Breck park with @fullertrron

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Aug 12, 2016 at 2:25pm PDT

@boredzinejp 's challenge was frontside flip revert so I took full advantage of the term revert. I told you I'd lower the bar Josh! @fullertrron and I learned new ones for the next challenge yesterday. Front smith to front rock. My first transition challenge! You got it! (It helps if you do it on a huge vert wall like us) #theglenandjosholdfartlongdistanceinstagramtricksuperchallenge #ithelpsifyouwearadinosaurjrshirt #thestreetstuffatbreckparkblows

A video posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Aug 13, 2016 at 6:39am PDT

After running some boards to The Grind in Silverthorne, Dave and I went to Breck to check out the newish park. It was a beautiful day up there, sunny and warm, but not hot like it is down on the front range. The park was not crowded and in fact another older crew was up from our area too. It was cool seeing them. Dave and I weren’t all that impressed with the street area. Ok, we were pretty much totally bummed on it. They might as well call Team Pain street sections prefab parks now. It had your standard Team Pain bump to this, bump to that, no regular ledges, no idea how to build a street section. We got warmed up on the tiny qp in the back of the park as I had an idea to try and learn front smith stall to front rock. It took us about 30 tries and we got them! We were hyped! Then we tried to skate the park. I sucked miserably. I was only able to front 50 the pier 7 ledge slowly and I got a rock kickflip to fakie on the bank under the giant ledge that maybe 1 person a year skates. Dave got a sick line of frontside boardslide the top pool coping qp, nollie into the bank, axle stall, back tail on this little bank over a weird little pool coping section. Sick! He also did a bunch of other tricks on the qp like backside boneless, back tail, many more. My feet were starting to kill me. I guess without wearing my orthotics my foot sits flatter in the shoe and my toes were smashed into the front of the shoe. It hurt. I tried to at least carve around some stuff, but even that hurt too much after awhile. Dave and I agreed there is no need to go back to that park again. Come on Team Pain, step up your street game already.

(setup: 8.5 null message deck, venture 5.8s, thunder bushings, 52mm reed wheels, 2 washers inside each axle, nb# quincy 254 blue/gum no orthotics)

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The line with the front tail then the ollie over the hydrant to nose manual is on of my favorite lines in Nothing. Connor rips.

Went up to my Mom’s house in Buena Vista because my brother was in town. We got up super early, ate breakfast, then went out, got some caffeine and dropped my mom off at a quilting class. Steve knew I would want to skate the park with him a little so he didn’t even try to skip it. We had fun. I had brought an extra board for him to skate and he made due. He carved around the park quite pretty good for only skating a couple times a year and trying to act older than me. Other then a carving around his only trick was a little 50 on a weird corner thing (yes that really is the best description of it). Click here for the quicktime of it!

I forgot to mention how cold it was. 18 degrees. With the sun it didn’t feel that cold, but when the wind would pick up, brrr. I was still really sore from the long red curbs session with Dave, but I knew I wouldn’t have much time to skate so I tried to get it all in. I bet the kids in Buena Vista were hyped on this rainbow rail until they realized the would have to drop in on a kinked vert wall to get to it. It was really fun to grind over though. And considering I gave up grinds on flat bars a long time ago it made it even more fun. Maybe I should try again. I found some little lines in the park cruising around. Here’s a movie I didn’t know my brother was taking (otherwise I would have done a frontside invert). For all the stuff that’s packed into that park the small tranny section really is hard to keep speed. My favorite line was a little front scratcher on the noping wall behind Steve above, roll into the roll in, pump over the roll in hip, slappy the rainbow rail, then front rock the little qp above it.

This one took me a bit. Front 50 that I would turn to front tail then drop in. It’s the only ledge in park (there is a backside one too). It has square coping and it’s really weird to go into tranny off square coping. The funniest thing is this wasn’t the only tranny with square coping. Whack. Some of it is even placed level so you grind on a corner of it (like a diamond). Anyways, this was pretty frustrating, but the only real trick I did.

Last thing I really tried was a little scratch grind on this wall. I think it goes to vert. I carved tile a bunch, and got the wheels halfway onto the pool coping, but couldn’t quite get a grind. Doh. My brother took the photo with my delay ridden phone and that’s the closest he got me to the top. I may have gone past my welcome as Steve was wanting to go pretty bad so I finally left.

I’ve finally skated the Buena Vista Skatepark. Yippee. My review of it is a 3/10. The reality is it sucks pretty bad considering todays skatepark standards in Colorado. Square coping on tranny? Whack. Kinks all over the place. I can’t even imagine what the crash up derby factor is as we were the only ones there. No flow. The funny thing was two high school kids were skating the old park. In most ways the old one is better for beginner skaters so I could see them avoiding the new park. That and there is basically no street stuff at this park. And the few “street” oriented obstacle have tranny in it anyway. For a town that has no street stuff to skate I imagine the kids are pretty bummed. Well, the kids that want to skate anyway, I bet kids with BMX bikes are hyped.

