Lurking In Two Corners of the Country: Tampa and Nike in Portland
Posted
on
on Friday, February 08, 2008
by Rob
A random chill cam dump consisting of a tour of the Nike Campus in Portland and random stuff in Tampa.
 The downtown destruction of the Art Museum has begin |
 Kenny Hughes and I had full blown text battles for a week leading up to the Super Bowl. Kenny lost four hundred bucks to me because the Giants won. I wasn't even going to watch the game, but thanks to Kenny, it was extra entertaining |
 Look at this crazy cut of characters at the Bro Bowl the other day. We got some large girl skating in a mini-skirt, some shirtless dude skating in slacks and dress shoes, some cat wearing cargo shorts hailing Hitler, BMX dudes with no brakes, and what appears to be a Roller Derby chick. It's just another typical day at the Bro Bowl |
 Bro Bowl slashers |
 I took a trip over to the St. Pete plaza park thing. When I saw this kid, I wanted to rip his shirt off like Hulk Hogan and give him his money back |
 Furlong is the latest knee surgery victim. Get well soon, man. We'll keep the flat bottom of the vert ramp occupied with plenty of games of SKATE while you're gone |
 It was a seriously weird scene at the Dirty But Sophisticated show at Czar the other night. Naked dudes were fanning people with giant feathers |
 Wow, foot fetish with shoes you can see from outer space. Who the hell am I hanging out with right now? I have no idea |
 Someone please take me to Puerto Rico |
 At every city I stop in, I send a postcard with a silly message or drawing on it to my second home, The Hub in downtown Tampa. I'm going to have my own wall there soon |
 Somehow this photo ended up in my inbox. That's DJ Wade and Blair from Transworld. Brothers from different mothers |
 I'm flying into Portland right now. The weather is not looking good |
 The first order of business was dinner with our friends from Nike SB. They had this menu that had sersiously like 25 words I've never even heard of on it. May as well have been in another language. I am not a fan of fancy ass food |
 Fine wine and skateboard sneaker talk - thanks for dinner |
 That's Mark and Rob from Nike SB along with a dessert that's too blown out and high class for me to even try a bite of |
 So now we're at the Nike offices. They call it a "campus." It's like it's own city with no hookers and homeless people. Everything's super clean except my friend Kevin's desk here. Wow, what a pile. This one tops mine for sure. I feel much better now |
 People have some interesting things at their desk here. I hope they don't get any inspiration from these |
 I'm in James' office now. He's the Nike SB designer. You wish you had a shoe stash like that |
 There's tons of random stuff in the hallways like this. Looks like this is the Nike teenie bopper Hello Kitty division |
 Are we going to see these P-Rod's anytime soon? Ask James |
 They take their testing seriously |
 That's Hunter in one of the cafeteria's at the Nike campus. They got extra fancy food there, too |
 Michael from Nike SB took us to all the top secret spots. This place here is known as the kitchen. It's where a lot of the designers for Nike post up and create stuff. In here we met Tinker, the designer of the Jordan shoe for the past couple decades where he showed us his latest creation, the Jordan XXIII. No photos allowed. He mentioned that a pair just sold on Ebay for 13 grand. Everybody chill, they're just shoes |
 That's Michael there with Schaefer. He brought us to the department that makes foot molds. They have a foot mold of all these superstar athletes here. I guess they used the same molding process to make the Tampa Pro trophies. This is a sample here. Feels like it's a big sugar cube molded into that turtle |
 We ran into Justin Brock wandering the halls of the Nike campus. He's got some new ink. You may recognize it from all the tags we had to clean up around the Skatepark after the Am Contest. Frosty wants to fold Justin in half after that clean up job |
 Ryan Dodge is new to the Nike SB staff. That's Barak and Lee from Plus Skate Shop. It's almost like a mini-trade show this weekend |
 Did you know Chet Childress has a 14 year old son that lives in Valrico, Florida? After one more Nike dinner, everyone took off to go skate at Department of Skateboarding, the local skate park here |
 I chose to go to the Department of Drinking and Smoking instead. Tomorrow we will be skating at the new Nike TF |
 This nice little package showed up in all our hotel rooms. A backpack with every color known to man with some gear inside, including the new Zoom Tre AD. The reason we're here is called a "Wear Test." We are going to learn about this shoe, skate in it, and take foot fetish photos with it. Actual skate photos are coming soon, I promise |
