So for the past 5 years, my group of friends and I (who all live in different parts of the world) meet up for 1-2 weeks for a little “skate vacation.” I’m from Minnesota, Christian Turbes and Conny Franko are from Nebraska, Erik Thorbeck currently lives in Shanghai, and our U.K. homies DJ Davidson and Matt McConnell came out on this trip. We also met this really rad dude named Weston Kearl at the Palais de Tokyo spot in Paris. I believe he currently lives in New York.
Some of us have shop sponsors and some of us just have a passion for skateboarding, so our trips are completely self-funded. We all jokingly kept saying, “it ain’t much but it’s honest work,” every time after someone landed a trick. But it really does refer to us just putting in time and effort to getting clips; not for sponsors or money, but for the sake of that satisfaction of landing a trick that you have been battling out. For example, on that last clip of the edit, Conny Franko was battling out a switch heel down a 3 block in Madrid while the sunset slowly crept in. My camera gave me the warning that it was about to die and I warned Conny that he maybe had 3 more tries left. On the try that Conny landed it, my camera died and cut off right before he landed. Fortunately, Conny was a good sport and we spent the rest of the night eating Donor Kebabs and drinking beers. We went back to the spot the next morning and Conny landed it effortlessly. Honest Work.
-Dino Torres
