Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek
Rob Gonzales - 360 flip
Rob Gonzales - switch heelflip
Matt Beach - backside 180 fakie 5-0
Five frames per second doesn't capture a double flip. Daniel Viera - double backside flip
Danny Cerezini - nollie backside flip
Diego Oliveira - rail assault part 1 - frontside 180 switch backside 5-0
Diego Oliveira - rail assault part 2 - fakie ollie fakie 5-0
Diego Oliveira - rail assault part 3 - nollie half cab switch 5-0
Diego Oliveira - rail assault part 4 - switch bsts
Diego Oliveira - rail assault part 5 - frontside 180 switch crook
Diego Oliveira - rail assault part 6 - kickflip frontside crooked grind
Diego Oliveira - rail assault part 7 - fakie back lip
Eero Antilla - nollie flip
Eric Koston - nollie noseblunt slide
Eric Koston - switch 360 flip
Pontus Alv - frontside tailslide
Rob Gonzales - 5-0 fakie
Elton Melonio - 360 shuv it noseblunt slide
Jason Rothmeyer and I are having fun doing ignorant ass radio rapper poses with the prize purse money. There was $70,000 cash in our office the whole weekend
Congrats Danny Cerezini!
These were the trophies made by Lau from Copenhagen
Lau also made these boards. They each came with $1000 attached and were given out as special awards picked by the Copenhagen Skatepark staff. Chico got one and was going around getting it autographed for a nice wall piece
DJ Wade got one of the Lau decks with $1000 in it for partying. What??!! Yeah, for partying. I think this is the first time I've ever said this: I should party more
DVS made this special run of shoes for the Copenhagen Pro 2008 event. That's the Denmark flag on the sole. Thanks for hooking me up with a pair, Gabe
After the Finals on Sunday, the Park cleared out because of this one game where people kick a ball around a field without using their hands. The hotel lobby in the Fox Hotel was packed with everyone from the Contest that got super excited whenever the checkered ball got close to the box with the net thing around it
The streets of Copenhagen, lost, all our luggage in tow, late getting to the airport when you're really ready to go home. Not the most fun time in the world, but I have absolutely no complaints, especially when I'm traveling with the best crew in the world
I didn't go out Sunday night either and I just realized how boring my photos are unless I go out and party. So, I'm going to say this for the second time: I should party more. Wait, does this mean it's actually part of my job to party? Sweeeet! I'll be sure to party on the next trip. Good bye Copenhagen. See you next year
Street Finals
I met Rob in the lobby of the Fox at 11am and he was looking like a million bucks. I suppose that’s because he took my route and didn’t go out last night. When we made it to the Park things were really mellow and in true Danish fashion, we got started bright and early at 3:30pm. It was okay though because it’s not like we were in a rush or anything...there was plenty of time to spare.
We broke the guys into three heats of four skaters each. They each got one, one-minute run that counted for 25% of their score and then participated in 12-minute jam that counted for 75% of their score. 12 minutes is a long time, but it really produced some great skateboarding. Here’s who got what:
13th – $1000 – Jani Laitiala – M.I.A. Where in the world was Jani? No one saw him all day, so we gave his spot to Willian
12th – $0 – Willian Seco – Willan agreed to skate in the Finals only under the condition that he gave the first $1000 he earned to Jani. Well, since he got 12th place, he technically got no money. He was a good sport though
11th – $1200 – Pontus Alv – I haven’t seen Pontus since Tampa Am 2000 or so...it’s been quite a while. But he’s got he speed and lines to keep any skateboard junkie entertained
10th – $1400 – Rob Gonzalez – when was the last time you saw Rob G. in the Finals? Thanks for coming out, Rob, and it’s a pleasure to witness your buttery style
9th – $1600 – Matt Beach – don’t worry, no one is calling it a comeback, but Matt Beach is on a path of destruction right now. He’s definitely one of the most talented skateboarders out there
8th – $1800 – Daniel Viera – he was the first of several Brazilians to earn a little bit of money in CPH
7th – $2000 – Elton Melonio – who is this guy? I don’t think that he’s even 20-years-old yet, but he sure kills it. Considering he was never out of Brazil until this weekend, he’s not doing so bad
