Let's Go Exploring!

By Stalker Steve

The last frame of the last edition of the popular Calvin & Hobbes comic strip showed the duo riding off into the distance on a snow-covered hill, Calvin steering with Hobbes on the rear, and Calvin exclaiming, "Let's go exploring!"

Many trips out to skate some street spots begin with "Oh, let's go to that spot," only to get kicked out and for us to just end up exploring Tampa and the surrounding areas. Often times what we come away with is infinitely cooler than what we intended to shoot in the first place.

We went exploring.

This is a spot we hit up on a sporadic Lakeland day. I'd been wanting to shoot a photo here for a while and Brandon Knowles was the lucky winner.

At the end of a fun skate day around Tampa, Jereme Knibbs, Jacob Krajewski, and I ended up at the infamous Ghetto Banks. Doubles ensued, as Knibbs laid down a long 5-0 to fakie with Jacob right behind him to a frontside 5-0 revert.

This is an old spot we forgot about and rolled by skating around Ybor City one cloudy day. Schaefer was doing some exploring of his own and walked by as Knibbs was trying it.

Robbie Kirkland has been on a killing spree lately, with this spot out in Lakeland, Florida being his latest victim. We were driving around with no particular place to go and ended up at this place. This tech of a trick being done on a sketchy barrier is insane.

I saw this spot some months ago and thought it was perfect for Robbie Kirkland. He was living in the panhandle of Florida at the time, but now that he's home he was free to skate it. Crooks, in under three tries.

This switch crooks by Pat Stiener is at the same spot as Robbie's frontside flip switch 5-0 fake. Pat showed me this out-of-the-way barrier one day while fishing for photos.

Knibbs and I were attempting to skate downtown one day and ended up at these smooth benches at the bottom of a skyrise. He was messing around and eventually tried a 5-0 three flip out with moderate success. A few tries later he rolled away, totally shocked.