He may not have landed that inverted huck in the finals against Australian Bede Durbidge, but pretty much everything else Kelly Slater did today (September 18, 2010) was spot on (including his free ride into the quarters thanks to a “sick” Chris Davidson). When Kelly is on there is very little anyone else can do to stop him.
“What can I say? What a week,” Slater said. “We looked at the swell forecast and Pat (O’Connell) and I were talking, going ‘look what we’re going to get this week.’ I told Pat that I’d let 105 people punch me in the face to surf Trestles like this and they’re paying me.”
Bede put in the hard charge, but had some trouble with consistency in the final. Kelly pulled in $105,000 which is reportedly the largest prize purse in surfing history, won his 43 elite tour victory, and moved into the lead in the ASP ratings. Not bad for a Saturday at Lowers.
Chris Brunkhart will be appearing at Laguna Beach, California’s 210 AR4T Space on September 30, 2010 from 6 PM to 10 PM in support of his recently published photography collection How Many Dreams in The Dark.
“How Many Dreams in the Dark” spans two decades at the epicenter of the skate, snowboard and related music and art cultures from Portland, OR to Prague, CZH. From the earliest days of the pioneering Burnside Skate Project, to South American travels with snowboard godfather Craig Kelly, NYC with creative madman Ari Marcopoulos, to Alaska, Japan, Scandinavia and beyond, Chris captures the energy, passion and amazing playscapes of an international tribe of fellow dreamers. . . Says, Brunkhart: “This has been a dream of mine for years: These images tell a story that connects many friends, many places and the world we create in, and I look forward to sharing them with the next generation of creative dreamers.”
Last week Youtube.com began testing some live broadcasts with several different partners. In one of their tests they featured a live interview with Tony Hawk in conjunction with YoungHollywood.com and according to Techcrunch.com no one showed up.
Well, Tony Hawk just finished an appearance on Young Hollywood right now, and the number of viewers never went above 500, according to the view counter at the bottom of the player. For most of the segment, it was much less—at one point I saw 9 viewers, then 81. As a point of reference, when we livestream TechCrunch events, we often get 2,000 to 3,000 concurrent viewers, and that is without being promoted on YouTube’s homepage. So 500 viewers for Tony Hawk is really nothing.
Then again, we didn’t know Tony was going to be on. If he’d told us we could have rounded up a couple dozen more people, no problem.
According to a story in the Daily BreezeBlack Flys is still in business a year after Jack Martinez sold the trademark to the company’s Asia distributor Carrozzeria Japan Co. Ltd.
“This past year we have been doing everything we can to just gain the relationship and trust back from our old clients,” Black Flys Inc. co-manager Cary Hokama said. . . The 32-year-old manager – dressed in a white collared shirt – said the company plans to . . . attract younger customers who embody an “absence of restraint,” in addition to its older, “hard-core” loyalists.
Nike 6.0 has reportedly nabbed the title sponsorship position of the Winter Dew Tour’s Breckenridge, Colorado stop according to a Tripp Mickle story in the Sports Business Journal.
In an effort to promote the first line of Nike 6.0 winter outerwear this year, Nike has signed on as the title sponsor of the Winter Dew Tour’s Breckenridge, Colo., event this December. The three-year deal . . . is valued in the low seven figures annually. . .
It’s nice, but it means we won’t have the Totino’s Pizza Open to kick around any longer.
When a group in Amarillo, Texas tried to burn a Quran on Saturday, September 11, 2010 a local skateboarder ran through and grabbed the kerosene-soaked book and escaped, according to a story on Amarillo.com.
Jacob Isom, 23, grabbed David Grisham’s Quran when he became distracted while arguing with several residents at Sam Houston Park about the merits of burning the Islamic holy book. . . “You’re just trying to start Holy Wars,” Isom said of Grisham after he gave the book to a religious leader from the Islamic Center of Amarillo.
Isom was reportedly carrying a skateboard at the time of the action. We’re guessing it was a longboard. . .
Tony Hawk gets Chaz Ortiz and Dancing With the Stars Louie Vito to demonstrate the new skate-snow crossover video game Tony Hawk Shred, the Swiss Army knife of video games. . . looks kind of confusing.
Dane Reynolds apparently used the first heat of round one at the Hurley Pro at Trestles to get all the jitters out of his system by taking would may have been the most waves of any surfer in one heat. He just kept going and going and going and didn’t score anything over a second. All that changed in round 2 when he went heat-to-head against local grom hero Kolohe Andino apparently.
“I was nervous going up against him (Andino),” Reynolds said. “I hate surfing against younger kids. If I surf against someone like Davo (Chris Davidson) I know what to expect, I know how he’s going to surf. Kolohe (Andino) can do huge moves and that’s usually my deal that I can pull out against other guys, so I was a little nervous going out there, but I got my bearings straight and got a couple of sets. I felt like every time a set came I was on the second one and it had a nice wall.”
“After six years building the U.S. Revolution Tour as the premier mid-level snowboard contest, we recognized the opportunity to grow the series as part of our development within freeride,” said Snowboard and Freeride Director Jeremy Forster. “With the possibility of slopestyle snowboarding and halfpipe skiing being included in the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, beginning to conduct these events together and share resources makes sense. . . . “The host resorts have been stoked on the direction along with positive feedback from the freeride community. Hopefully, the athletes will have fun competing together and it will be a great season for the Revolution Tour.”
Looks like skiing is going to continue riding snowboarding coat-tails for the foreseeable future. How annoying is that? There is nothing wrong with skiing. It just isn’t snowboarding and shouldn’t be snowboarding. Putting skiing and snowboarding together in one event harms the images of both sports (not that we care about skiing’s image). But the USSA will never understand that because they’re too busy saving money on their national tour. [click to continue…]
