I was quite a party scene in the back of the skatepark while the contest was going on. Check out that Euro cut. Looks like that dude has a piece of cheesecake on his head
Those pants and a jean jacket? Welcome to Copenhagen
Shots/mixers of some kind of sketchy alcohol were being served up all day. See how stingy they are with the ice? It's like gold here. I think ice is now worth more than the US dollar
Am I still at a skateboard contest? Someone hired these dancers to hang out after the Contest
Rob G, Schaefer, and DJ Wade. It's a Tuborg tornado
DJ Wade can consume twice the alcohol and smokes through his second face
Here's the Euro text message of the week. Anyone know what that says?
Here's a wide view of one end of the course. That's Danny Cerezini nosegrinding off the drop off ledge
Matt Beach, Brad Staba with emo eyes, and Eric Koston
You can tell this dude totally busted me snapping a photo of his wacky Euro gear
Terry Kennedy - switch frontside nosegrind for the masses
Adam Taylor just missed the cut by one
That's Anthony Furlong during the Qualifiers before he got hammered
Thomas Kring - frontside nosegrind
Renton has a great frontside ollie
As usual, we are drinking with children out here. They're very loose with that and there doesn't appear to be any problems with it
Rune Glifberg - indy nosebone
Rune Glifberg - wow, that's a frontside air tucked tight
Furlong didn't think he made the cut so went straight to the booze after his Qualifier run. By the time the Finals came, he was too hammered to skate and just gave up and kept drinking. Heal Hendrix is happy to be bumped up a place
Renton - kickflip tailgrab
Renton got first. Rune got second. It was another amazing Vert Contest here
Furlong gets the Take a Poop in the Finals for this bailed frontside nosegrind with beer in tow
Two more cups of coffee at two different places and they both come in a glass with no handle. Next time I get one, I'm going to ask for an oven mit so I can drink it
This is Adam Taylor's camera. He was walking home from last night and randomly found Renton Millar asleep on the streets of Copenhagen. I guess the celebrated a little too hard last night
Street Qualifiers
Since this was a pro-only deal, there wasn’t an abundance of entrants. A lot of these Euro contests that you may have seen or heard about in the past have permitted pretty much anyone to enter, so that’s how they get nearly 100 participants. If you keep it only “legit pro,” then that lowers the number of skaters significantly. But we’re talking quality over quantity here…and that’s exactly what we got.
So with just over 30 competitors, we split the dudes into four-man heats. The got one, one-minute intro run and then skated in an eight-minute jam. This change of format from Tampa Pro really makes for a more interesting Contest. We then took the top 12 overall and bumped them into the Finals on Sunday.
You don’t need to see who qualified because you can see that when the Finals are posted, but here are some dudes that didn’t make the cut that I was stoked on:
Terry Kennedy – it’s been a few years since I’ve seen Terry in real life, but even though he done growed up into a grown-ass man, he’s still as nice as ever
Paul Shier – he didn’t land a single trick last year, but Mr. Shier made up for it this time around. Next year he’s judging
Brad Staba – I just like his style and he’s got a great sense of humor…fun dude to be around
If you got over the skating at any point, there was some damn good food in the courtyard. The judging staff and I opted for the homemade chili. And since it was easier to get your hands on a beer than a soda, I washed it down with a cold Tuborg…because you can sure bet that the bar was open for business. Right after the Qualifiers we made our way over to the Vert.
Vert Contest
Come on, Rob…you’ve got to admit that the Vert Contest was killer. Really. I want you to admit it right now. Stop making fun of vert skating and give these dudes some respect. They killed it and you know it. They even did flip tricks for you.
Honestly, the Vert was definitely a highlight of the weekend. Not only was the skating stellar, but the layout of Copenhagen Skatepark allows for some amazing viewing from different levels, so there are literally spectators everywhere, from the floor to ceiling. Add in 2000 free beers and you’ve got pretty much the best crowd that anyone could ask for.
We broke the 13 competitors into three heats where they got one, 45-second run and then skated in a free-for-all, 10-minute jam. The top five from that went into a Finals with again a 45-second run, but this time they got a 15-minute jam. It went off! Here’s the breakdown:
13th – $200 - Juergen Horrwarth – if it was a style-only Contest, Juergen would have taken 1st. But the ripper from Berlin had a tough time staying on his board, so it didn’t work out. Hopefully we’re doing a Contest in Berlin next year…let’s make it happen!
