Got My Plastic Cup

Fifty or so years from now, when rapturous books and articles are written about skateboarding’s free-wheeling early decades, televised contest series mounted by deep-pocketed energy drink merchants may well be fingered among the powers pushing for ever-greater institutionalization. But hopefully there will be footnotes and appendixes nodding to the occasionally unhinged goings-on at contests such as notorious “runs” performed by Neil Blender and Sean Sheffey, the Tampa moat, and the legend of Tom Penny supposedly blowing the whole of a contest purse in one night whilst celebrating on the European club circuit.

Jenkem comes this week with one such morsel via SPoT brain trust Jason Rothmeyer:

It’s no secret that people rage out at contests, has that ever affected anyone’s “performance” judging?
The very first year we did the AmsterDamnAM contest, someone had the bright idea to use Adam Dyet as a judge. I think Dyet really wanted to judge and thought he was up for it. My other judges were P-Stone and Berard (when he was really piled out). The Skatepark of Amsterdam has beer at the concession stand. And they continue to bring beer after beer to everyone running the event all day long. About one heat into a full six heat day of qualifying, Dyet looked at me and said, “I’m not gonna make it bro” because he was jet lagged, smoked silly and drunk off his ass. He looked like he was on heroin.

So he just passed out asleep. We put sunglasses on him, propped his clipboard up on his leg and put a pen in his hand full Weekend at Bernie’s style. It was awesome. Berard and P-Stone weren’t much help either, as P-Stone was beet red from being 400 beers deep and Berard couldn’t talk. I pretty much judged that one solo.

Rhapsody In White

I’m a fairly strong supporter of Keegan Sauder’s second coming these past few years – there’s something about his low-key dirtballness that’s more genuine than a lot of dudes that seem determined to take it to the nth degree, and I relished the classically Zero-y nature of his “Strange World” section (big backside 180, tall hubba 50-50, ride-up curvy 50-50 shove-it, the ender). And so I’m well inclined to cheer his podium placement in the Tampa contest a couple weeks ago, alongside Chris Nieratko, who gives over a good portion of this recent interview to the experience. But unfortunately the accompanying photo of Keegan Sauder’s frontside rock-n-roll was totally obliterated by the monster truck rally that is this snowmobile X-games ad next door, which is on such a whole different level of amazingness that I spent a good while brewing up key words for Youtube searches to turn up somebody doing this physics-defying and awesome-looking stunt. But no dice. If anyone can help out with the name of this maneuver or better yet a clip, this Sunday afternoon would get that much better, but in the meantime here’s my favorite of the many videos I’ve now viewed, in which one enterprising bro manages a snowmobile wallride.

Debut of the Dazzler

Mystique is an amorphous, squishy thing, much like a color-changing cuttlefish or the nature of life itself. Yet if you can only attain it, the door stands open to early retirement, coasting on lifestyle ads and occasional blog photo appearances, minimal footage obligations if any and the giddy thrill of knowing that somewhere out there, an internet forum post is being crafted: “when is ___ gonna put out another part” translates to higher board sales than “does anybody know what’s up with ___ lately?” with both ranking above “anybody remember ___?” or the dreaded “___ denied parole again LOL”

Of course it is easier to establish said mystique if you’re some typa well-known 90s-bred style wizard (Iannucci, Stranger), a generalized misfit weirdo (Martin, Alv), or a flagrant breaker of state or federal laws. Far tougher if you’re some middling front-blunt-to-5-0er in black shoes w/white soles without great push or a nose tattoo.

Worse yet, you are a young flow-bro on the come-up in an age of instant judgment and sentencing via YouTube: message boards pore over the minutiae of park footage trick selection, SPoT profiles are tracked for sponsor switches and the Berrics transforms today’s pre-fab park hero into tomorrow’s factory-direct wunderkind. By the time kids “go am”* they’re generally vets by the internet exposure benchmark, and any sense of mystique probably long wafted away.

Emerica’s Marquis Preston is one of these increasingly rare exceptions**, with a relatively small number of photos prior to this month’s Paul Rodriguez TSM appearance and paltry seconds’ worth of footage scattered across contest, demo and “Stay Gold” clips – the intro to his magazine interview directs people to this six-second clip as a starting point, but indications are that some of the anticipation may be justified. Foot swag through the roof, as the fella says, there’s a few more tricks here on the off chance you haven’t seen all this shit already.

*an actual expression I guess
**Ishod Wair may be nominated as another