As you may have read in one of Rob's captions, I was the official legal guardian of Mark during our
trip out to Damn Am. Mark won an all-expense paid (except food) trip to Damn Am Costa Mesa. He and I went and
did our own thing a few of the evenings due to some prior obligations that I had, and of course
since he was under-age and all I wasn't able to take him to the bars exactly. I released custody of Mark
to Jorge (I know that sounds crazy) on Sunday evening and headed out to Portland to visit some family.
Here are a few pics from the entire trip...
On Thursday night we went to dinner at Ruby's on the Huntington Beach Pier. Jereme ordered a Shirley Temple, or is that a Roy Rogers? Either way it was really cute
Friday night was the Jeremy Wray Art Show. It was definitely the first time that Jereme Knibbs and Mark were in a straight up bar. They walked in, looked at the art, and walked out. I found them out front bored out of their minds
Thanks to Professor Schmitt for the lift over to the Art Show. He and Mark posed with the man of the hour, Jeremy Wray
Saturday morning was pretty mellow, so Mark and I headed over to the Costa Mesa Skate Park and got away with skating without helmets for about an hour. The last time I did that I got a $241 ticket
Saturday night was the IASC Hall of Fame Inductions at Vans Skate Park at The Block in Orange. We went to the "grown-up party" instead of heading to the Damn Am After-Party at Dave and Buster's. At least Mark got to meet the infamous Don Brown
L to R - Super-skateboard-nerd Adam Sullivan, R.P. from World, and Mark
Andy Mac is always down to bro-down and shoot a photo
Mike Fitzgerald from Transworld Skateboarding giving Mark "the business"
Mark was probably thinking, "Who are these old guys that Clem keeps introducing me to?" I'll tell you...I'm always hyped when I get to talk to Lance Mountain and John Lucero
Yet another skateboarder from the generation prior to mine that I have mad respect for. Mark is posing with Tod Swank and his lady friend
Leave it to Dave Swift to make fun of Mark with the bunny ears as Mark Waters looks extra jolly
On Sunday night I flew to rainy-ass, cold Portland and on Monday we drove up to Washington to see some family. That was the first time in Washington for me
It was raining and overcast all day, but the landscape was still amazing
To get from Portland, Oregon to Stevenson, Washington you can take a route to cross over the Bridge of the Gods. It costs $1 to pass over and it's pretty sketchy
You know that I had to get the usual "Welcome to" shot
On Tuesday afternoon, my good pal, Scott Koerner from Dakine, picked me up to go skate. There are so many parks in Portland, but the first one happened to be wet. Imagine that
It sure would have been fun to cruise around this one
The second place we hit was this really nice and brand new street plaza. Scott clears the gap on the smooth ground. I was feeling this place
We then made our way over to Glenhaven, where Scott promptly grinded this tight quarter. This place had a little bit of everything, but it was crowded and there were bikers all over the place
Homeward bound on Wednesday afternoon. At least Jenna remembered her WET WIPES!
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.
