An opening session at Zurich’s Beast DIY, eleven shop teams from all over Switzerland – i.e. Blue Tomato, doodah Zurich, doodah Bern and their Vipers division, Freestyle Halle Zurich, LGS Board Shop, two ABU Distribution / Model Skate Shop teams, Skate.CH and two Santai Skate Shop teams – a tire show and a death race, fly outs over friends and so much more. Here’s a recap from this year’s Swiss edition of the Vans Shop Riot, hosted by Freestyle Halle Zurich, supported by El Tony Mate, photographed by Alan Maag, caught on video by Jon Wolf and multi-lingually MC’ed by the master of team trouble Laax, Cédi Romanens.

Originally built in 2011 with a prospect to stay around for only four years, Zurich’s Beast DIY is still there today and made a perfect location to kick things off with a free-for-all opening session on Friday, August 30. Jan Hirt, Ramon Notz and many more were floating around the little concrete paradise till late, some damn good chilli was served and the man himself, Mr. Oli Buergin took some runs as well. 

Saturday, August 31, saw the main event go down at Freestyle Halle. Dr. Fad-R blasted beats all day long, while Cédi Romanens MC’ed the event more or less fluently in four different languages. Doodah Zürich secured themselves the win of the team contest with Oliver Weissmantel, Liv Broder, Lenny Jenni and Noam Lichtenstein. Noam’s former team mates over at Skate.CH came in second with Claudia Riera, Jan Hirt and Ramon Notz, followed by Freestyle Halle’s own team of local rippers, namely Ines Ohlig, Alessio Binkert, Tiago Barcik and Elliet George. The team contest was followed by a death race, with a slightly different format than in Berlin (each team together, time stopped for the last one to cross the finishing line), but just as fun. LGS Board Shop survived with Jeanne Lager, Cédric Oosterhoff, Eliot Golay and Toma. We can only put forward once again, that this is the kind of stuff that we’d like to see in the Olympics ;)

The tire show, a pretty random idea that turned into a lot of fun, as well as a most-tricks-in-a-row challenge rounded things off in the indoor park – LGS won the first and doodah Zurich the latter –, before the final show went down in the outside area. Our friends over at Emotional Skateparks had built a very special wavy obstacle… And guess what?! The people who built it, also won it. The Wavy challenge went to Skate.CH with Jan Hirt, Ramon Notz and Claudia Riera. But Noam Lichtenstein’s final fly outs, and obviously the all-day-long ripping of the crew, secured doodah Zurich the overall win of the Swiss edition of the Vans Shop Riot 2024.

So, doodah Zurich is moving on to the European Grand Final in February 2025 (more infos coming soon) and CAGE put on one hell of a concert to close things out over in Zurich. Massive thanks to Vans, nothing but love to everyone who showed up, and a big and final thanks to @autobahns, who made the soundtrack for the video recap.