X Games XII: Nightlife, Vert Best Trick, and Girls Street Article at Skatepark of Tampa

X Games XII: Nightlife, Vert Best Trick, and Girls Street

Posted on Sunday, August 6, 2006 by Ryan

Nightlife, Vert Best Trick, and Girls Street
Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek

Amy Caron has a nice looking floater over the hip
Lacey Baker has a good looking hard flip. Later on this day, she hard flipped the big four during the Contest
Lauren Perkins - ollie over the hip
Elissa Steamer – stale fish over the hip
Vanessa Torres – melon grab over the hip
Marisa Del Santo - lipslide
Do you have a 360 flip as good as Lacey Baker's? This girl rips and she's got a great personality to go with it
Jake Duncombe - casual nollie big in casual gear
Jake Duncombe - kickflip hurricane ass drag
I only eat plain old normal food like meat, potatoes, chicken, and candy. When stuff gets weird, I don't touch it. It got weird at this fancy dinner. Here's a sample of the sketchy edibles that were coming out to the dinner table. Finally someone brought some damn meat and I was happy
P-Rod got some gold dipped kicks like baby shoes
When I went downstairs to burn a grit, I found these girls talking to the guy guarding the private area of the restaurant that our party was in. I quickly threw out, "They're with me!" and made some nice new friends to keep all us dudes at the sausage party company for the night. They're some high class LA chicks. As hot as they are, they're also educated too. Their names are Lydia and Ilana
At first they were shy about sneaking in and crashing the party, but after a while things got loose and they were throwing down the free drinks and mowing down layers of fancy chocolate dessert
After the dinner party thing, I somehow ended up on a bus on the way to some high class Hollywood night club. There was a long line for the girls bathroom so these two chicks followed me into the men's room and proceeded to piss in the urinal standing up. Classy move, girl. Sorry there's no rated R version to email to the homies. I wasn't quick enough on the draw with the chill cam
Rob Sissi with Nike SB wasn't afraid to spark in the club
So my mission for the night in was to get shot down by as many high class Hollwood chicks as possible. Mission definitely accomplished although many of them did give me the time of day and spend a few minutes talking with me. Here's the first one. I can't remember her name
That's Sandy and Kevin from Nike SB. Lydia, one of the random girls I dragged into the dinner party, mentioned that Kevin looked real familiar. Right when I was about to say all us orientals look the same, she guessed his last name. Turns out she grew up with Kevin's sister. Small world
Another random high class Hollywood party chick that gave me a few minutes of her time. I don't remember her name or what I talked to her about
Wow, she's nice. I wonder what I talked to her about
I remember Beetlejuice girl here being pretty cool. I don't remember what I said to her, though
There's Omar Salazar with Beetlejuice girl and her sidekick. It didn't take long for us to scare them off
There were $eriou$ $hoes at the Hollywood night club. Had to take a few foot fetish shots. Can't remember whose feet these are
My last rejection at the Hollywood night club was this lovely lady
The next day, we're off to some Boost Mobile block party. I thought I was special for getting an invite to this and the Wu Tang show. Turns out any jackass could stroll up into it and lurk out. Boost did hook up tons of free alcohol for special VIP people. I guess I made the cut because I got totally hammered for free. Thanks Janae! They also had this mini ramp there. I didn't bring my board, though. That's ok, I wasn't interested in playing with my skateboard. I just wanted to play with my camera and maybe a sketchy LA chick or two
Braydon Szafranski, Robin Fleming from Vans who used to work at Baker, and Erik Hamamoto were going for the boy band look in the fan with their hair. That's Rodney Johnson, Billabong Team Manager, lurking in the back on drums
Ryan Clements holdin' it down with Jake Brown
Darell Stanton and Graham Bickerstaff go to work on some pizza and then drink up, lurk out, and wait for the Wu
Don't you get jealous when you see girls grabbing each other's tits? Not fair! That's Brandy from Sole Tech giving Robin from Vans a breast exam
Sean Sheffey was hanging out looking extra tough with some leather gloves on like he was about to cut someone up like OJ
Bill Weiss, the Wu, and the Wu tattoo
After several hours of, "They're coming on in an hour," two seventh's (well, six now) of them show up. That's UGod on the right but I'm not sure who that is to my right in the bottom photo - Masta Killa? They did Mystery of Chessboxin' and some new stuff from UGod's new album and then had to break out to do another show in some other city. Earlier, Red Man was skating around and hanging out at the bar with everyone. I just missed him
This is Janae from Boost Mobile. She’s responsible for a lot of damage to my liver. Thanks for the cool guy wristband that allowed me to get sloppy ass wasted by 5pm
Cheers to fellow Florida homie Nick Halkias from Nike SB
Kurtis Calomonico 360 flipping under the influence
Ryan Nix and Erik Hammamoto along with some girl that needs to be hanging out with us. They ran out of beer so everyone had to switch to Red Bull and Vodka
A random fat guy showed up and we took pictures with him like he was a freak of nature. Fat guy was stoked
We ended up at this high class hotel in downtown LA called The Standard. This is one of the bars there. See that round of beers I bought for my friends there? $32 – not including tip. That was the last round of beers I was buying
Congrats Elissa Steamer on first place and 1,500,000 cents
One of my favorite girl skaters – Lauren Perkins, not to be confused with Larry Perkins
This is the lounge at the high class Standard. They have these bed type couches that look extra comfy if you have yourself a nice LA lady to kick it with. That’s Lacey Baker whipping Clements’ and my ass in pool over there to the left
Look how psyched Dewitt is when he spends company money. Yo Kingman, I think you need to check this dude’s expense reports. Dewitt, why don’t you go ahead and put that waitress on the company card? I’ll take her
These girls are from Laguna Beach. They came to The Standard to mix with the upper class crowd. Too bad all they met was my ghetto self. They’re posing photos with Lacey Baker’s bronze medal
Vanessa Torress has some nice looking friends. This is a cigarette tepee we’re making here
Evelien Bouilliart gets some drunk love from Vanessa Torres
Vert Best Trick
We had every intention of attending the Vert Best Trick after our dinner plans, but dinner turned out to be an all night event at some fancy joint in Hollywood called The Hollywood Social. And since it’s our goal on these trips to get someone to buy us dinner nightly, how could we refuse? Plus, some soon-to-be-announced business went down, too, but there will be more on that later down the road.

