Contraband is burning all around me. A contact buzz is making this stale fish look way sicker than it really is
I'm seeing trails right now. I hope someone put something in my drink
This guy has the same problem that Gravekian has where his back foot comes off on lien to tails
Every bowl jam has to have a padded up stink bug grabbing tyke in it
Rob Meronek approved meron grab
Danny Cerezini - switch back lip
Baby Lamb - kickflip footplant on the fire hydrant
Neal Hendrix - cab heelflip
This dude has the huge snaps on nollies
Who dat? I'm feeling The Predator because he does a lot of tricks without grabbing his board
How come there aren't any Element boards that say US and A?
Some fully grown men still do stink bugs
Remy's photo of this crail is much better
The only thing higher than the audience blazing all this dope is Sandro Dias. Wow, look at that backside air
I was feeling this guy, but I can't remember his name. This is a front feeble on the bump to rail
The crowd was huge and very enthusiastic
Ricardo Olivera can catch a giant 360 flip easier than we can catch a cold
This dude is the king of the ride way with extra steez. He rips, though. He cracked his head on this switch bsts during the Jam but then got back up and did it
Evelyn was the only girl I saw tossing herself down the big rail. Best Trick was too crazy, so I don't have any usable photos from that
P-Stone bet me a beer that he could drop in and nosegrind on the vert ramp first try. He piled but I still bought him a beer anyway
You know how some people just look a little creepy where they might have body parts in their freezer? This is one of those dudes. He rips on vert, though
Can't remember who this is doing a 540
I haven't seen Trevor Ward to Your Mutha since he used to live with Clements years ago. He's ripping. He was doing proper switch frontside bonelesses, but I missed the photo
This kid is 15. He's got a good 540 and was skating the ramp like a grown man, not the kind that do stink bugs
Dirty Bird got VIP seating on the deck of the vert ramp. That's Sandro on a back smith
This is Axel. Apparently, he's the Euro Ryan Sheckler. The crowd went into an uproar on every basic trick he did. They love the baby rippers. We'll be seeing him at AmsterDamn Am next week
That's a real concrete Jersey barrier that this dude is doing a back lip on
This is only half the crowd watching the Street Finals. It was packed
Dirty Bird posted up at the bottom of the rail for Best Trick
Our new friends from Copenhagen made the journey out to Mystic Cup. That's Nis Anderson who rides for Nike SB Europe. They call getting drunk "going to the fence." We took a lot of trips to the fence together
The Thrasher staff is hard at work. Watch for an article about our adventure over here coming out soon
A Euro condom with graphic instructions on how to use it
Wow, how about that Euro shrapnel? As if the fantastic cleavage was not enough to have you staring right there the whole time you're talking to her, you also got the peircing keeping your attention away from eye to eye contact
The mojito is a very popular drink at the skate park bar here. It's basically a salad with alcohol. Not my cup of tea. The bartenders, however...
There was a full on mini-Roskilde music festival going on in the back field of the skate park. This raver was rubbing a spaghetti strainer on his head to get a strobe light effect going. Nice shoes, pal
Euro horse tail - yikes!
P-Stone and I got lost for a bit to go and find our favorite sausage stand from last year. We finally made it back to the After-Party at the park a little after 4am. It was still full on raging with hundreds of people hanging out. Hell yeah
Look who we ran into at the After-Party. It's Karolina we met last year. I guess after hanging out with us last year, she's a skateboarding fan now. Of course, she now has the full Euro shrapnel kit going
Drunk people got on the rope swing and hurt themselves as usual
Duncan and Schaefer should have a skateboard rap battle on the mic
This watermelon turned into a smoking aparatus was at the bar available for anyone to use until some drunk dude came along and punched a hole in it
Foot fetish with Karolina
It's now about five or six AM and people everywhere are passing out, but there are still a ton of people keeping the bar busy
That's a really awkward cast. That's Cobra Hand Girl with P-Stone, Javier Sarmiento, and Roberto Aleman
Trashy Euro feet is not an uncommon thing
They're dropping like flies. Karolina and her eye candy are keeping me awake
Time for another drunk circle photo. That's Anne. She lost her friends so we became her new friends. DJ Duncan has the boom box
So now it's like 7am. Time to spike beers with Red Bull for another couple hours of hanging out
P-Stone has a mutant eyebrow strand taking over his whole head
I didn't even know this other bowl was at the park until Anne showed me
This is the best restaurant ever. I've eaten a t-bone here for the last four days in a row. The food here is really good
So we all ended up at the baby tower thing
This rail is at the bottom of the baby tower
And then there's this bank you can do stuff into
There's also a big scary hubba there
We had a fun time at this grass bombing spot at the bottom of the baby tower. Schaefer took some good spills
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.
