Lodge Guest, Jesper “Lobster” Rosenberg
Name: Jesper “Lobster” Rosenberg
Current: Job / school: Carpenter
Where are you from? Amager, Copenhagen, Denmark
Where do you currently live? Nijmegen, Holland
Family status: Girlfriend, dad to Mila (2013)
Age: 41
Sponsors: None
Years of skateboarding: 27
Board size: Don’t know but it sure is streety
Wheel size: 54 mm
Trucks: Independent 139 mm
I change set up every: 3-6 months depending how much a get to skate.
Current Board trend: I ride whatever is available.
Please state your type of terrain on your board in %
Street: 90%
(Skatepark) Flow Street 5%
Miniramp: 5%
Long board: 0%
Vert: 0%
Bowl: 0%
Freestyle: 0%
Your daily DAY by the hours, (or tell us about your longest day the last weeks)
06.00 Wake up, breakfast, crap and go to work
07.00 Second cup of coffee
08.00 Build stuff
09.00 Build stuff
10.00 Food and third cup of coffee
11.00 Build stuff
12.00 Food and forth cup of coffee
13.00 Build stuff
14.00 Build stuff
15.00 Food and fifth cup of coffee
16.00 Take a shower and drive home from work
17.00 Come home and play with my daughter
18.00 Eat dinner
19.00 Go to the gym / go for a run / go skateboarding
20.00 Put my daughter in bed
21.00 Watch TV / read a book / laptop-ing
22.00 Go to bed
23.00 ZZZ
How are you doing at the moment?
I’m doing great, top of my game. Life is treating me good.
How is your body at the moment , (injuries, knees, and so so ) ?
Currently no injuries. I have never been in such a good shape as I am now.
Please comment on Skateboarding in the
80s
I started in 1989 and didn’t see another skateboarder for the first 6 months. I got my first board from a friend who didn’t use it.
90s
Skateboarding was kinda small. I knew almost everybody who skated in Denmark and the good ones from Sweden and Norway.
1990 I was the first Amager champion in street.
In the early 90s I had to put my skateboard in a plastic bag if I was going with the bus from Amager to Fælledparken (skatepark). If I didn’t have it in a plastic bag I didn’t get with the bus and had to wait 20 minutes for the next bus and see if I was lucky to get a nicer driver. The busdrivers said the skateboard was dirty and would put marks on other people’s clothes.
The pressure flip and late flip period was getting on my nerves, I only tried to land a few of them but realised quickly I had no fun in landing one trick in a day of skateboarding. It was too tec for me and I stopped trying pressure and late flips all together. The 90s were my best period in skateboarding. I went around Denmark with some friends doing demos for Airwalk Shoes for a short while.
2000
It was getting bigger and I sort of put it on hold caused by traveling to remote parts of the world plus I got more interested in scuba diving.
2010+
Skateboarding is so big now it is no longer just a life style, it’s a full on sport. I’m glad there are still space for old timers like me. Nobody really tells me I’m too old for it. It seems like an openminded sport where you don’t have to certain tricks to be the man, you can do whatever you fell like and nobody looks at you like you are a loser. All that commercial shit on TV I don’t watch at all. It’s way too technical, way too robotic. I rather see Julian Stranger, John Cardiel or Eric Dressen shoot a hill.
When I chill, I chill with,
My girlfriend and my 3 years old daughter.
I have been on a mission lately in (with)
Spain with my dad. We drove to Cartagena where my sailboat is located to pick up dive equipment and other stuff because the boat is sold. I brought my skateboard but all I did was an ollie here and there and skating to the local bakery.
Dream session is,
On a curb where I don’t have to ollie too high.
Lately I have been working on,
Frontside slappy grinds I learned after 27 years of skateboarding. I was so stoked the day I learned it, I felt like a complete skater.
When I was little I would like to,
Travel the world and so I did.
When I’m home I like to,
Hang out with my daughter and my girlfriend, watch documentaries or read books.
I normally call my homies for,
knowing how they are doing.
Your homies are,
There are too many to be mentioned here. You know who you are.
I enjoy going to,
Copenhagen visiting friends and family.
Favorite drink is,
Water, coffee and Guinness. Not necessary in that order.
Favorite food is,
The food that fills me up.
Favorite drug,
coffee
Favorite music,
Punkrock. I currently listen to a Dutch punkrock band called The Apers out of Rotterdam. Their latest album “Confetti On The Floor” is really good.
Favorite film,
“Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray.
I liked the documentary Tas Pappas – “All This Mayhem”.
Another really good documentary was “The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters” from 2007 about some dudes trying to break the world record on Donkey Kong.
“Senna” from 2010 about the formula one driver Ayrton Senna was also really good.
