“When I surprised Mazel Paris with a Golden Ticket there. Super random.”
The Barcelona of the North
Mike Boisvert went to Sweden because of a train. From Copenhagen, Malmö is thirty minutes across the bridge, a different country at the end of a commute, and after a few days of skating Copenhagen he crossed. He only saw one Swedish city, and it was enough to put the country near the top of his list. “Malmö was one of the most insane cities I've seen for skating. It's like the Barcelona of the North.” Stockholm, by everything he has heard, is just as big, with somewhere around thirty-five skateparks, and Gothenburg is next on the list. He had four days and made four videos. “I was pretty busy.”
A ticket handed out at the top of a vert ramp
Mike was in town for Vert Attack, Sweden's big vert contest, and saw on a story that Mazel Paris (@mazelparis) was there to compete. They had met in the Philippines, where he first crossed paths with her family, and he has looked after her a bit since. “I feel like she's my little sister.” She had no idea he was in Sweden. He had a JACKALOPE Golden Ticket in his bag, filmed a little video with her, and handed it over at the end without telling her it was coming. “I think that's destiny. I think I should give it to her.” Her family, dad included, was there for it. Mazel has been to JACKALOPE more than once since; Mike's read is that she will be one of the top vert skaters soon, and that the progress in two years has been huge. The video of that day is below.
The high school
The vert ramp Mazel was skating is inside a high school, which is the most Swedish thing about Swedish skateboarding. Bryggeriet, in Malmö, is a real high school where every teacher skates. Math is taught through the dimensions of a ramp. The street section is on the ground floor, the vert ramp is behind it, the classrooms are upstairs, and there are two bowls and a mini ramp. The diploma counts, and gets you into college afterwards. Mike went in to interview the director and left with the impression of a dream taken seriously; that video is below. “It's an actual high school, and all the teachers are skaters.” John, the director, rips; Stefan rips; everyone rips. Alumni include Koffe Kroon and Oski, both on the list below. It is Mike's number one place to skate in the country, with one open question he forgot to ask: whether the park is open to non-students outside class hours.
Where to skate
Stapelbäddsparken is the big one, a free outdoor park that Mike could not pronounce and still calls one of the biggest he has ever seen. “It's too big. It's intimidating.” It is one of about ten free outdoor parks in the city. Love Malmö is the strange one: a section of Philadelphia's Love Park rebuilt with concrete imported from Philly, same ledge height, same material, basically two ledges that skaters love because they are perfect. “I don't know why they did that, but that's pretty cool. The scene is really, really intense about skateboarding.” For Stockholm, Rålis Skatepark is the bowl he has bookmarked without skating it yet. And the tool that ties it together is Shinner, a free, community-based spot app built by a Malmö OG who spent about fifteen years at Nike, and who hosted Mike in two of his summer houses. “The best skate app I've ever seen in my life.” You filter by obstacle, order a ride to the spot from inside the app, and can win money for spot of the month or clip of the month. It is huge in Europe and almost unknown in North America. Mike made a video about the man behind it.
Skaters to know
Koffe Kroon (@koffekroon) is Mike's number one pick and a familiar face at JACKALOPE, where he has skated Mississauga. “I really like his skate style because he does weird tricks. He'll do a late front shove every try.” Mike was behind the camera for one of Koffe's tricks in Malmö, and Koffe told him he would buy him a flight back if it came with a Golden Ticket. Mike wanted to give him one; he was already deep into another adventure. Quiet, kind and machine-consistent, in Mike's view he could go all the way. “I think he could make it, street legend stuff, at some point.” Oski, Oskar Rozenberg Hallberg (@oski), is the transition beast and another Bryggeriet graduate. Hampus Winberg (@hampus_winberg), from Halmstad, is the vert and bowl skater who likes to fly. “Don't sleep on the Swedish skaters, man. They're underrated, or properly rated. They're pretty good.” On the ecosystem side, Nils Svensson is the legend photographer of the scene, and Kahalani is the board shop.
If you go
Everybody rides a bike in Malmö, so do that. Sauna is cultural across the Nordic countries, though Mike saved his for Finland. Stockholm is the beautiful city full of spots, and its archipelago is the island-hopping trip he wants to do in summer, not in the cold. The Swedish scene has no barrier to growth in his eyes: it is already there, with skate schools, budgets and the parks to match. What it could use, he thinks, is a full-on festival, and he made the pitch on the call. “Let's do a JACKALOPE in Sweden. If you do it in Sweden, I'm sure people from Finland would go.”
Mike Boisvert: “Malmö is just one city of Sweden, and the skateboarding there is like California.”
Photos and video: Mike Boisvert / The Skate Nomad. Part of the JACKALOPE Skate Atlas, one country at a time, with the skaters who live there. See every country on the map.
