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.
8 comments
David
Colin and kilwag, Ah, i thought he was commenting about this project. Gotcha 🙂
colin
david,
Kilwag is talking about Ed Benedict in Portland …
Kilwag
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.
David
Prickly Pete,
“skarpn
kvon
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.
Kilwag
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.
Mark
Ed Benedict needs a greenlight. Or do we need to diy the whole thing.
Prickly Pete
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.