A Beach Cruiser & A Mountain Bike

Only Mikey and Renato went on the weekly early Sunday morning skate session, clocking morning footy in Fullerton and evening footy in Norwalk. JJ, Kevin, Uncle Mike, and I were all unable to go because there was one too many. Someone should have made the sacrifice... Trying to figure out a spot for 2 hours while watching skate videos and eating Chorizo burritos, Uncle Mike finally mentioned the ledges at La Mirada Regional Park. The only thing JJ had to say about the spot was pretty much bitching and moaning. No offense JJ... Kevin's just not down unless the spot is super legit. Determined to find something in this day of monotonous grumbling, Uncle Mike and I both rummaged for bikes to ride to the spot with, which was about 2 miles away. Thirty minutes later we rolled up to the spot with unprecedented bike steez, holding our boards in one hand and steering with the other. After flirting with different tricks, accompanied with consistent bails throughout the process, Uncle Mike took one for the team with a damn fine lipslide bigspin out on the ledge. Props to us on that mission...



High Quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g66jUPw7GUc

Ayala Park

Not much to say about this day. Scheduled to go to Pomona and Riverside, the mission ended up falling through due to the societal working duties of our friend Drew Khemtongpru, who has driven these past two missions. Instead, Kevin and JJ went to Chino Skatepark with other friends of theirs. Mikey and I met up with them at the 4 block about 45 minutes after they arrived. Everyone mostly skated the park, except for me who practiced on the blcoks. After sticking a switch hardflip down the 4 block I asked JJ to film. The 1st try filming though ended up with me banging both my knees together, as you can see in the clip below. There was also a baby fetus there who tre flipped it... impressive.

San Pedro/Long Beach Part 3

The bleak sky of smoke and the ash rain it held made skateboarding today much more difficult. But, Drew, JJ, and Mikey had managed to skate so I figured breathing in smoke wouldn't be that bad. Here are some backside heel attempts down a 3 block... Mikey also gets down with a tree.

San Pedro/Long Beach Part 2

The Long Beach Spot, given its popularity and near longitudinal position to the first spot, was our second filming location. I explained its role in high-grade professional skate videos in a previous blog entry entitled, "Long Beach." Mikey filmed on the pole jam, and amazed us all with a trick that is up to par with many professionals: switch pole jam switch frontside 360 out. I wouldn't be surprised to see that same trick done in a Transworld video.

San Pedro/Long Beach Part 1

In light of "crunch time" (the duration in which things are very quickly done), the pressing feeling makes us want to throw ourselves unwillingly down flights of stairs or onto handrails that may very well jeopardize our manhood. It's for the greater good so-to-speak. Trying to get "bangers," or difficult tricks in general, is something we all hate doing but love when we do it. It's as ironic as the common goal. Our trips are becoming more focused around skating bigger sets of stairs, double sets, rails, etc., anything we can get hurt on. So for this entry's media we drove up to San Pedro to film on the famous 10 stair. Drew, JJ, and Mikey all skated the set and got very close. You'll have to guess which one landed it...

Buena Park

As a part of the surge, we've been consistently having official Tuesday missions each week. No more of the Whittier creeping we are usually confined to. JJ, in a matter of 15 minutes, landed a line on the benches: lipslide - smith kickflip out. I also got a sketchy boardslide front bigspin out as the sun was going down. Uncle Mike was the photographer for the day.

Long Beach

You probably don't like the commentary portion of this blog, so ill try to keep them short from now on. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you looked at the photos, watched the video, and exited the webpage or clicked back to MySpace (in which case you've reached this web page via bulletins). Either way I'll continue to give you the inside scoop of the day... Today, we were much luckier with the fuzz. We skated the best spot in Long Beach, which can be seen in the Berry video. It has gaps, pole jams, and an interesting manual pad. Scott Kane 360 shuv manuals it in the Berry video if you'd like to get a visual, since i forgot to take a picture of it. We got 2 tricks on the manual pad (ill leave it up to you to figure out who it was). On the 3 block at the next spot, Kevin stuck switch varial heel, Sammy stuck switch pop shuvit, JJ landed front pop twice in a row, and Mike had no luck with nollie heel. The End.

The Bust of El Segundo

Meaning "the second," the city of El Segundo lives up to its name in being "the second" biggest bust. Just below Brea, CA, almost every notable spot in El Segundo has a high bust factor. The city is home to the most perfect 4 flat 4 we've ever seen (this spot has been nollie inward heelfipped by Nick Trapasso in Toy Machine's, "Suffer the Joy"). But before we had the chance to film, a cop rolled up... The next spot we went to was the greatest high school we've ever skated. It's eccentricity of architecture gives existence to some very enticing spots, allowing the imagination to run rapid with tricks; you can't figure out what to skate first. But again, a cop rolled up within minutes and we had to book it. In search for the third spot we were pulled over by cops that had been following us for a few miles, waiting for me to technically break a law. The officer cited the reason of "driving past the white line" at a stop sign in order to interrogate us, or me as the driver, about skating. He even asked if we were skating the high school, hoping we'd say yes so he can interrogate further. We were told to go home and that was it, the day was a complete failure. Thank you El Segundo authorities, as well as the authorities of every city, for "protecting and serving" us. We really owe you one...

First Breath After Coma

This is the first of a line of entries to come from the previously discontinued 'Quest for Footage' blog... Ive decided now to continue posting because this is the most crucial part of filming. The last months of filming before a video deadline are the most intense and nerve-wracking; the soft comfortable cushion of time no longer exists. With that, we've implemented, as our president has, a surge. However, our surge doesn't involve an onslaught of troops, but rather an influx of footage. Thus far, we've been fairly consistent with the surge efforts. I regret that in the preceding 8 months of the surge our filming efforts were extremely low, sometimes nonexistent. These next few months of missions are the most dire of times, marked by renewed dedication, and is the ending to this epic quest. They are the first breaths after coma.

Fullerton Up Ledge

After a failed attempt at a San Diego trip, we settled for the Fullerton Up Ledge. Although a bit of a disappointment with how things turned out, the Fullerton Up Ledge is quite the veteran in giving its skaters a decent session. In order to complement his earlier nosegrind nollie front shuv (summer '07), Joe landed a 5-0 (regular) front shuv. Derek Spear also graced us with not only his presence, but some footage as well. Warming up he landed 2 muscly crooked grind pop outs. Derek also had a hand at some technical variations by configuring a backside 50-50 sex change to switch frontside 50-50 to fakie frontside bigspin out... an inventive imagination.

Murphy Ranch

In desperation to session on a rainy day, Juan, Mikey, and I lurked through Whittier rummaging our minds for a good spot to set up the box. Chiropractic college had a decent roof set-up, so we tried there first. Warm-up tricks were being landed and we started to feel the flow of the box's foreign position (we're used to skating it at ramp flat). However, that was diminished when a security guard, truly dedicated to his job, gave us the boot; we tried reasoning with the man but he wanted none of it. The next contender was Meadow Green, an elementary school down the road with a 3 stair. This would have been great for lines had there been no teachers there. Finally, we found sanctuary from the rain at Murphy Ranch, which holds the gap Tony Cervantes ollies in the Zero promo video (La Habra local Drew Khemtongpru can be accredited with ollying this enormous gap as well). The long awaited box session is as follows:

Mikey - tailslide fakie, wallride to back tail fakie line, fakie switch nose grind, fakie switch lazy grind, 5-0, 5-0 kickflip out
Juan - smith, nollie crook, half-cab crook