Local skaters Jacob Kelly and Mirza Jasarovic, representing Des Moines’ Subsect Skateshop team, won Saturday’s Battle of the Shops on the Dew Tour Skateboard Street course.
Kelly’s kickflip crooked grind and Jasrovic’s gap to lipslide and 180 nosegrind were contest highlights.
“We had the home park advantage for sure,” Kelly said after the podium presentation. “We’d been waiting for this skatepark forever, and now that it’s finally here you can’t keep us away.”
Subsect is less than one mile from Lauridsen Skatepark, and Kelly’s right that the home park advantage was definitely on display: the 2nd place team, representing Familia Skateshop, is from Minneapolis, Minnesota; the 3rd place team, representing the Escapist Skateshop, is from Kansas City, Missouri.
Kelly said he’s been sponsored by Subsect for just over a year, but considers the shop to be the center of the Des Moines skate scene.
“It’s a core shop: I bought my first board there, I love it,” Kelly said. “It’s just a fun place to get together with your friends before heading over to the park.”
Subsect is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary year, and owner Kevin Jones was instrumental in helping bring the 88,000 square foot Lauridsen Skatepark to Des Moines. Home of the Dew Tour since 2021, it’s currently the world’s largest public skatepark but it’s a project that spanned decades to make happen.
“I’m so grateful that it’s finally here,” Kelly said of having the park essentially in his backyard. “Now you see people that you would have never seen in Iowa before rolling through here all the time, and it’s been great for the local scene because it makes everybody want to get better at skating and keep progressing.”
Jasarovic has been on the Subsect shop team for nearly 5 years. He said it felt incredible to be involved in the contest, especially with the hill above the Street course mobbed with screaming fans.
“I’ve never seen so many people at the skatepark, not even at Dew Tour last year, and it’s amazing because it just gets everybody in the community excited about skateboarding. Before, most people in Des Moines either didn’t know that much about skateboarding or definitely weren’t that excited about it. But now of backing it, even from the non-skateboarding community. The skatepark and having Dew Tour in Des Moines have just been incredible for us.”.
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