This year, the game took about two hours. Last year,
it took four. People were
getting eliminated kind of quick in the early rounds.
After it got to the fourth round, things really got interesting. You’d hear the crowd like
“ooooohhh” whenever they would announce the next match-ups like
Jamie Thomas vs.
Eric Koston,
PJ Ladd vs.
Kenny Anderson, and other crazy match-ups like that.
AJ Burnett, winner of the
game in Tampa, first won the am game earlier in the morning. He beat out 13 other people that were all winners
from games held all over the country over the last few months. He also earned himself a spot in
the pro game and did pretty good. He first eliminated Jeremy Holmes. Then he took out
Stefan Janoski.
The karate kid looking score board thing shows that
Rodrigo Tx took out AJ, but I’m pretty sure it was
Chris Haslam that took him out
where he got his last letter on a pop shuv late shuv.
The last few skaters left were Chris Haslam who beat AJ Burnett, PJ Ladd who eliminated
Bastian Salabanzi, and
Eric Koston who took out
Jamie Thomas. Chris Haslam was serving up letters with crazy tricks like 360 flip late flips. In
the second to final round against Koston, Chris started out with a nollie laser flip that gave Koston an “S.”
In the final round, it was PJ Ladd against Eric Koston. Right before it started, I bet Ryan Clements $20
that it would be Koston who would win because his bag of tricks spans two decades. I should have known PJ could do any old school
trick he wanted like ollie impossibles and tricky stuff like nollie half flip kick back gimmicks.
PJ Ladd did a switch big heel to open up, which Koston made. Koston doesn’t like hard flips. PJ Ladd threw one out that Koston matched. Then he gave Koston his first letter with a switch frontside heelflip 360. Koston did something
else to give PJ an S, but I can’t remember what it was. After that, PJ gave Koston a “K” with a half cab double flip. Koston then missed a big flip to get an “A.” After that, he bailed a nollie half cab heel to get a “T” and finally
got his last letter on a nollie half cab flip. So PJ Ladd wins $10,000 and Ryan Clements wins $20, and that’s what went down at the eS Game of SKATE today.
Rob
Photos
Last year's Tampa Am winner, Sierra Fellers - nollie heel
Tosh Townend - pop shuv
Rob Dyrdek - fakie varial flip
Rob Dyrdek - heel flip
Ryan Smith - 360 flip
Ryan Smith - varial heel
PJ Ladd - nollie flip
PJ Ladd - switch 360 flip
Ryan Clements holds the flag while Ray Barbee plays the National Anthem in honor of the third anniversary of September 11, 2001.
PJ Ladd - 360 flip
PJ Ladd - frontside half cab flip
PJ Ladd - nollie 360 flip
Mike Vallely - 360 flip
Mike Vallely - one foot
Nate Sherwood - pressure flip tail grab
Leo Romero - big flip
Leo Romero - varial heel
Lindsey Robertson - backside heel flip
Kenny Anderson - half cab flip
Eric Koston - 360 flip
Eric Koston - frontside flip
Eric Koston and PJ Ladd with the big check
The score board that shows who eliminated who
Joey Corey had an accident
Josh Kalis - 360 flip
Josh Kalis - switch heel
Joey Brezinski - kickflip
Javier Sarmiento - nollie backside flip
Jani Laitiala - fakie 360 flip
Jamie Thomas - nollie flip
Jamie Thomas - varial heel
Darrel Stanton - backside big spin
Jamie Thomas - heel flip
Ronnie Creager - kickflip
Billy Marks - kickflip
Billy Marks - switch frontside 360
Ronnie Creager - cab double flip
Mark Appleyard - fakie 360 flip
Mark Appleyard - hardflip
Bastien Salabanzi - switch flip
AJ Burnett - fakie 360 flip
AJ Burnett - nollie backside flip
Videos
Sierra Fellers - nollie flip (750k mpeg video)
Rodrigo Tx - switch varial heel (750k mpeg video)
Ronnie Creager - fakie 360 flip (1mb mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - varial heel (900k mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - switch back heel (750k mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - switch backside flip (1mb mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - nollie half cab flip (750k mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - fakie inward heel (750k mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - nollie back heel (1mb mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - half cab heel (900k mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - hard flip (900k mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - fakie big flip (1.1mb mpeg video)
