Sketchy Winter Jam Contest

By Stalker Steve

If SPoT had a boy band this would be it. You've got the fun one, the young one, the rebellious one, and the older one.

Dillow came with us and got out of the Shop for the weekend. He was so psyched he frontside flipped up up this big Doritos step-up in five or less tries.

Dylan back heeled up the Doritos step-up.

Porpe pulled this switch flip after battling it out for a bit. He had it a little rocketed, but still, that's a big step-up to switch flip.

Jereme jumped over this this big hubba and planter gap.

Our friend Joe Storm came and skated for a bit and wrecked the cradle - frontside tailblock.

Jacob Krajewski pulled this disaster.

Dylan was hyped on the bank to flat bar. Back noseblunt.

Dillow is going for the cover of Frontside Grind Magazine.

Getting artsy in the motel room.

The Ocean Center's strict rules.

Tim Kulas brought his Goat Ramp up for the mini-ramp contest.

Chris Blake - ollie up to disaster.

Jordan Price is a Daytona local and was skating all weekend. Ollie up to back smith.

Knibbs brought out his ollie on-ollie off move to the Goat Ramp.

Everyone was hyped on Knibbs' alley-oop disaster.

Porpe, trying to get hyped in the morning.

The Ocean Center has some pretty okay ledges out front and Dylan took advantage with a back tail.

Jacob really surprised me with his palm tree laden switch front noseslide.

Chris Blake was one of the only people hitting the roof or hood of this ramp/Beetle that was straight out of a 2000 Euro contest.

Dylan Perry squashed the Bug with this switch 50-50.

As it turned out, this contest had some Christian undertones. I don't necessarily mind Christian skate events, I just don't like it when it's not advertised as such. When a Christian rock song came on, Jacob was pretty over it.

Jereme pulled out a spine trick - back tail to 180 blunt pop-over.

Jereme skated all the ramps with ease - front 360.

Hopefully you're not sick of seeing Jereme photos - back lip.

Dillow snapped a long bank to bank ollie.

I went to College in Daytona. While I did that I worked at Best Buy. It sucked. Anyway, the one cool thing about the job was my General Manager, because he grew up in Venice Beach, California in the 80's with all the Vato's and Cholo's and had a bunch of sick stories from it. I ran into him at the contest and he gave me this jacked mug.

It's just not an event without Mike Rogers there repping Grind For Life.

Mike Barnes was providing endless entertainment heckling this lame pop-punk band. Security snatched his beer in a hurry.

As it turned out, all four members of the band jumped Mike. In a matter of minutes a huge crowd formed around. I missed the photo op, but I did get this photo afterwards. Mike was pissed...

The cool part of the contest was that Tim Johnson was involved and helped judge.

Freddie Tan's buddy Mike introduced himself to me and said, "Yo, check out my tattoo." Wow. Check the snuff in that lip, too. Florida represent!

Freddie killed it with this 50-50 on the Bug.

Our buddy Devon Bagnoli with a kickflip 50-50. Give him a few years to grow up and get some power behind his tricks and he'll be ripping.

Dylan already had the switch 50-50 on the Bug, but handled the front smith in his jam.

Dillow locked a back smith down this rail.

This kid was a local and was ripping with a ridiculous flat spot on his wheel. It sounded like a dirt bike riding around the street course.

One of the wooden ledges broke while Jordan Price was skating it, so Freddie Tan went for a nose manny for a photo.

Tim Kulas was making fun of Jorge, so they had a quick microphone battle.

Our boy Devon came up $600. He got $500 for 1st place in street and $100 for 3rd place in mini ramp. That's a lot of candy.

We broke the rules and skated out. Security was on us like white on rice. A security guard even pushed me while I was shooting photos.

One last Daytona park session resulted in Jacob Krajewski and I shooting this boatyard influenced switch feeble around the corner.

We packed up the Clem-350 and took it on another adventure this past weekend. There was a totally lame, strictly-run skate contest at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida.

We headed out and got out to Daytona Beach a few hours before the start of the mini-ramp part of the contest. First thing we did was check out the public skate park we'd all heard so much about. It's all that and more, truly a really fun park. I'd definitely recommend checking that out. Our old friend Joe Storm came out and skated as well, telling me he'd just opened up a skate shop a mile away called Dirt City Skate Shop. Go check it out and buy something when you're done skating the park.

We skated down to the contest site and checked in, which was pretty smooth the first day. We went in, cruised around on the course, then sat down for the mini-ramp contest. How these guys ran the contest was that they had two divisions, 13 and under and 14 and up. So if you were 14, you were skating against all the legit ams that came out. Wow, awesome call. Knibbs ended up qualifying 5th for the mini-ramp finals, so we broke out back to the motel.

Back at the motel, I fell asleep early, but I guess I missed a totally awesome party on our balcony. One of the friends we made who was visiting from Wisconsin, who we dubbed "Dan the Man," told me the next night, "Oh man, it was awesome, Jorge and me were throwing shot glasses off the balcony!"

So far we were having a great time.

And then there was day two. Day two of the contest was a completely different story than the previous. Security was air tight, rules were (often unnecessarily) enforced, and about anything else you could imagine that makes a skate event leave a sour taste in your mouth was going on all around. Despite the weird scene going on, all the homies were out in full force. Orlando was in the house and so were lots of heads from the east coast of Florida.

Timing seemed to be an issue with the event organizers as a heat was restarted almost halfway through, not to mention the contest ran until 10:30pm after starting at 3pm.