X-crement
Story and Photos by Michael Burnett
Like the Army, Navy or cops, the hierarchy at
the 1997 ESPN X-Games was established and
maintained through the use of badges.
The plastic passes were everywhere and hung like
flea collars around the necks of the many athletes, news
crews, businessmen and countless other unnamed lackeys
that milled around the carnival-style venue.
Some people's badges let them run wild-skate, eat
free food, fiddle with their cameras, whatever. The people
that had these were stoked. Some were so proud of their
badges that they even replaced the chains they came on
with fancy, designer woven straps. Boy, were they sharp.
It made them look almost as if they had won an award or
something. Luckily, ESPN had the foresight to think that
some of the regular people in the audience might like
badges, too. If you weren't important enough to be
issued a badge, you could buy one for a small fee. But they
didn't get you anywhere, though.
Being a correspondent for the #1 skateboard magazine,
my badge allowed me to sit in the first two rows of the
VIP stands. The rows above, however, were for the real
VIPS. They had umbrellas and bowls of fruit and candy.
"How often do they wax their skateboards?" one of the
real VIPs asked me.
"Right before they paddle out," I answered. The
VIP smiled kindly.
Although I am a correspondent for the #1 skateboard
magazine, my badge didn't allow me to take pictures on
the platforms of the ramp, or on the ground beside it.
These spaces were reserved for sports photographers-a
truly nasty bunch.
Elbowing one another angrily and randomly firing off
shots from their 600mm-lensed cameras, this neckless,
Dockers-wearing bunch of ex-jocks collected enough lip-
less, crooked horizon aerial shots to fill countless math
books and catalogs well into the year 3000.
"Hawk! Where's the Hawk?" they would bark at
each other.
"There he is!" one would yell, pointing to Omar Hassan.
Their motordrives would go off like machine guns.
The sponsor list read like a regular gang of thugs.
Dropping a reported $2 million each to be a part of the
action were junk food companies, credit providers,
Rollerblade, makers of reconstituted meat snacks and
even the Marines, who had a booth set up where kids
could practice pull-ups to prepare themselves for the
day they can enlist.
TACO BELL
TACO BELL
"I don't know, Dad, I either want to be a pro skate-
boarder when I grow up, or a storm trooper of death."
"You're not going to be anything, son, if you don't
finish that Slim Jim."
Regardless of how retarded, stupid or just plain sick
and wrong the whole proceedings were, it was almost
as if all was forgiven once the skating started. It
I was really good. The events included streetstyle, vert
and vert doubles, with the latter being the real cooker
of the week.
Right before the vert finals kicked off, a little man
in headphones with a thick pile of badges came up to the
VIP seating to inquire about our signs we had made.
"But what does it mean?" he asked, after I showed
him my "Bob's No Slob" sign.
"I guess it means that Bob's no slob," I said.
Catching a whiff of the easy drinking Busch Light
we had tossed back earlier, the little man frowned.
"You've been drinking, haven't you? Can I see your
badges, please?"
Needless to say, our signs never saw airtime. Not
even the one that said: "Time to Get Paid, Gentry."
RESULTS
Street:
Vert:
1. Chris Senn
1. Tony Hawk
2. Andy MacDonald
2. Rune Glifberg
3. Brian Patch
3. Bob Burnquist
4. Bob Burnquist
4. Bucky Lasek
5. Andrew Reynolds
6. Willy Santos
7. Pat Channita
7. Max Dufour
8. Geoff Rowley
8. Mike Frazier
9. Frank Hirata
9. Colin McKay
10. Chris Gentry
10. Moses Itkonen
Doubles:
Tony Hawk & Andy MacDonald
2. Neal Hendrix & Mike Frazier
3. Mathias Ringstrom & Max Dufour
4. Max Schaaf & Bob Burnquist
5. Mike Crum&Rune Glifberg
86 THRASHER
TACO BELL
TACO BELL
5. Lincoln Ueda
6. Danny Way
Top sequence: Chris Senn
Swooshes across the Taco
Bell gap to frontside 5-0,
it's gotta be the shoes.
Bottom sequence: Bob
Burnquist kickflip frontside
grabs over the Skittles rail
onto the rainbow trail. Left:
This looks like a perfect can-
didate for one of those "cap-
tion-it-yourself" contests;
the reader with the best
response as to why Mr Hawk
and his friends are so happy
will win a lifetime supply of
Slim Jims and free tickets to
Disney's World on Blades.
TACO BELL
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