If you didn’t get a chance to watch the ITÄLIFE video when it was put online for 48 a few last month then you are in luck: Samu’s part is up again. I’ve alway enjoyed this guys parts, he charges at every obstacle in sight, has tons of board control and doesn’t do any boring over the top tech tricks. For photographic evidence of this statement check out his 12 page interview in our new issue.

On the cover of this month’s issue we’ve got Adrien Coillard taking out Geoff Rowley on Lyon’s famous hubba for the second time. Yep, the little guy who casually gap to bluntslid the beast in issue 110 went back for more.

In related “Bon Voyage” news, we covered Brophy, Flo, Joey, Pete Eldridge and Sammy Winter’s trip to China. The article should give you a good idea of the standard of skating we can expect from this new Cliché video. Only 4 days to go!

Since Element Europe are also working on a video (Hold It Down) we decided to send Sam Ashley to Morocco where Karsten, Nassim, Madars and Phil were out on a filming mission. Needless to say they absolutely killed it. With a crew like that what else would you expect?

We even managed to fit in Michi Mackrodt, Kenny Reed and globe trotting photographer Alexey Lapin’s recent  trip to the Balkans.

As you can tell from the titles on the cover we’ve also picked the brains of some pretty funny characters this month. I’m sure a lot of you will find the Pearls Of Wisdom with the one and only “Give your life to Christ”  Christian Hosoi quite interesting.

Samu Karvonen gets the first interview slot and tells us about organising a skate flea market, why he eats food from dumpsters and what he knows of Quicksilver’s plans for the Euro skate team. The second goes to Element Europe’s Jarne Verbruggen who came through with 16 pages of all terrain savagery. Finally we’ve got an Effect with Tom Day. Those of you who (like me) haven’t seen very much of him before this are in for a shock. This guy destroys some seriously unwelcoming terrain. Can’t wait to see the footage of these tricks in Heroin’s “Video Nasty“.

Now that you know what’s in there, go and get yourself a copy!

Most of people come to Estonia by airplanes but Russians still prefer overnight trains. Here we got Gena Kakusha having his morning tea before arriving toTallinn.

One of the best things about Simple Session is free shuttle bus between the official hotel and the arena. Here we got: me( Kirill Korobkov), Samu Karvonen and Willie Makela on the bus ride.

When it comes to big airs Tim Zom knows what’s up.

Max Kruglov didn’t come to mess around. He went straight to bs noseblunt on the first warm up.

It was way too crowded on the course during the practice. All the 70 riders we re allowed to skate at the same time. It was pretty dangerous for everyone. Max Kruglov catched Manny Santiago’s board with his head.

Korahn Gayle was another victim of the chaos.

Fernando Bramsmark did a stalefish on the obstacle that was bigger than some people’s houses.

Daniel Cates came to judge. He was marked as Daniel Gates in the judges list.

Alex Mizurov saved this trick for the finals – double bs flip up the gap.

Alex Mizurov and Manny Santiago visited Estonia for the first time.

Gosha Konyshev refused to go out on Saturday night and killed it on Sunday. He got the 6^th place.

Maxim Habanec slided on this bluntslide all the way down in his run. This thingl ooked like the funnest part of the park to me. I wish I had my skateboard with for this obstacle.

Maxim Habanec and his crooked grind up in the tech section of the course.

Maxim Habanec and his noseblunt slide in the rails zone.

Samu Karvonen and Dan Cates.

Phil Zwijsen did the biggest fs 180 of the weekend.

Proper fs 5-0 grind on the round rail always looks good. I am sure Phil knows that.

Phil Zwijsen and his stalefish transfer.

Russian delegation consisted of (from left to right) Misha Poponin, Gosha Konyshev, Sergey Dubrovin (Union Skateboards team manager), Gena Kakusha, me (I was one of the judges) and Dima “Flin”. Oh yeah, I forgot about Max Kruglov who came from Saint Petersburg in shining Audi A5.He didn’t need a free bus, he came to win.

Bs bluntslide into the bank by the skater who I don’t know.

360 flip by the Portuguese guest.

Woody Hoogendijk was as good as this crail grab on the first day but he got hurt during the semi-finals warm up.

Willie Makela comes to Estonia for Simple Session every year.

