Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek

Anthony Mosley, where ya' been? Anyone know the story? He was ripping all weekend. Nollie frontside boardslide

Every time I think of Gugu's name, I want to stick my thumb in my mouth like a baby. He goes fast as you can see on this frontside 180 switch crook where the takeoff and landing are about 10 feet apart

I first got to meet Helder Lima in a Holland hotbox at AmsterDamn Am two years ago. He kills it and is now starting to travel the world with us. He's in California until November filming with Volcom and is also entering Damn Am in three weeks. Bring this backside 360 with you, Helder

That's Manny Santiago's move - big spin boardslide. I bet that would look real good to fakie. Let's see it, Manny

Every time I see a switch back lip on a bump to flat bar, all I can think of is Bam. Anthony Mosley makes it look good

Kevin Romar - nollie backside 360

I am the biggest fan of this dude. Dylan Rieder - ollie impossible manual

Last trick Bill Weiss had on the site was a naked 540. He put clothes on for this early grab down the 11

Brandon Westgate has the snaps and the hotfoot. Ollie up, king sized flip out

Louis Tolentino is the future world record high ollie holder. We're planning an event for that right now. More on that later. Not only does Louis have cat legs, he's a manny champ, too. Frontside 180 fakie manual

Kurtis Colamonico - switch flip

Curren Caples probably has an easier time taking a 360 flip down an 11 than on flat with those baby legs

At the end of Brandon Westgate's back smith up the hubba, you can see the super snaps of Andrew Langi on a backside flip

Andrew Langi came out of nowhere this year, killing it and looking good even in shorts. He looks just as good on tranny as he does on this backside flip, too

Damn, Brandon. That's a damn good looking 360 flip

Figgy could have been the Goofy Footed MVP, except when he was trying tricks before his time that Chris Cole did in the Game of SKATE. Switch Figgy Figgy

Sean Malto - frontside nosegrind. He can get away with shorts

Dylan Rieder - that's how a boneless should look

Caswell Berry smoked a lot of cigs and also this double set. 360 flip into the bank

Darrell Stanton - switch pop shuv

Caswell Berry - stalefish disaster

Tyler Hendley - kickflip over the rail. Maybe it's time for some pants

Caswell Berry - wow, pop out of a frontside nosegrind on a hubba?

Who dat? Well, it's Julian Christianson. Check out this switch varial heel down the 11. Looks pretty good until you see him do a backside 180 bennihanna a minute later. Only Jake Duncombe can pull that off

Julian won the Hometown Heroes Contest so he was allowed to move on to the GvR Contest. He's got the bolts on all his tricks like this nollie backside heelflip. Bennie's on the bolts, too

Caswell Berry - frontside flip

When Chris Cole did this frontside 180 frontside grab up the giant step-up in the Game of SKATE, Figgy and Tyler Hendley did rock paper scissors to see who would have to try it and look like a fool. Figgy tried it. Fool he was. Stinkbug, too

Tyler Hendley did this hardflip in during the Game of SKATE

Andrew Langi's answer to Tyler Hendley's hardflip in the Game of SKATE

Brandon Westgate was stomping this thing both ways. That's a serious gap to manual right there

I like Billy Marks' All-American spend it all before you die attitude towards money. We're both helping to make the credit crisis worse and enjoying every minute. We also both have funny looking kickflips. We should be BFF's. This is a nollie inward heel

Alright, I'm fanning out a bit too much on Brandon Westgate. One more photo. Look at that flick and catch - Chuck Norris can't even kick like that

Taylor Smith is in the growth spurt club. That's a kickflip back lip

Here's a small sample of dudes who aren't usually on this side of the lens

The only time I ever see Rick McCrank in person is at GvR

Figgy kills it, but a key weakness was exposed by Chris Cole when he was forced to try a frontside grab frontside 180 up the step-up which made him look like he just got a skateboard for Christmas yesterday

Here's a photo of the crowd for you to analyze. What do you spy?

