Hi guys. Thanks so much for joining us again today. This is episode three of Skate Spot Pod, and today we have got some killer stuff to deliver you. And today we're gonna be talking about all things snakeruns and snakeruns from the 1970s. So we've got two spots. These spots are amazing. So the first one, we're gonna be taking a trip to Brazil and then the second spot is in the Netherlands. So thanks a lot for joining us again today. If you're on Spotify, remember to hit that follow button so you keep updated with all the episodes that were released, and do the same with any of the other podcast platforms that you're using today to stream this episode. That would be greatly appreciated. Also, don't forget to go and check out our YouTube channel at The Skateboarding Crucible. We are releasing new videos. And these short little videos, which are gonna be featuring a lot of skate spots, and we will be featuring these in our podcast as well. So please go over there and check that out too, and hit that subscribe button for us, cheers.
All right, so this place I have never heard of before and it was just really random chance that I discovered this place and it just, yeah, you know, it's like a domino effect. You find something and then you realise how fucking cool it is. And everything just sort of falls into place. There's a lot of great information on it, a lot of great images, all these sorts of things. So yeah, super stoked featuring this one today, we will actually be releasing a video on the top five snakeruns in the world from our opinion. So you can be expecting to see that in a couple of weeks coming out on our YouTube channel. But any rate, let's kick it off. So the first snake run that we're gonna be looking at, Is in Brazil as mentioned in the introduction.
And this place is called Clube 12, or it can also be called Clube Doze. It also has one more name and I can't really pronounce it that well. It is the “Jurerè Track” something. I don't know, I can't say it, but we're just gonna call it Clube 12. And this place is located in Florianópolis Brazil and it was inspired by Skatercross Skate Park in LA.
So it's really chosen for the landscape that it's on. So it's on this massive, steep, downhill track and it has a lot of rock structures around it, all this sort of stuff. So it is really steep. It's just insane. So the local community, they wanted to make this park super unique and they wanted to make it different than most of the snake runs that were present in the world at the time. So, I mean, if we can go back a little bit in, within the seventies, snakeruns, they were super popular and this was mainly because of the influence of sidewalk surfing. So people wanted to almost like simulate a wave on concrete to be able to carve and turn and really kind of like, dig in and mimic what they would be doing out in the water surfing. So they were really popular. They're not so popular anymore, but these seventies parks are really iconic and they're pretty rare. So I mean, being biased in this, I find a seventies snake run is like the most fun place to skate because I really love to kind of carve and turn and do all those sorts of things. So I'm a little bit biased here, but they are really epic.. So it's not a surprise that they were kind of popping up all over the place because they were very influential in California at the time, or you know, throughout most of America. So it, you know, is no surprise that other countries started to really adopt these things. And I believe that Australia was kind of one of the first, to be honest. They had a snakerun in Albany and that one you should also check out, we are not gonna feature it, uh, today, but we may do that another podcast. But yeah, that is an epic snake run. So definitely Albany Snakerun in Australia is one to one to have a look at.
But anyway, we we're going back to Club 12 in, you know, let's, let's, I'm gonna keep mixing up clube and club, let you know. I'll interchange that probably like 50 times in this episode. But anyway, so let's go back to Clube 12. Basically, we're influenced with what they saw in some skateboard magazines in the US, they found this slope, which was super, super steep, and the track flows from a real steep downhill formation, obviously I've mentioned that a couple of times, but it has this kind of range of elbows and they lead down to this final bowl section at the end of the track now. It's super crazy. So there was some videos that I saw of some guys skating in the nineties. Modern skaters just can't handle this shit. So the elbows, they try and get up there and do some kind of like rock to fakes and rock and rolls and stuff and coming down and like, they're just not used to this type of structure. So by the time you get down to this like bowl, they just like flip out. They just have to like jump over the side or you know, they're just sort of, you know, chicken out from, you know, doing anything on it. So like, it would've just been so cool to see, you know, some actual guys who rid it, you know, have been riding it from, you know, day one in the, in the back, in the seventies, and see how they, how they handle it. But, but anyway, so they've got all these elbows and twisting and turning down. You got this bowl section at the end, but out of research, majority of the manoeuvres were done on the first two elbows of the track or the upper part of the track, and they were on a slope of a hill of around about 30 degrees.
So it was a beast to handle, and the sheer speed generated along with these tight corners just gave it like this fucking formidable reputation. Um, it had a nickname of “Cuidado Perigo”. I think that's the best attempt I can do. And that basically translates to careful danger. So that was one of the corners names was Careful danger. Um, it. Yeah, uh, look, it's, it's just crazy and it was a really historic park for the, just the history of skateboarding in Brazil, to be honest. The Snakerun held two national contests in 1978 and 1979, and it was really the first event to bring together sort of the various skate teams from Brazil. So obviously Brazil is a really big country and you know, back in the late seventies, people were really quite siloed. The skateboarding community was really quite siloed, so this was the first time uh, all these skaters could kind of get together. Some really good skaters were present and yeah, it just really, they just influenced one another because from what, you know, some people were doing in different states and in different areas was completely different to what some other guys were doing.
So they, you know, it was a real sort of just congregation for some skaters to really develop their skills during sort of the late seventies. So these two contests, uh, are where the majority of images and videos and things like that that were shot. And there is some really, really cool stuff. So I have put some links in the podcast description below, so you may just wanna pause this podcast right now and then just quickly go and have a look at this place so you can kind of get a context of what I'm talking about. But it's just, Super cool, and it would've been amazing to see it back in the day.
So basically from the eighties, so early eighties, uh, surfing and football continued to increase in popularity in Brazil, but there was a real decline in the interest of skateboarding. And this is no surprise because this is what was happening in many other countries as well at the time . So from the time that it was built in 1978, it was, yeah, no maintenance was basically done on the place. So the snakerun, the deterioration really, really started to set in pretty fast. Now, the run was used during the eighties and it was used pretty infrequently, so it did not have the same crowd that used to attend, and there was just a few sort of like die hard guys still skating it who were going there on their own, and majority of the time you could be skating it basically on your own with nobody there. So the eighties, it really just sort of fell off the map. And also during the eighties, vert became really popular and there was a lot of wooden pipes, uh, halfpipes that were built in different parts of the community. So it just drove away more and more skaters from this place, which, which is pretty sad to be honest.
Now. During 1989, there was a little bit more of like a revive of the place and the community built a big cement halfpipe at the end, and this halfpipe still stands. So just picture this, right? You've got this like super steep snake run with these elbows that go down to this kind of bowl section that just, you know, kind of twist down this hill, and then you've just got this massive slab of a halfpipe at the end. It, it just, it's, it's, it's nuts. Um, but the pipe was used for a competition in 1989 and it, funny enough, was ridden by a young Bob Burnquist. So there is some footage of, uh, Bob taking on this ramp when he was really young. So that's also something that gives his place just so much more sort of hype around far it's history. So he was there and he was, you know, still pretty epic when he was, when he was really young. Now during the nineties, uh, street skating obviously took over and the halfpipe became used less and less. The area where the halfpipe is there were some skaters that were still there that were setting up rails, that was setting up ramps and all this sort of stuff. At the bottom of the run. The halfpipe wasn't used much, however and you know, it just, when there's no maintenance on the place you know, it just becomes to start to look like shit and it becomes unridable. So I think from the nineties onwards that deterioration really, really kicked in. Now there is a documentary actually on this place, and this outlines a lot of history on the track. And this can also be, uh, found in the description below. So there is subtitles so you don't have to kind of try and make your way with Portuguese. They're not like fantastic, but it still puts it into context with things and you'll be able to get the gist of it. So that is definitely something that you should check out. But Clube doze. In Florianópolis Brazil is just one that I would love to tick off and have a look at it.
The way it looks today is a little bit unknown. I have found some photos from sort of like the mid 2000's and I mean the track just, it looks in such bad shape. There's cracks in the concrete, there's grass growing over areas, you still can see how amazing this place would've been back in the day, but it's just so fucking sad that again, there's another park with this type of historical significance for skateboarding that's just, again, rotting away with just nobody there to look after it. So it is very, very sad. I'm not a hundred percent sure what it looks like now, whether it's completely covered. I did jump onto Google Earth and try and have a look at it and it looks like a lot of it is buried under grass and bush now. So if there's anybody out there that has seen it recently and could give a bit of an update, that would be fantastic. Please let us know.