Favourite skateboarders,
There are many but I got this one story about Donny Barley who is one of my favourite. The year was 1996 or 1997. I was hanging out at Hot Rod Skate Shop in Westwood, Los Angeles. One day Donny walked in. We were chatting a bit and it turned out he had just moved to LA. I didn’t know him at this point and had never seen him before. He asked me if I wanted to go skate the following day. We hooked up and drove to downtown LA the next day to skate. It was back when there was no skate stoppers on every ledge. You could skate a spot until you got kicked out and go to the next one, there were plenty around downtown. We just cruised around the streets grinding every curb and ledge we stumbled upon. Eventually we got to a 14 stairs handrail. I rolled up to it but didn’t have the guts to go down the rail. From behind Donny came rolling up full speed. He popped an ollie onto the rail and did a fifty-fifty grind landing it perfect on the bottom. We almost just got here, had skated around for about 15 minutes. My legs were not even warm yet and here was this, to me, unknown skateboarder named Donny doing a fifty-fifty grind down this rail first try. He got back up the stairs, laughed, rolled up to the rail full speed again and did a pivot grind, landed it perfect and laughed. He followed it up with a tail slide, nose slide, crooked grind, board slide, all in first try and said to me “Get on the rail man!” laughing. I told him I don’t have the balls, it was way too big for me. The fucking rail was over a 14 staircase! The stream of first try tricks was ended by a security guard telling us to get the hell out.
Donny and me skated a lot together the following months around Los Angeles. In this period he turned pro for Toy Machine.
Favorite skate film,
“Video Day” – The Blind Video
Brian Lotti in Planet Earth “Now ’n’ Later”
Favourite skatepark,
Area 51 in Eindhoven, Holland
Favourite spot,
Maasplein, Nijmegen, Holland (small ledges and curbs I have waxed up)
Favourite woman / men (blond, fat, thin, big, small)
My girlfriend Patricia
When I cook, I cook,
I’ll cook everything
To go to restaurant is,
Don Pablo in Nijmegen, Holland. Mexican restaurant with a good beef and great Mojitos and Margaritas
To go to trick is,
360 flips
To go to trick when you are farked is,
Go for slappy grinds.
To go to trick when you are winning is,
Ollie
TOP 3 Cities,
Copenhagen
Cape Town
Nijmegen
When I travel, I always bring,
A smile and a open mind.
Best travel advice I can give is,
A smile and an open mind will get you a long way
Best travel memory you want to share?
Traveling to the Philippines in late December 1999 with Henrik Roth Andersen, Thomas Kring, Christian Møller Jensen and Peter Vonjovic is one of the best.
It’s not a best travel memory but made me the person I am today. In 2004 I had become a scuba dive instructor and worked in Phi Phi Island in Thailand. December 26th 2004 there was a huge earthquake north of Sumatra in Indonesia. The world had never recorded such massive underwater earthquake before and it caused a tsunami to form. Eventually the tsunami hit Phi Phi Island I was working on and washed away 80% of the island plus a lot of people. Luckily at that moment I was in the water diving and not on the island it self. We felt a strong current but thought it was the full moon that made the current. There was normally never current in that area. When we got back to the island after 3-4 hours at sea we saw the paradise island was turned in to a sort of war zone. Dead people was lying on the beach with swollen bellies because they had drowned. Almost all buildings were washed away plus the dive-shop my friend had been in. For around 24 hours I thought my friend was dead. The tears were difficult to hold back when I saw him alive. Me and a friend from England helped wounded people to the helicopters all night until we didn’t have anymore energy left and the helicopters stopped coming in. The experience on Phi Phi Island left me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that I’ve been struggling with through the years but now I’m doing great and can talk open about it.
In 2006 I sold everything I owned in Denmark and bought a sailboat in Florida. Before stepping on to this sailboat, all I knew was that a sailboat should float and nothing else. I had never been sailing before in my life, I just thought it would be the ultimate freedom to sail the world.
A random dude I had met in a bar on a Caribbean island 8 months before the purchase of the boat helped me out and showed me how to hoist the sails, put the sails in the right position regarding wind and how to fix bits and pieces. Later when I got better and more comfortable with sailing and fixing broken things on the boat, I could see that the dude who helped me out, didn’t know as much as he said he knew about sailboats.
The next 5 years I lived on the sailboat, sailed around the Caribbean Sea and all its islands with friends and people who would become my friends.
in 2012 I sailed from Panama to Spain crossing the Caribbean Sea and then the Atlantic Ocean. The longest sail was from Turks and Caicos to The Azores. 26 days at sea with out seeing land. It was such an adventure. I would do it any day again. Storms and high seas…. you bet!
The sailboat is now sold because I didn’t use it as much as I would like to. It was basically just lying in Spain with out being used.
When I do not skateboard I,
… go to the gym or go for a run.
My fitness program is,
Lift weights.
When I get old I want to,
… be able to say I have lived a good life.
I would like to see more of,
… the world.
That one time where I was in jail because of,
I’ve never been to jail but I have woken up in the detention a few times.
