Dean Pattrick / dean_helsinki@hotmail.com
Helsinki / Finland

I have the typical story born '67, engulfed by the skating boom of the '70s. My first board was a wooden affair, which I think had a free audio tape with it. It was a standard affair, wide and no grip, still I rode the largest hill in the area (St Neots, Cambridgeshire) at a young age. Then I upgraded/downgraded to a plastic purple board with orange wheels, which was slim and had even less grip, when the wooden board broke.! Then I cannot remember if it was the injuries that stopped me or the skating just died...

...anyway many light years later and now residing in Finland since 1998, I decided to take the plunge again. I can certainly say that skateboarding technology has moved on somewhat since I was a lad, but nowadays I have the financial clout to buy a top end board and ride it.! So I got myself an Aste board (top Finnish brand), Fury trucks and Tikari wheels, I must say that its a rocket.! On my first outing I donated skin and blood to the asphalt after descending my first ramp many years.

Here in Finland you skate in the summer and snowboard in the winter, so after a few seasons snowboarding I believed that the natural progression would be to skating. The local scene here is wild, the kids grind everything, there is so much granite around the city its unreal. Then are 10s of skate parks in the Helsinki area alone, with the 5 meter half pipe downtown, its a monster.