Voyage Magazine

On January 2nd 2020, Vans opened their new indoor skate space in Brooklyn New york.

The skatepark has now replaced the old house of vans which vans closed in late 2019. The park will be open from Thursday to Sunday for free (just like house of vans) and all you have to do is sign up on the website before hand which helps with the amount of people skating the park at once. (also currently only skateboarders can skate the park so you won’t get any fucking annoying scooter kids or bmx riders that destroy all the ledges in the park.)

Anyway onto the way the park looks. It has a great mix between street and park, with some volcano quarters in the middle of the park and ramps all over the park. Also the park has 2 manny pads both varying in sizes, also it has a bank to ledge and a flat ledge and a few rails in the park (one roundrail and a downrail)

A few skaters have already been to the park like Andrew Reynolds (come on Andrew just announce the vans deal) and The Nine Clubs Roger Bagely who obviously just skated the curb and suprisingly the step us successfully… He also tried to skate the volcano quarters but ended up just flipping his board away as you can see if you watch the nine club experience where they went and skated the park.

Anyway it seems to be quite a fun skatepark, its great for all types of skaters and skaters from any skill level.

Last year Folkestone skate committee announced the building of a new indoor skatepark in Folekstone. Originally meant to be opened in 2019 but the date has now been moved to summer 2020.

The skatepark will cost £14 million and will probably become the best indor skatepark in England (exept addrennaline alley)

The skatepark wil have 3 floors, The first floor will be the Bowl level, which shockingly will feature two concrete bowls which are made like real backyard pools with copins, tiles, vert and also the bowls will have a 2.5 metre deep end in both pools. The second bowl will be called the ‘modern bowl’ which will be also the ‘beginners’ bowl. It features an oververt extention which is 2.7 meters high (thats way over 6’6) and will have 400mm of oververt. It wil aso have an escelator extention which will be 2.6 meters hjigh and have 300mm of vert, so definitely not for beginners.

The second floor will be caled the street level. It will be 700sqm and will have tons of flatground and mellow rails and ramps in the park and will have many flatbars/roundrails, hubbas, a frames, and a few stairsets for the zero style skaters, it will include a few manny pads and quarter ramps (only for speed, any tricks on them will ensure your instant death since you in the street room.)#

The Third floor will be called the Flow Level. This level will feature, wallrides, volcanoes, waterfalls, blends and hips with also 2 pilars which wil be skateable (somehow). The quarter pipes and hips will vary in size so it’ll be great for beginers and pro,s (but i doubt theres many pro skaters living in folekstone, maybe if you ride for death or heroin though…)

There will also be another floor which will have a climbing wall, gym and cafe but we dont give a shit about that over here and voyage since were all skaters and not gym rats.

You might remember a while ago where pro skater Greg Lutzka signed a contract with a shoe company called K-Swiss. If you don’t know what K-Swiss are then the basic explenation is that they’re a tennis shoe company from America ( I think)

Anyway back to the story. K-Swiss made Greg Lutzka some shoes to skate in and you might remember him saying on board setup videos and in his video parts where he had a k-swiss sticker on his board and was skating in k-swiss shoes. Anyway K-Swiss never really released and skate shoes and Greg Lutzka son left the contract aftrer a few years. He then went on to osiris where hes been on for the past few years (and thats another dying shoe brand, wow Greg your really doing well with the shoe sponsors)

I’ve looked on k-swiss’s website and they do have a few shoes which could be skateable which are just flat soled trainers which were made for tennis (makes sense tenis shoes are good for skating since in the 80’s and early 90’s skaters would skate in basketball shoes and tennis shoes)

So the main question is will K-Swiss ever come back into skateboarding? With the rise of skateboarding in the media and it now being in the olynpics for the first time this year, will they copy brands like nike, adidas and converse which suddenly started making skate shoes (also to be noted, Nike did try to make skate shoes a few years before they released the Nike SB brand but failed just like K-Swiss) and try to make an elite team of skaters which rep the brand even with its roots firmly in tennis and definitely not skateboarding. I’m tempted to try and skate some of the k-swiss shoes and write a review in a few months once ive skated the shoes.

