Skate Éire

Alfie Carleton – Kickturn

• By Craig Dodds
• 19 March, 2018
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What the hell is it? Part of a boat? An evil bond plot? The lost Beatles yellow submarine? Your guess is as good as mine will be. But we’ve all been there before, the spot that’s just too good to be true… an obvious heart wrenching experience for anyone on arrival after the pain stacking effort to get anyone to investigate it in the first place. This, sadly, as you’ve guessed by now, was another one of those cases. After spirits soared and minds raced with the arrival of this picture to Facebook, a dry day to present itself couldn’t come sooner. Planing our mission impossible esque entry to the yellow beast came at the risk of not leaving ourselves much light but the more hopefully relaxed side of things round quitting time in the harbour. After the excitement had soon dissipated on arrival once quickly realising there was a massive gap separating the transition the struggle to find any use for this after the long walk had became the pain arse we’d all feared. After some last minute thinking before the sun vanished behind the hills we pulled together to fill the gap as best as possible with whatever came into our paths. Several pallets, a wooden box, an assortment of metal blocks and a road sign soon took up residence inside the beast along side all our faith this horrific attempt at making it remotely skateable would in any sense work. Surprisingly it did! Barely… With it resembling more of a replica earthquake once your wheels touched the jenga tower of items. Nightfall by this time had engulfed the session leaving even less hope for someone to conquer the beast and bring back some sort of a redemption story to the skatepark. With the tight transition, no bottom and any sort of available light vanishing faster than someone mentioning the words “what about that strap?”. We settled for the ever simple kickturn in the end, and even that proved to be almost impossible at the beginning. Getting the run up and hoping the beast didn’t swallow you whole in the process was getting the better of dear Alfie but thankfully proved worth it in the end, even if it is just a kickturn…

Photo & words by Craig Dodds.