Introducing: Schaeffer McLean

Schaeffer first came to our attention back in August '08 when his mum, Eve, e-mailed Route One with some links to videos of her then 4 yr old son, skating. And wow, can he skate! After absolutely no consideration at all, we got in touch and offered him sponsorship, as his enthusiasm and love for the sport is above and beyond anything we would have expected to see from someone of his age.


Schaeffer is a busy lad, always travelling to skateparks with his Mum, he's been to our warehouse and had a skate with Andy Makepeace, (R1 Team Rider) and also went along to the Jib-Vid event in Bristol, to name just a few things he's been up to over the last 5 months.
The crowning achievement was his trip to the King of the Groms 2008 competition in California, where he became the FIRST EVER UK entrant into the competition!
Click here to read Schaeffer's KOTG tour diary, it's an amazing read.

So we at Route One would like to introduce Schaeffer as an official Route One Team Rider! Watch this space as this kid will get better and better!

Sidewalk's Sofia Spotlight

As you should know, we took our skate team out to Bulgaria with Sidewalk last year for a bit of a jolly tour with a difference, and finally it has made it to the hallowed pages of the nations favourite skate 'zine. We don't want to spoil it for those of you waiting for your copy, but it's well worth a read and out now, so go get it.
What we can show you is some of the stuff already put up on the Sidewalk website, namely interviews with the team, so click the link below to continue reading this post, where you'll find an interview with Mr Bernard Leyden himself.


Click here to continue reading

How does Scotland compare to Bulgaria then? Any similarities as far as you could see?

It looked to me that the general population of Bulgaria take a lot more pride in themselves than the average Joe in Scotland. You know, I don’t think I seen anyone wearing trackies or drinking Buckfast. Nearly everyone I saw looked really clean and on point...

The Bulgarian language barrier was hard enough for the best of us - how did the distinctively thick Scottish accent go down with the natives?

I never had any trouble with it really, just as long as I took my time, spoke slowly and threw in some sign language type stuff.

What did you and Ashley get up to when not skating then? Did you manage to take in more culture than the rest of the crew?

Well if KFC and pizzas count as culture, I drew in plenty (laughs). Me and Ash did a good bit of wandering around, there was one point were we ended up lost somewhere in Sofia and I was kind of stressed, obviously because of being somewhere completely different and a bit ghetto, but the missus didn’t seem fazed at all. Women are mental.

What were your favourite three Bulgarian spots that we skated?

Pretty much everywhere we went was pretty rad, so I don’t think anything stands out to me man. I was just really happy to be somewhere rad with loads of potential.

Top five memorable incidents from the trip?

1 - Avid being a total bastard.

2 - Hanging out with new folks and making new friends.

3 - Physically feeling heat from sunshine.

4 - Trying new food and drink.

5 - Just feeling good about skating in general, it was all good! Stoked!

And finally, the most memorable Amir lyric you heard?

Seriously man, Amir is so funny, that boy was spitting mad lyrics, yo! He was waffling some stuff man, f*ck knows what man, he's like like the Pharcyde wrapped up in one big underground hip hop parcel. He's a f*cking good lad.

Interview stolen from Sidewalk.com, 12/01/09.

Manhead Becomes A Vans Man

It's been a while but the blog is now back up and running at full steam after a rather hectic Christmas period and have we got some great news for ya?

First up, congratulations must go out to our Manhead, not content with being merely a Vans Flow Rider, he's just been promoted to the full Vans team in recognition of quite a spectacular 2008 and we're totally made up for him!
After becoming member of the Independent UK team back in July, it's continued to get better for the man from Tingley, with tons of international exposure, he's become one of the hottest talents on the UK skate scene and we reckon things can only get better in 2009.

Good work fella!

Route One Does Bulgaria. Part 1

As I sit writing this, I am sat aboard the 20:15 Bulgaria Air flight from Sofia to London Heathrow and with any luck, will get home for some time around 12pm tomorrow. The reason for me sitting here is that I, along with the entire Route One skate team and a couple of Sidewalk mag guys, have spent the past few days sampling the sights skate spots that Sofia, Haskovo and Plovdiv have to offer.
The story starts just under a week ago when Avid, Manhead, Lynskey, Sidewalk’s Ryan Gray and myself all met at Route One’s Leeds store to pick up a few last minute essentials (read – decks!) before embarking on a 5 hour train journey via London’s Kings Cross to Gatwick Airport.
Shortly after arriving we were met by Livingston legend Ben Leyden who immediately joined us in a stretch of the legs with a wander around, trying to find if anywhere was open at one in the morning to stave off our boredom.
Over the next seven hours we were joined by Brighton’s answer to Andrew Reynolds – Amir Williams, Bristol’s Andy Makepeace and the now London based Samantha Bruce, who has bigger balls than I do and a fair old trick selection to boot…
Our flight was scheduled for 10.30am and, after a thoroughly dull nine and a half hours meandering around Gatwick looking for ways to kill time, we were up in the air for a 3 hour flight to Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. As a regular user of budget airlines I was pleasantly surprised to be handed a free in-flight meal. This joy soon turned to disappointment as I opened the box to find cheese products galore. A traditional Bulgarian breakfast? Yes. Sadly your author is allergic to dairy products. Gutted…



