Sandro Dias breaks a skateboarding record, dropping in from a skyscraper
The Skate Ramp Building — The 22-storey CAFF building, shaped perfectly like a skate ramp, is located in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Huck’s founder and publisher Vince Medeiros explains what Mineirinho’s feat means to locals.
As you head to downtown Porto Alegre, Brazil from Cidade Baixa, it takes a little while for you to see its full drop-in splendour.
But once you slide under the Borges overpass, and look up to your left, OMG, there it is. It’s a giant modernist building – and it looks like a skate ramp.
The impetus to roll down the “skate ramp building” has been a part of the city’s imagination forever. In basic terms: every Porto Alegre resident has once considered it, thought about it, speculated on the possibility of a death-drop down the Centro Administrativo Fernando Ferrari, aka CAFF, tower. “One day,” they’d say, “One day I’ll skate down that building!”
I remember I told my son I’d once ridden it. For years, he believed me. (The early years when dad has superpowers, kinda thing.) And then he saw me actually skateboarding at Clissold Park, London, and any remnants of hero worshipping finally dissolved.
Today, Red Bull skateboarder Sandro Dias, aka Mineirinho, made that long imagined feat happen. He actually what-the-fuck dropped down the CAFF tower and rode it into glory. Insane. Did you know you can ACTUALLY ride the skate ramp building in Porto Alegre? A folk tale come true.
Vince Medeiros is Huck’s founder and publisher.
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