Anyway, what do you think? Will k-swiss ever make a comeback in skateboarding? or will they just tstick to tennis footwear and ‘casual’ footwear as they state on their website.

As we all know, most skate shoe brands have either been bought out by big corporate brands or they are corporate brands that have nothing to do with skateboarding. But out of all the corporate chaos pro skateboarders Ben Gore, Jon Nguyen, Jordan Sancgez, Kevin Coakley and Christian Maalouf released a completely non corporate, skater ran shoe company called State Footwear.

The whole point of State Footwear is that they’re “free and liberated” as they’re slogan says. They’re againsts corporate sponsors and are completely running the brand themselves. The brand was made in January 2016 and since then have made an impact on the skate industry with articles in Jenkem Magazine and many Skaters talking about them.

They’re shoes start from $55 (£42.08) to they’re highest priced shoe which is $70 (£53.56). The shoes are the standard price which is nice since recentely the trend of skate shoes over $80 has been more apparent recentely in the industry.

They’ve also done a colab with skateboard deck brand WKND which is made by Grant Yansura and is the board sponsor of Christian Maaloof.

I think over time State will become more popular and will gain more attraction, or on the other hand it might stay the same and just slowly dekline (see what I did there) and just dissapear.

Anyway everyone here at Voyage wish State the best in their future projects and we hope that they do stay “free and liberated” as their slogan says.

We recently interviewed Dave Bachinsky since his new thrasher part just came out. Here’s what we got

So you just recently put out a part on thrasher, how long did it take to film and was it thrasher who came up with the idea?

My good friends were flying over to Chengdu, China for a contest & I wanted to tag along with them. I talked to my good friend Rich about doing a extended trip off the contest to film some in the streets. We stayed 6 extra days and started stacking up clips and that’s how the part all came about.

What’s your favourite spot in the world?

It’s a mile hike up in Maine with a natural quarter pipe made from a water fall. It’s the best mission with the friends during the summertime.

When did you start skating?

My uncles gave me a skateboard when I was 2 years old. The local skateparks opened up in Lowell, Massachusetts when I was 13 and that’s when I really started to skate everyday.

Who originally got you into skateboarding?

My family & friends 💙🙌🏼

Are you working on any projects recently?

I’m working on a couple different video pieces but I’m excited to be filming a ditch & water dam segment. Growing up in Massachusetts there was no ditches to skate. Being out in California they run throughout the whole state and the aqueduct systems get unique. This last months adventures with crew have been epic!

Here’s a link to Dave’s new Thrasher part- https://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/videos/dave-bachinsky-s-six-days-in-chengdu-part/

2018 and 2019 saw some intersting trends come into skateboarding, from baggy clothes to complete kooky camo trousers.

One trend that has come back is big puffy shoes from the 90s and early 2000s like the DC Lynx and the éS Accel and éS tribo which a basically the size as Kobe’s shoe boxes. One shoe that has seen a comeback is the Osiris D3 (2001), it was a shoe that was released in the early 2000s and quickly became a famous shoe. The shoe is made of complete leather with a sort of sideways E on the side of the shoe, basically the shoe is indistructable. Youtuber Christian Flores who does skate shoe reviews tried to skate them. let’s just say if a nuclear war does break out, those shoes are gonna be the last trace of humans.

Last year at SLS London I saw a photographer who was wearing some white and yellow D3’s, some size 40 (I’m guessing the size I obviously didn’t ask) Jeans, a world industries T shirt and a 411-VM Cap, basically he’s the exact person he probably was in the 90’s. Oh he also looked like a total Kook.

Anyway Osiris are still selling the shoe from £50 (which if your American do the conversion yourself you lazy f**k) I guess that’s the standard price for shoes these days so you’ll probably be better off just getting some Janoskis or some decent skate shoes that aren’t huge and actually have board feel.

Anyway I mean if you like that style of shoe then go for it but if you like normal thin skate shoes then don’t go near them.