Of course now that I have to take some time off for my shoulder injury it’s super nice out. I haven’t set up a new board in a long time and needed something to do. If you know anything about me, you know that I obsess over really dumb stuff. Well lately I’ve been watching a lot of Westgate footage and read something where he said low trucks have better pop. When I had cleaned my garage last weekend I found an old pair of Venture Lows (8″) and I felt like giving them a try. They are probably at least 8 years old. Pretty funny. I put the Venom bushing in there for the heck of it. I also had some really old 50mm Null wheels that wouldn’t sell so I threw those on there too. I am now almost a 40 year old with Venture Lows and 50mm wheels. Aka I’m a dork. I went on a hike with Liz and got back kinda early in the afternoon and just couldn’t avoid skating anymore. I figured the safest thing to do was some slow flippers in front of the house so that’s what I did. I’m not sure if the lower trucks really help or not, but the new board felt awesome. I did some of the best feeling kickflips I’ve done in awhile. They board sure flipped around quick. I suppose the lighter wheels help too. I did a few more flippers too. Everything felt good with the exception of treflip which seemed a little harder since the trucks don’t turn the same. I got one kind of though and put my arm down and felt a tingle in the shoulder that reminded me I should probably stop while I’m ahead. I’m hyped my shoulder didn’t hurt at all while skating, but still gonna rest it so I don’t hurt it again next time I fall. Hyped on my new setup!

Our warmest day in a long time at 55! My shoulder seemed good enough to skate so I met Bernie at the new Street League park so we could start working out our contest tricks. It was way colder then either of us had anticipated. What happened to that 50 degree weather? I guess at 8pm it’s gone in January. It felt really cold. The park was way more crowded then I imagined it would be. Doh. The No Love dudes were there though which is always awesome. Andrew was ripping! Him and I easily had the most beat up boards at the park. So funny. Anyways, the warm up period sucked for me. All the pressure of the scoring system is rough. I felt like I couldn’t bail a trick so I would just not try tricks and instead just push around or get in some ones way. Bernie added to his point total in the line format pretty quick. Front smith 180 out on the bank to bench (above), front 50 off the ledge going down the 3, boardslide the flat bar, grind the bank to bank, etc. Andrew had some mean feebles and lipslides out across the whole flat bar, but those didn’t score as well as the feeble treflip out that TPuds had. The only tricks I got before being kicked out of the quarterfinals with the lowest point total in Street League history was a back 50 on the bank to bank, noseslide the bump to bench and ollie the rockish gap off the tiny kicker (with both feet coming way off the board). I tried a front 50 on one of the many ledges on the edge of the park, came up short and put all my weight on my right arm and threw out my shoulder again. Ugh. Rather then being smart and stop skating I just continued to fully embarrass myself. Doing dork tricks on the big kickers in the center of the park was fun. There are a million things I’d like to do at that park, but I’m gonna take some time off of skating to let my shoulder heal up. I’m pretty sure I tore the rotator cuff. Ugh. I kept thinking I should leave, but the park became less and less crowded until the point where it was just Bernie and I. Amazing. We did some Cali grinds off this one weird stair. Then I did it in a really fun line. Kickflip from one bank to another, cali grind, front rock the qp. Then Bernie and I both did back 50s in the middle qp/bank thing where you grind off the qp into the bank. NBDs for us. The judges went nuts. I did a couple cali grinds up and across some of the kicker things (photo above). I don’t think I even really landed it, but oh well, it’s a dork trick anyway. All in all I think I would have a blast skating that park a lot. Hopefully my shoulder heals up soon.

I’ll start by saying Mudhoney is one of my all time favorite bands. It’s been several years since I’ve seen them play and my excitement level was very high. Especially since I’ve never heard anything off of The Lucky Ones live and it’s become my favorite album of theirs.

The first band was Purple Fluid. They were young and the twin brothers in the band are the son of Rick Kulwicki, the member of the Fluid that died a few years ago. The show was a benefit for the them. With the exception of the glam kid that didn’t seem to fit into the band at all I thought they were great. Later on Mark Arm would thank them for opening and said how proud their dad would have been. Awesome.

This show had the most gray hair I’ve ever seen at one show. At one point the singer for The Fluid announced that he wrote a song for his daughter when she was born. Then said that she was at the show and she was now 25. I guess that explains the gray hair everywhere! The Fluid played a long set. I wasn’t that impressed. Zach was though and he’s in a band so we’ll say that The Fluid was great. Ha.

Mudhoney came out and completely ruled it. The start of the set was mostly early stuff. Superfuzz Bigmuff and the s/t album with some other classics mixed in. I was kinda worried they wouldn’t play anything off The Lucky Ones. Luckily near the end of the set Mark Arm put away the pedals and set down the guitar and they went into several off of the Lucky Ones. Stoked! They have such a great stage presence. At one point a water bottle was thrown onstage and Mark Arm held it down in field goal position for bassist Guy Maddison to kick it back into the crowd. Mudhoney completely killed it. It’s gonna be hard to top this show in 2012.

After a short, but tiring session on campus Carleigh and I went to Community Cycles to see Black Dots open for a couple Chicago bands. It was pretty awesome that it was so low key at a bike shop and the Chicago bands had promise so we stuck around. Black Dots were great as usual, well, maybe even better. They seemed more rockin’ and lively on stage. We even got to hear a new song that killed it.

