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Skateboarder magazine’s senior photographer Jonathan Mehring was there snapping photos during the first week of the undertaking and recently stopped by the VICE offices to tell us about it.

Jonathan Mehring: Holy Stoked bought a lot of land in a decent neighborhood in Bangalore, and then Levi’s bought all of the materials, gear, and equipment needed to make a skate park. They built the whole thing in just over two weeks and then had a party, an opening ceremony kind of thing. It was actually kind of funny—a local politician came and posed, pretending he was riding a skateboard.
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Yeah. Some of the guys were actually pretty bummed on that.

I think they were a lawyer and a computer programmer, or something like that, who had grown up skateboarding and they just decided to start this Holy Stoked thing. They’re like 28 or 29 and they got into skating through another park in Bangalore that was built in 2009.Is it any good?
It’s OK, but it’s kind of fallen into disrepair and is also in this extreme plaza, you know? You have to pay to get in, so that deters a lot of people. I guess they decided to build this new one because they wanted to have a free park that’s more up-to-date.

It’s 200 rupees. [About $3.30]Aside from the Holy Stoked guys, how many skaters would you say live in Bangalore?
I would guess that there were ten or 15 local skaters who were there before Holy Stoked came into being, and I’m pretty sure they’re all part of it now. There were definitely tons of kids hanging around during construction who were super into it, like super stoked. They weren’t skaters before, but they probably are now. That was kind of the goal, I guess.I heard they founded a skate school down there, too. Is that right?
I’m not sure… I wouldn’t be surprised though. Either way I’m sure Shake and Soms are going to be teaching kids to skate.
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That is insane. I don’t think that trick has ever been done.It looks sort of like a bizarro bean plant.
Yeah, well, we called it a bastard plant, because he threads the needle through his leg. Everyone called it something different, but the most common name for it was bastard plant.

Yeah, that’s the old park and is insane too. He was going like mach ten and would just hit the deck and powerslide under that flat bar.Jesus. Who was he?
Just one of the local skaters. I wanted to get photos of them as well as the pros. I saw him hauling ass across this kind of tennis court area in the old park and he just did it. I was like, What the fuck was that? So I made him do it like five more times.

Everything’s kind of a bust. Maybe it’s because the country was under English rule for so long, but they’re real sticklers for paperwork and permission and bureaucracy and stuff. Everyone’s like, “Do you have permission to be doing that?”That’s strange. Usually in these places that don’t have a big population of skateboarders you can sort of skate whatever you want without too much hassle.
Exactly. I was really surprised. It was not easy to skate. I mean, some places were OK, but overall it was not accommodating.
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It’s in a real nice neighborhood, and the guy who lives like right next to it is a lawyer or something. At first he was real hostile, but then the producer at Levi’s talked to him and smoothed everything over. He even became kind of psyched on what it was all about, I think. Once he understood, he was a lot more willing to work with us.

Well, at first they did, until that guy—the neighbor—got real pissed about people building at 11 PM, which I guess is understandable. So from then on it was basically just from the time the sun came up until it got dark; every hour of daylight.I don’t see bulldozers or anything. Did you guys have big equipment to work with?
No. I mean, a truck came in and dumped the pile of gravel on the sand, but everything else was manual labor.

Yeah. It was like, “Well, we have to put the pyramid in, so let’s shovel this five-foot pile of sand over ten feet.” [laughs] There was a lot of time spent moving stuff around.Well, from the photos it looks like the end result was worth it. Thanks for taking the time, Jonathan.









