Spare change?
Clockwise from top left to center: Pat Duffy, nosegrind.
first place. Matt Lewis, steaming carve in the wooden
bowl. Danny Way, butt ugly, but it's a switchstance
kickflip Indy. Darren Mendimo, moose on the loose.
Eric Koston, 360° olieflip. Mike Frazier, half-Cob blunt
revert. Coco Santiago, padless and pumped.
pavement. it miffed the neighbors of the park
just enough to call in the cops, and when
they got there, undercover of course, we were
sitting in the van having a smoke and got bust-
ed. The end result was a buddy getting
taken to jail, it sucked. All of us had to pitch
in the $500 to get him out, we got lost trying
to find the cop shop and we barely made it
back for the vert practice.
Brian Howard, Matt Dove and Mike Crum
had all done their homework and were down
to battle. Crum was almost making switch
stance frontside noseblunts, while alley-oop
360 frontside noseslides were all Matt
Dove's. Omar slammed on a rock to fakie on
his first run and sat down for the rest of the
practice. There were only fourteen riders and
pay to fifth, so the judging was very hard.
After the ten cut was made, the spectators
all settled down for the jam. The ramp was
slippery and without a lot of flat, so many
competitors felt its wrath when landing some-
thing sketchy or missing a pump.
When all was said and done, it went like
this: First place went to the mind-numbing
Mike Frazier. His list of trickery included
frontside olie disaster backside revert, Cab
noseslides, fakie ollie back truck fakie, fakie
pivot disaster revert, 360 Indy, fakie allie
frontside nosegrind, switchstance frontside
grind tailslide, nosebone tailgrabs, monster
to rail and lien melon to tail. The guy is too raw
for words, so I won't say anymore.
Bucky Lasek took second with frontside
Cabs, chink chink reverts, 180 nosegrind
fakies, Indy nosebones, huge 360 backside
ollies, ollie fakies, backside lipslide reverts,
half Cabs and switchstance frontside ollies.
Third place Danny Way obviously doesn't
care about pain because he dropped into a
540 and slammed hard as fuck. He had hip-
pers on both sides and just dealt with it. He
worked the surface with Cabs, frontside
blunts, Japan airs, 540's, switchstance kickflip
Indys, backside lipslides, noseslide to fakies.
frontside Cab blunts, nosestall fakies, and he
tried the switchstance 540 to top it all off.
Paul Zitzer rode hard as hell, but seemed
to spend a lot of time going back and forth
to get fourth. Indy nosebones, tailgrab fakies,
talgrab Caballerials, fakie tailgrab noseblunts,
backside lipslides, half-Cabs, melon 540 s,
noseblunts and allie blunts all were made by
the other guy from Florida.
If there was one person that looked to have
all the tricks and wanted to win, it was Brian
Howard, who took home fifth. He had his runs
timed as to do the raddest trick when the
judges called time, and all the other shit that
he does is beautiful too: big airs, 50-50
reverts, allie to truck, frontside blunts, Indy
nosebone to fakie, fakio 5-0 fakie, alley-oop
chink chinks, ollie blunts, fakie ollie to rail
reverts and melon to rail reverts. Although
he made it every time in practice, he couldn't
pull the backside tailslide shove it in the con
test, and it hurt his scores.
Smooth as silk is Mike Crum's trademark,
and he smoked that pipe to the ground. Huge
ollies, 360 Indys, melon to rail, sweet front-
side airs and frontside noseblunts were in his
bag and if he made the backside noseblunt,
he would have been top five.
Danny Mayer hadn't skated a vert ramp
in a while, but he still had enough magic left
to steal seventh by yanking 360 varials,
43