The second band was BUST! They had the fastest drummer I have ever seen. They played fast and energetic music and looked like they were having a blast. I couldn’t get enough of watching the drummer though, he seriously killed the drums.

And the drummer is clearly a huge fan of Max. Awesome!

The last band was called The Please & Thank Yous. They were also better than expected. Not as fast as Bust, but still rocking and awesome. They had their new album on cassette only. None of us have tape players. Ha. Thank you Black Dots for playing with all these awesome bands and exposing me to new stuff.

Liz and I are fully on the bike program these days so of course we biked to the Bright Eyes show. It’s the first show we’ve ever biked to.

Which comes in pretty handy when they are putting Pabst in glass and Fat Tire in plastic. Not that we had very many of those though. We did learn a new trick which is to go into the external bar through the door near the restrooms and save a few bucks on a beer. Hyped!

The first band was Omaha’s Conduits. They proved that they were from Omaha by being almost amazing, but trying to hard to hold back rocking out and therefore being pretty boring. This is such a typical characteristic of smaller bands from Omaha. Haven’t you learned anything from the likes of Bright Eyes, Cursive and The Faint? It’s just fine to rock out sometimes! Anyways, they were decent for sure, but there is so much more potential.

Next up was Bright Eyes and the theater had gotten pretty crowded. They came out sounding good and played a lot off I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and Digital Ash. They were great. For awhile. The crowd wasn’t helping. People yelling cat calls and “I Love You Conor” during quiet songs suck. Seriously, you jerks took the show down several levels.

Although I have to admit the mixed signals from the man in charge didn’t help. Conor was clearly wasted by the end of the set, talking about how he wants to be a party band, wearing a funny hat he picked up that day and went on a 10+ minute drunken rap about the members of the band. Yes, I said “rap”. I think it’s great how much Conor values the members of this band, but this was overkill. No one else on stage was partying. Liz and I have seen Bright Eyes so many times and most of those shows he’s so wasted it kind of bums us out.

So I don’t know. I love the music of Bright Eyes. They played a great set. The sound was great. I think Conor Oberst is probably normally a great guy. But I left that show very confused about what I saw and heard. I hope he gets it figured out soon.

After missing Bright Eyes due to uncontrollable circumstances a week before we decided to spend the $$ and see one of our favorites, Titus Andronicus. After a few poses in the alley this was the best I could come up with. Then we went to dinner.

Liz and I were cheapskates for dinner and shared a meal. We did got all out and get Pabst though.

The first “performer” was Julianna Barwick. She played the worst shit I have ever heard in my life. Literally, the worst “music” humanly possible. It was just her voice, dubbed over and over without words. Just ambient nothing horribleness. Whoever setup the show to have her open for a punk rock band is a moron.

So we wandered around and got a photo op with Mr Titus Andronicus himself, Patrick Stickles! He’s a really nice dude and a nerd! So we love him! We told him he better play loud after that Julianna crap. He said he’d try. Ha.

Titus Andronicus came on and did not disappoint. They played only songs form their latest album The Monitor. It was great.

The crowd up front was a weird one. Punk rock looking dudes with their ears plugged. Pretentious 20 year old hipsters that were annoyed with Titus fans yelling some of the words. It was easily the weirdest billing I’ve witnessed. Titus ruled it though.

The headliner was Okervil River. They were mediocre hipster rock. We left across the street for a drink and then fanned out with the Titus dudes some more. Fun night.

After some pizza at the Backcountry Pizza place most of Trick Factory went to Astroland to see Black Dots.  None of us had been there before.  Turns out that place rules.  Just a warehouse, BYOB, DIY steez.  Love it. I was feeling kinda sick so I went with some Ginger Ale with a bit of whiskey in it. Yum.

The first act was Lizzie Huffman. She was great. Like really great. Super mellow acoustic music with some revealing lyrics about relationships or drinking or both. Good stuff. I apparently didn’t take a great cell phone shot of the next act. It was a solo guy called Disorder maybe? He had some good crowd support.

At first glance it looked like the Brandow’s were grabbing pills from a bag. Turned out to be ear plugs.

Next up was a punk band from Pittsburgh called “Run, Forever”. They were super good. During the first song us old guys (and Carleigh) nodded to each other saying we liked it. There was a mosh pit going and us old guys were not in it. After the first song Brian announced “Votes are in, old guys like it!” I added, “But we’ll be in the back”. Maybe somebody laughed. These guys killed it though. Straight forward old school rock ‘n roll. They had t-shirts (no XL), patches, records and an amazing black/yellow minibus. Best of luck to that band.

Last up was Black Dots. John kept thanking everyone for staying out so late like it was a week night or something. It made me laugh. It’s saturday night! Whew! I have been listening to their cd a lot lately so this is their first show where I new most of the words. That added to the enjoyment of an already great show. And the Guided By Voices cover is always great. But the Neil Young song to close it down was the best I’ve heard them play it. So insane. When is that “In a Jar” cover coming guys? Ha. Great show.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say that Astroland is my favorite venue in Colorado now. Host more shows please!