PJ Ladd - big flip (900k mpeg video)
Eric Koston - switch frontside 360 shuv (1mb mpeg video)
Eric Koston - varial heel (900k mpeg video)
Eric Koston - frontside pop shuv late flip (2.3mb mpeg video)
Eric Koston - switch backside big spin (750k mpeg video)
Eric Koston - switch double flip (1.2mb mpeg video)
Eric Koston - nollie hard flip (900k mpeg video)
Eric Koston - nollie heel shifty (1mb mpeg video)
Eric Koston attempts to match Chris Haslam's nollie laser flip (1.5mb mpeg video)
Eric Koston - this is the last trick that knocked him out of the game (2mb mpeg video)
Eric Koston - ollie impossible (1.7mb mpeg video)
Eric Koston - double flip (750k mpeg video)
Eric Koston - fakie inward heel (1mb mpeg video)
Kenny Anderson - frontside big spin (900k mpeg video)
Javier Sarmiento - big flip (800k mpeg video)
Javier Sarmiento - nollie half cab heel (1mb mpeg video)
Jamie Thomas - frontside big spin (1.5mb mpeg video)
Jamie Thomas - switch back heel (1mb mpeg video)
Bryan Herman - switch frontside flip (1.2mb mpeg video)
Bryan Herman - switch frontside heel (1.1mb mpeg video)
Chris Haslam - fakie flip (1.2mb mpeg video)
Bryan Herman - switch frontside 180 heel (900k mpeg video)
Bryan Herman - nollie inward heel (600k mpeg video)
This most recent trip to San Diego ended up being more eventful than some others in the past, so be prepared for some serious name dropping included with the usual good times.
So right when we landed I called my friend Kevin Marks. For some reason, he kept calling me all week saying, "I'll pick you up from the airport and we'll go skate my ramp."...
éS Footwear's own P.J. Ladd took home the big $10,000 check at the end of Eric Koston's éS Game of SKATE this weekend at the Action Sports Retailer trade show in San Diego...
I bet you’re wondering why we’re taking Afro-Jim and Scotty to ASR with us. I’ll go ahead and hype them up – they’ve both earned it. Yeah, us execs run the joint and all, but without those guys, Skatepark wouldn’t be what it is. So this is our little way of saying ‘thanks.’
I forgot to mention that somehow we ended up hanging out with the infamous Baby Schitzo last night. Since he didn’t
have anywhere to stay, we let him crash on our floor. Waking up to Baby Schitzo in our room was definitely an experience in itself.
As the sun rose, so did I. Barry and I thought that it would be a great idea to head over to the
show before it opened and ride the mini-ramp. We had a full-on session at about 8:30am. Thanks to the official
ASR badge with my name on it, the Staff Pro security guards were forced to sit and watch us skate. That badge is gold.
Although I didn’t go to bed until late, I woke up early since my body was still on “Florida time.” It gets light out really early on the west coast and the construction starts at sunrise. There were buildings being raised on three sides of our hotel, so sleeping past sun-up was out of the question.
I think that after several years of going to trade shows, you become a bit jaded on the whole scene.
It’s not like I don’t like going, because I do, but maybe I’ve just been so wrapped up with the day in/day out
of operating Skatepark that I didn’t really want to leave. But my attitude changed upon arriving in San Diego.
It’s time once again for the Fall ASR Trade Show. In case you’ve never heard of it, this is where “it’s” all happening. For three days, the entire skateboarding industry will be working, and partying, in San Diego. From the guys that design the concaves, to the reps that write the orders, practically everyone will be there. Although it never works out, I’m going to attempt to give a day-by-day account…first thing I need to do is get a digital camera…
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.
This year, the game took about two hours. 
