etnies Goofy vs. Regular: Street Finals

Tony Tave - super nice guy and super nice bsts to fakie on the hubba

Tony Tave - frontside flip down the 11

Tony Tave - fakie flip down the 11

Ronnie Creager's switch hard flip down the 11 was PERFECT

Paul Rodriguez - frontside feeble grind

Paul Rodriguez - kickflip down the double set

All smiles Malcom Watson - backside 180 nosegrind

Paul Rodriguez - nollie backside nosegrind

Jereme Rogers made this switch feeble all day long

Jereme Rogers won $11,000, so we might see a new chain next time. This is a kickflip down the 11 set

These are the results of the Home Town Heroes Am Contest. We have nothing to do with this event. I just covered up their logos with the SPoT logo. A big HELL YEAH to my homie Colin Hale who won that

Jon Goemann - frontside 5-0 to fakie on the hubba

Here's your copy of the results being handed out at the Contest. We do not have anything to do with this event. I just put SPoT logos over the ones that were on there

Chris Cudlipp - frontside disaster backside revert faster than a New York minute

I get jealous when I see how effortless Darell Stanton does these nollie frontside boardslides

No need to feel homophobic on this photo. That's not Chris Cole's asscrack. That's his belt. This was a pretty damn perfect backside 360 kickflip down the 11 set

Ryan Clements and I decided to have a back tail challenge to see whose back tail looks crappier on this sketchy and hard to skate quarter pipe in some ditch near the hotel

Some of the best skateboard contest entertainment ever - goofy and regular cheerleaders getting down to full booty music and doing legit cheers that would get the jocks in your high school clapping. I heard someone on the mic say, "OK, skateboarding just got wierd." This was a fantastic intermission. High five to whoever hooked this up. Dennis Busenitz and Nyjah Huston don't seem to care as much as I do

Bryan Herman - 360 flip over the bump to barrier thing

Looks like a take a poop pic, huh? Nope, Bryan Herman made this backsdie noseblunt slide just fine. The front foot pressure sucked that tail right up and he rode away clean

Not the best photo, but definitely the best trick - Bryan Herman - nollie inward heel over the bump to barrier

Most of Braydon Szafranski's photos on the site are him drunk and half naked. He makes up for it here with a backside flip over the bump to barrier thing

Did Braydon Szafranski ever make this frontside flip? Not sure but this one looks close enough

Man I sure hate my skating. This back tail on the sketchy ditch quarter near the hotel took me like 8,000 tries and the one I made still sucks ass

Mark Appleyard went super fast on these backside tail slides, including when he did a nollie big spin into one. I had to scrape my jaw off the floor after that

Clements and I were walking back to the hotel, we saw three super bored kids breaking everything they could with their boards - beer bottles, etc. We hit it off with them right away and went to skate this sketchy stuff built in some ditch near the hotel. This is our new friend Aidan Campbell, a local here, doing a wall ride hand plant type deal

Angel Ramirez - backside 180 down the double set

Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek

I remember wondering when I was a kid, “Why is it called goofy when you skate with your right foot forward?” I mean, it’s total pot luck which foot ends up towards the front of the board when you first step on a board, right? You’ve got to also realize that when I started skating that there was no switch skating at all. The idea of switch kind of throws a wrench in the whole goofy/regular argument, doesn’t it? We all skate both goofy and regular nowadays anyway. Regardless, etnies has a really good concept here, so we decided to check it out.

Here’s how the format was broken down: There are two ‘teams’ obviously…goofy and regular. The goofy team was represented by Dave Swift of The Skateboard Mag and the regular team had the legendary Jake Phelps from Thrasher for their team manager. Each team manager got to choose five skaters that automatically made it to Sunday, the finals. The rest of the skaters that wanted to be in had to skate on Saturday to qualify for Sunday’s finals.

For the finals, each skater got two, one-minute runs. Then there were two jams for the goofy skaters and two jams for the regular skaters. All of the scores of the runs and jam combined were tallied together for a total that declared the champ. In addition, there was a goofy champ and a regular champ to be crowned.

There were a lot of superstars in attendance, so I’m sure that the kids watching were stoked. Not to mention, it was totally free for anyone to roll up and check it out. There was also a cool area close by that housed a bunch of tents and vendor booths. etnies had everything dialed to assure a fun time for the average spectator.

Rob just said to me, “Those jams were some of the best skating that I’ve ever seen.” He’s right about that. Here are some highlights from those jams:

Regular

• Kurtis Colamonico – he started out and then Braydon Syzfranski subbed for him.
• Bryan Herman – he was going for the nollie inward heel over the big barrier for a while, but it just didn’t happen
• Chris Cole – Chris did the trick of the year with his bs 360 ollie kickflip down the 11-stair. He left everyone shaking their heads in disbelief
• Ryan Sheckler – little Shecks is a true ripper. He did fs flips and full cabs down the 11-stair

Goofy

• Tony Tave – style doesn’t get much better than Tony’s, and his bs tailslide to fakie down the big hubba was classic
• Dennis Busenitz – I don’t think that Dennis was feeling it in the jam, but his skating was amazing all day long
• Mark Appleyard – he couldn’t nail the nollie bigspin back tail on the huge ledge (damn), so he wasn’t feeling it. Nyjah came in to sub for him and proceeded to destroy the course
• Nyjah Huston – switch heel down the 11? Big spin front board on the flat bar? Nyjah is unbelievable
• Nilton Neves – he started and then Jereme Rogers came in to help out…not only did Jereme help out, but he did switch 50-50’s and switch feebles down the
11-stair rail along with an assortment of ridiculous flat bar tricks, too
• Ronnie Creager – how is he switch hardflipping down 11 at 32 years of age?

When it was all said and done, goofy came out on top as the winner. In addition, the top placing for goofy was Jereme Rogers, who took home $11,000. The honors for regular went to Chris Cole.

To top it all off, I bet $100 on regular to win. My skateboarding gambling isn’t going so well right now. In August I lost $600 at the X-Games and now I’m down another hundo at GvR to one of the main men at Sole Tech, Don Brown. But I’m sure that I ate and drank $100 worth of free food and beverages this weekend, so we’ll call it a wash. Thanks for the good time.

Ryan