Vans WSR07 Contest in Rotterdam

(click to enlarge) I followed around Flip filmer Ewan Bowman so I knew I'd be getting the goods. He told me to make him look good, so I Photoshopped some of Adam Dyet's lovely flowing locks of hair on Ewan's bald ass head for this sequence of Arto Saari

(click to enlarge) David Gonzalez did not get the little kid points that some other tykes in the Contest got. He should have been higher than 5th place in the Finals

(click to enlarge) Adam Dyet could have made his kickflip melon backside 360 over the human cannonball launcher if there weren’t three stink bug grabbing attention starved tykes taking up the last minute of time on the clock on tricks they had no chance in hell of making

(click to enlarge) I'm not a professional judge or anything. Maybe that's why I don't understand how Dyet did this in the Semi-Finals among other things like back tail down the big rail, but didn't make the cut. Somehow basic tricks like lipslides, front boards, and kickflips got you in the cut, as long as you hadn't hit puberty yet. That's just my personal opinion. I probably just don't understand skateboarding anyway

(click to enlarge) I like Figgy's total disco stance on the ride away from this trick

(click to enlarge) If the wind was blowing harder, Neal Hendrix may have sailed all the way into the crowd in this transfer

(click to enlarge) Based on the nights I've seen Rune Glifberg out here and there across Europe, I bet he's sweating beer while doing this frontside heelflip

(click to enlarge) Rune Glifberg's kickflip back lip would still be looking good even if he had a silly Red Bull helmet on

(click to enlarge) Ward to Your Mutha has some serious moves on the pipe. Besides Rune, he was one of my favorites to watch

Who dat? Smith grind on the big rail

Weiger was ripping everything to pieces with hard, original tricks as usual. This is a front crook to backside 180 out

DMFP is using purple power in the feet to get down the rail frontside

When someone else's flash fires at the same time I shoot, it really helps with a better photo. Per Ewan Bowman's request to look good, I went ahead and Photoshopped a nice viking helmet on him. Arto is doing a frontside 5-0 to backside 180 into the bank

Apparently, it's easier to come to Europe from Brazil than it is to come to the US, so the Brazilians were in full force all month out here. This is Ricardo Olivera frontside nosegrinding the big rail. I hope Brazilians don't take offense when Schaefer jokes on the mic like, "You can take that 100 Euros and buy a mansion in Brazil with that"

Sebastiaan Vijverberg is one of my top 10 Euro dudes for this trip

I didn't get a good photo of my new friend Fries Taillieu (not fries as in French fries, it's pronounced "freeze"), but I did get this one with a nice Euro filmer in it. She's from Amsterdam and is filming for MTV. Fries rips and was our roommate for a night. See you next year, buddy

Dyet sure ate some poop going for this front blunt fakie

That's Ewan Bowman's hands in this Tom Penny photo. I gave him a Freddy Kreuger glove. Looking good, Ewan. The trick is a switch pop shuv to forward over the bank hip

Chris Lehman was scheduled to come to Europe with us for a while, but a busted collar bone derailed those plans. DMFP's got an ice plant fakie in his honor

Helder Lima's got it on everything - manuals, ledges, banks, and big rails. I know a lot of good people who will never make it in skateboarding, but Helder should be able to pull it off. This is a backside overcrook down the big rail

I don't think I saw Bryan Herman fall on any tricks on the big rail

I left for Europe a few days before the iPhone came out, so the geek gadget in me was pretty bummed. David Loy had one at the Contest and it was the first time I got to use it. I missed a lot of good skate photos while messing around with this thing. My friend Dan Peterka at Apple hooked it up and one is on the way to my needy fingers right now

Mark Appleyard was like, "What's with the duck?"

Our new friends Sille and Maria look innocent, but they're really on a secret mission to get Dirty Bird back to Copenhagen. Mission not accomplished

Things didn't work out for the Six Pack and the photo contest. Watch for all the entries in an upcoming issue of Slap and an article about our five week adventure in Thrasher

Holy hell, the vert ramp is way over there? Someone call me a taxi

Juergen Horrwarth - frontside air over the hip

Rune Glifberg - back smith over the hip

Someone should make a shaved head graphic helmet like that guy on the deck that Neal Hendrix is about to fastplant off of

Time for a pow-wow. Should the Vert Contest go on in these hurricane force winds?

Damn, wish I had a better angle on Nicky Guerrero's sad plant. I think that's one of the best looking inverts

Nicky, I'd like to see you out here for Tampa Pro next year

Sandro did everything huge

Rune Glifberg - crooked grind over the hip

Juergen was sailing huge backside ollies over the gap in the howling winds

Frederik Austbo apparently is some kind of super star snowboarder in Europe as you can tell by this frontside 360 looking like the Noah Salasnek of today. Fred rips and he's a cool dude, too. Best Trick was on this cannonball launcher thing. I missed the shot of Curren Caples' 360 varial that won it. He learned it during the Best Trick countdown

A bottle of Jack Daniels came with your trophy. That was no good for P-Stone who drank Joe Brook's winning bottle for the Photo Contest

So the Contest is over and we're all pretty sauced out so a trip to a nearby coffee shop is in order. Appleyard holds up a finger to put things in perspective. We reached the clouds in this place

We sure did

Right now it's a race to get rid of all our substances that are legal in Holland but illegal in the US and A

This is what the ceiling in the bathroom at the coffee shop looks like. For some reason, it was like, really, really, really cool at the time

Tom Penny and crew, thanks for the drunken entertainment in front of the hotel after the contest. We made our own After-Party that totally ripped

The train goes directly into the airport in Amsterdam from Rotterdam. It's finally time to go home. Good bye Europe

Wait, but not before one last session in front of the airport with Shruiken Shannon, Anthony Schultz, Adam Dyet, and P-Stone...see you all next year. I already want to go back

If we were in the good ol' US and A, someone could come out with bombs, hand grenades, and AK47's while throwing Rambo knives in the crowd and it would be no different than every channel on regular TV. If a bare naked woman walked the street course prior to the Finals in a skateboard contest, the Swat Team would be called in to take care of the problem. Good thing this isn't the US and A

Rune Glifberg won Vert and Arto Saari won Street. Joe Brook won the Photo Contest. Except for the top placings which were on point, I'm going to have to call total shenanigans on the results today. It pretty much didn't make any sense, but maybe that's just me. Ok, and maybe like 10 other people standing around me, too