I played footbag yesterday with Mathias Blau and Andreas Hald. We played at our usual thursday indoor spot, but because of holidays there was no light in the room where we usually play. We decided to play in the lobby, even though the lightning wasn’t much better. It was very hard to play but I was happy that we did anyways. I footed Terraging Muted Clipper a bunch of times. That would be cool to hit. Here is a small clip from snapchat of Mathias:
As some of you have probably already seen Nis appeared on a Danish Children’s TV show. He did a great job.
On friday all of Denmark celebrated solstice. In Denmark, the solstitial celebration is called Sankt Hans or Sankt Hans Aften (“St. John’s Eve”). It is tradition to have bonfires on the beach and have speeches, picnics and songs. A tradition of putting a witch made of straw and cloth is also common. FootbagDenmark was hired to entertain the kids with some footbag before the bonfire in a big park in Copenhagen.
Kim, Nis, Frederik and me did the job. We were playing on gravel and it was pretty much raining the whole time. Not the best conditions. But a bunch of kids and teens tried footbag for the first time and we were able to enjoy it.
By chance the entertainment after us was a rap group for children called “Hip Som Hap“. My old friend Anna is one half of that group and they had a really fun show that the kids loved. A bunch of other old friends showed up to watch Anna do her thaaang and we all ended going out getting beers afterwards. Good times
Once a month I am gonna take you down memory lane and tell my story in footbag. Each post is gonna focus on a different year in chronological order. You can read all the previous posts here.
Fjellerad Footbag Camp
My second year in footbag started with the first annual Fjellerad Footbag Camp. Fjellerad is the city where Mathias, Søren and Nikolai are all from. This was a time where footbag was really going in Denmark – In 2004 the European Championships was in Copenhagen, the Danish Championships later that year had seen a lot of new players (me included) showing up, Lise was one of the best female footbaggers in the world and there was even a footbag magazine in print in Denmark.The footbag camp was a great experience. If I remember correctly there was more than 20 players there. I learned a lot and got to know everybody better.
Video by Lise Thygesen
First Breath After A Coma
This video was the first time I saw myself play footbag. I didn’t realize that I took long breaks after each stall before seeing this. It took me a while to fix it.
Svendborg Barbies
Around this time I was also lucky that I convinced a couple of guys to start kicking with me in our hometime. We would sneak into the gym at our school after classes and work our asses off. Everything was so new and exciting. With called our little group “Svendborg Barbies”, which in hindsight is pretty dumb but we were only 14/15 after all..
I designed a logo for us (one of my first attempts at graphic design)
USA
That summer I went to California and Nevada with my family. As soon as I got out of the airplane in San Francisco, some guy stepped up to me and said “nice shoes” and threw a footbag at me. We kicked for a few minutes, but I was so baffled I didn’t even get his name. I still don’t know who he was.
Later on the trip I managed to set up a footbag session in Las Vegas with some players I had gotten in touch with through (you guessed it) modified. First we met up and played at the hotel where we were staying. After a while the guys suggested we wen’t to Loren Baum’s place. Luckily my mom let a young Asmus run away with some Americans he had never met before.
We played for hours while watching old footbag VHS tapes. Pretty sure a young Evan Gatesman even made an appearance and attempted Nemesis. Finally one of the guys gave me a ride home to my hotel and I didn’t get drugged or raped or anything. What a night for a young footbagger.
Me and Loren Baum AKA Happy Om on a Las Vegas rooftop.
Danish Footbag Open
For the first and only time DFO took place outside of Copenhagen. The reigning Danish champion at the time Nikolai Lorenzen arranged a big tournament in the third biggest city in Denmark Aalborg. He had booked a cool old theater for the event and hired one of Denmark’s greatest turntablist DJ STATIC for the afterparty.
Special guest was the hottest thing in footbag that year Jorden Moir. I was a massive fan of Jorden at the time and his solo videos from his room made me believe I could get good without having good players around me. It was a huge experience for me to get to play in a 2 man circle with Jorden. Dylan Fry was travelling around Europe at the time and also joined event.
I stayed with Søren Nøhr in Fjellerad and every morning we took the bus into Aalborg with Mathias Blau and the other active youngsters to join the fun.
For the second year in a row I got last place in intermediate. This year I felt like I should have ranked one spot higher, but I was happy with my routine.
Nikolai ended up defending his title in fron of a huge and excited crowd.
Mads Hole’s awesome videos from the event.
Boarding School
This was also the year I finished primary school and decided to take a year in boarding school instead of going straight to high school. There is a big tradition for boarding schools in Denmark with over 250 schools all over the country. Many of my friends absolutely loved going to boarding school. I wasn’t that convinced about it’s greatness but it did definitely shape me in many ways and matured me a lot. I did not play a lot of footbag during the time but me and couple of friends did have a lot of illegal late night hacky sack circles going down.
Last week was Distortion. So no footbag but lots of drinking and partying in the streets. Distortion is a celebration of Copenhagen street life and international club culture, “A week of Emerging Dance Music and Orchestrated Chaos”. With an estimated 100,000 guests per day, it is one of the largest annual gatherings in Europe. Distortion is a mobile festival: the week starts in the streets of Copenhagen – in the Nørrebro and Vesterbro district – and with the Distortion Ø festival, with 8-10 stages per day by the Copenhagen harbor. It was good times. Partying a lot with Lise the Legend. That is always a blast. Maybe I should start calling her that? Just Lise Legend.
I did not get to see many shows but I did finally get a chance to experience Madlib live. A personal hero of mine. He played a 2½ hour DJ set on a sunny afternoon and it was amazing.
Meeting & Session
Yesterday the weather was classic Danish summer weather- a lot of rain. So we decided to take the shred inside. Before playing the royal family of FD (Kim, Nis and I) had a quick meeting of the board. Nothing worth sharing here was discussed.
One of the OGs Tobias showed and then Frederik showed up and we started playing. I played for the first half of the session with Kim. Then Frederik moved from the other circle to our circle. The first half was rough second half was better. Quantum and Steps was on.
A couple of highlights:
Gyro Mirage > Toe Sidewalk (hit good side footed flip)
Tripwalk > Blurry Legover [b2b]
Pixie Tripwalk > Run
Here is a digital painting experiment I did this week: