BLOODY GUMS
"I forgot my tooth-
brush" was the first thought
to
cross my mind as our caravan took off for the
northern border of the United States. We were on our
way to check out the Third Annual Slam City Jam in
Vancouver, British Columbia, home to Bryan Adams
and the worst team in the NBA, the Grizzlies, and I had
already committed an oral hygiene faux pas. "No big-
gie." I thought. "I can make it three days or buy a new
one if I have to."
The two-and-a-half hour drive from Seattle was
punctuated by a brief stop at the Bellingham Burger
King, where I applied the first coat with a Whaler and
fries. The drive-thru at the border was a breeze, and
we headed straight to Langley to check out one of the
Vancouver area's newer cement parks.
Made up of mostly twinkies and pyramids, the park
was fun to cruise. Ethan Fowler was there, riding a
Schmidt Stix Lucero, and catching fat frontside flips.
My cohort for the weekend, Roger Seliner, took the
switch approach to the main pyramid ollie. It was
Friday evening, so we figured we'd go check out the
contest site and find something to do later.
Unbeknownst to us, the elimination heats had
started that afternoon, and we'd missed the first heat
already. The second was under way, and they were
were in for a long haul
After running some Thai food over our
gums, Roger and I were left alone with all of our shit.
as our ride to Vancouver, Davey and Leah, had aban
doned us to pursue their romantic tryst. Burdened
with all of our shit, including my camera gear, Roger
and I took off down Robson Street in search of a little
adventure. With all these pro skaters in town, we were
bound to find some action, or at least a place to stay.
After some confusion over the name of the hotel
where some of Roger's friends were staying, we just
started skating. Luckily, we spotted Lance Conklin, Pat
Duffy, Chris Senn and his wife, Mandy, along with some
lady friends, enjoying some beer in a hotel bar. After
the first beer, Matt Hensley and Rudy Johnson walked
by the window, playing the accordion and guitar. What
the hell? Duffy hooked us up with a room to stay in, so
we were set.
After staining my teeth with some strong coffee
and German pastries, Roger and I headed to the con-
test. The next morning's elimination round started
early, and after seemingly thousands of flailed fip
tricks and fallen ollies, along with a few stand-out
runs, the 30 cut was made, and the second elimination
round got under way. I've just got to say that out of
cut were Marc Johnson and
Rick McCrank, a local guy from Whistler, who showed
some style despite his snowboarder/sweatsuit attire.
2nd place qualifier was Chris Senn, who barreled
through the course with his usual disregard for per-
sonal safety. The top qualifier was Ray Barbee, who
put together an amazing qualifying run. Barbee's still
got it! Also making the cut was Scott Yamamura from
the Seattle area, who showed consistency with his
nollie variations.
Since it was getting late, the staff decided that the
final round would be a single-run event. Sounded
screwy to me. I thought it would make more sense to
eliminate the first 130 qualifiers with a single run, but
whatever. The show got under way, with everything
riding on one run.
Some falls kept most people out of the running
including Chris Senn, Chet Thomas and Brazilian Lucio
Flavio. Ex-Vancouver resident Rick Howard pulled in at
13th. Ed Templeton couldn't pull the repeat of last
year's win and came out with 9th. Mike Vallely burled
around the course and looked strong, but a fall or two
whole time, was
stylish, and pulled a
huge kickflip fakie on the big-
ger quarter-pipe. Burl definitely took a backseat
to smooth this day, but so be it. The contest went on
for so long that the anticipated bowl session at North
Van didn't materialize.
After the results were announced, the usual
milling around took place, much to the chagrin of the
goon-squad bouncers, who tried to hurry everyone
out. Steve Berra was signing an autograph for a kid,
but the bouncer said it was time to go and grabbed
Yogi by the collar and proceeded to "escort him out.
This caused more than a little bit of a scene, and the
bouncer finally let him go after being surrounded by
skaters. Don't those goons understand that they're
only there because of the pros and kids? Steve Olson
was spotted attempting the Natas spin on a fire
hydrant. All I could think about was food and a place
to stow my shit. Roger had written down Scarecrow
CEO Russ Pope's hotel room number, and that was
going to be our hook-up for the night. When we got
there, some chillin' was going down, and Barker
Barrett was taking the herbal approach to medicat-
party as
went to meet my
friends. We tried to find the party.
but I guess it was a dud, so we wound up drinking
a beer or two at a local pub. I wound up with a hide-
a-bed that night and slept in comfort.
I skated to Russ' hotel room to pick up my stuff
the next morning, met up with Roger, and headed to
our coffee spot. After a strong cup of joe and a scone.
my teeth were wearing sweaters. I guess I never got
around to buying a toothbrush, and at this point in
time, it just didn't seem to matter. After knocking a
few pedestrians over with my breath, Roger and I got
to the contest where practice had just started fol-
lowing the completion of the vert ramp by Pat Black,
Sasha Steinhorst. Dave Duncan and crew.
The ramp contest was to be run similar to the
street with two 45-second runs from each of the 40
or so contestants with the best run counting and a
cut to 15.
The vert contest was a battle, no doubt about it.
Wade Speyer skated a run to synchronize the judge's
scoring and pulled the backside boneless out of the
bag, as well as quite possibly the stinkiest frontside
Chad
Vogt qualified 7th
by staying on and pulling
some weird variations out of the
bag like fakie olie late shove-it, 360 backside olies
and backside tailslide reverts. Top 10 street finisher
and Red Dragon representative, Moses, qualified, as
did fellow Dragon, Sluggo.
