March 6, 2004
Words by Ryan Clements
Photos by Barak Wiser
Geoff Rowley - First man in - last man out. He killed it even though his knee was a bit hurt. His bs tailslides on the flat ledge were at mach speed and he even did a bigspin out of one of them. I had never spoken to Geoff before, but he was a true professional skateboarder in every form of the phrase. Plus, he thanked Scotty and I for the "obscene commentary." He's one of my new favorites.
Jim Greco - Grecs was not feeling it at all, but still a nice guy.
Van Wastell - Obviously a great skater, but skated pretty mellow. Seems a bit shy, too.
Scott Kane - I've never seen Scott in real life and he was a super-nice guy. I don't recall him hitting the big rail, but he did smooth kickflip fs 5-0's on the bank to hubba box.
Darrel Stanton - Skated with a permanently glued smile on his face. Darrel has a great sense of humor and killed the big handrail with a fs salad bs 180 out. He's a total gentleman and seems really cool to hang out with.
Cab - A living legend. Cab was sick from food poisoning so he just hung out. It was nice to have him around.
Ray Barbee - Another living legend. Ray Barbee is one of the most innovative and smoothest skateboarders ever. He still has one of the best styles to this day, and he showed it at the demo.
Danny Cerezini - Danny did some moves, but nothing like I've seen at the Am. He was very friendly, and we all know that he kills it.
Luther the Marketing Guy - This guys is all about no bull$h!t. I like his style. If you are sponsored by Vans, he expects you to skate at the demos. Isn't that revolutionary? Nope, it just makes sense.
Dave Smith the Team Manager - Dave has been managing teams for the five years that I've known him. I think he's going to do just fine at Vans as well.
In addition to the skating, there was a very nice product toss. Also, every single member of the Vans Team signed autographs until 11:30pm. Thanks very much guys.
Geoff Rowley - fs nosegrind
I think that this joker (the fake Greco) gave Scotty and I at least 30 minutes of material on the mic
We deserve free stuff!
Geoff was so cool that he even signed autographs for little chubby kids - stoked!
Front to back: Greco, Cab, Kane, and Barbee
Is Cab performing a soliloquy for the laypeople or throwing out Skaterade?
Danny Cerezini did a hardflip to 5-0
Darrel Stanton - fs salad bs 180 out - that's a tough 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.
