Jam´n´Go 2005 – funkiest Freestyle vibes in Nuremberg

It was like the 3rd Jam´n´Go annual get together, one that was bonded together as part of the answer to the question “how can we collectively mock gravity?”

At Jam´n´Go 2005, there were a total of 31 participants that had come from Berlin, Darmstadt, Duisburg, Heidelberg, Ludwigsburg, Karlsruhe, Nuremberg, St. Gallen, Trieste and Zurich. They had all registered for the two categories of ‘Open Pairs’ and ‘Intermediate. That is 10 more than the previous year. There could have been even more if the 3 from Stuttgart and the 2 from Jena had also registered. They instead chose to only observe and pick up some new tricks.

As it was last year, the weather this year was again perfectly ideal. Another bonus was that despite a residential complaint, the officials from the state of Bavaria didn’t cut off our power supply that we needed to play or music. Although two of our participants, Toaster and Matthias did pull a few muscles.

Once again, like last year, the entire German Freestyle Disc family had a great time but the main difference this year is that everyone is much closer and knows each other much better. Almost traditionally, our event host, “Café Kabine” supplied us with a delicious buffet while Boris had generously offered the Weinerei to the competition during the Night Gitis Contest as an ideal transition from the day. Additionally new this year was our great new sponsorship that financed our food, beer and competition prizes.

Friday, 2nd of September: Upon arrival at the Weinerei towards 10nish, the DVD of the German indoor competition in Berlin 2005 was being played. Because many of us were starving by the end of the show, we headed off to the next ‘kitchen’, opposite the Weinerei, a Franconian beer garden, to rob our next Schnitzel. After that, there was no holding back, people were ready to play. Over at the Pegnitz passage, whilst downing 3 crates of Zirndofer, Fabio was fooling around and tossed my FPA-Disc membership into the river. Resulting in the both of us going for a dip in order to save my card. With such great atmosphere, we’re pretty sure that no one got to bed before 5am!

Saturday, 3rd of September: After a monstrous breakfast and then gearing up with all the right gear, the games began! Unfortunately, the tournament started off with a slight set-back. Due to the city of Nuremberg’s refusal to register JAM’N’GO as an official event, we were not allowed to use a microphone to conduct the event. That resulted in us having to physically looking for people and crying out for CDs between 2-4pm. The qualification round for the ‘Open Pairs didn’t happen until around 4pm. Although it was clear that the first team were all set and ready to go, the ghetto blaster was not accepting our CDs. Boris arranged another player that made enough noise that the neighbours had to notice.

Around about 6ish, because Crumpler had agreed to sponsor prize for the winners, in exchange for the generosity, we were told that “the more noise you make about Crumpler, the happier we are “. There was also a brief performance with the Frisbee-like ‘Crumpler sign’ just before the Night Gitis Contest took place. So there will be footage available soon on the event’s website.
September is known to have shorter days, so it wasn’t surprising that we had headed for the nearby Pizzeria Trattoria by 8:30pm. But of course the worst comment had to come from Eleonora “that was the worse pizza I’ve ever had!”. I couldn’t compare because I had ordered a salad !

Night Gitis Contest: The crate of beer from our sponsorship was consumed from the very first day. Therefore extra Zirndorf had t be organised. The rest was partly financed by the players themselves and the rest by some participants. The contest organised by Fabio and those in comparison to 2004 involved the introduction of new rules.

The first runner up could have been Flo from Karlsruhe, who could pull Flamingo all the way to endless time what gained extra points. Second place could have belonged to Jan from Berlin.
Besides the winners Anton and Markus from Berlin have to be considered also as winners, who both managed to achieved the Hammer Gitis! By about 2, it was pretty much knock off for everyone. What a jam packed day it was for everyone.

Sunday, 4th of September: Sunday started off way less chaotic as Saturday did. We weren’t exactly on schedule but we did manage to finish up with the finals at sunset at 8pm. I can’t write too much about the routines, had to calculate the results and motivate Adrian to pick up new supplies of beer. But the feedback itself was very positive. There were plenty of on-lookers, although they mostly bystanders or some who just turned up by coincidence for a sun bath. The ‘audience’ were obviously impressed by the acrobatic performance.
Former and current 1st place winners were Fabio and Eleonora, 2nd place runner-ups were Flo and Chris from Karlsruhe while 3rd place belonged to Kolja and Markus from Berlin. Jan and Anton from thankfully settled with “just” 4th place. I should mention that the results for 2nd – 4th were very close (1.14 points decided the victory).

An African drummer appeared out of the nowhere and offered drum roles during the prize ceremony. Then we headed over to O’steria, Nuremberg’s best pizzeria, one place I thought would change Eleonoras impression of German pizzas. It was over the pizza that we discussed the FPA Worlds for 2006, which will take place in Berlin so we’re hoping to have the opportunity to organise a Freestyle Disc tournament a week before that in Rimini, Italy. The idea is to organise a shuttle from Germany to Rimini and back and to promote the event along the way. We’ll still have to see when and how, but it’ll all be announced on jamago.com.

Thank you to all of you that had came along, helped out, financed, or supported us with materials. The next Jam´n´Go 2006 will commence on Saturday the 29th of April through to Monday the 1st of May. The categories planned are Intermediate, Open pairs and COOP. For further information, please go to jamandgo.com.

Jam´n´Go

Markus