Kurtis Colamonico can get photo incentive without a shirt

There was a Bad Religion show on Saturday night. There was tons of free beer but the lines were super long, even if you had the gangster wristband. Mark Vallero solved that problem by stealing a vodka bottle. You don't know who Mark is yet, but you might soon if he can keep from abusing the substances. Good luck with that. He rips

Adam Dyet got the first Skatepark of Tampa Party Team tat. We have to get tats now? Damn

Matt Milligan is trying to vote me off the Skatepark of Tampa Party Team. We're going to have to play a Game of DRINK, just like a Game of SKATE. I will take him out

I spent like 30-minutes in the beer line staring at a big ass dread forming in Figgy's hair. Is he going to be the next white dude to rock the dreads?

Taylor's trying to get on the Skatepark of Tampa Party Team based on one night of getting loose. Pffff, you don't go pro with one kickflip, son. It takes some payment of dues. See you at the next one, Taylor

We've all gome some embarassing things about our past. These two freestylers here used to wear kneepads when skating flat with socks pulled all the way up tucked into the pads

Filmer Sara worked all weekend and will have some footage coming in soon. Bobby Worrest won't be in any of it because he didn't skate

Somehow Peter Raffin ended up in our room at the end of the night. Thanks for the entertaining stories, Peter. I like when people don't hold back on their industry stories. Good night everyone. Thanks etnies for everything this weekend

Clem's Playin' Hooky Photos:

The Chief is into old cars as well as motorcycles. This is a '69 Camaro, 100% completely restored with all OG parts. He takes it out about once a week

Gearing up to get down

This is Drew. He's the building operations manager at Black Box and doesn't have a car. The bike he's sitting on right here is his only form of transportation. One day on the way to work he clipped the end of a car and went flying over the handlebars. Amazingly, he was fine (but a bit shaken up) and there was only $130 worth of damage to the bike

I think that I got slightly artsy with this one. JT is smirking and that's Chad in the mirror

I'm not sure what town we were going through right here, but it sure was nice. Riding and taking photos at the same time is a bit of a challenge

Jamie grabbed the camera to take a shot of me and he caught me waving to another biker going the other way. Check out those ape hangers. I had never ridden with them for a long period of time before, but once you get used to them they're pretty comfy

The Chief on a fs feeble to fakie over the gap, just like he did at Washington St. in Ride The Sky. Jamie's got this move on lock

Jamie offered me a pair of shoes, but I had my eye on the Crocs and they weren't my size

L to R - Jamie, Jesse Fritsch, Mike Burnett, Mike Sinclair, and Brian Howard. This group of guys can tell some damn funny stories. I also learned a lot of inside info that I'll never be able to repeat, but let me tell you that there are a lot of crazy people involved in skateboarding

I’ve seen enough Contests in the past few years to know that I don’t necessarily have to watch every single bit of the event to write a story, so when I got an offer to go ride motorcycles with Jamie Thomas, I took him up on his hospitality. We met at his place at about 1pm and hit the road immediately, with the threat of rain looming overhead. Joining us was Chad and Drew from Black Box, as well.

So we start the ride and it’s like 0 to 100mph in no time. We’re going through winding roads, up and down hills, at a minimum of 30mph over the speed limit at all times. Then when we got onto the interstate it was 100mph and weaving in and out of cars. In CA it’s legal to “split lanes.” That means that you can literally pass between two cars on a motorcycle. After that experience, which I was totally down for of course, I think that Black Box needs to do their own Wild Ride. Or maybe they just do it every weekend…

We grabbed some lunch midway through, rode down the coast, and then hit the Black Box TF for a quick session. We met some old friends for dinner after that and called it a night. Thanks for the fun day, Chief. I finally made it back to Lake Forest, but missed the Bad Religion show and party. Oops. I’ll check out the entire GvR Finals though…

If you don’t know what GvR is all about, then let me give you the quick break down: This is the 5th Annual. Who knows if it will continue from here, but the bottom line is that Regular has won twice and Goofy has won twice. That means this could be the eternal tie-breaker on which stance is truly dominant. Funny to think about, right? Does anyone really care? I’ll tell you what…a lot of people that are hanging around Sole Technology (parent company of eS, etnies, and Emerica) care, and overall, it’s really an entertaining concept.

