Ryan Clements’ Miniature Central/South Florida Skate Park Tour

Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek

That's one of the bowls at Englewood Public Skate Park

A skateboard rollercoaster ride at Englewood Public Skate Park

The street course at Englewood Public Skate Park

The China banks at Englewood Public Skate Park

Levi Combs felt right at home on these banks. Check the sequences

Levi Combs - backside crailslide shakka out

I'm always making requests for Levi to do a sugarcane. Wish I could do that

Levi goes surfing during hurricanes. Here, he went surfing out of a hurricane

Now we're at The Edge Public Skate Park in Naples

The mini-ramp at The Edge Public Skate Park in Naples

You can have fun times slashing like a murderer here

Of course they have one of those pools with no water in it. Let's fill it up after Clem finishes that frontside grind

Porpe almost killed me. Lucky the camera was my shield

Jorge aka Porpe took a beating to get that 50-50. Here's two rough pile ups

One more Porpe pile up, this time to the nuts followed with a front flip

Jorge finally rode away and we called it a night at The Edge

Levi doesn't want water in the pool - frontside 5-0 crail grab

We stayed in some hotel in the sticks and this frog was our entertainment for the night

They got high tech TV's with radios in them

Now we're back on the road and the road signs always provide some great entertainment

Porpe had everyone from girls to old handicapped people honking at us left and right with his sign

Crusing around the state a little drunk in the back of a pick-up truck can wear you out a little

So now we're in Melbourne where we got the full small Florida town experience in under 24 hours. Durke is working at a classy bar there so we stopped by for a drink or six

Then we filmed a scene out of a crappy radio rap video. Who's paying for the Moet? Carrie and Dodge don't care

Mandatory foot fetish

Mandatory phone fetish

A fine Sunday in Melbourne started out with a dip in the ocean

Then we stopped by a park being constructed. It looks like it's going to be super fun

Dodge took us to this abandoned batting cage with banks, a gap, and lots of other fun little things all around

Hell yeah, Levi meron grabbed the gap

After Dodge backside 180'd it, we were kicked out by the darkness

Levi's getting skakka on the trampoline with a tuck knee

The last place we went to was Cocoa Beach Public Skate Park. Clem's got a back smith stall and a wave for you

Hot photography stance

A correctly balanced tail block by Ichabod

Ryan Dodge - feeble grind on the bank to Jersey barrier thing

Ichabod - fast plant

Jorge Angel - jumping jacks. Levi Combs - frontside disaster

Levi Combs - frontside flip smith on the weird bank tranny

Levi Combs - no comply tailslide

Hey Neal Hendrix, here's that old man trick you're watching for. Rob Meronek - pivot fakie

Rob Meronek - blunt fakie. Thanks for shooting these photos, Derewenko

The Florida sky is bringing rain and thunder our way. We're out of here. You should quit reading about road trips and take one of your own

Take six guys and throw them in the F-350 for two-and-a-half days and see where the road takes them. Yeah right. You know I got that $h!t planned and calculated where every “t” is crossed and every “i” is dotted. I put together a list and developed a plan. Calls were made where needed and we knew that we’d run into a Hooters for fuel and Starbucks for rocket fuel. We left Skatepark on Friday at about 12:30pm. After the second stop the tour got its name. Just like the Listen to Ryan Clements t-shirts, I didn’t come up with it…

• They require helmets and elbow pads and they’re “run” by the City
• What I mean by the City is two meatheads doing pretty much nothing other than enforcing the “rules”
• The meatheads both decided to take lunch at 3pm. For real…they just took off right when we arrived. So we hopped the fence and skated for an hour with no pads
• They were pissed when they got back, but we made peace and gave them some Red Bull that they didn’t want
• Team Pain added a nice replica of the China Banks at this place. Overall it’s really sick, but it was hot as all hell

• What appeared to be lame from the outside, was rad on the inside
• We figured it would be pad-nanny park number two, but when we walked in the kid was like, “Yeah, go ahead.”
• Jorge was the MVP with the gap out to 50-50 on the Jersey barrier to back into the tranny while taking the most falls I’ve seen in a while
• Team Pain did a good job on this one, too. It has a snake run (sort of) that goes into a really good bowl area that’s very fun. The pool is sick, too
• There’s a Hooters just off I-75, so we got hotels right across the street from there

• It always feels good to go back to something you know. We were welcomed with open arms by Matt Cantor and staff
• The park, built by Allen Russell, is fun, but as soon as there are kids going back and forth it’s tough to skate
• Cantor threw on the Slayer and proceeded to destroy the place
• I had trouble seeing because there is limited natural light
• Rob got the tail-gate party started
• We were beat, so we bailed at about 1pm and took a quick tour of South Beach, which basically accomplished nothing other than getting a truck full of dudes all horned-up

• At this point I’m sure that everyone was thinking, “Clements, what the hell are you doing to us?”
• I had heard that this place had A/C. I was wrong
• Someone also told me that you need your bible and helmet to skate, and you have to hold them on you at all times. That’s funny
• Uli was super-cool and let us slide on both
• The ramps are a little struggling, but they just got into that new, non-A/C’ed location and will be rebuilding soon
• I don’t think that Rob took a single photo of Levi killing this place just like he did all of the others

• Finding this place was like being on a wild goose chase, but 10 phone calls and four wrong exits later we made it happen
• It’s at an old, run down go-cart race track, mini-golf, and every other fat-kid activity in which you could participate
• It was actually creepy enough to film a horror movie there
• I heard that Johan Stuckey did an alley-oop fs ollie over the gap, which is absolutely ridiculous
• I had absolutely nothing for this spot…pretty much just like every other spot we hit. You’ve already seen me do fs smiths, bs disasters, and fake tail blocks…sorry Neal (unless Rob took a photo that I’m unaware of)

• I’m not sure of the name of this place because it’s under construction courtesy of Team Pain
• The layout is sick and it looks like it’s going to be a really fun place to skate
• We rolled in and talked to some old friends and hung for a bit
• Obviously we didn’t skate, but I still think this counts as visiting a skate park

• I really like this place, but skating at 1pm in the Florida sun can be brutal
• I don’t think that it phased the crew because some serious ripping still went down
• This park is run by the same crew that runs Graffiti Skate Zone. They always take great care of us and the hospitality is amazing. I want to say ‘thank you’ for their kindness
• The kid that told me about his grandmother dying of cancer and Levi about his dead uncle totally freaked me out
• We kept yelling “Get some! Get some!” out at each other…straight quote from Full Metal Jacket. You probably need to watch that movie about 100 times

• We watched three movies in the F-350
  • Full Metal Jacket
  • The Big Lebowski
  • 40 Year Old Virgin
• Sirius’ Radio rules and “Hard Attack” was the station/anthem of the trip
• Derewenko was sober
• Total trip time was approximately 55 hours, with 12 hours of driving time
• Two tanks of gas were burned up – that’s over $200 in the F-350. Yikes!
• We covered about 750 miles

Just wanted to drop a quick thanks to Ryan Dodge and James Witt for being our guides up the east coast, taking us to the beach on Sunday morning, and letting us crash at their pad. Thanks to Durke Schmidt at Fubar in Melbourne for hooking up the drinks. Thanks to all of the lovely ladies at Hooters for giving us something to laugh about.

If you don’t go out and do something like this for yourself once-in-a-while you’re not a skateboarder…you’re more like a jock like Jorge.

Ryan