One time, back in the late 90s, me and Thomas Kring had been drinking and went to downtown Copenhagen. We walked a bit around “Strøget”, the pedestrian street in town, to get to a bar, when a police car rolled by really slow. In my drunken state of mind I yelled “WANKERS!” at the window. What I didn’t realise was the window was rolled down and I was yelling the officer right in his face. The handcuffs were on my wrists behind my back in a matter of seconds and I was face down on the hood of the police car. I was thrown into the police car and driven off to detention. At this point I didn’t know what happened to Thomas.
Next morning I was woken up by an officer, still affected by the alcohol from the night before and taken to a desk upstairs for a statement. The first thing the officer behind the desk said was, “Ok Jesper, you have been drinking last night with Thomas Kring.” Putting two and two together got me to the fact that Thomas was also taken to the detention.
I asked the officer if Thomas was still here but he was just released. It didn’t take long for the officer to come to the conclusion that I was given a ticket of 500 kroner (100 dollars) and a warning. Outside the police station Thomas was waiting with a huge grin on his face and said, “welcome out my friend!” We took a bus to Gormsgade, the street we lived in at that time.
There were a few other times I ended a drunken evening in detention but mostly after watching football games when I got in some fights with a rival club or rival supporters.
In Manila in the Philippines in 1999 me and Christian Møller Jensen had to piss badly. We had been drinking and just pissed in an alley. Some street dudes who were selling stuff called the police and seconds later we were taken to the police truck. The officers told us we were going to jail for pissing on the street. Møller and me were just laughing about it but when we got shoved into the truck and it started to take off, it got pretty sketchy. There were three officers sitting in the back and two in front of the truck. The one sitting opposite me had a shot gun in his hand, the guy next to me had a gun he kept poked into my side. I was pretty drunk and didn’t realise it at first but Møller did and looked pretty scared.
One of them was laughing and said we were going to jail for three days because it was around christmas. Møller started emptying his pocket for money. I did the same. We had no more money but they kept yelling more money. Møller took his fake Rolex watch off of his wrist and gave it to one of the officers. All we got back in our faces was “MORE!”. We had driven about 10 minutes and finally got kicked out of the police truck with a warning never to piss on the street in Manila again. Møller told me the guy with the gun in my side was scary looking and never smiled. He was dead serious. Møller and I have never pissed in the streets of Manila again.
I should do more of,
… The family life puts an end to the endless time I once had. Now I have to prioritise my time and I wish I could skate some more than I do.
My future looks like,
… it looks bright.
I dream of,
… good health for my family.
The book I currently read is,
“Johnny Cash: The Life” by Robert Hilburn. A really good book everyone who likes Johnny Cash should read.
My favourite book is,
“Jens Munk” by Thorkild Hansen. Jens Munk was a sea captain who lived from 1570 to 1628. He tried to find the passage north of America to China. A really well written book.
The best travel I have been on,
Going to USA in the 90s was great.
Easter Island was such a mystic place and the most remote island in the world.
Diving World War II wrecks in Norway was really special.
I did a safari in Namibia in 2001 all by my self in a Toyota Corolla sleeping in a tent.
San Blas Islands in Panama which you only can access by sailboat and where only indians are living. No hotels, no supermarkets. Very pristine and pure place. Last time I was there was in 2012 so maybe it has changed since then. When I left the place they had just gotten mobile phones.
There are many more great adventures I have been on. It would take up too much space here.
The worst travel(s) I have been on was,
… going to Cuba in 2005 with a girlfriend who dumbed me half way through the three weeks we were suppose to spent there. She had no travel experience and wanted me to take her back to Denmark because she didn’t know how to get home. In my sad state of mind I did and knew nothing bad would ever happen to me. I had done my goodness. However, it was a painful 18 hours train ride from Santiago de Cuba to Havana. A painful 10 hours wait at the airport. Painful to buy new tickets because the old ones couldn’t be changed. Painful flight to Copenhagen and painful drive to her apartment to pick up my few clothes. Painful ride alone to my apartment but nothing bad could happen to me. I’m a good person I guess. Maybe too good sometimes…
On Netflix I watch,
… I don’t watch Netflix but everyone is talking about it. Maybe it’s time to check it out.
If I could change the world I would,
… get people to complain less.
Everybody should own a,
… sense of humour.
The hobby I have, no one knows about is,
… maintain my website.
I will never get rid of,
… my skateboard.
I would love to be in a movie with,
… I wouldn’t like to enter the fake world of movies.
I currently follow (social media, instagram twitter, Facebook)
… I’m on the usual suspects but go to my website for the full story from the tsunami in Thailand and story and a film from the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean plus lots of photos and other stories from my many adventures:
Life advise so far ?
… enjoy every day more and stop complaining about little stupid, meaningless things in life.
Anything else,
Keep skateboarding, it will keep your mind young.
Thanks,
to Thomas Kring for letting me stay on the floor in Florida back in 1995 and for giving me the opportunity to be on shredderslodge.com Thanks buddy!