So back to the Contest…it’s basically a team vs. team challenge, with the teams being those that are regular-stance and those that are goofy-stance. Think about your favorite pros and top ams and which way they skate and you can figure out the teams. Pretty simple, right? Sometimes the most simplistic ideas are the best, which brings the eS Game of SKATE to mind. Did I happen to mention that it’s the “etnies” GvR? Yet another good Sole Tech idea.

To add a little more excitement, there is a betting pool where you can actually bet on Regular or Goofy with legit odds and the whole deal, like it’s Vegas or something. The last two years I’ve put $100 on Regular and lost. This time I put $100 on Regular again, but keep reading to see how I did…

You know that it pretty much never rains in Southern California, but of course it rained on Saturday during the Qualifiers. That meant that the rest of the Qualifiers got handled before the Semi-Finals on Sunday afternoon. But I happened to miss those too because I had cool-guy industry conversations going on constantly. However, I did make it into etnies Skatepark to watch the best of the best, the Semis and Finals. Now we’re talkin’…

The skaters were broken down into five-man heats according to their stance. There would be a heat of Regular, then a heat of Goofy, then back to the Regs…and you get the picture. In the Semis they had four heats total, two for each stance. Then they took the top dudes out of the Semis and put them in with the “chosen ones” from each stance…they guys that were picked ahead of time to represent either Goofy or Regular in the Finals.

With my $100 on Regular I felt pretty confident because I had Malto, Reynolds, Cole, Sheckler, and McCrank. And the top five for the Goofs just didn’t seem to match up with Rogers, Hendley, Caswell, Olson, and Darrell representing. No offense to those dudes because they’re all rad skateboarders, but I just thought that the Regular line-up was better. But then I got a bit nervous when I heard that both Andrew Reynolds and Ryan Sheckler were “sick.” I don’t know about that because I saw Shecks in the crowd, but hey, I don’t blame those dudes because I wouldn’t want to be skating contests constantly either if I was them, so Regular got ams Chris Troy and Julian Christianson (who?) in their places.

Okay, so we get through four more heats of Finals, two for each stance, and the skating was literally off the hook. The little crew I was hanging thought it was going to Regular, then Goofy, then Regs again…the skating was that close that we couldn’t predict the final result. So then guess what happened…the final scores were within 25 points and the two teams had to play each other in a Game of SKATE on the chosen obstacle, which happened to be the big double-set with a step-up and good-sized hubbas on each side.

It was Chris Cole and Andrew Langi repping Regs and Tyler Hendley and Justin Figueroa for the Goofs. This was literally the best Game of SKATE that I’ve ever seen. Goofy came up and got a couple of letters on Regular, but then Cole got strategic. The best part was Chris Cole getting Figgy on old school tricks like the fs 180 air and nosegrab judo up the step-up. As gnarly as Figgy is, his attempts were literally pathetic…it was obvious that he had never even thought of trying those tricks before. Goofy had a chance to make a comeback, but it didn’t happen because Cole can do every single trick in the world. Cole ended it with a switch fs flip and bs 360 ollie into the step-up. Tyler and Figgy gave solid tries respectively, but just couldn’t hang...

