San Diego Day Two: Black Box “Open House” & Random Skating

Words by Ryan Clements
Photos and Captions by Rob Meronek

The warm-up spot is probably in the running for the Worst Skate Park of All Time award. It’s in Carlsbad, right by the Adio facility, and it’s absolutely unreal that in the ‘heart’ of skateboarding that a city could build such a horrible spot.

Who cares though? We still skated for about an hour and then headed over to Black Box, the home of Zero, Mystery, Fallen, and now Slave. They have the doors open for anyone that does business with them…there is free food and the private TF is there for anyone to skate.

Here are a few random things that I remember from Black Box:

• Anthony Williams once referred to himself as “the Jay-Z of skateboarding.” I have no idea what in the hell that means or if he really even said it, but it was funny enough to jot down
• The Chief, Jamie Thomas, was there in full effect. I heard that he was in Barcelona and flew back just for the Open House. That’s pretty damn cool
• There are bunch of Chevy Novas all over the place that are apparently the property of Jon Allie

From there got into the crappy California traffic and headed south back to San Diego. We dropped the van off at Dollar Rent-A-Car and skated back through downtown to the hotel and hit a few spots along the way, which was certainly a highlight.

Then the work began…it was meeting-time, followed up by a business-oriented dinner. The Trade Show had arrived…

Before going to the Zero/Mystery/Slave/Fallen warehouse known to skateboard bid'niss dudes as "Black Box Distribution," we stopped by the worlds second worst skate park in Carlsbad. The view is more interessting so I'm showing you that instead

Marissa Del Santo on the random obstacles in the parking lot at Black Box

I watched Full Metal Jacket the other day and they were calling them orientals "zipperheads." Never heard that one before. I'm using it from now on. I don't know who this zipperhead is, but he's doing a 360 flip down the stair set

Who dat? Whirly bird whoop dee doo. Right after this, he did a hard flip stink bug grab. Seriously

That's the rest of the Black Box warehouse and more of Scott Koerner not partying while he ollies the pyramid

Who dat? Wow. I would like to personally thank this guy for providing me with some quality entertainment by doing this stunt

Holy hell my work for today is done. I got a Jamie Thomas meron grab photo

The Chief is helping to construct some kind of contraption here. Apparently, the last challenge on King of the Road is at the Black Box warehouse today at 5pm

Chad Bartie lost the Kentucky mudflap and now is sporting a rat tail. Hell yeah. That's a back smith on the bank to wall

Jamie Thomas, thanks for the bbq and drinks

So now we're just getting lost around San Diego in the car and on the board. Lako is claiming that he's going back to drop in on this spot. You can't tell how rough it is. We'll see if he steps it up tomorrow

Many parts of San Diego look just like dirty old FLA

We made a quick stop at a few spots while rolling around the streets of downtown SD. Right after Ian Gow did this tailslide, I had to run off to yet another sketchy skateboard industry bid'niss meeting

Come on, not this crap again. I asked for a fork and they looked at me weird. Bring a steak and potatoes with the fork, too, you zipperhead

A true foot fetish

Phone fetish after another sketchy skateboard business meeting

Professor Schmitt is spreading the skateboard knowledge as usual

Oh man, DJ Wade is here and he's in permanent party mode

There are plenty of pathetically busted products here. More coming up later

Phone fetish with Curren Caples

That's Sierra. She's a model and also teaches austistic children. Nice. Check out Sierra's myspace