ASR January 2008 – Lord of the Lines Presented by Matix
Posted on Monday, January 28, 2008
Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek
Torey Pudwill - look at how far the ollie is into this backside noseblunt slide. He's not going slow
There was open skating all day before the event. Chris Mendes was doing perfect nollie heel crooked grinds
Almost all of Jackson Curtin's tricks were switch. This is a switch back heel back tail
Benny Fairfax could almost pass for Bastien here. This is a kickflip backside nosegrind
Fully Flared has everyone fully flipping out of smith grinds frontside and backside. Billy Marks - smith grind kickflip out
Torey Pudwill - fully flaring backside flip out of a back smith
Jackson Curtin - switch backside nosegrind
Enrique Lorenzo - frontside 180 switch manny
Lem Villemin - front crook
Malcolm Watson - switch nose manny fakie flip out
Joey Brezinski - half cab kickflip manual
When it's not pretty like this, we call that a "contest make." Torey Pudwill - big spin nose slide
Joey Brezinski - fakie inward heelflip to backside tailslide
Bobby Worrest - frontside flip tailslide
Torey Pudwill - kickflip backside noseblunt slide
Curren Caples was light years ahead of the the other tikes on the mini-ramp
Mike Santarosa and I are light years ahead of the tikes there, too. In age, that is
I can't remember this girl's name, but she had the stinker grab on lockdown
What's that smell? I think I stepped in poop
Bobby Worrest - frontside feeble grind
Hosting events at trade shows really breaks up the monotony of going booth to booth and checking out the newest gear. And don’t get me wrong, because socializing amongst skateboarding’s finest is truly a pleasure, but after two days of it something really needs to happen.
And to add to the excitement, the public is permitted into the San Diego Convention Center to view the entire thing. They don’t let the non-attendees travel the aisles, but they are permitted into the skate area, which certainly adds to the environment and vibe.
We had 19 entrants…the list was invite-only and they were all top dogs. And as I mentioned, these Contests are unique because there are some guys skating that you wouldn’t normally see in any contest, like J.B. Gillet and Bobby Worrest, who ended up in the top three.
We broke them into heats as best as we could, but some guys bailed out and others showed up last minute, so it was tough to keep the heats balanced. Some had three, some four, and others five skaters in them, and they each got to skate eight, 10, and 12-minute jams respectively. The three ledges were skated in a row as a line and the contestants were judged on their best three-trick combo.
It was a tough Qualifier round because we were only taking the top three to the Finals to compete for the $15,000. However, we did have some extra cash to hand out to some deserving rippers, insuring that they didn’t go home empty-handed.
I want to give a shout-out to the following skaters because they didn’t make the cut, but were truly a pleasure to watch:
Jack Curtin – you don’t see this dude skating too many contests, but his switch fs nosegrinds were on point and he surprised everyone with the switch bs heelflip tailslide fakie. Stevie was there cheering him on
Benny Fairfax – a recent addition to the professional ranks, Benny skates fast and solid. We tried to get Stereo Co-Captain Jason Lee to rip, but he ignored the request
Eli Reed – Zoo York’s newest recruit surprised the hell out of us at last summer’s Manny Mania. He couldn’t land the switch pop shove-it to krooks, but we know he’s got it
Qualifying in the top three spots were Torey Pudwill, Bobby Worrest, and Joey Brezinski. I can’t say that I was surprised at all, but I will say it was a surprise that Bobby even skated the Contest. I see him around pretty regularly and he’s a class act, so it was cool to see him show the skills in public.
Torey, Bobby, and Joey skated in a 15-minute jam for the Finals. And then when time was up we gave them three more un-timed shots at landing their lines. Here’s how it ended up:
3rd – Joey Brezinski - $2000 – Joey purposely didn’t hang out at ASR prior to the Contest because he wanted to do well…and it paid off nicely. It’s difficult to read the judges’ notes, but I think that Cliché’s finest had a inward heelflip manny, fakie inward heelflip to bs tailslide fakie, and a nose manual nollie heel out in the run that he landed
2nd – Bobby Worrest - $3000 – the only thing that would have made Bobby’s line any better would have been Mark Gonzales being there to cheer him on, but we had to settle for the switch bs tailslide, kickflip fs tailslide, and nollie fs nosegrind without the presence of The Gonz
1st – Torey Pudwill - $10,000 – that’s quite a chunk of change for skating some ledges on a Saturday afternoon. His winning line was a buttery-long bs tailslide, kickflip bs noseblunt, and nollie krooks, so the judges didn’t even need to look at the other two lines that he landed
The placings were announced, checks were handed out, and The Sorcerer parted with his dearly coveted sword. Thanks to Tony E. and our friends at Podium and ASR for the space to make it happen. The lights went out, the Show closed down, and the SPoTlight crew went out for some drinks prior to departure. See you guys back here in September.
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.
It’s that time of year again when the skate industry gathers in sunny San Diego for what is known as ASR, where buyers from all around meet with company representatives to take care of business…
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.
