Introducing the Archivist-in-chief
Simon: KrakMap archivist-in-chief - news from the shop and Skatefolio - what makes skaters so swaggy?
OpenSB is a skateboarding collective. We are a bunch of skateboarders who release work, collaborate, and support one another.
The OpenSB Times is like a skateboarding writing label, trying to explore every corner of skateboarding and serving fresh weekly edits [trying]. Collectively written and curated.
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In this week edition:
What’s up in the community: shop; Skatefolio.
Introducing a new release: Simon — KrakMap’s Archivist-in-chief
Cool links we’ve enjoyed
What’s up in the community 🔥
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Skatefolio just dropped their SOTY page! They've Clip Mapped the entire 2023 of 30 skaters and have some fascinating data as a result.
Simon — KrakMap’s Archivist-in-chief 🗺
Interviewed by Virgile👇
Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Simon Grassart, I’m 36. I was born and grew up in north of France and moved in Brussels, Belgium when I was 20. I skate since I’m 11. I'm one of the co-founders behind Krak.
On the krakmap you go by ‘splinter’, it’s almost impossible to not come across your profile as you added so many media and spots. Can you share the backstory behind that nickname?
The funny thing is: ‘splinter’ isn’t my only account on Krak. I also manage ‘donaldduck’ for instance. That being said, Splinter is my real life nickname. It comes from the Ninja Turtles obviously. I was given this nickname when I started my board company called Silence skateboards [here’s our ZAP.01 released 7 years ago] with some friends here in Belgium. One of my main team riders at the time was a brazilian guy who stayed at my place for more than a year. His name is Leo, like one of the turtle. He couldn’t really afford food so I was giving him pizzas to survive. Another member of the team was living with us. We were just eating a lot of pizzas. That’s how I became Master Splinter, taking care of his ninjas.
What inspired you to create the "wikipedia of skateboarding" and invest 8 years of your life (and counting) into this project?
I’ve always been working on such a thing. As a filmer, I was constantly looking for spots. I did a lot of biking to look for spots in Belgium before Google street view arrived here and I was already exploring huge cities online in France. At some point I had a few thousand spots on my hard drive and started learning coding for a few months to put a map online but while doing that, my cousin sent me a link about Krak getting started. From there I met Kev and the rest of the team and here we are many ten of thousands spots later! It's not only a map showing skatespots, it's a huge library of clips on these spots that built Skateboarding History along the years. I've been a huge fan of Skately while it lasted. It was a huge database with like 200 famous spots worldwide with all the ads, and youtube links in which the spots were featured. It wasn’t a map but it was already amazing to explore. As a skateboarder, filmer and skate-nerd, I think what we do was really missing.
How has the skateboarding community responded to your work so far? Have you received any feedback or testimonials from skaters or other enthusiasts?
First, everyone really digging what’s on the map are amazed of the amount of work put in. I’m also glad I receive feedbacks from some famous local heroes from here and there, skaters and filmers who are using the map to go film. I think everybody would love it, just not everybody knows about it!
Can you describe the process you go through each week to add skatespots to the map and curate the video sequences? How do you decide which spots to add and which clips to include?
I don’t really decide what spot to add, I just put anything that can be skated. There are many ways to find spots, I use street view a lot, even just to make sure the spot is well located or still existing. I get spots from local spots instagram accounts or maps online. I spend a lot of time cutting videos, I watch it on my video editor and cut a trick everytime I know we have the spot in the database. Then since I don’t know all the spots names by heart, it’s an exercise of looking for each spot to finally upload the tricks. I’m getting really good at it, like there are a hundreds of spots I can now locate in a minute. I also get golden informations from skate-nerds instagram accounts really digging the past.
What challenges have you faced in building and maintaining this extensive library of skateboarding history? How have you overcome those challenges?
I would say the biggest challenge was to find a way so that people could consume the content and realize how big that thing is without digging every spot on the map. So we recently created a new format that we call curated maps. We released a curated map of more than a thousand famous spots worldwide with a decent amount of clips and photos on each one of them. This map represents pretty well my work of all these years. I created other curated maps like for exemple the 'Andrew Reynolds FS Flips' map which shows 41 spots where the Boss executed his signature trick. Now we sorted these curated maps in categories and you can browse maps by skaters, filmers, photographers, videos, magazines, years, shops or skatepark related stuff and more to come. I’m still building this right now but it has been evolving quite a lot already for the 2 months it’s there. Way more maps will be added soon and it gets actually easier to find a spot now thanks to these categories because I can think about who skated it or in which video, and then just check the skater or video curated map and find the spot in way less time than before.
How do you envision the future of your project? What new features or improvements are you planning to introduce?
The possibilities are endless. Our list of ideas and improvements is still pretty big but I think the next step would be to enable people to create their own curated maps, empower them to build stuff around the map, organise their own events. I believe Krak can be a perfect web3 platform for skateboarding. I wish that in the end, any talented guy from anywhere on Earth could make it in skateboarding, regardless of whatever factors. We also decided to share the company with the community and become a metalabel focus on skateboarding.
