NSA #1
SANTA
BARBARA
SKATE-
ZONE
FEB. 8-9.
1992
Suuque Show
Fast and furious Wade Speyer (above left)
goes over the tomb of Tut with a floating
heelflip. Chris Senn (sequence) coming at
you with a humongous olle over the plat
form to backside lipslide. It takes big balls
and confidence to stick this puppy. Tom
Knox (below) is nothing but a blur when
launching from quarter-pipe to pool wall.
By Vaj Potenza
Everyone knows the deal by now
Begin by convincing the ogre at the door that
you're somebody worthy of not paying the five
ducats it costs to get in. Then make your way
through the dense crowd of skaters, sponsors
and groupies. Find a decent vantage point from
which the viciousness can be viewed. In this
case, the opportunity presented self in the
form of a semi-wide fence post with only a cou
ple of rusty nails sticking out at jagged angles
from the top. After stepping on a couple heads,
you manage to get a good enough view to watch
the pros from the finals go into the top ten
Tenth went to Danny Way with his righteous
display of soutulatitude that makes us all proud
to be skaters. After two successive, failed at
tempts at a 540' on the Tajna Wall (big vert
well), Danny busted out with a board fing across
the park to revert, followed by further frustration
at a board that just wouldn't snap no matter how
hard he stomped on it. He capped off his run with
a tal-smach to backside tantrum near the roll-in.
It's cool Danny, we all sew ya pull it in practice.
Eric Koston glided into ninth place with speed,
intense technicality, and plain of big ole late.
shove-its. A bit more consistency could have got
ten Eric a slightly higher placing
A big indy grab on the Tajma Wall gave Frank
Hiram enough speed to jam over the pyramid with
a fat impossible and on to the roll in for 360"
shove it. This added up to a line back to the pyr
mid where Frenk made the masses feel his wrath
with a big-spin. Up, down, and around, the lite
guy floated the ample gap from a small quarter
pipe to the pool wall (small vert wall with mass
tail grabification. All this and style is what gave
Frank Hirala a damn good eighth place
Wily Santos goes by fun-boxes really fast, but
not before smacking them with big nose-blunt
sides. He tends to go over banks and pyramids
with kickflip varials, and off roll-ins with impossi
ble-tail grabs A big-spin, a beckwards heel flip.
and a couple backside 360' olles are what put
the sauce on Willy's spaghetti for seventh.
Sixth place went to Wade Speyer who hit the
Tajma Well with such pure bellsiness that I'm
sure
he caused a
couple of heads to
explode in the crowd. Take your
pick from a frontside pivot or a indy nose-
bone, just for starters. He followed this by a heel-
flip over the pyramid then a 360° alle, on the
Tajma Wall and down again for a backwards 180"
nolle on the pyramid, and over to the pool wall for
a frontside disaster that defied sickness. All this
could have easily put Wade imo first, except for
the fact that he too bailed two McTwists on his
final run à la Danny Way Wade was a bit more
good-natured about the whole thing and the only
time he threw his board, it landed on urethane
and he rode off. However, no matter where you
place him, Wade is re-defining punk skate ag-
gression for a whole generation of skaters.
Spasking of psycho, Alan Petersen is, and his
1th place run was. A tweaked mute grab to take
on the Tama Wall, a half Cabover the pyramid, a
torbie grind over the tun-box. It all ended with a
mind-bending, board bashing olie over the tun
boxiquarter pipe to a frontsiderade
Tom Knox gave the impression of someone
bom and bred in the cold, hard, concrete, waste
land we call modern society. Manipulating his
sick imo alley-oop indys on the Tama Wall set
him up for a finger flip over the wood facsimile of
King Tut's tomb. He flowed off the roll-in with a
backside one-foot lie in the bowled comet, and
a few more oilies high enough to clear a large
mammal brought Tom back up the Tajma and on
track to the pyramid for another one foot in every
one's lace. The infamous channel olie from quar
ter pipe to pool-wall was in-affect nart bringing
this speady, young hoodlum to a floating, grinding
fourth place
After years of ripping and innovation, what
more can you say about Steve Caballero? A
whole lot actually. For starters: alley-oop indy-
nese bones, big spins over the pyramid, nose
slice to nose-blart-in on a parking block quar
pipe attached to the fan box; backside 350' alles,
blunt-slide
across the top of the pyr
mid and down one side to revert
Speed, argeness, imagination and third place
was all Cab's
Another legend, Tony Hawk was riding for his
new company Birdhouse Productions. The Hawk
never seems to lose his wings, or his board for
that matter. A roll-in to fast 100 olie over pyra-
mid, Caballerial on the Tajma, and a foeble to
Smith on one of the quarter-pipe that was off to
the side of the course, all gave Tony a downright
dominating in to the hip where another quarter-
pice met the roll in. He promptly allied this to
nose-blunt, then cruised to the pyramid where he
threw down a backside olie without really soon.
ing to notice, then found a line to the charnel olie
to pool wall which he did to revert. Tony's artful
aeck took him to second place
Now at this point, I'm sure you all must be won-
dering who the man was that owned the hour.
Who has $1400.00 pocket change with which ha
can buy all the coffee, doughnuts and hats he
wants? Well, it was Powell's own Chris Senn,
who took the contest by storm Cyclones whiled
with every pressure fip Chris busted over the
pyramid, land masses surged with a fast-plane
over the tun box, dans broke and cities flooded
with every one of Chris al emacks on the quar
ter pipes, gutter waters rose 3-inches with every
verial done over the channel Chris ended his run
with a olle to backside 50-50 on the handrail not
with a whimper, but with a cortex-shattering bang
In the calm that followed the storm, awards
were given, youngsters killed each other for hee
stickers, and I used my skate to paddle on out of
there in search of dryer, less crowded, and less
hypad train
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