The Hollywood Social was dimly lit, had modern décor, and the food was amazing. I think we had like five courses, and each of them was more interesting than the previous. Rob is the pickiest eater I know and he was tripping on each plate that was brought in front of him, barely even touching anything.

P-rod and Jereme Rogers happened to be at the same restaurant, too, so we got to chill with them for a bit outside of the business-talk. P-rod informed me that he will be back at Skatepark of Tampa sometime soon to pull the trick that he didn’t make during the filming of Dyrdek’s “Street Dreams”.

Rob hit the late-night party scene and I took a cab ride home. When I woke up in the morning Furlong was sleeping on the floor and he kindly informed me of what went down the night before at Vert Best Trick. It wasn’t a 900 and Shaun White didn’t land the 1080 (more X-Games hype), but here’s what got pulled:

1. Bucky Lasek – frontside cab heelflip varial frontside grab off the loveseat
2. Max Dufour – kickflip tailgrab bs 360
3. Bob Burnquist – frontside tailslide 360 revert (supposedly sketchy, but that’s still gnarly)

Girls Street
While Rob shot photos of the girls practicing on the street course I spent my afternoon in yet another meeting. I got out just in time to see the Girls Street, but Rob was like, “Wu Tang is going to play any minute at that Boost Party downtown. Let’s go.”

Before leaving I told Lacey Baker’s mom Donna that Lacey and Elissa would be in the top three, but I just didn’t know what order. That was my prediction.

The Boost Party was on an entire block and it was full-on LA style, too. There were high-end Nikes and designer clothes and sunglasses everywhere, including some fashionable haircuts. People were getting pretty wasted courtesy of the free booze…and not to mention, Wu came on about four hours later than announced, so that added to the intoxication level. The crowd was stoked on the few songs they played and the party dispersed.

When we were leaving I ran into Ryan Nix, othewise known as Pikey. He said he was on his way to The Standard to have a drink to help celebrate Elissa’s first place finish. Oh hell yeah. Elissa Steamer came up 15 G’s and we couldn’t be more stoked for her. So we got Chris Cole and Elissa winning both Street events. I wonder what vert skater Jamie Thomas is going to put on Zero so they can dominate all three disciplines? Not really, but that would be funny though, wouldn’t it?

I then received a phone call from Donna Baker informing me that Lacey got third. My prediction was correct…both Elissa and Lacey in the top three. Congrats to Lacey who I heard hardflipped the stairs and came up $5000.

At that point Rob and I thought that we would grab a quick drink with Elissa and then head off to dinner, but before we knew it it was midnight and we had been drinking there for several hours. Good thing DeWitt showed up and picked up the tab or I’d be broke as a joke today. Thanks, DeWitt.

Comments

Subscribe to the SPoT What's Up Blog

Enter your email: