The philosophy of street skateboarding is to locate points that exist in the world around us (stairs, ramps, ledges) and skate them, with a videographer by our side. The most productive content is incorporated into the skaters’ video portions.
There are other trails that professional skaters can follow outdoors on the festival circuit – think events like the X Games, the Dew Tour, the SLS Super Crown and, starting in 2021, the Olympics.
Most of the places coveted by skaters, even the music videos of the movies, are not exactly sanctioned. Sometimes this simply means that the local police ask skaters to leave fenced or forbidden areas. But what’s at stake when federal agencies step in.
Skateboarders’ careers take them all over the world, which means they spend a lot of time at airports. And as any skateboarder will tell you, airports are packed with skating features. But they’re also full of TSA agents, a high-risk, high-paying scenario.
That’s the backdrop to Red Bull’s Terminal Takeover event, which brings together professional and amateur skateboarders from around the world at the deserted Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans (MSY) for a skateboarding session and a movie session.
Now in its fourth year, Terminal Takeover was the brainchild of professional skateboarder Jake Wooten and the Red Bull team in 2021. With Covid-19 putting on hold the same old circular of in-person contests, a film contest and voting that benefited skate shops. in the U. S. The U. S. crackdown seemed like the best way to not only give skaters a chance to participate, but also to provide the industry with some monetary relief.
The teams qualified for Terminal Takeover 2024 by competing against their city’s most productive skaters in the Red Bull Boarding Pass event. After compiling their footage in MSY, each team (consisting of four to five skaters and one videographer) submits a compilation of videos. and submits it to a fan vote to determine the winner. The winning team will get a cash prize for the organization of their choice.
Fan opens May 13.
Fans representing their local skate scenes this year came from 11 locations: Nashville, Tennessee; Pensacola, Florida; Fairfax, Virginia; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Birmingham, Alabama; New Orleans, Louisiana; Tupelo, Mississippi; Katy, Texas; Durham, North Carolina; Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Aichi, Japan.
It is the first year that Red Bull Terminal Takeover has had a foreign team.
Professional skateboarder Margie Didal, from Cebu City, Philippines, traveled to New Orleans for the first time to compete in Terminal Takeover. She was especially excited to cheer on Japan’s foreign team.
Didal has been instrumental in the progress of the skateboarding scene in his hometown. While qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, Red Bull helped her build a skate park in Soul Sierra, Cebu City, which the Philippines’ national skate team used for training.
Margie Didal makes ollies with a cart at Red Bull Terminal Takeover in New Orleans on April 18, 2024.
“I like what Red Bull Terminal Takeover has with this concept that every skate shop has to form groups, paint with their groups and do an edit,” Didal told me. “It’s unique because skateboarding is an individual sport, but it’s about racing as a team and laughing as a team. “
Getting to skate in a deserted airport is part of the magic of Terminal Takeover. Amateur groups also had the opportunity to skate and film with five pros, the largest number ever featured at MSY: Wooten, Didal, Madars Apse, CJ Collins, and Gavin Bottger.
Professionals competed against amateurs to win cash prizes in “point battles,” adding the highest wall jump and longest slide, aided by the airport’s marble floor.
Wooten, the only professional skateboarder to have competed in all four Terminal Takeovers, says he couldn’t have imagined the event would be successful at the point where it was successful when they started.
“It’s amazing to see the performance grow in both years: more skaters, more teams, bigger obstacles, bigger builds, pieces more consistent with the airport and making sure it looks like an airport when you skate it and not just put an internal ramp. an airport,” Wooten told me.
Haru Urano is going on a 5-0 run to replace his twisted position at the Red Bull Terminal Takeover in New Orleans on April 19, 2024.
For Bottger, who has lately been competing in the Olympic Qualification Series for the Paris 2024 Games this summer, Terminal Takeover is a good opportunity to skate for fun, in one of the most elusive venues on the market.
“It’s a very different occasion and a rare opportunity to skate in an airport,” 17-year-old Bottger told me. “You usually get yelled at for skating at the airport when you travel. “
Bottger’s favorite feature? Definitely the escalator, a feature you think about skating for whenever you’re in a mall or airport.
“You can create content when you have a full terminal,” Wooten said. “It’s unbelievable; Everyone comes here and their mouths open.
Gavin Bottger goes 50-50 on the escalator at Red Bull Terminal Takeover in New Orleans onArray. [ ] April 18, 2024.
But the creation of the Terminal Takeover content, which took place on April 19 and 20, is just the beginning. The real purpose of the contest is for each skate team to get a large amount of their net through fan voting.
That’s how skaters in Tupelo, Mississippi, a city of just 40,000 people, managed to win the fan vote last year and win $5,000 to build a new skate park in their community.
“The goal of skating is huge, as is the creativity of the videos and the way they’re filmed, but it’s actually vital to the network for the teams,” Wooten said. “Tupelo is rarely the biggest skate scene, but its city published them. If the network is you, that’s how you win.