58 TR
Above: With the Girl ramp a block away and the Huntington Beach
pools a hop, skip and a jump down the road, Andy Harris opts for
daily sessions on a ten-foot-wide PVC-laden junker.
Right: Texas Dan busted out a special pool-riding hat for this
Midwest-style frontside over the hip at Basic.
abandoned, so Tex took a quick dump in the parking lot. Then,
as we were ready to leave, Cookiebead Jenkins rolled up in his
bass-bumpin' ride and parked right over the poop. He rolled
down the window and gave me a sideways glance.
"Hey," said
"What's up?" asked Cookiehead
"Nothin' Are people skating tonight?" I asked
"Nah." said Cookehead
"Do you have the keys?" I asked
"Nah." said Cookiehead
"Well, what are you doing here?"I asked
"Just cruisin'," replied Cookiehead
y exchange that got even funnier after he left
What the heck was he doing out there? Is he the night watchman
or something? Another brush with skateboarding's superstar
Next we skated downtown and made Ben Bodilly, a
Found amateur from England, jump down a bunch of big
stuff for the camera. The power of Kodak courage astounds
me sometimes
if not for a bunch of stupid design flaws.
"Temecula, to heck with ya." Texas Dan kept saying as he
watched from outside the fence. He didn't even want to try it.
Once back on the road. Texas laid into us with all the reasons
why we should retum to the Nude Bowl
birthday,
"It's practically on the way to SF," he whined. "It's my
ty, you guys. We have to go." he pleaded "Mike, we
need to retum i enemas to their home. They'll never make it
Finally he e dropped the bomb
"If we don't go to the Nude, first I'm going to pout for a
few days, then
I'm going to get drunk and fight each and
every one of you
headed for Palm Springs
Although the B
Martin contingency had promised an
y at the Nude with generators and non-stop skat
ing we arrived in 100 mile per hour winds to find the bottom
of the bowl covered in broken glass and huge bullet holes in
the walls of the shallow end. It was like discovering the scene
of a horrible crime. Tex swept up the glass with a tiny dust
We spent one day skating Santa Rosa, which is one of my
favorite spots on Earth. It was a Sunday, so the place was
packed with freaks BMX Hessians, in-liners and even a pregnant
woman on rollerskates, the latter of which Scott would skate
pay the video crew
the straight shot into the rock star jump over and
who at kind of annoying
over o
we can were treated to an all-star session
at Jim Thiebaud's new mini-ramp Stranger, Cardiel, and Max
were pounding the Masonite, while Jason diagrammed all
the cra
e crazy tricks that had gone down during the pro contest the
previous weekend
While I was dropping the lids off at the pool the next morning
Scott told me the news that made all of Roth's anxieties come
true someone had broken into the Vanagon.
"We had wisely brought most of the stuff inside, but Roth's new
wetsuit, three boards and some tapes had been taken, not to
mention the broken window. More shocking, the thieves had
even tore open the pack of enemas!
At this point there was some debate among the crew about
FIFTY BUCKS A MONTH IS ALL JASON AND HIS ROOMMATE SCOTT BOURNE PAY TO
LIVE IN A CONVERTED BOILER ROOM OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE LOWER HAIGHT.
IT'S A REAL NEAT NEIGHBORHOOD. I SAW MY FIRST PERSON SMOKING CRACK!
what to do next. Revord was out of cash, Roth was getting
homesick, and all Texas Dan wanted to do was go back to the
Nude Bowl. We left our future up in the air as we followed
broom and got a few grinds in before it got dark. We didn't
sleep at the Nude this time
San Francisco was our last destination and one I was really
I headed out to visit with you at High Speed, while Tex and
Roth went on a crackhead beat-down mission to all the
Kevin and Ben out to the desert town of Temecula to sample wilder walks of Jason's neighborhood
their new park
Temecula skatepark was designed by Thrasher founder Kevin
wonder if he
cher, but after skating it we couldn't help but w
should have supervised whoever poured the concrete more the Lower I
closely True
Thatcher,
for anyone to try
to clear and mostly act as a place for th
r the in-liners who dominate
the park to rest up between soul grinds. There's also an 8-shaped
I with inset metal coping that's too mellow to grind unless
iding 43 millimeter wheels. To top it all off, the wrist
guard/hull pad rule is in effect as well as a cost of five bucks for
two-and-a-half hours
Don't get me wrong, if this park was in my town I would
skate it everyday. It's just frustrating when you see a park that
cost this much and know that it could be the best place on Earth
makeshift "yard sales" of stolen goods that pop up on the side-
Although I wasn't ready to go home yet, Roth couldn't
is all Jason and his for his car to spend anymore time in the Lower Haight
e played tourist at the Golden Gate Bridge and then hit the
road. Instead of saying goodbye to Jason and Scott, they decid
ed to coincide their East Coast trip with our retum to Boulder
Scott slapped a Thunder sticker on the side of our car going 75
mph on the highway outside Sacramento. After that, I fell
asleep until Salt Lake C City
www house in Wes
e all drifted off to sleep only to be awakened some
hours late
s later by fat beats and partying being done by the other
people c
e on the floor. When I went out to use the john the next
moming, there were three gangster kids in big Raider's jackets all
crammed onto a small couch-all sitting straight up and snoring
their heads off
"Where are you going?" Scott yelled at me the next night as
I got up to pee. "You'll use the pee bottles like the rest of us.
mister Lining the pipes that stuck out of the walls of the
boiler room were several three-liter bottles filled with urine
Now that's convenience.
This was probably the best road trip I've ever gone on, not to
mention the best company to share it with
Good news, I guess I'm going to tag along with Scott
and Jason on their Midwest/East Coast trip. I'll write you
about it then
Later, and thanks for all the film. *x*