A
Far Left to Right: Floating out of an
early release, Adam Luxford covers a
lot of ramp. Danny Way grabs some
tall over the Knoxfield bowls. Fairfield
flight by ace pilot Gary Valentine in
full method-to-fakie. Manly style
wheelie for the girls. Below: Christian
airs out over Sergie's waiting stick.
to Melbourne were Gary Valentine,
Adam Luxford, John Finlay, Matt
Hoffman, Courtney Clark, and Mit-
chell Newall. Good skaters who
were aced-out of the right to riot
included Dominic Kekitch, the
small wonder from Melbourne,
Michael Mulhall, power-mad man from Sydney, Chris Paine, rock
n' roller from Melbourne and some other talented young rippers..
After the formality of the contest was over, the Fairfield facility
played host to a pro demo by Bod Boyle, Steve Schneer, Scott Stan-
ton, Al Losi, Ken Park, Craig johnson, Eddie Reategui, Lee Ralph,
Dave Duncan and more. During the festivities, the adjacent mini-
ramp monster (designed by Spittle and John Finlay), was christened
by the mayor of Fairfield and his court. Bod Boyle furthered his grow
ing rep by ripping notorious ollie-to-nose grinds and axle pivots-to-
backside disaster hang-up death maneuvers. Gary Valentine polluted
the air space over the ramp with methods, half Les', half Cabs, and
indy grabs, all to fakie. Oh, and the McTwist is now part of GV's reper
toire. Adam Luxford's ultra-smooth skating style saw him floating
backside ollies across the girth of the whole ramp wall. The 500-plus
crowd of spectators was cheering wildly when they weren't laughing
hysterically at Boris and Mike D's commentary.
During the rest of the week in Sydney the order of each day was
to try and get out of bed before noon, eat breakfast for two hours
and then take the 'foil or a van, whichever came first, to Manly Beach
for surf, sun and skate. Down the road past Narabeen lies the Mona
Vale ramp where daily sessions occured between rain flurries. Sun-
day's gathering was particularly plentiful. The session came on slowly
at first but built as the boys ripped until it was hard to keep up. The
friends, locals and onlookers who were fortunate to be rampside
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for the two days while rippers such as Jeff Phillips, Johnson, Schneer,
Luxford, Valentine, Allen Midgette, Robison, Reese Simpson, Bryan
Pennington, Dominic, Mikey Mulhall, Losi, Reategui, Rob Mertz,
Chris Paine, Scott Stanton and lastly but largely, Lee Ralph lit fire
to the steel. At one point Schneer came off a testy frontside invert
and landed slightly sketchfoot and headed for the edge of the ramp.
After launching of the side out over the grass, Steve reached up
and grabbed the rollout fencing, swung out over the lawn below and
tried to hurl himself back into the safety of the transition. He ended.
up flat on his back next to the flat bottom as we all stood there flap-
jawed at the fact that Schneer was still alive. That was the way the
day progressed, just weird. Phillips spied the empty rollout deck and
launched out to a manual covering the entire deck and just did it,
once, that was it. Adam Luxford launched into an alley opp backside
air and during his re-entry a board landed directly in his path through
the transition. Lux calmly landed the move and pumped a slalom-
like turn around the fallen deck of death.
And so the days wore on, marked by incidents that only seem
to happen when there are three or more skater types gathered.
Classic Aussie character Simon Reynolds consummated his lust
for one female in the bathroom of a nightclub. Cochrane got hit up-
side the head by a streetwalkers unflapped breast. There were un-
confirmed reports of the atmosphere at another nightspot being shat-
tered by a full can of Foster's hurled through the front window.
ON TO MELBOURNE
The road to the Ramp Riot in Melbourne was about 900 Kilometers in a
southerly direction. Because of a pilots' strike it was virtually impossible to
book flights between cities. The alternative was a hitched ride with Sydney-
based photographer Scott Needham in his Volkswagen camper bus. We slid
through Canberra, the capital of Oz, hoping to session several righteous spots,
but were thwarted by rain. Pressing onwards we encountered a car full of
trouble in the form of Sin, Spittle and David Mock whom we engaged in a
100 kilo-per-hour food fight ala Road Warrior which had the occupants of
both vehicles hanging out windows and doors, mercilessly pelting each other's
vehicles. What started with Keith Cochrane firing the first shots, apples and
bananas, ended with Spittle lobbing several quarts of ice cream and egg mix-
ture to a direct hit and full coverage of the "hippy" bus' windscreen.
Arrival in Melbourne meant rekindling friendships from previous tours and
the mass takeover of skatespots and nightspots by our ever expanding en-
tourage. Word of a cement bowl and snakerun configuration in a nearby suburb
had everyone in a frenzy. Especially when we showed up at Knox, as it was
called, and found a double bowl with spine rimmed with inlaid steel coping
and a snakerun. The next two days were spent carving and charging around
this quite kinked spot that blows away most anything in the states, unless
you're paying to skate. By this time Christian and Sergie had beamed in with
Tony Magnusson and Danny Way. Ben Schroeder, Micke Alba and John
Shultes had been in Melbourne for days warming up to the Pahran ramp in
town. Chris Miller arrived with wife Jennifer and brand new son Zachary in tow.
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