SPoT Goes to Hollywood

I’m super good at spotting celebrities. Hey it’s Carrot Top! Unless I’m crazy…there’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Isn’t that the mayor? All real sightings by me. And the more time I spend in LA the better I get at it. This time I just had to board the plane and - wait a minute! The Miz from MTV Real World New York! What a goon. But getting to the point, Schaefer and I were headed to California on a 48-hour trip for two things, the first, to film an episode of SPoT Life for RIDE Channel. So Wednesday morning we touched down around 11:00am, picked up the rental car and drove straight to Carlsbad where we met up with about 10 of the Bones Wheels team guys and filmer Jared Lucas. First stop, Blockhead Dave’s ramp, which is a backyard wooden bowl that’s essentially carved into the side of a mountain. To bring the young’uns up to speed, Blockhead was a skateboard company in the 90s, famous for discovering future greats like Rick Howard, Steve Berra, Jeremy Wray and Mike Sinclair. Dave had a famous wooden bowl back in the day and now he’s got this one. So we skated it, and let me just put it this way, skating with professional skateboarders can be a humbling experience because they all RIP. Blockhead group photo. Schaefer, backside over the hip but under the lip. Next stop, a double set. Not my idea. But in the course of about an hour, Romar kickflipped it, Decenzo three flipped it, Hoffart varial heeled it, Paul Hart switched heeled it, etc. Back in the day those would have all been enders and sat on for years. Now they're throwaways, and the stuff you didn't see already on Insta you can see next week on SPoT Life. Flotsam and jetsam. Trevor McClung getting the angle of the double set. Look for the footage in SPoT Life. After Hoffart got completely folded trying to clear the double set and the sidewalk into the street, we headed to Bishop skatepark, one of a million outdoor cement parks out west. Sinclair came out to meet us and told us about a ditch that he wanted to have a birthday party at with his pugs, so we pushed around the corner and there it was, basically a perfect cement mini ramp. It was wet but still skateable, and so so good. But before I knew it I was 45 minutes deep in a battle with an old man hammer while the crew gave me tips to help out. “Trust your feet,” Bartie told me. I’d never heard that one before, but you have to consider this is a guy who believes we can bend spoons with mind power. If you’ve ever skated with him you’d be prone to believe him. Bartie, aka Bar-chi, he can melt your mind with his mind. He also likes monster mudding apparently. They don’t make ditches like this out east. Actually, sometimes they don’t even make skateparks like this. We shut down the night with a BBQ at Hoffart’s backyard bowl. The only thing I noticed about it is that it doesn’t have a hip in it. Turns out Hoffart doesn’t like hips. Fun Fact: Jordan has a wife and baby these days so he can no longer really talk about that time he made out with Jessica Beal. Hoffart’s bowl, no hips, along with Paul Hart and Matt Berger. The next day, and the real reason were even in California, we attended a very high level secret meeting with some very high level people at a very high level location. During the meeting, an attendee that shall remain nameless said, “Someday they could make a documentary about this meeting.” Birdman is everywhere these days and we happened to bump into him. He’s rad. He told us about doing the Gumball 3000 Rally in Europe where he went 160 miles an hour in a jeep before the thing shut down completely, like it was playing possum. I thought he should drive slower next time. It's cool to get to see people like Birdy and catch up, we’ve got history together after all. Well, if nothing else, Schaefer and I can say we were there 20 years ago when he did the kickflip McTwist at SPoT. After Birdman explained to Schaefer how to do a 900, Brian returned the favor by telling him how to get a thumbs up in a Selfie and post to Instagram while driving. From there it was straight to the Fantasy Factory to meet up with our new SLS bros. The place is unlike other reality TV show sets in that the star of the show, ahem, Rob Dyrdek, can actually be found there working late night. Out of respect for the partnership I didn't poach a photo of him through his glass walled office. (On a side note: Chanel West Coast was nowhere to be found.) Schaefer handling business at Fantasy Factory. Our hotel in downtown LA neighbored those famous carwash banks, which have been skateable since forever and some how never got proofed. We talked about the famous Gonz / Cards off-the-roof drop in attempts and were trying to figure out where they did it, but I’m pretty sure there’s two car washes with similar banks and this was the other one? Comment below if you know. Either way, it was time for us to go, our 48 hours were up. Schaefer, steep climb. - Paul Zitzer