THE
86 THRASHER
Words and photos
by Michael Burnett
FRE
DUDE
ABIDES
new.do
Mc
REST
CO
ICKI BEDENBAUGH SAYS THE WORD DUDE A
lot. This, on its own, sounds bad. He uses dude
as a noun: "Hey dude." But perhaps even more
troubling, he uses it as an expletive: "Dude!
This soup's fantastic!", where the dude is no one in
particular, but rather the universal dude-the everyone dude.
"Dude!" he might utter at a point of frustration. "Oh, dude!" in
a fit of sadness. It has effectively replaced words like wow or
shucks in his vocabulary. It would seem exceedingly annoying,
but dude, it's just the way Ricki talks. It fits him. In recent
months, some people have even started calling him The Dude.
A FILMING TOUR
The Dude works for the Giant family of
skateboard companies. He's a videographer
and has hit pay dirt, gigwise, as he's on
salary and has full use of a company credit.
card while most other videographers get
paid in hooded sweatshirts and live in their
mother's basements. The Dude and I took the
New Deal team: Ken Reed, Rob Gonzalez, Ryan
Johnson, Chad Bartie, and new Brazilian rider.
Fabrizio Santos on a tour to Colorado and back. New Deal
pros Lincoln Ueda and Ricky Oyola did not go on the trip,
although they are still very important members of the squad.
This was to be a demo tour, but all the demos fell through or
something and it turned into just a filming tour. The filming
tour is a slightly new phenomenon-an offshoot of the old
fashioned road trip, but with a heavy production slant. I some-
times feel bad for skaters who attend filming trips. On a nor-
mal road trip you skate only that which is most enjoyable, and
you spend the rest of the time getting blitzed and/or trying to
lure strange girls into motel hot tubs. A lot of this went on in
the '80s, I suspect. Today, however, shit's different. If you're a
sponsored skater going on a trip, you know you're expected to
bust out in proportion to your teammates or else get a poor
report to the team managers and suits upon your return.
87