So, here it is, I made it to Cali and got a great place to stay with my old friend Joe Ho!! He is a cool guy that I met at NIU years back who was also a close friend of Wendy, a very important person in my life. So, anyway, Joe put me up for last night and tonight and I got to hang with his friends and eat lots and lots of food!! I was so full last night I could barely hold it in. My stomach must have shrunk eating the 99cent menu... Probably a good thing.
So thanks Joe!!
I got up early and updated my blog but was kinda out of it, no coffee yet. But I headed out around 8am and got on the road to San Francisco. I could hardly believe that I was on 101 heading into the city I have always wanted to go to. Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to check this place out. Not only for skateboarding but just the city in general. My aunt lived there when I was really young and always heard stories of the street cars, the hippies, the bridge, the sand sharks and all that stuff!
On a sad note, Bill called me this morning to let me know that Ray Underhill passed away after a long battle with Cancer. Best wishes to the Underhill family. I was told to do a grind for Ray today. I never got to meet him but understand that he was an outstanding human being and will be missed.
I cruised around for a while until I found the park. It was kinda cool just to drive up and down those crazy hills and try to imagine Cappetto riding down them on acid? Nuts right - yup. But I kept seeing Tommy Guererro doing those killer lines down the side streets and all the skate vids and all the history. Cool stuff. This is definitely a city I would like to come back to some day and spend more time. I really wanted to check the art scene too. I tried to find some galleries and stuff. But the street art is just as good!
I got to the park and was like, oh yeah, this one is good! It just goes to show that big and plenty doesn't always rule out. If you use the space well, a smaller park can kill one of those super sizers. I keep saying that I like the smaller parks better. SF is not a small park but compared to Sac it is definitely smaller. But, I think I had twice as much fun at SF. The bowl rules! The streetcourse is gnar!
I rode here for over 3 hours and got tons of lines. I still kinda was pussy-footing but I got a few things in and had a great time. The pockets are so mellow but the deep end makes up for the gnar. the coping totally rules (pool block all around). I think with the newer parks, Dreamland just doesn't even mess with crappy metal coping anymore. They seem to be just smacking down the rad pool block on everything these days!! I love it. I really am thinking about talking to Marty about putting that stuff at whiting. It would just amp up the bowls sooooo much and fix the problems with the wavy hand poured stuff. Hell, I would write a grant or have a fundraisor for that stuff!!
These two chicks rolled up with matching leather jackets, I think these where the cafe' racers they rolled in on. Pretty cool, you can take an otherwise unwanted motorcycle and just mod it a bit and it becomes totally cool. I took a pic of one of these early 80s Hondas in Oregon too, totally ratted out. Great stuff.
It was a Saturday morning so a lot of the older guys were out, it was cool to ride with the Saturday morning crew!! These guys were just killing the streetcourse. It was pretty rad, there is a launch ramp/gap thing they were doing all morning. I did get some vid so check it:
1 comment:
that looks so fun..............
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