Jo’burg Flashing

Written by: Lloyd Clark
Photos by: Jaco Bester (edited by Victor Peenz)

The Jo’burg Longboarders Club (JLC) is a a Facebook group that myself and Massimo Bastiotto started back in 2009 with the purpose of finding more longboarders to bomb hills with. (Massimo is one of my best mates and was the biggest influence in getting me on a board going down hills but his is a story for another day). Now the JLC is the place where longboarders and lugers organize sessions all over Gauteng and share their stoke for the sport. My biggest frustration with the group these days is getting everyone off Facebook and onto the hills! Enough cyber skating. Come out and play!

On Saturday 18 October I held what is known in the longboarding community as an Outlaw but since I don’t want to label myself or the attendees as criminals I call it a Flash Jam. The spot is a relatively new discovery that hadn’t really been skated before. It’s in Chancliff near Krugersdorp and looks like it was going to be a new neighborhood but they ran out of money so all that’s there are the roads. Perfectly smooth, steep inclined roads. And the best part is that there is no access for cars! All this and some freebies on offer is seemingly still not enough to get a crowd to a session in Jo’burg!

My plan was to have a race with two man heats. I had an interesting route planned out that would have evened the playing field and made things really fun. But unfortunately only six skaters showed up so we decided to have a slide bowling competition instead. Canadian Torry Horrigan dominated us Jo’burgers with his “bike path” skills and went home with a set of Cult TFR Converters.

Despite the poor attendance and a small amount of bloodshed, we skated from 9am to 3pm and had a lot of fun sessioning both left and right hand corners. It’s a really awesome spot and I encourage everyone to get out there and have a session. We did have a little trouble from the security guard there when we arrived but after a little negotiation (3 beers and a 20) he let us stay. He wouldn’t give me the details of the owner of the land so I reckon we’ll keep skating there until we run into the owner and when we do, strike a deal with him to get permission to skate there.

Looking forward to seeing more Jo’burgers at the next session!

Lloyd

PS Flip didn’t stick around for the photo shoot so there are only 5 of us in the pics.