About 10 - depends if my fat ass breaks more then that, but usual is 10.
b) How many boards do you use a month?
Depends if its Video Part time - then I will use 10. If not, maybe five or six.
c) Do you keep unused boards to show your grandkids one day?
No, I don’t have enough room in my house for them all if I did.
d) Have you ever been to boarding school?
Nope.
e) Do you skate boards with your own graphics?
Sometimes, but I like team logo boards more.
f) Are you bored with these questions?
Whatever. It’s better than “how high can I ollie” and all that.
g) What do you do with all your used boards?
Most of the time I give them away to whomever is around when I am changing it.
2) One night I was out to dinner with a group of people and a Catholic priest. Anyway, conversation led the priest to sing the song "Stripped" by Depeche Mode. If you are familiar with the song then you can understand how awkward that was. Have you ever been around or witness to something more awkward than that?
A long time ago, I was at my friend’s place when he had to explain to his mom why their house cleaner quit after walking in on him destroying himself to the TV.
3) Are you an early to bed, early to rise kinda’ guy or an up all night, sleep all day party-like-a-rock-star guy?
Ha ha...it depends. I do like waking up early, but I also like staying up late. It all depends if there’s something to do the next morning or not.
4) When you leave for a skate tour, demo, contest or whatever, what are some of the must-haves you put in your bag and/or bring on tour with you?
Leaving out all the gay $h!t everyone says like iPod’s and toothbrush and all that stuff, I try and bring as many shoes to skate in as I can. The less clothes I put in, the more product I can fit, so I like bring back-up. Computer, too, even though I usually end up not using the damn thing.
5) On the VH1 TV show "100 Hottest Hotties" they said that hottie #33, Gwen Stefani, is "every skate rat’s dream girl" and that "she is what they think about in between kickturns on a halfpipe." So is this true? Do you dream of Gwen Stefani in between kickturns on a halfpipe? Do you consider your self a skate rat? Who is your celebrity dream girl?
When I think of skate rats I think of little skater kids. Wouldn’t say I am a little skater kid, but I was a skate rat for sure. Celebrity dream girls change all the time, but at the moment it’s a Keira Knightley, Kate Beckingsale, or Alyssa Milano phase…either one will do.
6) I skate as a hobby. Skateboarding is my life, but I am a working stiff. You're a professional skateboarder. Your job is to skate. What is your hobby?
I don’t have many hobbies, but sometimes I go golfing. I like watching movies as well...never really thought of that as a hobby though.
7) A Chris Haslam PEZ would be cool. Your shaggy head on the top of a PEZ would be funny. If you could have your own Chris Haslam toy what would it be?
I always thought sling shots where sweet.
8) Dog, cat, or exotic pet? American car, foreign car, or exotic car? Ginger, Mary Ann, or exotic dancer?
Dog for sure. Probably an American car or truck and not a Ginger. The others are fine. Actually, an exotic dancer might be to craze for me - have yet to venture down that road.
9) Who are the top five buttery-smooth skaters in the industry right now?
In no particular order:
Marc Johnson,
Kenny Anderson,
Mike Carroll,
Guy Mariano,
Danny Garcia
10) "I'm a person just like you/but I've got better things to do/than sit around and f&c$ my head/hang out with the living dead...I've got the straight edge." Is that you? Is it hard to not drink and get crazy when that's what everyone else is doing all night, every night?
I just like hanging out, being around people having a good time. I mean, there comes a point in every night where enough is enough and then I usually make a break for it, but it’s not hard at all to not drink I don’t even think about it.
11) So I had your Round Three board set up and I focused it the other day for no real reason. What do you have to say about that?
I knew you been working out, dammit. Least I know that my boards are making it down there, for focusing or riding. So I’m pretty psyched. Ha ha.
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.