You mentioned sharing the company with the community. Could you elaborate on how you involve the community in decision-making and what kind of impact they have on the project?
We want the community to own the project with us, meaning they get to decide what we do with the project. We create a non-profit structure on top of Krak named OpenSB. Everyone can join and participate. We are now 39 members. We welcome everyone on our discord server where we all can discuss things and contribute to set up the future. It makes total sense that we spend our time working on things that people actually want and will actually use. It’s a constant work-in-progress project. We just released an OpenCollective account where our members get to see the money on it whenever they want and decide what it will be used for in the future. Right now we are still trying to be enough members to pay the bills but we are getting there! We also aim to enable or help people to build their own projects or tools using ours by making everything totally open-source.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of working on this project for you personally?
The most rewarding thing is to see the project building up. We make it happen, it’s like a kid fantasy coming to reality. Being a part of it and working on something I’m passionnated about is the biggest freedom I could get.
Have you encountered any legal or copyright issues while curating the clips and photos? How do you ensure you're respecting the intellectual property rights of the content creators?
I used to ask a lot of filmers when I started and pretty much everyone was cool with me posting their stuff. In the end, people repost stuff from others on instagram all the time, why not doing it on a dedicated platform for skateboarding? We share history and build a common good here, we are not trying to make money out of anyone’s clip. I never had any copyright issue so far except maybe on Youtube. We don’t monetize our videos because it’s not our footage but sometimes they take the soundtrack out. Like for exemple, they took out the jay-z track on Tyshawn Jones switch tre on Le Dome double set, and what’s crazy is that their algorithm is so powerful that it only took out the song, the sounds of the trick was still there. They did that within a few minutes when I uploaded the video.
How do you stay up to date with the ever-evolving skateboarding scene and the latest trends in tricks and styles?
It’s not easy to stay updated on everything nowadays. There is so much content coming out everyday. But you have youtube, thrasher, free, just to name my main 3 sources. Oh and we also created our own tools that we made availabe like this amazing feed with all the videos being released by more than a hundred youtube channels - Krak Videos - and also a RSS feed of news coming from a few dozens of sources - Krak News.
Have you collaborated with any professional skateboarders or industry insiders to gather information or footage for your project? If so, how did those collaborations come about?
It happens sometimes that I ask a skater, a filmer or a photographer where a spot is on an instagram post or in private message. I got lucky to have a few answering. A few times I also asked some pros who had a few tricks on some peticuliar spot if he knew what other tricks were landed there. Thanks to them for taking a few minutes to answer me!
In what ways do you think your project has contributed to preserving and celebrating the rich history and culture of skateboarding?
Well I think in the end, we are archiving skateboarding action better than any other platform because we keep track of the tricks done on each spot and it stays there, when meanwhile, videos get more and more taken out of youtube when a skater switch a sponsor or got fired for whatever reason.
What are some of the most memorable moments or stories you've come across while researching and documenting skateboarding history?
It’s always exciting when you finally locate a famous spot you’ve seen many times in videos. Getting to finally see how it is on street view, what’s around, what it looks like from above, but especially for the huge pieces like megaramps (like Bob Burnquist’s residence for exemple) or just huge spots that you can see from far above. Sometimes I have to go on Google Earth to see the past satellite pictures and find out the location of ripped off spots. One example I have in mind is the 1st megaramp Danny Way skated in The DC Video, located next to what was the location of the Point X Camp.
How do you balance your passion for skateboarding and your work on Krak with other aspects of your life? Do you have any other personal or professional commitments?
I’m a lil addicted to digging into skateboarding history and building this map so I’m still working almost everyday on Krak even though it doesn’t pay the bills. I’m a little bit struggling with money but I also give skate lessons here in Brussels with an association that receive money from the states. So it’s free for the kids. Like I mentionned earlier, I also started with some friends a board company called Silence skateboards. I make collabs with engaged artists for the graphics of the boards and I sponsor a bunch of the best skaters in Brussels who I film with to promote the brand. I’m a former filmer, that’s what drives me to all these skateboarding projects. I also just started a new project for the youngest called Teenage Terror.
What advice would you give to aspiring archivists? How can they join you in this adventure?
Anyone can contribute already, weither it’s posting your local spots, the local action that went on these spots. You can also try to fill an area that has no spots, a city or whatever if you find a database somewhere or just by exploring on street-view. I have a long list of sources and you can hit me up if you really wanna put some sweat in it. You can also dig the famous spot map and try to post some missing tricks, or any other map now online.
Cool links we’ve enjoyed 🌐
🎥 it’s not only a great video from a nice crew based in Brussels, Belgium. The first part went to one of our member: Victor. Congrats 🍾
👕 it’s hard for us not to agree on such a title. And tt’s always funny to read about our universe from differant angles. Well done
🥂
You can think of OpenSB as an incubator for skateboarding ideas. Our goal is to create a common good for the whole community, truly owned by everyone.
Peace everyone ✌️
Hats off Simon! 🙌♥️