Tampa to Texas: Road Trip to the Johnny Romano Skate Jam

Video by Joe Pelham



Story, Photos, and Captions By Stalker Steve

We packed up the posse into Clements' truck and headed to Houston, Texas for the Johnny Romano Skate Jam. I broke up the trip into a Contest article and this trip article, so if you're looking for Contest coverage, check out the other article. We got an early start and left the Park at 8am Wednesday morning. We barreled up I-75 to Possum Creek Skate Park in Gainesville. We skated the park for a couple hours and Piro asked, "Y'all wanna see come 'circus-solay' s**t?" and then did a sick bluntslide pop-in on the banked ledge.

From there we hit Tallahassee Park, where we encountered rain right away, so we headed for Biloxi, Mississippi. I kept an eye out for oil in the Gulf, as the room overlooked the water, and everything looked pretty fair. BP, thanks for taking care of your mess.

The next day we headed to Louisiana. We skated around New Orleans' French Quarter, enjoying the Cajun food and atmosphere. Ironically, lots of the streets are named after Saints, but they're packed with bars and strip clubs. I'm not here to judge, live how you live. We found a handrail and Piro and Dylan killed it. Porpe took his turn as security came out and when the guard tried to grab Jorge's arm he lost it. "Don't touch me! Get your hands off me!" Then screamed, "Your name is Carl, Carl!" Carl bore a resemblance to Carl Winslow from Family Matters so that might explain it. After that we hit Baton Rouge's new street plaza.

We got to Houston Thursday night and ran into friends right away. We hit downtown Houston Friday and skated around. That night some of the crew hit a sketchy strip club while Frosty and I hung out with Billy Rohan, discussing mad Wu-Tang mathematics as well as telling funny stories.

The next day was the Jam. It was a great time for a great cause. After the Contest, Billy invited Frosty, Rob, Colin Clark, and I to a party at a local ESPN station. "They're broadcasting for ESPN radio, so you guys might have to hop on the mic real quick," Billy explained. Sounds good. What happened was us on ESPN radio giving a summary of the Contest. From there we hit some bar in Downtown Houston where Chanel from the Fantasy Factory performed. Frosty jumped on stage, grabbed the mic, and yelled "Skatepark of Tampa!” And added a second later, “Dot com!"

The next morning we started making our way back to Tampa and stopped over in Biloxi again to gamble some more. The second day we hit the road hard, hit Tampa that night, and returned to normal life. Thanks to everyone who traveled with us, all our friends at South Shore Distributing and Southside Skatepark, and SPoT for funding another fun trip.