Okay, so moving away now from Brazil, we're gonna be taking a trip over to the Netherland. And there's a city in the Netherlands called Oldenzaal, and this hosts one of the actual oldest snakeruns in Europe. And this snake run was completed in 1979, and it's built in the stunning surroundings of Het Hulsbeek Park. So this place is again, something that we really, really wanted to feature on this podcast because it is so unique and it's actually still in use today. So this is a bit of a difference from Clube 12. This park has been continually used since it was built, which is really the perfect happy ending that you want with these parks. You still want them to be used, you still want people to be traveling from far and wide to experience them. So this is a very, very fantastic with this snakerun. So just a few of the particulars about the run so you understand what I'm talking about. So there are two main sections of the park. The first is the winding snake run so you've got that on one side and it runs just over 113 meters in length, which wraps downhill to. I mean, it's stunning. This picturesque lake at the end of the track, like you couldn't get a better setting for a skate park. You can go there in the summer, you can be all sweaty and all that sort of stuff, and then you can go and take a a dive in this beautiful lake. So really, really, really fantastic. The second part of the skate park is an actual ditch, and that runs parallel to the snakerun. Both of these sections are just great. Like the ditch is amazing. The snake run is great. So this is a park that if you are living in Europe, you should absolutely go and check this place out. And then at the end of the park there is some very flat ground, uh, and that's accompanied by some smaller banks, so a little bit more of sort of a, I'd say a modern type of skatepark there. So there's a lot to cater for, for everybody's needs. So that's, that's really, really fantastic.
So, as I mentioned, the entire park is still used frequently and there was actually, well there is still, uh, yearly competitions that run at Oldenzaal and these started during sort of like the early 2000's. So there's a variety of competitions that they run, there's some downhill skateboarding, there's obviously more sort of like trick based comps and these sorts of things.
So they do run their yearly and they continue to run and that's fantastic. You know, brings just so many people to the park and it keeps the spirit of this place burning. And I think this is exactly what needs to happen for a lot of other old parks out there that just haven't been taken care of and they just, there's no spotlight that's shown on them. So this is a very successful, uh, case for an old snakerun, which is amazing. The only thing that I found a little bit unusual with the story and with this park in general is that there is not a great deal of historical documentation on the spot, which is a little bit unfortunate because when it comes to the historical photos, photos of, you know, it being built, all these sort of things, there's very, very limited information. I know with some of the other parks that are in much worse shape than this one is today, there still is quite a bit of documentation around those and you can gather a, a little bit more information about it. So I understand that there's probably a lot of information is in Dutch, so I have been also just trying to search for some things in Dutch to try and, you know, pick up some results that can kind of give me a little bit more about Oldenzaal. There still is not a great deal. What I did manage to find though, which was really helpful, was a project that was put together to really document the historical value of Oldenzaal. And this was in more of sort of like a presentation form. But this was fantastic because I had a few historical photos from there, and there was also some great information just about the background of the place still. Still not loads on the level of detail that I would've liked, it still is a little bit hazy around how it was used in the seventies and just, I don't know, like any more information around competitions that were run there in the early days, why it still has been so preserved and why it is in such, yeah, good condition. So it still is a little bit lacking, but this was still really good for me just to get a little bit more of a background and I have added those. Uh, with that link in the description below.
Okay, so those were the two spots that we're featuring on episode three. Now you may be thinking, hey, there is some other really significant snake runs in the world for example, Albany in Australia or Kona in the US. There is also a couple in Canada that are fantastic and absolutely we recognise that and we actually do want to pick up with another episode on these spots because as I mentioned, I am biased towards snakeruns in general, and I just think that they're so fascinating that we should highlight these things more and that will be coming, so really stay tuned for that.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that our first episode on Skate Spot Pod is actually featuring a snakerun, and this is a snakerun that has been left to rot on a piece of private land. In the countryside of Sweden and it is called Automobilen. So please tune into our first episode. It's very, very important that these types of places are highlighted, so that's also something that we wanted to mention.
The last thing that we wanted to say is that we really appreciate your feedback and also tips on spots. I mean, it's very hard for us to kind of understand and cover every spot that exists in the world. I don't think anybody can do that, but it would be great if you have a place that you know of that is very unique and that is really interesting and has some history behind it. Please let us know because we are always looking for cool places that we can feature. So if you want to get in contact with us, please search for our Facebook page and you can search for The Skateboarding Crucible and from there you can contact us. So don't be shy. Please go away and if you do have somewhere you want to feature, do let us know. We would really, really appreciate it. Also, we really want to get more people across this podcast. So if you have friends or family that would really be interested in this, so please share this podcast. We would be truly grateful for that.
And yeah, we really wish you guys a great morning, evening, wherever you are in the world. And we're gonna be back with an episode four next week, and please stay tuned. Thank you for tuning in. Cheers.