Amsterdam is now officially the only European capital without an indoor skatepark. Ofcourse skating in the streets will never go away but what about visiting professionals doing demonstrations and (international) contests, will we see any of those now that we don’t have a good indoor or outdoor facility? Surely our skateculture has suffered a big loss now that Skatepark Amsterdam has closed it’s doors. Older skaters will remember the slow and boring years after the Third Floor closed and before the NDSM was skateable. There were very few places where you were allowed to skate, no contests were happening anywhere and there were no more demos at the Museumplein
It’s a long time ago but the Beursplein on the Damrak has seen quite a few skateboard demo’s throughout the years! Just think back to the vert demo of 1987, the demo inside the Beurs van Berlage building in 1999, the Junkie Jam in 2000 or the whole Dutch freestyle scene coming together here for many years, the Beursplein definitely deserves a mention when you look at Amsterdam skateboarding history….

Let’s travel back to the year 2000 when local skaters were fed up with nothing happening in their hometown! The Junkie Jam was meant to make people aware of the disastrous state of skateboarding in Amsterdam at that time. During summer there would always be lots of professionals travelling through Europe for all the different contests in England and Germany. Together with Subliminal, Rodolfo’sThe Old Man and The Greenhouse local skateboarders Benny Komala and Stan Postmus organized a demo so that ’the pros’ would hopefully come skate and not only do all the other things that draws tourists into Amsterdam. Bucky Lasek and Andrew Reynolds might be big names today, in the year 2000 they didn’t think twice about skating the outright mess they put up on the Beursplein. Old ‘Amsterdammertjes’, crappy launch ramps and old coffeetables, they sure as hell didn’t choose the name ‘Junkie Jam’ by accident. Willy Santos, Sam Hitz and Tyrone Olson throwing down at the Junkie Jam? Yes they were!

berlage reynoldsAndrew ’the boss’ Reynolds catching a 360 flip during the Junkie Jam of 2000.

And how about this picture here; a full-on skateboarding demo on a vert ramp on the Beursplein! There have to be some great stories to go together with this photo, please let us know if you were there in 1987 and wanna share!

beursplein demo 85

The Beursplein has always been a popular spot with freestyle skateboarders who use the smooth asphalt for all their flatground trickery. Freestyle was completely dead for the longest time but this discipline seems to be making somewhat of a comeback! So with the future of skating in Amsterdam being so uncertain will we see skatedemo’s again on the Beursplein? Who knows what the future holds in store for us…

beursplein freestyledemo 1988Freestylers freestyling in the summer of 1990 at the Beursplein in Amsterdam.