Our warmest day in a long time at 55! My shoulder seemed good enough to skate so I met Bernie at the new Street League park so we could start working out our contest tricks. It was way colder then either of us had anticipated. What happened to that 50 degree weather? I guess at 8pm it’s gone in January. It felt really cold. The park was way more crowded then I imagined it would be. Doh. The No Love dudes were there though which is always awesome. Andrew was ripping! Him and I easily had the most beat up boards at the park. So funny. Anyways, the warm up period sucked for me. All the pressure of the scoring system is rough. I felt like I couldn’t bail a trick so I would just not try tricks and instead just push around or get in some ones way. Bernie added to his point total in the line format pretty quick. Front smith 180 out on the bank to bench (above), front 50 off the ledge going down the 3, boardslide the flat bar, grind the bank to bank, etc. Andrew had some mean feebles and lipslides out across the whole flat bar, but those didn’t score as well as the feeble treflip out that TPuds had. The only tricks I got before being kicked out of the quarterfinals with the lowest point total in Street League history was a back 50 on the bank to bank, noseslide the bump to bench and ollie the rockish gap off the tiny kicker (with both feet coming way off the board). I tried a front 50 on one of the many ledges on the edge of the park, came up short and put all my weight on my right arm and threw out my shoulder again. Ugh. Rather then being smart and stop skating I just continued to fully embarrass myself. Doing dork tricks on the big kickers in the center of the park was fun. There are a million things I’d like to do at that park, but I’m gonna take some time off of skating to let my shoulder heal up. I’m pretty sure I tore the rotator cuff. Ugh. I kept thinking I should leave, but the park became less and less crowded until the point where it was just Bernie and I. Amazing. We did some Cali grinds off this one weird stair. Then I did it in a really fun line. Kickflip from one bank to another, cali grind, front rock the qp. Then Bernie and I both did back 50s in the middle qp/bank thing where you grind off the qp into the bank. NBDs for us. The judges went nuts. I did a couple cali grinds up and across some of the kicker things (photo above). I don’t think I even really landed it, but oh well, it’s a dork trick anyway. All in all I think I would have a blast skating that park a lot. Hopefully my shoulder heals up soon.