Our friend Kamila, a Cuban-born artist and filmmaker, was traveling to Havana to visit family. She offered to fit a custom Parasite Label skateboard and some shirts into her suitcase. @el___candy___ and @oteromgz took the board out and filmed themselves skating through the city, watch it here. That video reached skateboarder Leo Ariel and his skate friends in Matanzas. They started tagging us in their own skate videos. And that got us thinking about how we wanted to do more.
Word got around and Erik from Partisan Meat Cleaver Skate Boutique and the Lotboys in Miami generously donated 20+ boards for us to recycle and add our designs to. We put together a second package with merch, stickers, guitar strings, wheels, shoes, trucks, a couple boards and shirts made for the Matanzas skaters. Kamila and Jorge aka Åre:gone fit everything they could into their suitcases before traveling back to Havana.
Skaters came from all over Cuba to Parque Miramar for a skate jam. The ones who won went home with boards. When the skating wrapped, they threw a rave.
Åre:gone, Cuban producer and DJ now based in Miami, organized it. Before coming to the US he was running underground techno nights in Cuba. He'd never met the Matanzas skaters but afterward he shared how talented they are and how much energy they brought that day.
Our friend A.D.R. was there too and while catching up with him in online he mentioned the first SLIT rave we held in 2020.
He and Åre:gone were in Cuba at the time, before any of us had even met in person. They climbed on the roof to get enough signal in order to join while the rest were scattered across Miami and elsewhere. That first online rave we hosted ran for nearly nine hours.
That was the beginning. We had just started releasing music when lockdowns hit. Mithril introduced us to IMVU and online raving. While Virgo had been developing games and playing MMORPGs in the years prior, online raves were totally new to us. A whole scene took form across those parties. Future SLIT lineups brought in Anetha, UFO95, Bjarki, Lolsnake, Schacke, Vixen, Viscerale, Samantha Togni, Tommy 47 and more. For once we felt more connected despite being so disconnected.
We're still figuring out the best way to get the rest of the gear to Cuba. The situation makes it complicated. But the community showed us what's possible and we're not done.
Xx,
Parasite Label