Normally Clyde is gold, but I’ve learned that even with Clyde you’ve got to trust but verify, so I went to search things out and find out if Clyde is on the money. The first problem I encountered is that I couldn’t find a complete list of Tampa Am winners on the SPOT website, so I’ve created one here. Let’s see who we’ve got. Bear in mind, Clyde’s not saying these guys are lame people or lame skaters, he’s just saying their careers as skateboarders may not have exactly flourished.

1997 – Judd Hertzler. Who? Ok, I actually have heard of Judd, so I can’t really say “Who?”

1998 – Nathan Smith. Ditto, who? Except in this case I really have no clue who Nathan Smith is.

1999 – Mike Petersen. Mike seems like a nice guy, and there’s no doubt he’s good, and no offense to Consolidated because I totally respect those guys, but if you’re on Consolidated you’re not a “top pro” by definition. Geez, I’m totally going to get beat up by Birdo or Kharma now. Sorry guys, but you know it’s true.

2000 – Kyle Berard. Ditto.

2001 – Colt Cannon. Hey, Colt had an ok career there for a while, but then what happened after Element?

2002 – Caswell Berry. Hmm, I think Caswell has had an ok career. Maybe not a “top pro” per se, but everybody knows who he is, don’t they?

2003 – Kevin Long (Spanky). I don’t know about Spanky…I’ve never really seen anything from him that makes him stand out to me, but he does seem to be fairly popular, if not “tops”.

2004 – Sierra Fellers. Sierra is an amazing skater, but I think it’s gets hard to judge what his career will be like. I don’t think we can say he’s reached “top” status as of yet, although seriously, the guy is amazing.

2005 – Nyjah Huston. Who’s this guy riding for anyway? Again, I think we’ll have to wait and see on Nyjah.

2006 – Cody McEntire. Cody definitely has the potential. You see his part in that Digital vid from a while ago where he was skating in Australia? Dang.

2007 – Felipe Gustavo. We’ll have to wait and see, I guess.

2008 – Ryan Decenzo. Ditto.

2009 – ? I’m predicting…well, who knows.

So I think I’ll have to agree with Clyde, at least somewhat. I don’t know if I’d say that any of these guys have ruined their careers, but then again we don’t have a P-Rod, Koston, Reynolds, or Ladd on this list.

Hi Joshua!

Check out this AWESOME skate video: Dennis Busenitz doing what he does best, landing so many tricks that it’s almost unbelievable! See Dennis kick-push: http://chunnel.tv/street/774/dennis-busenitz-pro-skater:

Dennis Busenitz puts together more tricks in 3 minutes and 50 seconds than most skaters do in a 6 or 7 minute spot.  It’s ridiculous, plus the insane amount of tricks performed over gaps, and possibly the best Kalis 360 flip ever made! This is definitely a top video spot for 2009!

Thanks, and please share this with your readers!

Best,
Carrie

The video is really good though. Can’t wait for it to come out so I can see a higher-res versino of Dennis’ kick-push.

So yes, we all know Chris Cole is amazing. If he had only done the 360 or the switch frontside flip that would have been all that was necessary, but doing both, and the frontside flip absolutely flawlessly…well, that’s Cole for ya.

What’s a bit sad about an event like this is that it’s kind of dillutes each trick. Of course there’s going to be one trick that overshadows everything else (obviously the 360 in this case) but dang, what about everything else. Imagine that Hoffart had gone and done a heelflip varial a week ago–it would have been a cover for sure. He would have made history. But as it stands, a year from now most people will forget that the trick was ever done down Wallenberg. The same goes for Nick Merlino’s switch heelflip. I mean, that was one of the tricks everyone was saying they wanted to see, right? A switch flip down Wallenberg? And he did it as a virtual no-name, but unfortunately he won’t get the cred from it that he could have gotten if he did it on his own without the contest. And Lindsey’s backside 180 heelflip. Did you see how easy he made that look. Not a hint of sketching. It couldn’t have been any cleaner. And I think Catfish’s backside bigspin might have been my favorite, but again, it will mostly be forgotten a year from now, and Cole will be the indisputable King of Wallenberg because everyone will remember the 360 flip and the 360 ollie.

Then again, maybe none of these guys would have landed those tricks if it weren’t for the raging crowd egging them on. And in all likelihood they never would have gone there to try those tricks if it weren’t for the Phelper putting on the contest in the first place. For myself and skateboarding, I’m stoked it went down, I just hope people don’t forget that history wasn’t made just once last Saturday, but 10 times…wait, 10 times? Oh yeah, I already forgot about Lizard King’s three tricks, and Pott’s hardflip, for goodness’ sake! See what I mean?

So here’s the question, will anyone go there and get a trick on their own before the thing gets demolished? I’d still like to see a girl do it, and I’d like to see some sort of nollie trick down it, even if it’s just a plain straight nollie.

Most of you know the feeling. You lay awake in bed dreaming of that trick you’re going to do down that six-stair. In your mind, it’s so easy. You’re so stoked because you know you can land it. You go over it time and time again. The next day you go there, and suddenly your knees are wobbly and you think “There’s no way I’m trying that.” Then you get depressed and go watch some skate videos with newfound respect for the guys who do that trick down 15 stairs like it’s nuthin’.

Corey Duffel is one of those guys I look at and think “I think he might not really be that good, he’s just crazy.” That is, I’m not sure if he has a natural talent for skateboarding, or if he just has so much fun and is so crazy that it makes up for any lack of talent he may have had to begin with. Dustin Dollin is another one. On the other side of the spectrum are guys like Koston and Paul Rodriguez who I’m not sure are too crazy, but they seem to have a talent that makes skateboarding come easy for them. Their brains and bodies work so well together that they’re confident and can do anything they put their minds to and make it look like it’s simple.

And of course there are people who may be a mixture of both. I think Greco is crazy, but I also think he has natural talent in spades. In other words, he’s crazy/good. I could go on with name after name and try to categorize who fits more on the crazy side, who’s more on the good/talented side, and who straddles both, but you tell me what you think.

Well, I’m sure that by closing all the public skateparks, using tazers on skateboarders, and rounding up all the skateboarders into internment camps, we can somehow get to the bottom of this. After all, every skateboarder knows every other skater and its only a matter of applying the right pressure on the skateboarding community to get us to give up one of our own. Or at least this appears to be the logic of local municipalities that close skateparks whenever someone tags them up.

Unless you have a very small park, you’re going to be looking at spending a good $50-75K on ramps (including labor) if you buy them, and you could spend quite a bit more. You might think you’ll save a lot of money building the ramps yourself, and hey, how hard could it be? But bear in mind you’re lying to yourself. Building an indoor skatepark takes a lot of time, especially if you’re not an expert. If it takes you four months to do what a professional team can do in two weeks, you may have just blown through an extra three months of rent and now you’re not saving any money. Plus you might mess up the ramps, and as a result the kids won’t like them and so you’ve only got half the customers coming in that you would otherwise have. So trust me, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing go and pay someone else to build those ramps for you. And don’t just pay the 18-year old kid who built a halfpipe in his backyard once and who has some “cool ideas”, I mean really hire a professional company, like Team Payne.

Another way to find out who to hire is to find out who built some of the private indoor parks that are in videos so much these days. Unfortunately I don’t know exactly who built the Berrics, or the Blackbox skatepark, or any of the others, but I bet someone else does and will comment on this post.

Upon watching this, it occurred to me that perhaps the same way I was seeing this is how most people view skateboards–talented, but silly. And that was kind of depressing. I mean, what if most people out there in the world don’t see any difference between this guy and Koston?