if we were allowed we could also afford to build twice the amount of obstacles.
But now since some time back we have finally gotten the needed permission to build ourselves and we will keep doing that.
We are also seeking funding to integrate large brick banks, brick quarters, skatable art monuments and stuff at a higher pace then we can afford ourselves without funding.
Cheers, thanks again, talk later!
So there you have it. Maybe there is a DIY street plaza here and we just don’t know about it.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:37 am
What’s the difference between a skarpnack and a skejtpark? Whatever, good for those guys for having the tenacity to get the greenlight on building the skarpnack themselves. Skarp and annoy the bureaucrats til they say ok.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Ed Benedict needs a greenlight. Or do we need to diy the whole thing.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Yeah, seriously, I don’t know WTF is going on with that park. The unsubstantiated rumor is that they designed something that was out of the budget and now they are waiting for money… If that’s true then I would be pissed if I was waiting for my street plaza. Why not design within the budget? Isn’t that part of getting the bid? Hopefully I’m not getting the whole picture.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
waiting for a park sucks. In the WCO we have been trying to get our new park going now for three years, originally they were going to have Grindline do it, now it has been reduced to fun box bank ramps a-la Red Bull Sheckler style… oh well. I guess the kids will dig it… while it lasts.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:00 am
Prickly Pete, “skarpnäck” is the name of a suburb to stockholm and so there is quite a big difference between a skarpnack and a skatepark…
Kilwag, with all due respect and thanks for the article, you are obviously not getting the whole picture and regarding the “unsubstantiated rumor” i think you are probably mixing the plaza up with a completely different project in stockholm where they actually had 4 times the final plaza budget and only made drawings and research for about one plaza budget and then the rest of the budget was taken back if i remember it right.
If im right please dont mix the plaza up with that project. Thanks.
Why not ask before you critisize something, you have my mail?..
And as far as drawing within the budget goes with the plaza… The first plaza budget was $0, nothing, so if i designed within the budget we wouldnt have anything at all.
The first actual small budget came because i worked for it and showed the city pictures and drawings and that was only $12.000. If i left it at that instead of drawing and working out of the budget we would now have 3 curbs with no asphalt around them. Good idea you think?
Next budget was $24.000.. Next 36.000.. and so on.
In other words, if i didnt keep trying to make it bigger we would have nothing instead of the plaza we have now with 10 curbs and ledges, rails, etcetera. And there is also plenty of reasons why it was mostly curbs and ledges in part 1, but its a long story.
By the way, publishing that letter sent to you privately might not be that helpful to our cause, I thought that was pretty obvious and trusted you to not make our work harder, so id appreciate if you take it down. Thanks.
David
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 am
David,
Apparently we had some miscommunication. I keep re-reading this post and there’s no criticism in it, so I’m not sure where you are coming from.
I’ll contact you and we’ll get it straitened out.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:20 am
david,
Kilwag is talking about Ed Benedict in Portland …