We were walking towards the train after skating the Favela park, and @marbalskate found a spot. "The crusty-er the better" he said. Good thing I set up my new 55mm wheels before I left the US. New wheels and bones swiss baby, yeeew. it's been a good year without Bones Swiss ball bearings in my wheels and it is good to have them back. Very noticeable difference in performance.

New spitfire classic 55mm with Bones Swiss ball bearings.

marbal testing out the spot

At first glance you might say, "uh, where is the spot?" Look closely, you will see a protruded sidewalk slab that was dislodged via a tree root of a tree that has been since cut down.

Since this spot was downhill, we didn't really need to push to get speed to hit it. @xvlad already stacked a frontside flip at the park so he was on filmer duty.

It was up to us to deliver him some tricks to make his hard filming effort worth-while.

The old men aged 47, 43, and 37, assembled, and handled it like bosses.

I was trying frontside flip, @pharra was trying pop shuv, and @marbalskate was trying tre flip.

This frontside flip got the squad hyped. i actually kinda impressed myself with this one. it took like what felt like 10 tries.

Marbal decided to commit to his tre flip and was served up on a platter of concrete and rock, with a side of Telephone pole.

With his carcass wrapping around the telephone pole, we were a little worried he might not be get back up after that one. Surprisingly, he fared well, and was pretty much unharmed aside from one of his fingertips getting kinda ripped off, which, if you ever had that happen, fucking sucks. But yeah his torso really wasn't scratched at all.

Marbal's hand got a little shredded

Pharra and Marbal got their tricks back to back after this. It was sick.

To see these dudes get down like this on a spot this crusty was so fucking sick.

after we all got our tricks we bombed the hill down to the train station

on the way, pharra pointed into a space between some buildings and explained that in oder to get the cement mixed up into the favela above, he had to use a crane from that spot in between the buildings. i still am not sure how he exactly managed to do that. but talk about a lot of work, man. thats wild.

carrying cement up a mountain. nothing sounds more brutal.

thats not the actual space where the crane went, i think it was further down, this was where he was telling me about it though so i took a photo.

this is inside the subway station in rio. legend has it some dude dropped in on this hubba which is just insane. observe also, the first only Thrasher tee shirt @pharra has owned.

thats all for this episode of exploring rio with the skatehive dudes. whats next? well probably some crazy carnival recap, stay tuned.

update

I realized there is actually more to report since the last skate post from my adventures in Rio.

A piece of art @xvlad made. it prints all the skatehive community activity on that screen. its located in a small hallway of his apartment is and is fun to glance at when you pass by

Found a sick wallride spot by Fogo De Chao

dont remember this dudes name but he HAD heard of skatehive.

Above: Ran into a Greecian Squad who knew @knowhow92 #smallworld

Spotbook. I think we are going to sesh them soon. This was the night I saw a woman get her phone snatched out of her hand by a dude on a bike. @doblershiva took me on a mini spot tour late one night downtown. I added most of them to the

She was with our group-- There was no one around us, we were kinda just lurking on a marble sidewalk like you see in the photo above. she was looking down at her phone, typing, then without really looking around her, she went from typing to raising her phone up to take a picture of something. Some dude on a bike pedaling super slow just snatched that shit out her hand and started pedaling away. I felt horrible for her as i watched her and 2 other dudes chase the thief away.

What suprised me was that they came back with the phone! apparently some random security guard saw them chasing the thief and swung a large piece of wood at the thief, or threatened to like knock him off his bike with a 2x4 or something... but the thief dropped the phone, undamaged. how exciting! Wish i got the whole thing on video lol. nothing like streetlife in rio. hopefully more stories to come. cheers.