Click here to continue reading.

We arrived in Sofia at around 3.30pm local time after a thankfully incident free flight and were met by Virus Skateboard’s owner and Bulgarian skate legend Alex Kyourkiev and one of his team riders, known to us only as Yavor. This kid had some amazing skills as we would later find out and has had a number of Euro magazine covers to his name.
A short drive later, and after stumbling along, weighed down with far too many changes of clothes, we had found our accommodation. For anyone that has seen the film ‘Hostel’ think of that but sketchier! Well, not really but the stairwell leading up to the main entrance gave a foreboding impression to say the least. But we need not have worried as the welcome was one of the friendliest I have encountered throughout my travels, they even had a kitten by the name of Lucky to hang out with when the stress if dealing with 10 skaters got too much to bear!
Luggage was dumped; boards were grabbed and within one hour of landing we were making our way through the equally beautiful and ghetto streets to the main hook up point – NDK (pronounced N-D-Ka). NDK is the Bulgarian National Palace of Culture and the architects that built this huge imposing building also accidentally created a skateboarding heaven. You may well have seen footage of the place in recent Death and Blueprint videos - banks down stairs, knee high hubbas and some a lot bigger and all manner of ledges, kickers and acres of perfect flat ground. Combine this with the low cost of living and we were in heaven!


Most of us just had a gentle roll around but Lynskey was straight on to it – skating just as though he were at his local park. Within the first thirty minutes he had knocked out a number of film worthy tricks, finishing with a beautifully caught backside flip out of a mellow kicker and over a bin that had been raised well above it’s normal height.


As darkness descended the decision was made to go and get some food. So, going on the recommendation of our guides we headed over to “Bar Happy Grill”. Wonderfully cheap good food and stunningly attractive waitresses. This was sure to be an omen of the good times that were ahead…


After eating we split up. Some of us going to bed (me included – spending the last 36 hours awake had started to get to me) whilst others soldiered on through and went to witness a live set from old skool Hip Hop legends “Funk Doobiest”, in town playing their first ever Bulgarian show. The hip hop fans amongst us sure dropped lucky on that one and regailed tales of an apparent fantastic night the next morning. Well, apart from two of our guys accidentally ending up in a gangster’s house but that’s another story!

Alex Winstanley (R1 team manager – of sorts)

Continued very soon...

Element & Tosh Part Ways

Element has decided to part ways with twenty-three year old Huntington Beach pro skater Tosh Townend.
Joining Element as a fourteen year-old he turned pro at the early age of sixteen with his first pro skateboard deck and eventually was instrumental in the launch of Element’s shoe division with the design and introduction of the “TOSH PRO” model shoe, leaving his long relationship with Emerica to do so.
Tosh is now a free agent able to pursue new opportunities in skateboards, footwear and apparel while maintaining his current endorsement relationships with Independent Trucks, Boost Mobile, CCS, Map Cargo, Upful Hardware.
This decision comes on the eve of Tosh’s second independent skate film release “The Weenabago Projekt II/Crossing America” this summer. Along with touring on the Independent 30th Anniversary Tour.
From skateboard.com.

ROUTE ONE'S OWN JOSH "MAN-ED" YOUNG

Route One Rider Josh 'Man Head' Young is absolutely killin it at the moment!
With a 1st light in this months sidewalk doing a half cab blunt 360 out in a nasty steep ditch, and a frontsideflip down a double set! HE'S A BEAST!
He also had a full part in the Baghead Flats DVD I'm hearing "cheese and crackers style tranny skating!" and countless articles and trips with Vans, I'm sure he will be coming along to N.A.S.S. as well so keep your eyes peeled. Not that you could miss that head!
Just have a look at his clean smooth style with this footage from the "Rock it Like a Hurricane" mini ramp comp held at ISPO Munich.

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