Madars Apseand his signature wallie 50-50.

Gap to fs nosebluntslide that happened during the best trick jam.

Austyn Gillette was there too – bs smith grind.

If the best trick contest happened on this obstacle, Maxim Kruglov would have won it too –360-flip up and over.

Champagne in the bus.

We had few hours before the train after we checked out from the hotel on Monday and I decided to cheat the fear of heights.

I don’t know what to say here. Her hat pretty much speaks for the whole picture, Monday afternoon in Tallinn.

Antiz’s Samu Karvonen put together this little indoor skatepark clip featuring the whole Lamina crew. That miniramp trick Eniz does at 2:25 just looks incredible. Imagine floating a frontside half cab into the backside overcrook grind and then popping back in straight with your shoulders still twisted the wrong way around. Doesn’t it seems like the most unnatural movement your body could possibly do?

Antiz just dropped this half retrospective, half banging new shit, video. Honestly fucking hyped on this shit. Everyone’s got some stuff in there and there are full sections from both the technically astounding youngster Teemu Pirinen and stylish ATV Dom Dietrich.

Fucking ripping. Happy Birthday Antiz!

Get watching!

Antiz are almost three weeks deep on their OAF premiere spree. Samu sent in some iSnaps. I think we were supposed to talk about what was going on in the photos, but somehow ended up talking about the trip in general. So I don’t know exactly who does what in the ones with skating in there. Sounds like it’s been hard work and good times in equal measure though.

Have a look at what Samu’s got to say and show and find out more about the DVD release and download dates for OAF. Which is a sick video by the way. Dallas Rockvandamme and Hugo Liard were my personal favourites. Won’t go into detail to spoil it for everyone, but if this show is coming to your town and you’re thinking about attending, think no more. Attend.

How far into the tour are you?
We just passed the magical halfway mark.

How many days have you been on the road by now?
If I calculated right it’s our 18th day going now.

How many more to go?
I’m just checking flights at the moment to get out of this trip. But the tour will go on for another few weeks. Germany, Swiss and Italy still to come.

Do you have a premiere in a different city every night?
Well, it is a premiere tour…

The question between the lines here is, have you been boozing 18 days straight by now?
Yes

Samu Karvonen, Itä 1974 section

How’s the team’s morale doing? Still high spirits and high fives, or just guzzling spirits at this point?
It’s rising again because the crew changed a bit. Few had to leave and a few new sources of energy jumped on board. But the spirits still remain.

Do you get to skate at all, or is mostly premieres and parties?
Because of the tight schedule we haven’t been hitting the streets that much. If you don’t count the night missions. But we still skated most days. Mostly concrete parks so as a Finn it suits me well since we still don’t have too many of those at home.

You have a band with you, right?
For the first two weeks we super rad punk’n'roll band called Cortona with us. I think the best way to describe the band is to quote their opening line “We play rock’n Roll and we play it fast”. A few gigs were in bars and a few in skateparks. Skatig with live band is quite awesome. The “BUZZ” is high. Amazing guys. Fitted our Hoboness perfectly! Thanks guys! Speedrock band Ta Gueule will join us in Hannover. Don’t know much about them but looking forward to it!

I was kind of disappointed you weren’t at your Berlin premiere, I was hoping to witness the sickness myself..I love Julian, but he’s no match for a whole team AND a band.
Yeah, I wish I could have been there. But we had Pete, Julian and Polo to cover that one. We were busy on this weird tunnel after party in Paris. You know. Someone needed to take care of that one too.

Pete Ruikka, Itä 1974 section

Have you been camping out in parks most of the time? How’s that been treating everyone?
We have our tents with us but we only used them once so far. Other than that we have been floor surfing mostly. No complaining is the hobo rule n.1. To be honest, people have treated us so good. So thanks to all the distributors and other people who let us keep their neighbours angry.

We are supposed to go skate Cologne now! A real skate day and a premiere later. Soon as we get this tour done we are putting some effort to get the DVD out for those lucky people who couldn’t make it to the premieres. Around mid June. There will be a Scandi-premiere tour from Norway to Finland starting 20th of June.
After the last stop in Helsinki we will put a download link to ANTIZ site so the rest of the world can enjoy OAF too. In Good quality.
And the show goes on….