DIY Riot 2022

As we come out of pandemic times, this summer has certainly had no shortage of skate events. The DIY Riot, actually a "kick-off" event for the Vainstream Rock festival, should have taken place one Friday earlier. However, the original weekend was not only the SKTWK in Frankfurt, but also the Munich-Mash contest in the Bavarian capital. With these two other big events, it didn’t make sense to organize a third one. So, the event was put on the 2nd weekend of Vainstream, which was a smart solution.

After a two year break (and especially after enduring some harsh winter weather here in Münster) the bowl showed some signs of wear, especially the wooden platforms. So, parts of it were torn off and replaced, the bowl was given a new coat of paint, and boom, things were back in shape! Actually, this was supposed to be something like a "demolition contest" for the bowl (hence the idea for the Coffin Challenge), but time will tell how long the old bowl will remain on site.

Of course, the 2022 DIY Riot was meant to be the best one to date. Riders from Denmark, the Netherlands, England, Belgium, France and of course Germany were invited. Not all of them could come by, but for the first time, we had a Japanese shredder in the lineup! The first event, "Cash for Tricks", gave an early indication of the trick level that would later be reached that night. It was full throttle from then on!

After the first money had been handed out, it was time for the "Das Dackel Bier Barrel Jump". Taking the win was Deo Katunga. Previous champ Alex Ullmann had unfortunately injured himself the week before. TITUS Pro Jelle Maatman came close to topping Deo's 12 barrel jump, landing three times on his board but just couldn't hold onto the ride away. Congrats Deo!

The "Bones Bearings Race Challenge'' followed. This challenge involved carving through an initially not-so-easy to see through arrangement of cones. Local ripper Christian Krause showed everyone how it's done and was ahead for a good while with 10.63 seconds. Jason Lijnzaat, who seemed to shred the bowl faster and faster from minute to minute, then clocked a time of 10.40 seconds, which couldn’t be topped by anyone else. Congrats Jason!

After that, trusty builders Boje and Magic Marius came on stage to set up a coffin in the shallow end of the bowl. The "Creature Coffin-Challenge" ensued with some incredible tricks, especially from Jonas Bünger. His frontside blunt would have been enough to win, but with a frontside pivot shove-it, he shut it down for good. Congratulations Jonas!

The last event of the evening was the "Independent Trucks Ring of Fire"! This event was a real eye-catcher, a fire jump just looks so rad! Almost all skaters got in on the action here, but especially Sören Noe and Jason Lijnzaat who threw down more than one trick through the ring. Dominic Wenzel flew through briefly with a gnarly 360 late shove-it, but in the end it was Jason who shut it down with a super sick transfer. Congrats again Jason!

In the end, it was probably the best DIY Riot ever, at least trick-wise. Thanks to everyone involved, including main sponsors VANS and TITUS, as well as Independent Trucks, Creature Skateboards, Bones Bearings, Das Dackel, Skaters Palace, and of course the skaters who made the event what it was! See ya next year!

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the DIY Riot is actually the kickoff to the Vainstream Festival, followed by a concert at Skaters Palace. Since this year, as already mentioned, the dice were reshuffled, the idea came up to connect the festival somehow closer with skateboarding. So it was decided without further ado to set up a miniramp on the grounds at Hawerkamp and to hold three small "cash for tricks" sessions there with the invited riders. The whole thing had more of a demo character, but the main thing was that both riders and audience had fun. Thanks to Schützi from IOU Ramps, Vans, TITUS and Timo from Vainstream, that the whole thing was rounded off at this point!