12th – $200 - Nathan Beck – from what I recall, this was Renton’s boy from Oz and he had a nice fs invert
11th – $200 - Thomas Kring – local ripper who we’ve been friends with for a very long time. Basically because of Thomas we are here in CPH. Thanks, Man
10th – $500 – Christiano Mateus – one of the many Brazilian vert rippers that I haven’t seen around in a while
9th – $600 – Thomas Madsen – another local from Denmark that REALLY had the crowd pulling for him. I’m sure Thomas has to work a real job and all that, but he’s still got some skills on the vert
8th – $700 – Alex Perelson – he doesn’t talk too much, but he made a damn nice showing on his first international trip without his folks. He’s going to Prague from here with host Neal Hendrix. Note: Best trick of the entire Contest was done by Alex…the illest fs flip lien melon ever
7th – $800 – Nicky Guerrero – I’m going to say that Nicky is pushing mid-40’s, but who cares when you’re still doing inverts over the channel, sad plants, and 7’ alley-oop airs? I’m a fan
6th – $900 – Adam Taylor – Adam is going over 8’ on his airs and he’s still got little-kid-legs. When he beefs up a bit this kid is going to be unstoppable. He’s got class and kept his mouth shut, but I know that he wanted to be in the Finals
5th – $1000 – Anthony Furlong – too many cervezas before the Finals put Furly out of commission, so he just hung out on the deck with a Budweiser in hand, heckling his fellow finalists
4th – $1500 – Marcelo Kosake – I’ve neven seen this dude before, but apparently he’s from Brazil and let me tell you, he gives it 100% and gets hyped on a loud crowd
3rd – $2000 – Neal Hendrix – he said to me on this trip, “You know I love a good excuse to travel.” Neal excels in a jam because he’s so damn consistent and he’s one of the guys out there that truly knows how to have fun with skateboarding
2nd – $3000 – Rune Glifberg – as his wife, Queen of the Vikings, watched the Contest from the highest perch in the building, Rune gave it his all, ending with an 11’ fs air to ring the bell, but there was no stopping Renton
1st – $500 – Renton Millar – coming all the way from Australia, he wanted to get the most out of this trip…and he sure did. I can’t believe that he can do 360 flips and kickflip 5-0’s so consistently on vert. Add in huge bs ollies and Madonna’s with some nosegrab 540’s and you have a winner
By the time we got out of the Park it was after 10pm. Add up the time that it took to get back to the hotel and then some dinner, and it was nearly 2am when I hit the sack…very late for me, but most hardcore partiers stayed out ‘til sunrise.
Looks like the Kiddie Course isn't going to be done until tomorrow. Here's some photos from our first session on the main course and some random bar antics at Skateboard Industry Night in St. Pete: A New Course and a New Bar Scene.
You can get a fisheye's view of the completed street course on the SPoT Facebook Page. If you're a fan of SPoT on Facebook, you already know that we sometimes do special sales and give out coupon codes there. Maybe there might be a special just for Facebook fans next week? Who knows? Maybe. The kiddie course isn't done yet. Photos from that coming up in a bit.
On the Win an All Expense Paid Trip to Tampa survey thing, I should have added, "Stay away from the Skatpeark of Tampa Party Team" as one of the options to prevent your skateboard career from derailing. When you come to Tampa, it's easy to get spinning in the party tornado, especially when 200 of your homies are all in the Ybor hotels or the Ho Jo. If the sauce is not your scene or you're trying not to make it your scene, a nice hotel for a decent price just a few minutes up the highway from SPoT is Days Inn. If you're just looking for a lower price room, a cab ride from there to the tornado in Ybor is probably about $15 or so. There's also another Days Inn on Dale Mabry that's across the street from Mons Venus. They don't serve booze there, just boobies. Boobies never hurt anyone's career. Anyway, you have some time left to enter the Tampa trip giveaway which comes with a hotel room and $500 spending cash, among other things. Since you're not skating, we will see you at all the parties that you get passes to.
I went out to shoot photos of the Kiddie Course construction and spotted Kris Markovich hanging out. Here's what things look like as of now. Gotta go, I have a conference call with 25 people from Fuel TV. 25 people??? Yep, mindblowing. It's about the live HD webcast for Tampa Am. They should put this phone conference on live webcast.
If your company has products on our site, you're welcome to a free ad in our banner pool. On your company's product page, only the ad from your company will show up. On all other pages like articles, photos, and skater profiles, your ad will display randomly from the pool of ads. The size is 970x100 and no animation is allowed. You can update it as often as you want. Email them to me at rob@skateparkoftampa.com. Below are some samples from a few companies that have sent some in already.
The main street course is done and skateable today. The kiddie course should be done late tomorrow or Saturday. Check out some construction progress: Street Course Construction and Completion 2009.
If you're in St. Pete tomorrow night, join us at Durty Nelly's for an event that The Finest Skate Shop is putting on called Skateboard Industry Night, appropriately abbreviated as SIN.
The winners for the Globe Cruiser completes have been picked. I know at least one of them is a local - Yonis came out on top. See you on the Booze Cruise this Friday. The first $600 worth of sauce is all on me. The trucks on these boards are called "Slant" as in my eyes. Sick.
What song is this in this Tampa Am promo video? That one dude, you know, the guy who will be at Tampa Am 2009 on December 3 at SPoT then
on Friday, December 4, doing a show in Ybor for our 17-Year Anniversary Party at Czar. Yeah, him. Oh, and there could be a little bit of ripping skating going on.
Today the staff at SPoT got started on putting together all the skateboard parts collected in the Shop all year long. Through your discarded skate stuff and contributions from your favorite skate companies, we build as many completes as we can and give them away to as many kids as we can find in the underprivileged neighborhoods in our area. We call this charity Boards for Bros. Check out a few photos from what we did today: Boards for Bros November 2009 Assembly.
If you haven't entered the Globe Cruiser Board giveaway yet, you have one more day for that. Tomorrow, all the emails go into a spreadsheet and get sorted random. The top two get a Globe Cruiser complete. On Friday night for the Booze Cruise, the first $600 of sauce is paid for by eBay shoe nerds who bought some of my old Dunks.
One commenter suggested we change the website every year like we do the street course. As soon as we get one of me for every construction dude out there, we can make that happen. Check out some street course construction that just started. In case you don't know, we have completely changed the street course every single year since 1993 when this place was born. This is the first year we've had a slab of granite, however.
Stalker Steve took some nice chill shots at the Harvest Jam this weekend. The skate ones are sort of like the bennihanna of photography, not that mine were any good either. I know we both can do better than that. Check them out: Stalker Steve at the Harvest Jam 2009.
A known hater on the Skatepark of Tampa Facebook page also has photos from the Harvest Jam. Thanks Kirk Hallinan. I'm putting you on the next cover of Frontside Grind Magazine.
