Wish Upon
Words by Damian Hebert
Photos by Luke Ogden
O
A
In November 7th, 1998, the second
annual Texas Skate Jam was held
at the South Side Indoor Skatepark
in South Houston, Texas. OK. That's
the primer.
This all started about two years ago. I
wanted to do something for skateboard-
ing while helping somebody in need. I
thought about AIDS and MS, but these
programs were already high-profile and
had large company-type budgets and
staff. I saw too much money not going
where it was needed. Then I saw this
program about a young girl on HBO.
She was dying, and all she wanted was
to live; she even had her whole life
planned out. She seemed really smart,
like a 14-year-old, but she was only six.
She died not long after her sixth birth-
day. This got to me, and I decided to call
the Make-A-Wish Foundation and find
out about them. They had a really small
operation and relied mostly on dona-
tions and volunteers to make things
happen the right group of people, I
thought. So I used whatever pull I have
in this industry and begged a lot to get
the companies to shell out bucks to send
pros and ams to this demo that I was
going to have in November '97. A bunch
of pros came out-about 30. We raised
more than $5500 that year. Now, in '98,
Star
0100
YORK
Clockwise from left: Forrest Kirby attacks
a nollie 180° switch crooked grind with
determined ferocity on the box. The metal-
capped ledge is again assaulted, this time
in the form of a kickflip backside tailslide
by Matt Beach. Taking a trick that he per-
fected on the rugged cement of Hubba
Hideout to the skate-specific architecture
of Houston's South Side Indoor Skatepark,
here's Cairo Foster with a nollie nosegrind.
YORK 5
we did it again, but the skateboard compa-
nies really came through. We raised more
than $7000, and we had more than 600 peo-
ple come out to see about 60 skaters for five
hours of great skating, prizes, sticker throws
and music. I spent about two hours just giv-
ing away boxes of skateboards and stuff.
Then we started auctioning off the rest of
the little items. Brent from Halos Bearings,
Rodney from Zoo York, and Jeff from
YORK
Rhythm gave more stuff to be auctioned,
and we even found ourselves selling the
pizza we bought for the pros (they were
done with it by then). There are lots of peo-
ple I know to thank, and hundreds of others
I don't know and hope to see again next
year on November 6th, 1999 and thank
them again. Please get involved with com-
munity affairs like this, or even try to get a
local skatepark built. This is the type of
74 THRASHER