Skatepunk

Paul Rodriguez, one of my favorite skateboarders and all-around good guy, quit City Stars to ride for no one, then made the decision to ride for Girl early this week. Good move for Girl! Mikey Taylor is still the man on City Stars--he just turned pro. Congrats, Mike! And by the way, Kareem Campbell is one of my favorite people. We have absolutely nothing in common except a love of skateboarding and some peripheral history, but the guy is gold. Brilliant gold.

I still haven't written about Woodward, and I'm afraid that the more I put it off the harder it will be to write. But there's so much... I went with my good friend Mark Holder, and even though I think our experiences were very different, we both found at Woodward what I think a lot of people don't find--only a certain person can handle it there. Good people and good times are abundant there for me, and always have been. Warmth begets warmth, or something like that. And this year was no exception. Actually, even though there were less of the crew there when we were there than usual, the people we spent time with and met were amazing. Jonah Owings, Buzzy, Ryan Wilburn, Barker Barrett, Mike Frazier, Alan Russell, Shannon, Erica, Jen Wolf, Nate Wessel, Ruben A., Alexis, Dave from Florida, Erich Browne, Furlong, Mark Podgurski--the list always goes on. And meeting Rachael and Elena was very nice-- blooming friendships that I'm stoked on. And, I even saw Margie and Nina and met their wonderful families. What is it about that place that is so amazing? OK, I'm getting choked up, I'll stop. Oh, yeah, one more thing. Mike Frazier and his chess tournaments are so amazing--he gets a group of campers who know how to play chess and organizes round-robin matches to determine a camp champ. Pretty damn cool.

ASR came and went. Cool things were seeing video footage of Elissa kickflipping 12 stairs, the Emerica video teaser, and something else... what was it? I guess that's about it. Outside activities that rocked were the Coup D'Etat across the street put on by Alien Workshop, TumYeto, and a host of supporters, and the Etnies party with TSOL and the Adolescents. On the bad news list were the Osiris Wet T-shirt contest (I heard from people there), girls who tease, companies with racist names, and disrespectful people. Oh, well!

The Clash played at ASR, and the Sex Pistols are playing this weekend. What's going on?

Woodward and ASR Check Out