How could I forget?

We heading up north to check out Slayer, but before we did, we hit the Creature Dome...

Then more blood shed...

Pier 62

I let Lance ponder his back yard while I pondered this...



Irene was there... she's better than you.






Marshall has "tricks"

Black Slab-bath

19 bags of crete. myself and the little guy in the back had some work ahead of us the other morning. not so great view of the form and the gravel leveled up to the bottom of the form, on the left hand side. i supported the forms with hand-made stakes, screwed into the form...and with large rocks dug into the ground. pretty janky. at the end of a couple hours, this is where i was....

got a little artsy while i was trying to send a message to my boys ...

but this is a good view of where i was after screeding, mag troweling and finally, using the pool trowel to finish..

this is the seam connecting the slab to the previously poured quarter pipe. a little sweeping then grinding after she's cured and it'll be good to go.

2nd pour came and went. hopefully it'll be cured enough to skate by the end of the week. this pour was a little extra wet (nice) because i was a little afraid that the crete would go off too quickly like with the last pour. 3rd time's the charm. until next time

--d4L

Concrete

The shit rules. Right?

Well I for one do not get to grind nearly enough of it lately. So we got the hell outta the Gayrage, headed out back, and grabbed a couple of these.

I cleared a spot. PJ designed and cut the forms.

Keith and Ry joined me 'n PJ one Sunday when we could've all been spending some quality time with our beloved families. On top of that, none of us has any real experience with pouring concrete. But with a little (little??) hard work, some tips from youtube, multiple Budweisers and some luck, we came up with this. It's a tough angle, but the ramp is roughly 3 ft high and a little over 5 ft wide.

Actually, we came up with something a lot worse than that at the end of the day. The quarterpipe was (is?) in rough shape on the surface. I'll spare you the details, but concrete goes off fast, particularly when you mix some dry crete on a real hot day....that's lesson 1 for today.

So, we had a really shitty surface. Totally not skateable at first. Depression set in, but shit, if we can build a bowl in a one-car garage, we can pour a quarter pipe. Right? Bueller?

Anyway, I've spent the past couple weeks resurfacing the quarter with some real good, life saving shit for all inexperienced masons, called Cement All. The rest of the time I've been leveling out the flat area. This is where we're at....

What in the hell are we building out back? God only knows. We have no idea. But we'll share the photos as we progress.

-D4L

Family Vacation

Wild in the Park


Slayreville

pdubbsz-it

Creature Dome

Little skateboarding lately, and even less documentation... but ideas are marinating at the moment... we might bring old roads back to life. Until then, check out the Creature.

shredgnarly

the mini bowl got shredded to pieces the other night by two former One-In-A-Million finalist... John Marshall and White... but you'll just have to believe me - not one camera was pulled out.

Over a year ago...

we went and skated vert in New Jersey, then....

A gentleman who runs the site The House of Steam grabbed some photos of mine from a trip to the DWGVR and he recently asked for some more. It made me look thru some stuff from said mish to Jersey, which led me to remember that I never posted those photos. I wouldn't want to disappoint anyone of viewing my spectacularly crappy photos...

Vert is hard work, some people (me) make it look hard, other people (see below) make it look easy.

Friday at Garden Skate




Allen's is a hard place to take photos... who wants to stand around and not skate (even if you're a coping scratcher) and because it's such a massive ramp, it's hard to be in the right place at the right time. Did I mention that I take crappy photos?

Are you feeling slow?

This ramp is retarded. Well, it actually makes you feel retarded, stupid, like you can't skate.

That's not really true, but everything is so quick you have to set up for your trick about 3 runs ahead of time. And if you actually make your planned trick, you better think fast about the next one, cause you got about a nano-second to figure it out. If you don't, that's when the stupid feeling kicks in.

We haven't been in here for awhile and we all forgot how fun it is (despite the stupid feeling). I'm trying to think of a way to explain it, but I'm at a loss. It's just fun. Maybe because it's different... you can mini-ramp it or go after a corner. Maybe it's because you're hanging with your friends kickin' it and laughing at each other and getting each other psyched to make a trick.

Maybe it's because of the skateboard and skateboarding is fun. Yup, that's it. I think.

All these photos were poached from Qua's site. He took all the photos except for the one of him. Not only does he take really good photos, but he makes sure everyone gets a trick.

Lance - BS Blunt to axel

BS 5-0 around the corner

Qua - front feebs


Dane - it was his first time in the gayrage and ripped it. He has a lot of tricks, a lot of good tricks, unfortunately he did them before the camera came out. But Qua got this one, front pivot pop to fakie


Doubles - RnR

FS RnR


Pdubbsz - Satan's FS slasher

Linkage

My buddy Qua is a professional photographer and a skateboarder. Occasionally he does both together. The other day he did so in Saugerties and now he's got the bug to do it more often. Which is good because he makes everyone look good. He's got a blog of the pictures. You should check it.

Here are a couple from the other day, but really, go to his blog, there's a lot more there.

White


Coilean


Me


Marshall

the mind of a 14 year old...

...with a body of a 60 year old .

Normally, when we're lacking updates it's because we simply just aren't documenting our radical adventures. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Rather, the body has been breaking down a lot lately, either from injuries or just plain old winter sickness resulting in little, if any skating. But we did manage to get a sesh in with a newbie to the gayrage... Benj. Not only does he have a nice camera and lense, he also knows how to use it. I took a couple to document his smoothness, but he then took over and got all artsy on me. Benj kills it with effortless grace, something I really enjoy watching.

Qua




Benj


Me


And finally, as is often the case, most of this dudes are not only skilled on the stunt wood but also in the artistic world. John Marshall (EG) is one of these guys. He's got a site, you should check it out... www.defleotard.com. Click thru the animated gif's. Fun stuff.

MLK, gonna find a way

So we made the MLK holiday weekend even longer. We took off Friday and headed down to Connecticut to hit the new bowl at Haven Skatepark. This thing is sick, probably the best wooden bowl in the North East. Once me and pdubbsz did an upgrade to our wheels, things went faster and better!

Lance

Me (photo/creature)



The BMFC

The General Idea

Please click here

If people wanted to get an idea of what it's like to skate this thing, hopeful this gives you an idea

The most fun you can have with two and a half feet

What can be said? Things are going well. We're stoked. We're glad we did it. We're happy the way it came out (for the most part). We're having fun.

Lance, BS Five-O around the corner.


I went and took a stab at the new and improved Delaware Water Gap Vert Ramp during the holiday's. It now has 12' corners to close off the deep end.

The amount of speed needed to huck yourself around these corners was just insane. And that's just to get to the top of the damn thing. And if you are really skating it, you're on a level that few can touch. I'm not sure who came up with the term "vert jock", but who ever did never stood on a deck 12 feet up and had someone kick a backside air in their face. Do that and then talk shit. Until then, vert is tops in my book - and should be in yours.


Brian


Mark


Allen (the lucky owner)


Irene (watching her skate might be one of the most amazing things ever)


During that same time, there were rumblings in the gayrage as well, but no evidence to prove such a thing. Not that it matters.