For the five days we were in Vancouver, the weather was absolutely amazing, except for Saturday, the day of the Contest.
Oh well, it was still a super fun day with ripping skating and plenty of laughs with
all our best friends from around the world. Thanks to Billabong for helping us put this together. Congrats to Scott
Decenzo for winning both Street and
Best Trick in his own hometown.
William Cristofaro is one of those guys that rips but ends up not doing so hot in contests. He's winning practice with this nollie big spin
Matt Berger is growing up and getting pretty damn good. That's a big spin front board on the baby rail
Joel Morgenweck - kickflip crooked grind straight out of Jersey
William Cristofaro - big spin boardslide during the rained out Best Trick Contest
Matt Berger - kickflip back lip
Chris Mendes - wet nollie back heel
I think that's Stacy Gabriel - nollie flip the baby three block
Josh Clark - cab front board
I always have to meet someone like 10 times before I remember their name. Who dat? Big flip front board hanging on with the toes
Jimmy from Ultimate Distribution had plenty of hot foot moves in the Bowl Jam
Bowl Awards went to Nate Lacoste,
Marius Syvanen,
Curran Caples, and
Jimmy Miller
Donovan Piscopo - pole jam up, 50-50 down, surf style out
Some of the rails at the park are skate-stopped. I wonder what Vern would say about himself on the mic regarding this frontside 180 over the skate stoppers
It was nice to see Ryan Decenzo's tranny skills during the Bowl Jam
My favorite little kid ever, Curren Caples. Kickflip blunt fakie in the Bowl Jam
Alex Chalmers of course leveled things in the bowl. That's a frontside disaster on the tranny to wall
Micky Papa is usually in my hometown at Tampa Am, but now I'm in his. I like your city, Micky, but your border patrol guys need to settle down. This is a kickflip back smith
Who dat? I can't remember, but he was back foot flipping all over the place. I wouldn't recommend doing that trick in public. Stick to the back lips
Will Marshall's dad always brings us cases of Canadian sauce. This time we were able to enjoy it locally. This is a frontside feeble grind
It's been five years since I saw Alien. Maybe the border patrol is keeping him on lockdown
Chris Mendes threw all kinds of water logged tricks down in Best Trick. This is a 360 flip
Scott Decenzo won Best Trick with this frontside bluntslide shuv it out first try
After the Contest, the sun came out and a beautiful rainbow showed up symbolizing how okay it is be be gay in skateboarding. Gay tricks, gay clothes, gay companies, gay pros, gay bros. I love it all
Just what every kid dreams of. A full pipe. Lucky they threw this in for all two people that care
Behind the park, there's a fun slash zone looking like the Bro Bowl of Vancouver
Life of Brian
Extra macho mullet, not so macho bike basket
How do you skate stop a nice downhill manny spot? With weird Candian Jersey barriers
I got lost in the city for a while and ran into these statues carved out of tree stumps. They keep things really clean here except for this one street called Hastings. It's crackhead central for about 20 blocks there. I didn't even want to pull my camera out
Seems like the whole city is under construction. There will probably be a new building in this giant hole in the ground by next year
I bought a six pack and two tall boys for a mere $25. Thanks for the bargain
Our first two nights out here were not my scene at all. Silk shirt techno clubs with cool guy VIP lines that Vern's friend was taking us to. Vern was in his own dance party world and didn't seem to mind. Where's The Hub of Vancouver please?
Former Zorlac pro (yeah, Zorlac), Mike Sinclair, just got a job as Team Manager for Tum Yeto. He got a hand-me-down phone from the secretary there - a gold Razr. Keep it gangsta, dawg
We had plenty of good meals with good company. Perogies are on every menu and they like putting bacon in their pasta sauce. Everything else was fairly normal. Can't hate on that
There were two good places to take shelter in the rain - the vendor tents and the Coors Light bus that was parked all day giving out free beer
Inside the Coors Light bus, it was a full blown dude fest. I think a rainbow showed up in here, too
Well, it was 99% dude fest in there. There was a Coors Light model giving out the beer and making sure no one took it outside. John Lupfer spent a lot of time on the bus
The judges from left to right are Brian Howard, Paul Machnau, Alex Chalmers, Mike Sinclair, and Jason Rothmeyer. Calling you out on the mic for anything suspect is Vern Lair and Brian Schaefer. Piercing your ears with the jams is DJ Wade
We were told about this party on Friday night. All we had was an address. We jumped in a cab that took us to a random door on the street with no lights on and no name/sign. Two dudes were standing out front that unlocked the door for us, rushed us in, then locked it behind us. Apparently, the cops have been busting up the parties here. Anyway, we arrived to this scene - a few people skating, a makeshift bar, and us just kind of standing there looking at each other
Within minutes, DJ Wade fell asleep. That was our cue to leave
We ended up at that plaza they build in Vancouver. What an amazing spot
Where's the full pipe and 90 foot deep bowls? Oh, someone under 65 must have designed this amazing place
The rules of the plaza are simple
Rodney Johnson and Risto Scott from Billabong, thanks for helping us kick off another annual Damn Am event in Vancouver. See you all next year
When you're throwing stuff out in the product toss, it's okay to pocket a few things like Curren here
Finally, a normal bar with good music, no silk shirts, and actual skateboarders hanging out. The After-Party on Saturday was super fun. That's John from Push Skate Shop across the street from the Park with DJ Wade. Thanks for the drinks!
John Lupfer is everywhere, especially after midnight. That's our new Aussie mom friend who has a kid skating in the Contest. Them Australians can party no matter how old they are
Kong is the Osiris Team Manager. He's hyped on party photos
Alex Chalmers, thanks for assisting with our skateboard shindig
We're in the Decenzo hometown. Congrats to your brother, Ryan. See you at the next one
Rodney Johnson and Ben Gore - this is the last party photo I snapped before calling it a night
DJ Wade, however, did not call it a night and is up way later than me as usual. I had the pleasure of having DJ Wade as my roommate all weeekend. I woke up to this photo in my camera
It's finally time to go home and "visit" my hometown of Tampa for a few days. Next trip is NYC this upcoming weekend. Sinclair uses a full size pillow on the plane. Maybe I should get on of those and a gold Razr. Goodbye, Vancouver. See you next year if I get in
The 2nd Annual Damn Am Canada went off in beautiful weather and pretty much no hassle with us getting into the territory occupied by our friends in the great white north...
I guess that awards shows can be greeted with different emotions. Some think they’re cool; others think they’re lame. But we just wanted to have a good time...
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.
