Super Bowl Party! Part III

Okay, so first off, two-time Pool Party champ Bucky Lasek is out of the contest on account of a broken ankle, and TONY HAWK IS IN! so that happened.

Have your heads finished exploding?

Awesome.

On to business.

So, aside from the obvious Tony Hawk is finally skating a proper contest again, why does skateboarding need the Pool Party? What makes it different from the throng of contests put on every year?

Sorry, Tony, awesome as the All 80s contests are, they're pretty much a costume party...

1) The Pool Party is one of the only exclusively vertical contests left. The only other one I can think of is the Rumble in Ramona, and let's face it, that's more of a weekend-long ramp party. When you consider all the major contests right now, there are really two kinds: those with both street and vert, with the vert contest playing second fiddle (re: Maloof, Tampa, X-Games...... pretty much all of them), and contests that are only street contests (re: Street League, Manny Mania, Thrasher's occasional "let's throw a carcass-toss for cash at a famous street spot"). Accentuated by the fact that the pool party is held in a multi-faceted bowl, the contest not only helps legitimize vert riding itself, but also helps break the stereotype that a vert contest is relegated to sixteen tricks done back and forth on a basic vert ramp.

There's a reason the old Gameboy Colour port of THPS didn't do well...

2) The Pool Party has an inherent lack of (non-skateboarding-centric) corporate sponsorship. Let's be honest, all three or four of you reading this blog, along with myself, skate. That being said, we all know that skaters are weary of big corporate America getting its chocolate chequebooks into our peanut-butter professional endorsement. (Apparently when the owners of an NBA team want to throw money at us, that's okay, but I'll save that for another time). Skaters have learned time and again that if we want something done right, we need to do it ourselves. It's the reason why the Gravity Games failed, and the X-Games are on the way.

Well, not to mention lumping skateboarding in with Rally Racing.... nice, ESPN....

It's the reason why Tampa Pro is considered the most legitimate pro street (and vert) contest in North America. The Pool Party is run by Vans, Pro-Tec, and Rockstar (Okay, I know, an energy drink sponsor, but skaters drink 'em, and your new Almost deck was manufactured using money taken from collar-popping jocks who bought Globe flip-flops, so don't get me started). The lack of corporate sponsors at the Pool Party makes it feel like it's of skaters and for skaters, and for a discipline where the pros are maligned on message boards throughout the interwebs for everything from padding up to being sponsored by beef jerky, something that adds a plash of hardcore back into the fray can't hurt. Vertical riding is awesome, and this contest affords people the opportunity to watch a well-run, organized vertical contest that isn't bogged down with Taco Bell and Verizon Wireless banners, making the whole thing seem like a corporate publicity stunt. The Pool Party is about skateboarding, the way it should be.

Stay tuned for Monday, when I'll wrap up the winners, losers, makes, slams, and Jeff Grosso's epic pool gut.

And hopefully equally epic andrechts.

Super Bowl Party! Part II

Welcome back to part 2 of my 4 part mini-series on this year's Pro-Tec Pool Party. Last post I rambled on about the importance of the Masters' contest, and why it made the Pool Party worth watching, so this post I'm talking about the Pro division.

There's a lot about the riders that make up the pro division of the Pool Party that I think is worth talking a little bit about. It all really starts when you look at the age range of the guys skating the pro division:

Bucky Lasek: 38
Rune Glifberg: 36
Omar Hassan: 38
Pedro Barros: 16
Bob Burnquist: 34
Alex Perelson: 20
Josh Borden: 20
Lincoln Ueda: 37 (as of last Tuesday, Happy Belated!)
Benji Galloway: 33
Nolan Munroe: 18
Ben Raybourn: 18
Zach Miller "Lite": 21
Bruno Passos: 35
Michael Brookman: 18
Sky Siljeg: 16
Bennett Harada: 32
Matt Boyster: 21
Andy MacDonald: 37
Anthony Furlong: 32
Joshua Rodriguez: 20

Now, for me, I can't help but notice the staggering eleven-year jump in ages from the oldest of the young guys (Miller and Boyster) to the youngest of the old guys (Furlong and Harada). While I am perfectly aware of the fact that this gap is indicative of vert skating's so-called "Dead Years", it is genuinely interesting to have watched, in the last few years or so, this sudden surge of young, fresh-faced vert riders burst into the ranks of professional competition; ranks that, since about the mid-nineties, had remained largely unchanged. Speaking as someone who started skateboarding during the utmost height of street skating's popularity, I went through the whole of the 2000s seeing, on the street side of things, a handful of new guys popping up every year or so, and maybe a handful retiring their pro models, or at the very least just kind of fading away from mainstream coverage. There seemed to kind of be this natural flow in mainstream street coverage, as opposed to the kind of generational dynasties that existed through the 70s and 80s, these groups of pros that kind of cornered the market, the mags, and the competition standings for maybe five years or so until the next dynasty cropped up.
The thing is, vertical skating is not easy to delve into wholeheartedly. You can maybe chalk this up to accessibility and intimidation. For one thing, proper vertical ramps and bowls have been, for the last couple of decades, notoriously hard to come by; a trend that has only recently started to change. Second, for anyone who has never skated vert before, it is really, really difficult. Learning even a basic trick can be the equivalent of trying to learn a basic street trick down a set of eight stairs before even trying it on flat ground. There is no middle ground with vert, which is why it isn't surprising that there is a seeming decade full of stories of Tom Grom who, when given the option of 1) missioning at least two hours to the nearest vert ramp to spend a month learning how to do airs, or 2) waxing the curb out front of the local 7-11, the choice was a no-brainer.

I think it was the Slurpees the really tipped the scale, here.


However, then came the 2000s, replete with the X-Games, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise, and the North American Daycare Skatepark boom.

Now, not only were kids being marketed vert and street skating on a more equal footing than ever since around 1992 or so, but with an increased frequency of high-quality daycares skateparks being built, many of these kids had much greater access to a forum in which they could be dropped off for the day while dad works and mom shops practice whatever discipline of skateboarding they so desired.
Now, shake well, fast forward five to ten years, and you have this aforementioned sudden explosion of vertical talent; kids who probably got into skateboarding because of the THPS games, and now find themselves hurling 540s alongside many of the guys they probably spent countless ours skating as in front of their TVs. With many of the older guys of the batch pushing up near the qualifying age for the Masters' division, there's really only a scant few years in which we can really observe this phenomenon of two generations of professional skaters in the process of passing the torch from the old guard to the young blood, and there's something really special about that.
And on a related note, I can't wait to see what happens in 2013 when Bucky and Omar start competing in the Masters' contest - Lance's going to have to relearn his 540s...

Stay tuned for part 3 on Friday, when I'll talk about why skateboarding needs the Pro-Tec Pool Party.