once again, i’m a fan

Old Bad Religion is still awesome.

Chris Cole is Thrasher’s SOTY again and I must say that bums me out.  Not that it really matters, but it just seems ridiculous.  Sure, Cole may have won the most contests this year, but really?  I don’t see him influencing skaters and his style is hideous.  He looked so bad at BATB2 that I started routing for PRod.  And that’s saying a lot!  My pick would have been Busenitz.  He may have not “done anything for the mag”, but he has started a whole new wave of all terrain fast as hell complete destruction warriors.  To me Busenitz fits the whole Thrasher “Skate and Destroy” motto way better than Mr Cole’s robotic and boring style.  Once again, I don’t really care that much, but I’ve seen Chris Cole skate in person and it was absolutely nothing special.  I have also seen Busenitz skate in person and it hyped me up to skate for weeks.  So to see Chris Cole get such a distinguished award twice while the best skater ever goes unnoticed, it bums me out a little.

Jake, Travis and I got things started for awhile just the three of us.  It started of pretty awesome too.  Jake was killing as usual.  Travis was new to Rampy, but his warmup period wasn’t long.  He was doing cool wall bonk grab things quickly.  I warmed up quicker than usual and had some decent runs for me.  Although I couldn’t do the Travis trick (front 50 yank in).After awhile Lazer and Brian showed up too.  It took less than 30 seconds for Brian to stink the place up and start off a wave of farts.  Wonderful.  Brian brought his new trick to Rampy.  F/s halfcab rock to front rock.  So sick.  He also did a million blunts, bonks, tricks, slams and oh yeah, he farted a lot.  Lazer killed it as usual.  Prolly did all the same tricks as last time and then some.  Dude blows me away everytime.  Jake learned front hurricanes kind of and did another nosepick stale grab out.  I went through a long dry period where I didn’t try to really land anything which sucked.  Towards the end I got a couple fakie pivot’s to fakie and a new trick – front disaster 180 out.  Cool.  Fun session.  Good crew.  Screw the cold.

On a super cold night (about -9f) I met Nate with my box in the Steelyards parking garage. I thought that garage used to be warmer, but it was freezing. I guess there was water puddles instead of ice, but it couldn’t have been much more than 35f in there. Warming up was really rough and it didn’t help wearing a big coat and gloves. Eventually Nate and I both shed our jackets and ended up having a blast.Nate was did some crazy ledge tricks.  Back 180 nosegrind, back smith, nosegrinds like their nothing, 5-0s of course, switch front board and about a million front smiths.  I’m sure he did more, but it’s been a couple days and I forget.I ended up prolly getting more tricks on Ledgey then ever.  50s, 5-0s, noseslides, nollie front tail (“nollie” is a bit of a stretch here – more like slappy, but whatevs yo), crappy front tail, halfcab noseslide, back crooks, back crooks fakie and fakie front nosegrind.  The funnest was doing some of these in runs though.  Got a first try run of front 180 a puddle, halfcab noseslide Ledgey, varial flip.  Another run was kickflip the puddle, crooks, bad backside flip.  Almost got another one with pop shove the puddle, back 5-o, but missed a treflip.  Tried to do fakie ollie a puddle, fakie nosegrind, fakie treflip.  Not sure I ever got the fakie NG in a run, but I know I didn’t get the fakie tre.We were both pretty tired, but before leaving we put the ledge down the curb.  Nate back 50’d it like it was nothing.  I got back board and back nose, but chickened out on the back crooks.  It was fun having to get to it because you had to ollie a puddle, ollie up the curb and get ready quick.  Nate got all Leo on it too and front 50, 5-0 and smithed up it.  Sick.  I bailed the front 50 up.  I was bummed at the time, but in retrospect I really shouldn’t be too bummed at not being able to grind up a ledge that tired.  We switched sides and both boardslid up it.  I even did one to manual.  Then I slammed hard trying it again.  Nate back 50’d up it like he was riding off a curb.  Sick.  At the very end we put the ledge out past the curb and ollied onto it.  Took me a few tries to get front 50 and that was the night. Fun.  Tiring.  Cold.

Here is 10 minutes of the Meta video Turd Merchants of Death. That’s Little Jack’s 5-0 ender at the start of the clip. Corpo is the cop in the first zombie scene and you get to see the start of Jeff’s part too. Sick video eh? Now go buy it and support local skateboarding. Here’s the coverOh, and to top it off, the Nullmo is in the bonus section. Thanks Sam!

Total ripper.  He was filming at 3rd & Army when Jason, Nick and I were there and was the nicest dude ever.  Total ripper, good style and nice dude = one of my favs.

Been sick and snowboarding so it’s been awhile.  Went to SOL after work in hopes of skating with Brian, Nate, John, Bernie and others.  Nate left the lights on so he couldn’t get out of Boulder.  Brian expanded on his excuse book.  Bernie worked late.  John was hurt.  Awesome.  I basically just hung out with John and skated flatground which ended up being pretty awesome in itself.  Got a treflip in a couple tries and rattled off most of my tricks.  I did skate the ramp a little bit, but man it’s hard.  When John was busy with customer’s I would take a run on the ramp then skate flat until I landed something.  My runs on the ramp were bad.  Basically axle stall, rock fakie, front slash, rock fakie, back 50 hang up because the coping is sticky.  I worked on Rick flips for awhile.  Got remotely close on a couple.  Did a couple fakie no comply finger flips (new trick!) and ended the session with 5 treflips in 6 tries.  Cool!

so awesome

Winter Wednesday Night Rampy Session! Lazer and Carleigh arrived first and we did a few runs before Jake showed up. I offered Carleigh a new board if she could land a kickflip rock fakie on her first run. She didn’t. Lazer started off quick as usual and wanted to introduce Sweepers to Rampy. It took at least a whole 5 minutes before he landed a couple. Must be nice to be able to just rattle off tricks like that. I thought Carleigh and I were going to have a blog battle over all the tricks that Lazer did, but apparently she just opted out with this. Ha. Anyways, here’s my attempt at listing Lazer’s tricks minus the setup tricks which he never does anyway. Fully decked front rock (wheels past the deck), frontside sweeper, blunt to fakie, blunt indie yank in, front pivot indie yank in, front pivot indie yank in to fakie, frontside ollie, front tail, front lip, back lip, back tail, front smith, back smith, front 50 fakie, beanplant fakie, front boneless, front feeble, fakie pop rock, full cab rock, feeble 270, boardslide 270, halfcab rock rewind, and probably 50 more tricks I can’t remember right now. Lazer rips. Carleigh and I are the best at getting into a trick and bailing. At least she normally falls instead of just walking out like me. Anyways, she tried a ton of front disasters and got really close, but no cigar. She made up for it with an out of the blue textbook kickflip rock fakie. Jake was ripping as usual. He hypes the session because he tries a lot of hard stuff and lands it. Tricks you wouldn’t think Jake could put down so quick. He pretty much did all the tricks I’ve seen him do on Rampy and added 5-0’s to fakie. I started off skating horribly, but had a good session. I got a front crail slash thing. Not sure I went to tail, but it’s a start. Toward the end of the session Jake and I raced to new tricks. He was doing nosepick stalefish yank in and i was trying front 50 yank in. Wow, my trick sounds so lame compared to Jake’s. We both got our tricks though and celebrated by having a couple drink while watching Turd Merchants Of Death at Lazer’s. Awesome.