The finals were three timed runs with the best
two scores combined. I thought a jam format would
be cooler, just because it keeps the ball rolling and
lets some people take longer runs if they don't fall.
Some couldn't hang on like Vogt. Schaaf and Ueda,
who placed 15, 14 and 13, respectively. Sergie Ventura,
who's back with a vengeance, was consistently going
overhead all day and pulled the backside Smith fake
in one of his runs, fell, and ended up with 12th. Bob
Burnquist avoided the switch approach this year and
fell to 10th. Adil Dyani reminded me a little of his
Swedish counterpart, Tony Magnusson, and took the
repetitive backside air variation approach to pull
into 8th. Sluggo and Moses wound up with 7th and
5th, and Mathias wound up at 4th. Tas Pappas over-
came his earlier round sketchiness to burl into 3rd,
his balls-out approach and staying on paid off. Mike
going to try to get through five If it wasn't for this sequence of Geoff Rowley kickflip backsidlipslide we would have pulled the plug on the whole deal. Frazier is an amazing skateri big, clean
heats of 20-some skaters by
nightfall. The course was pretty similar to the one two
years ago. It appeared as though they had tried to
make the best of the space they were allocated: Some
people were finding lines, while others seemed to just
skate around in a circle or hit the same obstacles
repeatedly. They made it through three heats as it
started to get dark, and the other two were post-
poned until the next day. There were some 170 skaters
who entered, and around 130 had to qualify into the
top 30 to have a chance at the second elimination.
round with the top 40 seeded pros, so I
the newcomers entered in the contest. I thought Neil
Heddings from Burnside got ripped in his teeth-cut-
ting contest, and he'll definitely be one to look for in
the future.
The second round pitted the top 30 qualifiers ver-
sus the seeded top 40 in three more elimination
rounds. By this time, however, I had to piss so bad my
teeth were floating, and I made a move to relieve
myself and get a bite to eat. As I returned, the first
round was under way.
Another three rounds of eliminations set up like
the previous rounds-two runs each, with the top run
counting-and the final cut to 20 was made. Just
missing the
held him back from higher placing. Local Moses
Itkonen put together a 7th place finish, barely beaten
out by Ray Barbee, who had a fall and got 6th. Popular
consensus was that Barbee would have won if he skat-
ed his qualifying run all over again, but 6th still seemed
a little too far back. 5th went to Steve Berra and 4th to
Gershon Mosely, who skated killer all day and
frontside flipped the quarter-pipe gap every time.
Colin McKay showed his versatility and brought 3rd
place to the Red Dragons' hideout. Ronnie Creager and
Carlos de Andrade had tied for 1st, so the judges
resorted to qualifying scores to determine the winner.
Creager came close to the win with consistency and
tricks to back it up, but 1st place went to Brazilian de
Andrade. Short in stature but big and smooth, he
stayed on the
ing his baseball-sized ankle. Pope had a pizza on the
way and let Roger and I take much-needed showers.
After brushing up with the pizza, it felt good to sit
around for a couple hours and watch TV. Bad Religion
was playing at the contest site for something like
$20. What happened to these guys' sense of ethics?
guess it's 'cause they're the standard
snowboard/skateboard event band, something akin
to the regular hotel lounge acts, and about as excit-
Ing. Stereolab was playing somewhere in the area
that night and some opted for that. I went to go meet
some people to find a party, and when I got down-
stairs, I was greeted by none other than Dave
Duncan, who was conspicuously absent from the
precedings due to a deportation at the airport. He'd
flown into Seattle and caught a ride up with some of
the Seattle crew. They
headed to the
air I have ever laid eyes upon. The later heats got
hotter and hotter, leading me to believe that some
from the earlier heats who cruised to stay on might
miss the cut. The third heat was intense, everyone
went for broke, and the cut was made. A few of the
big guns were conspicuously absent from the 15 cut.
namely Neal Hendrix, recovering from knee surgery
Wade, who couldn't stay on; and Danny Way, who
didn't skate his runs due to a knee injury.
Euro-guy, Mathias Ringstrom, qualified 1st by
staying on and landing the circus tricks. Brazilian
Lincoln Ueda made the biggest impression on me out
of anyone at the contest: His qualifying runs were
amazing, and he pulled off everything that he'd been
trying all day, including overhead frontside airs and
body jars, and a fingerflip sien to frontside air, all at
Mach 5 with a hectic but
stylish approach.
and technical at the same time. It was
a close call, but he wound up with 2nd. 1st place went
to European Rune Gifberg, who pulled out all the
stops and barreled around the ramp at high speeds
to take it all for the Flip team. Although I would have
preferred a jam, the vert contest was an amazing
spectacle, showing just how much vert has pro-
gressed when others left it for dead. I wouldn't have
wanted to be a judge, but things wound up pretty
fair, all things considered.
I got stuck with driving home, as my ride had
opted for drinking high-octane Canadian beer all day,
and Roger had taken off before the finals. After a final
stop at Denny's just after the border to run some
greasy food over my ivories, I was home in Seattle,
dashing off to the bathroom for a brushing that
made my gums bleed. See you next year.
-Wez Lundry
SLAMCITY
3
VANCOUVER, BC