Aggressive Skate Blog

RW Team Rider Ross Kuhn

Submitted by Tony Beitia.

I have to say that this was the very first classic that I have been to and it was also the first competition I have been to as well. On a nice day in early August a bunch of Nor-Cal rollerbladers came together to compete in the 5th Kindgrind Classic hosted by JSF (Juiced Sucka Foos, for those who don’t know). There were many people that showed up to the meeting spot which was Hayward Skatepark. I had gotten there earlier in the day around 10:30 am just to see what the park was like. So I skated for a while with the people I came with and we liked the park. I was hoping to get some dog tags from the Roller Warehouse crew but they had ran out real fast. Those tags are the coolest dog tags I’ve seen with the silhouette of Mike Martinho on one side and the RW logo on the other. Grab some if you haven’t already. So after we skated for a while, it was now around 11:30, people for the competition started to show up. It was now about 12, and everyone was showing up and we skated the park for about an hour before we had the talk about the first spot. So we all hopped in our cars and drove to the first spot.

The first spot was a group of small ledges around a basketball court that had coping on them. At this point my friends and I were the first to get to the spot. This spot was really nice. I got the chance to skate it before the others had arrived and I have to say that it was really slick because of the coping. The ledges were about knee high and had two gaps which of course had to be done. The first person I saw trying the gap was Dustin Dixon. He was just trying to soul to gap to soul. Of course once seeing him try it I was wondering who was actually going to do it. So at this spot there was 5 heats with 10 guys in each heat. Given 10 minutes to skate all the guys tore up this spot. It was like seeing a train of skaters because they were all following each other so closely, so if one person fell the next person was likely to fall. After the first heat of skating, the judges told everyone to just give some space to the person in front of them. So it went on from there 4 more heats to go until they chose the next twenty to compete at spot number 2. We spent about an hour and a half at this spot it looked like everyone was doing really well. When it came down to it only one person completed the gap which everyone tried to. Joey Ihara was successful with about his tenth try. He did a frontside to frontside over the gap. The names of all the people who made it to round two were announced and those people were all applauded and cheers roared at that little spot for most of them. Some of them being Ross Kuhn, Andy Johnson, Victor Arias, Vinny Minton, Sneaky, Mike Martinho, Jon Morciglio, Brendan Tidd, Ivan Narez, Sean Keane and about 10 others. (Sorry if I missed your name)

After about 10 minutes of talking and deciding who will go on to the next round Erick told everyone where the next spot was and how to get there. So we were off in a big caravan of cars again, going to the second spot. About 10 minutes of driving and we got to spot number two a nice drop rail. This rail was wide and it was not all that high. At this spot we got out of the cars and brought the wood Scott Moore had in the truck up to the rail so that the people could skate it. There was a short runway from the dirt hill to the rail which made for easy access. The stair set was probably about 15 stairs not to many and the rails were about waist high. I remember that when we got there Sexy David came up to me and said “I’m so glad I don’t have to skate this rail.” I say to him “Why” and he goes “because I finally get to relax.” We had some laughs about that while the others were practicing on the rail. From where I sat the rail looked really nice and I wish I had brought my skates from the car to try it out but I didn’t oh well. So after about a half-hour of practice Erick came over to the rail and announced the names of all who made it again and then told who was in each heat. The first heat started off great a bunch of great tricks were done on that rail. After the time was up here comes heat 2 this heat was really exciting as well many tricks I didn’t think that would be pulled off were. Then here comes RW’s very own Andy Johnson in heat 3 tearing up the rail. He came out with a true spin mizou right away but after a couple tries at the rail he falls really hard and needs a minute to catch his breath. I give it to him for giving his all after that really hard fall straight on his tailbone. There was one trick that stood out at the second spot. It was when Bobby from Oregon rolled down the hill and then gapped the stairs with a 540 and stuck the landing.

After a long time at this spot the heats were over and everyone was on their way to the third and final spot. The final spot was also a rail but this rail was a lot bigger than the second spots rail. The rail was at Cal-State East-bay, which JSF’s Own Rob G was the only person to get all the way down. This rail is huge with three different kinks all with about 17-20 stairs each. If you look that the pics that I took of it you will see as well as watch the video of Victor’s winning trick you will see how amazing this rail its. For about an hour of skating this rail with everyone getting so close to the end only two successfully got down the rail on this day, Mike Martinho and Victor Arias. Mike just did a soul all the way down and Victor did a switch up with the tricks being a top acid to backslide. That very switch-up won Victor the 1st place prize of a new pair of skates from Roller Warehouse. The last bunch of competitors were given no time limit for this last spot because basically if you got down the rail you would be the winner and since two people got down it the one who did the switch-up actually on. To end the day of course there had to be police to ruin our fun. The only thing was the cop from the actual Hayward Police Officer did not really mind us being there. It was the University Police officer who was being an a#$ to us and telling us to get out of there and that we could not film or have music. A few more people hit the rail and then Erick decided to call it and then the announcement was made to the group that Victor Arias was the winner and Mike Martinho came in second.

With an end to another Kindgrind Classic like all competitions around the world there had to be a product toss. There was a couple sets of frames from Ground Control and Able. A whole bunch of stickers, some AggressiveMall beanies which I might add are very comfortable and about 15 Skate DVDs including Steve Kerr and Casey Bagozzi’s film Humble Beings, a must have skate video showing how we do it in Norcal. Matt Murphy’s Dreams are made of this another great film showing the inner workings of the Norcal skate scene. Also there were a bunch of other skate videos I did not have the chance of seeing titles. To sum it all up this was one of the best competitions I have ever been to and one of the best I probably will go to until the next Kindgrind Classic. Thanks for all the great times guys and the new spots for me to skate.

Keep Rolling Alive!!!

Buddy Newby

Brendan Tidd

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 10:10 am and is filed under skating, Events, Video, dvd, scene, aggressive, rollerblade. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.