skate journal: SF day 3 poker run, SKATE, icehouse, black ledge (March 5, 2011)
Saturday was the big Poker Run day. It was epic. 150 skating through the streets of SF from spot to spot to get poker hands. Gordon ruled it. Such an epic day. Check Carleigh’s blog for way more photos as well as Cruz, Lowcard and while your at it try googling it. It was a lot of pushing around the city. The last stretch to Thee Parkside was a long one filled with some funny memories. Brian trying to go about 5 miles without taking his foot off, tic tacs only. He was sweating like crazy and the rough concrete wasn’t helping. This other dude went right through a red light without looking or slowing down. He almost got hit. Gnarly.After a couple glasses of water and some resting Nate, Joey and I played some SKATE. We thought it was gonna be super bad after all that pushing, but it ended up being insane. Nate got a first try nollie tre. Joey got his back and then surprisingly somehow I landed mine too. Back to back to back nollie tres? Awesome! Joey went on to win that game, it was a good one. We played another no repeat game. Joey probably won that one too. Lots of tricks went down. Last Joey and I played a no comply game of SKATE and I think that one got cut off early as we moved on to the Ice House gap where I could make $30 (soon to be $40) if I ollied it. Unfortunately there was a truck two spaces away from the landing. I wanted to, but the way I shoot my board out prevented me from mentally getting into it. Carleigh ollied it though. So sick. Joey went buck on it. Ollie, tuck knee and back 360 bolts. Joey rips!
After the hammers Fuzz, Nate, Joey and I had a totally epic little dork session. We skated the side of the kicker near the building where you can do cali grinds and stuff. Fuzz did a full cab to rock. Nate had some crazy grind to nose manual variations. I got a soft rock horrible kickflip out. Joey did cali grind to manual kickflip out. We also started messing around with the laybackish mute grab off the side of the loading dock. I almost broke a tail off and kind of did the trick. Nate though, he made things epic because he could not do it to safe his life. He just kept doing early grab mutes and slightly dragging his fingers before rolling off. It was hilarious.
Then we hit the black ledge spot for awhile. Joey killed it with the above manual manual manual gap out, 5-0 through the opening in the ledge, back 180 nosegrinds, etc. I started trying this line with an front 50 on a ledge ollie up to front tail on a slightly taller ledge, noseslide through a corner then crook jib on a black ledge. Never quite got all three, but I was hyped to do the 50 to tail a couple times. Fuzz was trying the same line and he did it super good. Nate took forever to get the 50 to tail. It was funny because he kills ledges, but for some reason couldn’t get it. He eventually did though and then closed out the day with a nose manny on the long black manny pad where Busenitz did sw bs flip nose manny (retarded). Another fun day in SF. Go to Carleigh’s blog for more.