CPH Open 2018

We arrived in Berlin on Wednesday, well rested and fresh, while most of the riders had already a few days of skating and partying on their clock. Thursday started mellow though. There was a so called am-contest at the Shelter, but we can’t say anything about this, cause we just chilled in the Beergarden, the vibes there were too mellow to be bothered to go into an indoor skatepark with sauna-like temperatures. At one point the “secret-missions” started and we went to the first spot where some of the best skaters in the world skated a little session in front of random spectators that happened to come by in the outskirts of Berlin. Although the spot was rough, a lot of tricks went down. Too many to remember. But still Bastien Salabanzi is the king of this spot. Then we went on to a bowl session in a private garden. The bowl was tough. Kinda vert only in the shallow end but the guys again managed to squeeze tons of tricks out of it. Sad side note: The beer was already gone, when we arrived.

It started with a mellow session at a flatspot near the river. What you actually had to do to win this or if their was even a winner picked wasn’t too clear, but that’s the fun thing about CPH Open anyway: You don’t really exactly know what’s going on, everybody is just skating and having fun and when it’s over, a winner gets picked but it doesn’t really matter. More important is that everybody had a good time. While the sessions till then were kept a bit secret, cause it seems like the city of Berlin wasn’t as open minded as Copenhagen and wouldn’t have been too keen to have thousands of skaters at a streetspot, the next spot on the list was the supermarket that was officially announced and yeah, it got crowded. We arrived a bit late and it was nearly impossible to get a spot to see something from the rail session in front of the building. Afterwards it continued in the supermarket, where a kicker session over the giant CPH-sunglasses started. Again, we have no clue who won that thing and also once again: it’s about everybody being a winner. By looking at the faces of the people sitting around in the sunset, you could tell: mission accomplished. And there was still the afterparty to come…

The session at the first spot was delayed a bit. A lot of people had to pay the price for the partynight that just ended a few hours earlier. But from the skatepark at Böcklerplatz we went a few meters to a famous rail spot and there instantly everybody went nuts. Hard slams and even harder tricks went down within only a few minutes. Then it was time to head back to the Shelter where another contest went down and yeah, we also can't tell you anything about this one cause once again we stayed outside in the beergarden worshiping the sun. Finally everybody (and yeah, if you see the crowd it was literally everybody) went to the Dogshit spot where the final was about to start. We (same old story) couldn’t see anything cause the amount of people standing around there was crazy but what we saw on instagram was some good skateboarding. In the end Zion Wright was picked as a winner and everybody was happy. It was the end of a great day, of a great contest and there was still another party to come…