This past week I got a taste of the rockstar life premiering Reckless Abandon (Salomon x Snowboarder Magazine's new film). Despite spending most of our times in airports, on trains, and in lines, it was exceptional experiencing four European countries in six days: two in London, one in Zurich, two in Munich, and one in Vienna.
In each city we were hosted by a retailer for a few hours before the premiere. We signed autographs, drank beer, skated, and shot the shit with the locals. In particular, the shop party at Doodah in Zurich was most epic. They have a mini ramp inside the shop and we had an insane skate session. It made for an awesome pre-party to the premiere, which resulted in a pretty rowdy audience and lots of beer. The turnouts for the premieres were nothing like the world premiere in Salt Lake City, but damn!, Europeans know how to party! It's amazing to see how hard they will send it on a Monday night.
I tried to skate as much as I could despite the minimal downtime we had. Although I did have the chance to skate the infamous South Bank skatepark in London, which was such a unique experience. As you skate there you are watched by hundreds of pedestrians and it feels like you're on display. On top of that, two people were doing grafitti in the skatepark while everyone was skating. Since the skatepark is basically a tunnel, you can't help but inhale the fumes as your catching your breath to skate.
The journey was exhausting but so much fun. It was just enough of a tease to make me long for more time in Europe. Hopefully next time my destination will be a single city so I actually have time to digest something else besides the beer. But the beer too! - Jesse Paul
Reckless Abandon: A Film by Bode Merriill and Jon Ray from Snowboarder Magazine on Vimeo.
