rollTogether #15 review by Peter Bender

After the last successful rolltogether in Eskilstuna, Sweden, the crew decided to head back to its roots, namely at the new concrete skatepark in Hemer which is a smaller town near Dortmund and Iserlohn in the West of Germany.

Hemer was a great choice, the skatepark is located on a hill at a huge horticultural show which delivers a beautiful view over the whole area and the landscape behind.

Furthermore it's some kind of snakerun, realstreet plaza-built skatepark which is perfectly integrated in the forests of the, so called, Landesgartenschau area. Nevertheless the plaza is made for skateboarders, rollerbladers can still have a lot of fun there by choosing different lines to skate and some creative obstacles like the quarter/bank type of curb which was destroyed pretty hard by nearly everyone.

The days before everybody was looking kind of pessimistic towards the session because of the bad weather forecasts, but it turned out to be a pretty mellow day with a mix of sun and clouds and almost no rain.

The rolltogether crew did a great job by organizing tons of free red bull, free giveaways, extra stuff for good tricks and definitely to mention the new white Nimh Shaman, offered in all sizes to give the people the opportunity to test them out.

Sebastian Hofer, Lars Echterhoff and myself showed up for photography coverage as well as Kai Schmitz for video.

My flat mate and Razors team rider Philipp Preuss, who just recently moved to Hamburg, was the first who laid down some serious hammers before the session actually started with tricks as ao topsoul, ao topacid, zero ao fishbrain and even more on the bank type of curb thing. Maik Lojewski, who's just currently injured on his ankle motivated the people with his speakers when the session really started which resulted in a heavy skatebattle on separate spots. Once again Borken local Eugen Enin showed up with some banger tricks on the downrail and the curb, as well as Remz Rider Jo Zenk, who also showed the rest of the game whats up.

But not only the team riders delivered some massive stunts, their were also many more or less unknown and talented skaters who enjoyed riding with the pro's such as the guys around Eugen, the Cologne guys with Grindhouse flow Daniel Gourski and Dimka of course. Also a lot of oldschool rippers from back in the day showed up and left some impression on the crowd: Sven Schillings, Chris Rother, Matthäus Parobeck and others let the new generation take a glimpse at what its all about. Sven Ehmer who surprised the crowd troughout the whole day took the 200€ voucher from Grindhouse and is now allowed to entitle himself as the Rookie of the Day.

All in all i can just say that for me rollTogether is and has always been a special event because of its family-character and mellow vibe. The concept of rollTogether is just based on a simple skatesession by bringing together people from all over Germany or even Europe to one location, to meet and stay in contact with everyone and simply skate.

Quoting Oliver Nermerich: Since Kai has stacked footage throughout the whole day he has still a lot of clips left for a second edit. Yeah you get this right. This is just the first edit, a second one is on its way and will be delivered after the weekend. So stay tuned and come back to the site. At this point I want to thank everyone who contributed to the success of this sesssion, especially Maik, Lars and Kai! But also Peter Bender and Sebastian Hofer for hooking us up with some additional photo content that will be appearing soon! And of course a big shout out to all our sponsors!

rollTogether #16 coming soon!