BELFAST - Brennan Moore wants to get gnarly. He and his newly founded skate company, GNARK, have been hard at work designing merchandise, shooting videos, and planning their “End of Summer Throwdown”, a crazy combination of jackassery and competitive skateboarding to be held in Belfast later this month.

The inception of this sure-to-be wild gnark-tober carnival can be traced back to Brennan Moore’s idea to film and distribute a skateboarding video.

“The original idea was to get a bunch of my friends and make a [skate] movie that would come out next summer.” Moore said. “Then I thought ‘well, might as well start making clothing’ and then idea for holding the competition came up as a way to boost everything else.”

As the idea progressed, the GNARK team began to assemble.

Reminiscent of the Dogtown Zephyr (or Z-Boys) skate team circa mid 1970s, the riotous GNARK team currently consists of skaters Brennan Moore, Hunter Finden, Matt Knott, Matt “Kiwi” Buch, Cash Recanzone, Greg Stevens and John Cronin, who works as a wise facilitator and mentor, helping the boys with the odds and ends of the team and competition. Also on board is Ethan Laurel, who operates as the team photographer/videographer for the GNARK youtube channel (soon to be online), and Jack Smith, who is referred to by Brennan as “the guy we’re going to duct tape to the wall soon.”

Moore and his right-hand-man, Hunter Finden, have been plotting and scheming for weeks now, meeting with Belfast’s parks and recreation department to secure a date, location, and rules. The encounter with the city was more complicated than the boys imagined.

“It was awesome, though.” Hunter Finden said. “We were asked about the skate park conditions. They [parks and recreation] told us that the city was going to help us out and we’d be covered by the city’s insurance so if anyone gets hurt we wouldn’t have to pay out of pocket. There was a lot more to it than we thought there would be, but it was all good.”

As the legalities of the End Of Summer Throwdown near completion, Moore and Finden turn their attention to more logistics.

“This competition is more than a competition,” Moore said. “There will be a skate competition section where we’re going to hold games of S.K.A.T.E. (a game of HORSE with skate tricks) and there will be a jam, (a timed free-for-all skate-off) but there will also be a raffle for skate equipment, music, grill food, a hot dog eating contest, and I’m going to sell skate clothing and equipment there, too.”

Moore has been investing most of his time and all of his money into this competition and skate company. He is in the process of designing and producing GNARK hats, multiple T-shirts, skate decks, pins, patches, posters, flyers and other merchandise, which will be for sale at the festival.

“People are getting pumped," he said. "We’re anticipating at least 30 skaters from places like Bangor, Waterville, Lewiston, all over really. We have an edge too because you never hear about stuff like this coming out of Belfast. In Maine people skate differently and dress differently and act differently. We have Moxie and whoopee pies.”

The End of Summer Throwdown is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 28 (rain date: Nov. 4), at the Belfast skate park. $5 Admission for all the trouble and gnar you could imagine.

www.facebook.com/gnarkskateboarding

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