This is Mark, aka Adrien Bulard. When we gave away a trip to Damn Am at the last Free Day here at SPoT, we didn't consider what would happen if someone under 18 won it. So, Adrien here is 14 and won it. Clem stepped up as legal guardian all weekend. Adrien got the full trickle down benefits of Clem's skateboard industry status, including this shopping spree in the Volcom store. He also got a full dose of Schaefer life-advice all weekend
Finally caught up with Big Al. Of course it's not in either of our own home town
Looks like Porpe went straight for the contest shirt pile. Thanks to whoever provided all the free sauce on this first night I was out there
Paul Flores is 100% Mexican, but his girlfriend sure isn't
Now we're at the Contest, and I'm shooting headshots and checking people in all day and finally meeting in person everyone I've been talking to by email for the last few months leading up to the Contest. Manny Santiago, thanks for all the laughs
These are Mike Sinclair's dogs, Chubs and Lebowski. They spent all day hanging out at my "desk" during the Contest
A little bit of course dressing and the Contest is on
That ain't Colin Clark
Is the future of skateboarding as we know it in trouble like "the sky is falling" type people that are always complaining? When I consider most of the people with future careers representing skateboarding, I don't think so. Skateboarding is just fine and always will be
We had a Halloween budget
More of the Halloween budget
I always get Alex Longcamp (black shirt) and Tyson Bowerbank (white shirt) mixed up. Know who that kid in the orange beanie is? Maybe you will soon. After seeing his skating this weekend, Mike Sinclair put him on the flow-gram with Tum Yeto. That's Nick Matthews and his street footage is super good. Hopefully we will also see him in Tampa
Here's what you're up against. Click to enlarge
Caesar Rosado, hope to see you in our hometown in December
Thanks to Volcom for providing free food all weekend
A Santa Cruz chef outfit
Welcome to the OC
Kids here are born with skateboards
Tuck a beer under Ira Ingram's arm right now and he could pass for P-Stone
I imagine this photo will go into a Red Bull Marketing Department PowerPoint presentation on the effectiveness of natural product placement. Billy Marks and Neal Hendrix, thanks for coming to our skateboard shindig
Beer up. Sauce gets delivered to the roof where Steve Stratton and the Volcom crew are watching the Contest
Schaefer and Porpe dressed up on Saturday to encourage crowd participation in the costumes for Sunday
Porpe, Shira, Sarge, and Mean Gene in the chill out tent
Schaefer the Clown joined in on the High Ollie Contest without his skateboard
High Ollie Contest winners and some underwear creep from Shira
I rolled up to the hotel to find this crew keeping it Miami as hell
Yep, it's Miami
I told Jorge he could have my First Class seat home on the plane if he could make a backside disaster on this bank to wall. He got the take a poop and I kept my seat
Your hosts talking to the live webcast viewers. Here's the view they didn't see
Andrew Cannon makes a good Ron Burgundy
Skull Candy gave out all kinds of gear in their booth. Thanks for keeping the kids entertained
Skull Candy's gear for a wheel spin
The DNA Orange Juice tent was squeezing out fresh juice all weekend. I spy a little Flip kid with a Golden Ticket
Oranges get put in that machine and vodka mixer comes out
Take your DNA Orange Juice to your local skate shop for recycling and get 10% off. Not a bad deal
Sean Sheffey, thanks for coming to the Contest
Schaefer and Vern keeping it raw on the mic. Someone needs to make an edit/montage of just the crazy crap they say
The behind the scenes tech of the live webcast
DJ Wade's list of banned songs gets longer and longer at each Contest. Those are Schaefer's redneck shades
UnFilmer Sara and Lacey Baker
The Damn Am top three trophies
Jake Brown, thanks for coming
F350 skateboard
Dylan Perry got some stiching
Thanks to Dean Guitars for again providing two guitars for the winners
Clint Walker was the Zumiez Destroyer Award recipient for the weekend. Well deserved
Nick Merlino - thanks for joining us in the costume antics
Congrats Luan Olivera
The Contest is over, let's party. Schaefer is way taller than Ron Whaley
Norman Woods is coming to Tampa. I don't know if Ybor is ready for the combo of him and DJ Wade
Red Bull provided this double decker bus to take us across town to one of the few places around here that you can get a beer and still hang out with your under 21 friends. Looks like Paul Flores is starting something
From up above, Brian Schaefer and Ron Whaley are the same height
Upstairs on the bus, there was a full blown DJ booth. Where's DJ Wade? Porpe and I were forced to take over
You know the routine, right? This was our 8th annual trip out to California to what we like to dub the West Coast Tampa Am. It’s also the last Damn Am of the year prior to Tampa Am in December…
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.