• 1st - Chris Cole - $16,000 – at the risk of kissing way too much Chris Cole ass, I’m saying that he is currently the best skateboarder alive. If he puts his mind to it, I don’t think that there is anything he can’t do. That’s why he was the Regular MVP, too
• 2nd - Andrew Langi - $10,000 – what is this kid going to do with 10 G’s? I don’t know what to say and I’ve said this before I guess, but Langi is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the very near future. He’s skating on a pro level
• 3rd - Julian Christianson - $6,000 – who are you? Where did you come from? With the exception of the bs 180 bennihana, this kid had quite a bag of tricks. Someone will be picking him up shortly
• 4th - Carlos DeAndrade - $3,500 – where you been, Son? Carlos still has it, with HUGE fs ollies on the qp and bs flips over the whole couch
• 5th - Chris Troy - $3,500 – I think that Troy was a bit nervous that he got picked for the Final squad, but he held his own with proper 360 flips down the big stairs and fs boardslides 270 out on the rails
• 6th - David Loy - $1,000 – my boy
• 7th - Fabrizio Santos - $1,000 – new nickname courtesy of Duncan: Fabreezy
• 8th - Rick McCrank - $2,000 – note: If you were picked to be in the Finals, you got an extra G. That’s why McCrank in 8th has $2,000 and 7th has $1,000
• 9th - Kurtis Colamonico - $1,000 – gangsta’
• 10th - Austen Seaholm - $1,000 – yes, we’re cool with him
• 11th - Sean Malto - $2,000 – Lil’ Koston
• 12th - Steve Reeves - $1,000 – wild man
• 13th - Chris Mendes - $1,000 – some people say he’s weird
• 14th - Adam Dyet - $1,000 – claimed to get ripped off again
• 15th - Danny Rosario - $1,000 – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost before each trick

• 1st - Tyler Hendley - $2,000 – they call him “White Chocolate.” Damn that’s a funny nickname, but don’t let it fool you because Tyler knows how to throw the f*#k down when the time comes. He did 360 flips and nollie biggies higher than anyone there and was damn close to leading the Goofs to victory and himself to MVP
• 2nd - Jereme Rogers - $2,000 – the best was Jereme claiming that “Cole cheated” because he did some old school tricks to take the Game of SKATE. Sounds like someone needs to learn ollie grabs
• 3rd - Justin Figueroa - $1,000 – Figgy is already a top am and is on his way to being a top pro in the next couple of years. He’s got a HUGE bag of tricks, but now we just need him to learn how to grab his board…ha
• 4th - Rodolfo Gugu Ramos - $1,000 – someone said to me, “It’s amazing how much control he has over those 180 fs ollies to switch krooks.” It really is…he locks them in so good and solid it’s like a regular krooked grind
• 5th - Chad Bartie - $1,000 – ATV Aussie ripper ain’t scared to jump down big stuff. Even though he was 10 years older than the rest of the Goofy skaters, he still did a bluntslide down the big hubba and a heelflip down the big stairs
• 6th - Caswell Berry - $2,000 – stoked to see him in a contest
• 7th - Brandon Westgate - $1,000 – super impressive
• 8th - Darrell Stanton - $2,000 – class act
• 9th - Taylor Smith - $1,000 – on the come up
• 10th - Alex Olson - $2,000 – best style ever
• 11th - Felipe Gustavo - $1,000 – kf fs krooks on lock
• 12th - Tommy Fynn - $1,000 – doesn’t look Australian
• 13th - Morgan Smith - $1,000 – ripped the whole time, but maybe got overlooked
• 14th - Kevin Romar - $1,000 – can’t remember much, but he’s a smooth operator
• 15th - Helder Lima - $1,000 – Euro

And I won the betting pool, too. Not sure how much I came up because Rob and I had to book it out of there to make our flight at LAX, so it’s just money in the bank. It was a long trip home sitting in the middle from LA to Atlanta, but Rob took the middle for me from ATL to home…

Thanks very much to our friends at Sole Tech who always take such good care of us. From the hotel accommodations to the free food, party, and entertainment the entire time…thanks for having us.

Let me leave you with a quote:

“Swift blew it by putting in Taylor Smith over Felipe Gustavo.” – Chris Ortiz

Ryan