Riding." And sure enough all three types were at
this exact spot at the same time, coexisting
peacefully. Young urban rebels on wheels, unified
in the destruction of public property in the name
of fun. Beautiful.
KNOXVILLE, TEN ASS SEA
It took us some driving to get to good ol'
Knoxville. Adam hoped to run into some hillbilly
type people along the way, but we didn't see any-
thing that we couldn't have seen in Southern
New Jersey. Our host in Knoxville was Brian
Beauchene, the owner of Pluto Sports. His abode
had lots of sofas and the street he lived on was
party central. All
kinds of rad stuff
went down, like
late night dust dirt
volleyball, beer
drinking by a front
yard fish pond and
the sampling of
Colonel Bacchus
crazy skateboard
collection. As far
as terrain goes,
there's a lot of cool stuff at TSU. There is also a
ditch called Wallos that our tourguides Ryan
Jacob Wilburn, Ray Russell Moss and Jay
Cabler skated finely, but the line king of
this ditch was Mr Beauchene. All things
being equal, the best part of our Knoxville
Everything in
Plorida sucks
except the
skate seene
stay was jumping off a cliff. Ryan has
some pretty good cliff jumping skills. I
was impressed. I fouled up on a flip and
got a painful case of swimmer's ear, but
it was definitely well worth it.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Here we met up with Thomas Taylor
and no offense, but Thomas is a kick butt
skater. He also runs Stratosphere, the pre-
miere skateshop of Atlanta, located at
Little Five Points. Unlike other skateshop
465
Chicken wing action over the hip and into the shallow end courtesy of
Jimmy Leaphart (opposite top) at the now outdoor Hangar in Charleston,
NC. John Montesi (opposite bottom), fat frontside heelflip at the Skatepark
of Tampa. Up in Knoxville, TN, Colonel Bacchus (god of wine) and friends
(above) hold court. Six years old and chargin' at the Hangar bowl, little
Bradley (right) has more balls when it comes to vert than most street pros.
Shane Phatterson (below) works the new pool at The Badlands in Orlando.
owners that can only
skate grandpa style,
Thomas can skate it all.
From the metal halfpipe
he took us to, to the
streets of downtown
Atlanta, to the slippery
session we had on the
mini at the Hellhouse, he
showed old and young
alike how it's done. We
also skated with Jason
Marcus Guthrie, Carter Mull and Emily Hope
Prodgers' boyfriend, Robert Daniel Powell, they
were all very talented on much terrain as well.
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA
I thought the fun would really start once we
got to Florida, you know, with all the lizards, alli-
gators and walking catfish around, but shoot dag
was I wrong. With all the beer-drinking college
Joes, old spooky people and leathered sun wor-
shippers, we soon discovered everything in
Florida sucks except the skate scene. One sweet
thing was the Florida Skate Underground, in
Tallahassee, which is a
warehouse park with
hips, bumps, slants
and transitions. Chan Thomas Leonard and
Jeffrey Alan Marquith Jr ran the show. They live
in a large house with a pool and a video arcade
game in the kitchen. The house dog was a deaf
dalmatian that stayed outside and was tossed in
the pool occasionally for cruel kicks, but not by
me. You should always be nice to dogs. Me, Adam,
Ben and Rob have never seen kids so young live
so fat without parental supervision.
THE WARMTH OF BOBBY LEE JR'S AFRO
Yeah, we rolled into Tampa all cool and got
into the Skatepark of Tampa for free. The park