6th – $3000 – Eric Koston – as I’ve said 100 times before...my favorite skateboarder by far. Frost got robbed. Just kidding. The bottom line is that he didn’t land as much as he could have. With a fakie tre down the gap and the switch bigspin bluntslide on the handrail he could have come up a couple more G’s
5th – $4000 – John Rattray – I heard that Rattray told Schaefer that the only reason he came to CPH PRO was because he heard that we (SPoTlight) were involved. Damn that’s good to hear. It’s almost as fulfilling as seeing John skate
4th – $5000 – Jereme Rogers – he did SO MANY tricks on the rail that it was absolutely ridiculous, but there were some guys that even stepped it harder than Jereme
3rd – $6000 – Eero Antilla – I said his name incorrectly all weekend by calling him “e-row,” but it’s really pronounced “arrow.” At least I didn’t call him “Euro.” Nice work, Arrow
2nd – $7000 – Diego Oliveira – he qualified 1st, but got bumped down to 2nd in the Finals courtesy of brother-Brazilian Cerezini. Diego was solid and in control the entire jam, but the nollie 180 to switch bs 5-0 on the handrail stands out in my mind
1st – $10,000 – Danny Cerezini – is there anything that he didn’t do? Danny ripped the entire course, but the mass destruction went down on the rail where he took out his list of difficult (both switch and regular) tricks and started checking them off one by one
Best Trick
Last night at the hotel I took notes of who won and the prize money they received so I could write the story on the flight home, which is what I’m doing right now. Since I forgot to jot down what tricks were done I’m going off of memory here.
The Best Trick was held immediately following the Street Finals. Well, it wasn’t exactly “immediate.” Nothing is immediate when you’re on Euro time, but it still happened soon enough. Anyone that skated in the Contest was permitted to skate in the Best Trick of course, but we threw Scott Decenzo in there, too, because he was hanging out and was itching to skate. And he almost made the switch kickflip to bs tailslide shove-it out. Had he landed it, I’m sure the results would have differed.
After 30-minutes of hucking themselves down the medium-sized gap with a not-so-big rail, here’s who walked away with some money:
5th – $300 – Jereme Rogers – his landing on the nollie flip nose slide 270 shove-it out was sketchy, so the judges didn’t count it. I can’t remember what he actually landed and got credit for though
4th – $500 – Willian Seco – I can’t even remotely recall what he did
3rd – $1000 – Lewis Marnell – switch bs bigspin kickflip down the gap
2nd – $1200 – Danny Cerezini – nollie flip fs boardslide on the handrail
1st – $1500 – Diego Oliveira – nollie flip fs 5-0 on the handrail
Additional Awards
The crew at Copenhagen Skatepark took it upon themselves to do their own version of our “Just for Showing Up” and “Thanks for Nothing” awards. Nice work on that one, fellas (and Camilla), but I think that you definitely one-upped us by giving each “winner” $1000 each. What?!?! Yep, you read that right...
Gnarliest Slam – Pontus Alv – since no one really slammed all that hard, this award was given the Swedish professional for being so damn gnarly
Best Partier – DJ Wade – who would have ever thought that you could come up a G by partying harder than anyone else? Hopefully Wade didn’t lose the money
Sexiest Skater of the Weekend – Danny Cerezini – talk about coming up. Danny won the Contest, got 2nd in Best Trick, and then is crowned sexiest of the weekend? You go
Nicest Guy – Chico Brenes – have you ever hung out with Chico? If so, you know why he won this. He’s a class act
Thanks
We need to give a shout-out to our friends at DVS for putting up the initial money to make this event happen and bringing out a legit crew with Shier, Baines, Brenes, and so on sure helps out. Also, William, Simon, Camilla, and the rest of the crew at Copenhagen Skatepark...you guys are a true pleasure to work with and go above and beyond with making us feel comfortable, so thanks. Ciggy and the crew from Tacky World.com, thanks for being easy to work with on the live webcast. Finally, thanks to the people of Copenhagen...damn I love that city.
Ryan
Check out a few minutes from Rob's chill cam: Kenny Hughes just found out about the Skatepark of Tampa Party Team. He scanned the list of riders and his first questions was "How come there are no black people on this list?" Rune Glifberg rung the bell and the crowd went nuts. That's followed by a clip of the Street Finals awards. Thanks to everyone that came from around the world to Copenhagen for another SPoTlight Productions event. See you at the next one.
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.
