Wors by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek
Aaron Suski - frontside noseslide
I gave Aaron Suski one of those surfer accidents - 360 flip with an arm bitten off
Brian Sumner - backside flip
Can you believe Nyjah Huston still has a few years left before becoming a teenager? As usual, he's doing grown up tricks like this back smith across the ledge
Sean Malto is Girl's new am. He rips and has a fantastic hard flip. This is a smith grind across the ledge
Know your pro skateboarders. How many can you pick out of this line-up?
Corey Duffel - 360 flip
Look around on the internet for video footage of this. It was pretty insane. Chris Cole - double backside flip
It's amazing how Chris Cole can do anything on a skateboard but not look all robotic or whatever. This is a perfectly executed backside 360
It only took Bryan Herman a few tries to make this kickflip frontside nosegrind
Bryan Herman catches his hard flips at 90 degrees kind of like a backside shifty flip
Angel Ramirez - backside tailslide
Angel Ramirez - back smith
We got started a little bit late because the Zero team was running behind schedule. They had just flown back to California from Canada the night before, so they didn’t get to stay near the event site. This meant that none of them even got any practice time. I was walking Jamie Thomas around to the different obstacles and explaining the format to him and he said, “I think that we should just leave.” I knew he was being sarcastic, but at the same time, seeing all of these obstacles for the first time with about 1,500 people standing around and getting no practice probably threw a bit of pressure towards the way of the Zero team.
The Tylenol Street Gap got things started off properly. It was the least intimidating obstacle of the Showdown, but things still went off with a bang.
Baker
Bryan Herman
– He ended up winning it by knocking out so many difficult tricks, including his head on the side of the building. With a bleeding wound, Herman managed to take it with a
kickflip fs nosegrind
on the ledge sticking out as the banger with me.
Antwuan Dixon
– Antwuan may have skated, but I don’t remember what he did.
Birdhouse
Brian Sumner
– Sumnermate nailed all of the classics over the gap with a pop-shuv,
bs flip
, and a nice looking impossible.
Jereme Rogers
– Jereme did more switch tricks on the ledge than I can remember, but I specifically recall switch frontside tailslides and smiths.
Sean Malto
– He must have done something since he ended up in 6th place, but you got me on what it was.
Toy Machine
Billy Marks
– I know that Billy did a great 360 flip over the gap. Matt Bennett – His bs 180 nosegrind-come out forward was killer.
Foundation
Corey Duffel
– Corey did a kickflip over the gap going the wrong way, which was super-gnar, along with fs 5-0ing the ledge the wrong way, too.
Angel Ramirez
– Angel subbed for Ethan Fowler who looked pretty rough that morning. I don’t know if he was sick or hungover, but Angel did a sweet
backside smith
in his honor.
Zero
Chris Cole
– Ryan Smith was supposed to skate this one with him, but it ended up being just Cole out there representing Zero. That’s okay though, because he
backside double kickflipped
over the gap, along with 360 flips, frontside flips, and so on, earning him a second place finish.
Almost
Chris Haslam and Cooper Wilt tied for last. They were both working on stuff, but I don’t recall anything getting landed.
Element
Jeremy Wray
– The fs 360 ollie is a go-to trick for JWray and he did it over the gap with ease.
Nyjah Huston
– The little rasta-man is unbelievable. He had killer bs tailslides across the ledge and a bs 50-50 kickflip out, amongst many more moves.
Back out to LA for yet another event, but the Downtown Showdown is always a good one. Taking place on the “streets” of a Paramount Pictures movie set, prepare to be entertained…
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.
Bryan Herman
Antwuan Dixon
Brian Sumner
Aaron Suski
Jereme Rogers
Sean Malto
Billy Marks
Corey Duffel
Angel Ramirez
Chris Cole
Jeremy Wray
Nyjah Huston
