EQUITABLE
"Watch Guerrero, this is his first pro con-
test, I think home boy's going to win," Cor-
nhead told me, "The trend of the day is get-
ting your shirt signed by the pros. He
pointed towards Tower Books and a flock of
kids in a frantic circle, I thought maybe
someone was passing out free food.
That's Hosol doing autographs. They
think he's God."
Hosol (top) petting fr
some practice a, J
Grosso ing du
above the party boom
From page 27
KT grabbed the microphone and before
long order had been partially restored, and
the contest was underway again.
Yooked as if the competition was going to be
between Bryce Kanights and Natas
Kaupas who both blazed with innovative
and aggressive styles. Natas showed his
reign in the ole kingdom with numerous
hot moves including shove-it ollies and a
four foot leap to SO 50, exploding caps at-
tached to his trucks. Bryce combined a bit
of greasy freestyle (Hail Marys Russian
boneless), with the most inventive car man-
euvers and a little smooth action with a
massive eight wheeler. Other eye-catchers
in this division were as follows: Jeff Ffej
Hedges, aggressive car jumps and a mid-
session switch with car occupant Ratsass;
Mike Archimedes, inverts, wall walks off
car: Cory O'brien pulled some rad ollie to
curb maneuvers; Jeff Grosso left his mark
on the car with inverts from roof to hood;
Jesse Martinez rolled eyes with his own
Martinez-plant, an inverted handplant into
a reverse somersault assault, which virtu-
ally destroyed the wave ramp. Don "Fish"
Fisher was in true form, jumping everything
that stood still with non-stop finesse;
Spidey used the grease to his advantage
and powered some fine slides; John
Fabiker sailed some nice air, and Spock
had it out with the grease, slipping in the
same spot a couple of times while trying to
nail the crowd with his water pistol.
The crowd waited impatiently for the pros
to show their styles and the sun kept blaz-
ing. Many skaters, in an attempt to escape
the rays, headed into one of the few stores
in the mall, Some shops were more recep-
tive than others; Tower Books had a great
display of discount back issues and a pub-
lic toilet, Double Rainbow kept us cool for
awhile with ice cream and cold drinks and a
nearby 7-11 type snack store sold out of
everything by three o'clock and had to shut
down. The bowling alley, on the other hand,
adopted a personal vendetta against all hu-
mans with skater-type looks and wouldn't
even let us in to get a drink of water. It
looked to me like the cooperative stores
had their best days ever, all the bowling
alley got was bad vibes from a few hundred
skaters and fuel for their grumbling ulcers.
By the time the pros skated the grease
was practically flowing through the parking
lot, making control very difficult. Whoever
pulled off the gnarly tricks under these con-
ditions would be labeled not by anyone.
Everyone skated well on the surface of
fered and without fail every skater, includ-
ing the amateurs, invented 'an original.
move of his own. Each skater was given
two runs of one minute each. Gator showed
promise, spinning multiple 360s on the roof
of the car and continued to rage until he
broke his board. Billy Ruff didn't make the
cut (who knows why?), but he raged with
360 backside airs over the wave and scat
tered airs in a fast paced run John Grigley
snapped varial hazards off the curbs and
performed one-footed tail wheelies with
style, Eddie Reatigui easily got the highest
air from the roof of the car over the five oc-
cupants lying on the hood and showed nice
aerial control. Lance Mountain was steady
but predictable as each run ran identical to
the last, non-predictable highlights were a
nice rolling handstand directly into the
crowd and finally riding down the
windshield without hanging up on the wip-
ers. Hosoi made the crowd say YAY with an
ollie over three boards and high backside
airs off of the wave, missing the crowd by
inches. A near crotch-shot with his board
slowed him down for a second but he kept
the flow going Caballero chased the vert
where he could find it, including an invert
fakie recovered with a 180 slide on the
camel, it even sounds good. Mark Gon-
zales was definitely one of the hottest ac-
cording to everyone but the judges, who
couldn't really make up their minds on who
would actually be in the finals. After about
twenty minutes of board smashing on the
car by every frantic skater who could get to
it and twenty minutes of warm-up by the
pros, who hoped they had made the finals,
a list was presented by the judges. It read
like this: Ruff, GSD, Lucero, Grigley, Blen-
der. Reatigui. Roskopp and Guerrero.
Tempers flared immediately and many
skaters and sponsors stormed the judging
stand. No Christ, no Caballero, no Gon-
zales-all who had excellent qualifying
runs. On the other side, John Lucero
exhorting, "I beat Stevie, I beat Stevie. Ex-
pected revisions soon followed, there had
been omissions and errors in the final to-
tals, said the judges. New list as follows:
Vetoed are Lucero, GSD, Billy Ruff and Neil
Blender New finalists are Caballero..
Christ, Joe Lopes and Lance Mountain.
Still no Gonzales,
Clockwise from top: Contorting his bone-thing, Mark Gonzales
Floating above the Sacto crowd, Rob Roskopp, Neil Blender,
sliding upstream Spidey, descending to a tap-in
After booing and general bad vibing by
the crowd the judges changed their minds
again and called him back. By this time
Mark had logically split, thinking the contest
was prematurely over for him. It took him
awhile to get back and he looked under-
standably upset when he got there. Mark
was hot, pulling off consistent, inventive
moves including contorted frontside bone-
less ones off of the hump and one of the
raddest maneuvers of the contest, a ollie to
rock and roll side up and over the wave.
His noticable anger worked in his favor at
first but it seems he blew a few moves be-
cause of it. Rob Roskopp spun one-footed
tail taps and an amazing length of the car
roll under/run over back onto his board. His
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