Before getting into the thick of this tale of young guns, veteran warriors and the mind blowing skateboarding that they conjured, I will open with a travel tip. If you find yourself in San Diego fresh off a plane and you should be in Ocean Side;

1. Grab the 992 Bus (It’s right in front of the airport).
2. Get off at the Santa Fe Depot stop and go inside (get a transfer).
3. Have someone direct you to the Coaster and take it to the last stop . . . Ocean Side (use the transfer when purchasing the ticket).

The whole trip is going to cost you about $5.75! The leisurely train ride up the coast is a nice bonus. If you have already booked a nearby hotel more power to you! Unfortunately, the cab ride three miles to that hotel is going to double the cost of your trip.

Once settled in to my nest for the weekend, I proceeded to the site on the beach to check out the practice for Thursdays’ prelims. The Contest site was pretty cool; beachfront view, really well laid out street course and the addition of the Soul Bowl! We had a really fun party at Ruby’s on the end of the pier that night with free drinks, free food (great greasy burgers) and lot’s of dope skaters and cute daters. The stage was set for some ripping action and the weekend looked bright.

To get the standings feel free to refer to the contest standings elsewhere on the website. My personal fulfillment is to give you the contest in a mish-mash of reminiscences. Let’s start with the event that I missed, the Soul Bowl jam. From what I did get to see (which wasn’t nearly enough) there was some total annihilation going down! One guy I did get to see kill it was Omar Hassan. Omar started out by popping out of the bowl, manualing around to corners at speed and bringing it straight in to a milked tail slide. He tore up the bowl with super speed, flipped, grinded, slid and Christ aired to fakied to boot. Some speculated that the Christ was a birthday present to Christian, as it was his b-day. Renton Millar was so damn impressive all weekend that I was compelled to repeatedly reiterate this fact to him. Rentons’ finals run in the bowl was gorgeous. He had total control throughout and finished with a backside nollie flip that I think even impressed him. Aside form those guys; I was judging street and vert during the bowl competition. I know that Soletechs Sasha Steinhorst was up in the masters division, which was one by none other than Mike Mcgill!! Yes, I would have liked to see that as well! Yes, I heard he Mctwisted. The women’s division for street was as always very interesting. This is not meant as a joke, rather it is the truest description of my feelings regarding this obscure (for now) end of skateboarding. Some good skating goes down in the women’s street. Vanessa Torres is quite tech as well as looking very comfy on her board. Amy Caron is one of my favorites because she does nose blunt slides on picnic tables! The thing is, as far as the women’s end goes, the sport is so young that any girl who wants to dedicate one solid year of her life to skating can be top of the sport! How often in the sports world is there a sport so popular and still so young that a person could catch up from scratch? Well, it just doesn’t happen, except right here! Ladies who want to skate get out there and help yourselves and the future of women’s skateboarding go! It is a worth while investment and you could be on t.v. In a year! O.K. I’m calling y’all out. Just the same, these girls who are out there now are awesome. Keep an eye on the girls.

Back to the ranting and raving about this skater and that skater. Neither Christian Svitak nor Jim Gagne made top ten. The fact remains however, that they ride on the same team (Label), they are both crazy good skaters and I say that they are my pick for the working mans skaters of the contest. Those guys seriously bust ass to skate hard! They both look like they're working a coal mine start to finish. Gagne will nose slide anything to flip-out and Svitak in his own words, “can’t believe I land anything sometimes”. Well believe it, working class ripper! Brian Howard has been fighting his share of skate demons lately. This weekend he was showing folks how to conquer your demons by having a good time on the ramp. Brian had nice runs throughout the prelims and ended up 11th, just one off the cut. Brian Howard as well as Buster Halterman are skaters who have been there and are staying. I am really looking forward to seeing these two in the finals for 2002.

Matt Beach came out of nowhere to make qualifiers with humungous kickflips and silky smooth slides then descended back to nowhere during the finals (nowhere being the nowhere that skate superheroes descend to, not normal folks). Caine Gayle just wasn’t feeling it this event, but he is fun to watch so I am mentioning him. Rob Dyrdek had some banging runs and can literally do any form of crooked grind conceivable. Coming back to Renton Millar, this guy killed the vert just like he killed the bowl. It’s so enjoyable to see someone making a kickflip, no grab in the midst of a well-rounded run. Neal Hendrix was in fine form, as always, he doesn’t hit the lip as much as he used to, but this guy goes all out with every air. Neal has a fakie air to fakie that can cover literally fourteen feet (with a big roll-in in the middle).

Rodil De Araujo Jr. is a mouth full to say and his music was almost to obscure to bear. Rodil is a technical monster and Qualified first in the eliminations. The finals caught him by surprise I think; it might have been the music though. I think he was trying to seduce one of the more attractive handrails, hard to say. Chris Senn is always skating real fast and this time around he ended his run with a flat bank ollie-to chest high frontside board-to fifteen-foot slider-to over head high drop! Chris is too cool and he can paint. Bucky Lasek lives in the Matrix! Bucky can put so many twisted, inside-out tricks back to back that you swear he comes from a long line of pretzel makers. He topped off absolutely thrilling runs with a lean 540 over the eight-foot death channel, good god! Rune Glifburg has a new baby! He also has switch flip to fakies, the tightest 540’s, the most torqued out madonnas, and second place! Sweet deal Rune. Bob Burnquist did the most flawless switch kickflip indies possible. Bob killed the whole ramp. He blew it up, tore it down, set it on fire start to finish. Burnquist is Hudini and Merlin rolled into one and for that he won.

Colt Cannon is coming up fast in the pro rankings. Colt took second behind Koston in his first pro contest in Vancouver (also part of the Triple Crown) and he took fourth her, right behind Templeton. Colt through down crazy stuff including kickflips to backside fifty-fifty on high ledges and a mammoth frontside nosegrind down an incredibly long and large ledge (I think from end-to-end it was like twelve SECONDS long!). If Colt keeps surrounding himself with all this skateboarding royalty, he will get into clubs for free . . . someday (age). Ed Templeton did not flip his board. Instead he conquered every rail and ledge systematically like the terminator. Eric Koston is just soooooo pretty on a skateboard. I took lots of pictures during practice and every one of Eric’s looks like one of those “poser of the month” shots because it’s just too damn perfect! Backside smith buttahs award! Okay, last but definitely not least . . . Bastien Salibanzi!!! Bastien is unbelievable! I don’t mean he’s really good, the kid is literally not to be believed. His runs included an army of super tech wizardry. Tricks like bigspin flips over hips, kickflip backside nosegrinds, backside nosegrind-backside lipslide-fakie, and kickflips over boxes to frontside sliders etc. Salibanzi not to be outdone on any front cleaned up the contest with an all to non-shalante kikflip to frontside rail down a long eleven-stair rail. He looked up surprised just to make us all feel better that most of us will never do that. Have a nice day!