The “Yama and Carhartt Mental Weirdo Asylum” is a series of four models of teamriders who skate for both companies. The cooperation was born out of a long time friendship between us and Yama Skateboards, a hardcore skateboard company from Bregenz/ Austria, famous for their strong political attitude and their colourful team of “wannabe alcoholics”. The 4 mental weirdos who found asylum in both companies are David Martelleur (8,25”), Patrick Munz (8,0”), Ferit Batir (8,25”) and Muki Ruestig (8”). The boards have been designed by belgian artist Elzo Durt (who also designed a stickerbag that comes with each model) and are available in stores right now! You can watch more of Elzo’s amazing artwork in the latest issue of Rugged and at his exhibition called “Amen”, which is gonna start on the 26th of June at the Carhartt store in Hossegor and then move on to more destinations in Europe (soon to be announced).
For the celebration of this cooperation the 4 mental weirdos will travel together for one month (with more riders from both companies) during the “Yama & Carhartt Mental Weirdo Escape Tour”. The tour will start at the Pirate BBQ weekend in Hossegor (26.-28.06.2009) and then move through France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and finally heading back to Austria and Spain.
You’ll find the details of the tour right here!
Yama Skateboards in their own words:
“For us, running a skateboard company has always been a family thing. After going through some sponsoring troubles with the big skateboard distributors, we thought “why not do our own boards”…
That was 1998 and back then there have not been many “euro-brands”. We simply did Yama Skateboards, cause it was the obvious thing to do for us. It´s all about the D.I.Y. ethics, that we all grew up with, being sozialized by the “grassroots” Punk Rock subculture of the 80ies and 90ies. We all do what we love to do…skateboarding, music, travelling, or being creative in any kind of way. Everything evolves from this. And it started locally without the intention of growing big or anything, but it just happened by travelling a lot, meeting likeminded people who wanted to support us, or who just quite naturally became a part of the family as riders, photographers or artists. We have never been about the latest trick or trendy fashionable riders. Don´t get me wrong. Our riders do seriously rip on their skateboards. But mostly coming from rough backgrounds, we also got the strong characters. If you ever met them, you will never forget them. All of them are unique individuals who carved their name in the history of skateboarding on and off their boards. And I think that´s also how these four Yama riders hooked up with Carhartt streetwear. Because they are not the average, faceless up-and-coming kids, that will be burned out in a year, but they are approved rippers with outstanding characters. Carhartt always had this very special and great approach to skateboarding by supporting the extraordinary personalities. And that was also the root idea for the graphics of this great board series. A longtime friendship and thousands of miles spent together on the road paved the way for this very special Carhartt and Yama Skateboards cooperation project. Our crazy friend Elzo, known for his morbid , futuristic and almost apocalyptic designs, illustrated four exaggerated images of the unique characters of our riders. “Welcome to reality, it´s the year 2009”. We live in a fast paced, competitive and aggressive “post modern” world. The pressure is growing every day, but we are the “Mental Weirdo Asylum”. The last shelter for all traumatized and tangled up zombies, lost in obsessions. We are the last anchor for the wrecked.”
- Alexander Kramer, Yama Skateboards
(LG)
