Thomas Kalak was a prominent German vertical roller skater in the 1980's and early 1990's. He's a great skater and photographer.

Thomas Kalak is a vertical roller skater from Munster, Germany. He placed in the Monster Mastership Contest in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988 and 1989, click here to see the Monster Mastership / Euro-Cup / World Cup rankings for 1982-1991.

Thomas is also the inventor of the insane handplant 540 and the creator/writer/photographer/publisher of Alley Oop Magazine.

The photos shown here were fist published in Alley Oop Magazine in the '80s.

Click on the thumbnails to see the full size images.

Thomas Kalak 's Biography

"well, i started skating when i was very young in the early seventies. the old stiff skates were just a metal-bar with very hard wheels you put under your feet with a leather belt. in 78, the discoskating wave came from usa to germany. skates were colourful, had big smooth wheels, they were dirigible and easy to skate with. so my dad bought a pair of those in 79 and i started skating on the street and in shopping malls. 1980 the first skatepark with a half-pipe opened in my hometown münster. i started vertical skating.

the biggest inspiration i got, was a picture of fred blood in "action now"-magazine. it was a shot by cassimus. fred in the air over a pool. no special trick, just flying. he had a black and white striped shirt and black and white chekered boots. the picture was as simple as convincing. a new wave guy flying over the things! another big inspiration was the movie "tim, rollerskater", with tim altic shot by percy adlon. it´s a very emotional documentary about the rollerskate-feeling with amazing music by neil young.

my skatestyle...........mmmhhhh. it looked different from the others because i was heavier than the others - and it sounded louder. i am proud to have invented the handplant 540°. a lot of tricks we invented in the 80´s were tried without knowing if it´s possible. there were no examples because nobody was doing these tricks.

injuries - i never broke my bones. the worst was when i fell on my chin and couldn´t speak, eat and laugh for one week. everybody was trying to make me laugh and i was close to crying because it hurted so much to move the (jaw joint? the ones you move when you´re eating). i had a very painful arteritis in 1990, you feel the blood rushing threw your veins with pain. this is why i could´nt skate the worldcup 1990.

my best memories are three. the first was when i recieved a letter from george powell that says he would like to sponsor me and i could order stuff whenever i want. the second was the the world cup in münster 89. my last contest. it was held in my hometown münster what means i was skating in front of 15.000 local spectators who knew me from daily newspapers announcements. "local hero". i felt like a rock´n´roll star. . i was really never interested in getting famous or successful. just to skate was always the best feeling, even alone or with two friends in a session. but this feeling on that contest was crazy. i know what the feeling has to be on beeing a popstar in front of the crowd. i made third behind brian and jimi. ( and i beat jimi in the qualification ;-)
the third was when we made a big show tour to east gemany after the wall fell. for the people of the east citys that have been under a socialistic government, skating was something very new and they loved it.

my last contest was 89, i skatet shows and demos until 93. after that........mmmmmmmmmhhhhhhhh not that much.

the idea of alley oop was to bring rollerskaters interests together. skateboardmagazines featured rollerskating very very small. so i collected pictures, put everything together in a trashy layout every month an printed it in a copy shop. i stopped the mag when i moved from münster to south-germany.

now i work as a photographer. i started shooting in 87 for different skatemags but changed very fast to another kind of photography. most of my commercial pictures are about peoples experiences, global adventures, travelling-experiences, people doing something funny ore strange...... so i worked a lot for the travel- and tourist industrie. my newest book "bangkok-stadtansichten" is available on www.amazon.de. it´s an alternative picturebook about bangkok. no cliches, temples or monks. just people and strange things in the city. my website is www.kalak.de and www.beautifulbangkok.com.

skating was the best thing that ever happened to me. it is the biggest influence in my life. it "open minded" me a lot, i met some of the finest persons and charakters, it made me travelling the first time to discover that there´s not only my country and culture."

- Thomas Kalak