skate journal: Downtown Denver fun with Fuzz, Fullerton, Skelly and Gnarly Carleigh (Nov 20, 2012)
It was a late start for us, everyone but Skelly (who’s coming from foco) left Crisis a little before 9pm. We parked by the pedestrian bridge near the Denver ice rink (skatepark) and walked over it to get things started. Fuzz was winded from the stairs. Ha. We played around that area for awhile. There was some stairs, kind of manny pads, little banked ledge, etc. I don’t remember much from that part of it other than Carleigh did a feeble on the banked ledge. We got the boot and went a half block to the next spot with the angled granite ledges (up/down). We were there for a bit and security told us we could skate for a bit longer. I haven’t really street skated with Fuller much, but he killed it. Boardslides to fakie going up the ledge, switch ollie over a sandbag. Carleigh and I did some boardslides. She almost got noseslides too. The ledges are kinda weird because the edges are good, but they have some jaggedness to them. Fuzz was able to 50 through them all tough though. I could not. I could also not crook them. I was feeling a little odd on my board though. Like my legs were too tired or something. Oh well, we moved on to some jersey barriers to meet up with Skelly. We did a bunch of wallrides on them. We tried to do them as smooth as PJ does in his Cruisin’ NYC clip. We couldn’t, but we got a few wallrides regardless. Dave and I added some frontside ones to it too. His sick, mine not so sick. Skelly joined us and we moved on. Ended up at a ledge going into a downhill entrance to a parking lot where we each lasted about one attempt. Luckily I went for a little front board pop out and managed to land it, do a fun powerslide and ollie over a little speed bump going way faster then I normally do an ollie. Perhaps my favorite moment of the night. Some investigating at the RTD station and pissing in the alley later we found a tall loading dock to ollie onto and off. Fuzz got up it first try. I got it a few tries later and managed one with a decent (for me) ollie off the taller side. Fuzz did an ollie up to board stall shove out to the top. Sean went the back 180 route. Next we went around the corner into a parking garage and found some amazing painted curbs. Maybe the best curb I’ve ever grinded. There must be 20 layers of paint on it. You could slappy up the curb cut parts or ollie in. We all did a 50 that we ollied into then the curb cut went down and we rode back into grinds when the curb cut when back up. So fun. Skelly was all over the place doing little manuals, tailslides, etc. Dave almost did a switch slappy. He’s the oldest one of all of us and skates switch the most. Awesome. Fuzz almost did a front 180 off a curb cut to nose slide. Hard to describe, but he couldn’t quite get it. I had a bunch of slappys and was skating this one you could go over the top and go straight across. Got a back 5-0 across it! Then started going for back nosegrind and got surprisingly close, but we got the boot. Doh, I haven’t tried back nosegrinds in a long time! Pretty sure we ended up at Tabor center after that where we posted up for a really long time. Skelly, Fuzz and Dave skated the little bank you have to ollie into. I was trying ollie down the 3 to ollie up the 3 which I would eventually get with my signature of the night – hand down. Dave did a super sick frontside wallride/hold onto the rail around the six stair. It was so steezy. Carleigh went buck and ollied the gap which amazed me because it was really dark. I tried downhill flatground for awhile and struggled big time. Managed halfcab flip then treflip signature of the night. Then a mostly old school session ensued on the bottom of the stairs. Stall tricks for days. Impossible to remember all of them. It was really fun though. I felt like I was in junior high again. Fullerton showed us some super sick boneless wall bonk variations. I kind of learned a switch 360 version that he did with so much style that the rest of us were left with our jaws on the ground. Then we headed back to the car, but got interrupted trying cali grinds down the bike groove part of the stairs. It was so fun. The first few were really scary, but we all grinded down it. The marks left on the trucks are so awesome. Dave did a super gnarly dropin on a higher set up stairs to grind down the main set. Fullerton for MVP! Super fun night as they almost always are in Denver. Oh yeah, so we skated way past midnight. I was beat!