TAMPATEURS
DDUE
SKATEBO
ARE
footwear
Mobk
Shorty's DUFFSTUFFS
ATEBOARDING EBO
FORMANC
PIT Emerica.
RISING
UECON
ATEBOARDS
IRCRAFT
bo
SKATES GARWING SKATEBOARDI
DESTR
INDUST
TRUCKS FOR A SE
Left: Flying at Mach 5, Mike Peterson nailed
this nosegrind all day long.
Right: Swedish über-skater Pontus Alv gets
back to his roots with a barnstormin' bodyjar.
W
intertime can be
hard on a skate-
boarder. With twen-
ty-degree weather and
sleet on the ground, it is
hard
to
enjoy life, much
less skate. I spent the first
week of 1999 doing nose
manuals from the kitchen
to the bathroom at a
friend's house. With the
only indoor skatepark
three hours away, a severe
case of cabin fever was
setting in. The warm
weather of Tampa, FL
sounded like just the cure
I needed.
Every January, Brian
Schaefer and his
friends/crew at the
Skatepark of Tampa
(SPOT) hold an amateur
contest which is properly
billed as the best of the
year. All the money in the
X-Games contests could
not buy the skate contest
know-how Schaefer has
developed. Every year
this contest gets bigger,
but the
but the SPOT crew is
always ready for it. I
arrived on Thursday
morning around eight.
o'clock
o'clock with the guys
already there hanging
banners and cleaning the
crust out of their eyes. I
found out Brian was hav-
ing
to turn people away.
The event hadn't officially
begun and there were
already 200 entrants in
the street contest.
The four-day event was
planned as follows:
Thursday, open skating;
Friday, street qualifying
with the top 15 skaters
each day going to the
finals. on Sunday;
Saturday, more street
Qualify
qualifying with the top 15
skaters going with the 15.
Friday qualifiers to the
finals on Sunday; Sunday,
finals for Friday and
Saturday street qualifiers,
and vert contest and best
trick on the snowboard
jump/handrail of death.
And after all these contest
events, there would still be
the 6th Anniversary Party
on Saturday night; more
on that later.
Friday morning doors
opened for skating at
o'clock, with the day's first
heat starting at 11:00. The
judges had to pick fifteen
guys who would make it
75