Category Archives: SF

Final days in SF. Part 4 of The epic Cali roadtrip 2012.

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On Tuesday we met up with the Crisis kiddos that happened to be in SF while we were there. We picked them up at DLX, brought them to Eagle Donuts for some delicious breakfast sandwiches and then headed out to Treasure Island. Our first spot was the “skate park” there…

The Crisis kiddos…Justin, Blaine and Keenan

Keenan was feeling super sick and it showed. (Little did Jack and I know at the time that we were about to catch the same cold and feel just as shitty a few days later.)

Jack started working on a pretty epic ollie…

From there we moved on to some other Treasure Island locations…

We finally decided it was time to get back on the Bay Bridge and head back into SF. The kids had never been to 3rd and army before, so after a quick stop to say whats up to Freddy and Rob at the LowCard/Strange Bird headquarters, we made our way to there…

The kids had to catch a bus back to where they were staying so we dropped them off and said goodbye. Jack had dislocated his toe at this point and wasn’t too stoked on skating any more. I had talked to Freddy about skating a mini ramp in Daly City, so we drove out there (going the wrong way at first), but by the time we got there Freddy had left. Since Jack wasn’t into skating we just went to In-N-Out instead and then back to Oakland. More chillin, drinkin, and relaxin.

The next day was our last full day in town. We had some missions in the city and then met up with Reed and Yabo at DLX for a full day of adventure. We headed out to wine country to skate an awesome park that had grills and allowed you to drink beer out in the open. So that’s what we did all day… skated, grilled and drank. And shot ice cubes from Reed’s slingshot. I took it easy cause I was driving, but the boys polished off the 30 rack and got some tall cans on the way home I believe. Very entertaining, to say the least. We headed back into the city probably around 11pm or after to drop off Reed and Yabo. Being our last night, we kicked in the city just chillin for awhile longer and made one final trip to our new favorite pizza place (where I seriously watched Jack consume at least a half a cup worth of Sriracha  on his pizza slice). Then it was back to Oakland for even more late night chillin on our very last night in town.

The morning came painfully early – we were supposed to meet the LowCard/BloodWizard/Heavy tour at 8am in SF. Luckily they agreed to meet us on Treasure Island, and by about 9am, we were off on an epic roadtrip with at least 18 dudes and over 400 beers. The only last pictures I took were on a quick stop on the side of the road in Nevada…

The rest of the trip was awesome. (minus the fact the jack got really sick :( that was a bummer!) We did get to camp with the crew, skate some parks, and then say whats up to Matt in Cheyenne on the home stretch.

Overall amazing trip. Jack – you fucking killed it. Seriously, I can’t imagine a more fun adventure and more awesome person to travel with. Thank you so much a million times over.

Super big thanks to Gordo and Sandy, Freddy, Rob, all the Heavy and Blood Wizard dudes, Reed, Yabo, the Crisis kids, Jaxon, and anyone else I’m forgetting!

If you haven’t already, you NEED to check out Jack’s rendition of this adventure on his super awesome blog.

Weekend tours with Gordon. Part 3 of The epic Cali roadtrip 2012.

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Gordon ended up taking the weekend off from work to act as our “skate tourguide”. Pretty damn rad. We started Saturday in the Oakland area, since I had to be back to shower, change and head to an engagement party mid-afternoon. The first few spots he took us to were just for sight-seeing, although we did say we would come back to a particular double set – we went back though.

So our first real spot of the day was one called “redwall” that both Jack and I were excited to check out.  This spot:

Jack warming up

hurricane

Gordo street-skating!

and he was killing it.

After this spot, we motored back to Gordon’s place. The dudes hung out and watched skate vids while I got ready for the party. I left them to head about 20 minutes east to Molly’s engagement party.

the ladies at the party

McGill crew: me, Shayda, Molly and Alia

It was SO awesome to see everyone. I’m usually lucky enough to get to see Molly and Shayda whenever I make it out to SF, but I hadn’t seen Alia since 2004! It’s been so long I almost can’t believe it. After the party wound down and I was filled with delicious finger food and desserts, I made my way back to Oakland. Sandy had a friend over and we all drank and watched a sweet and ridiculous Natural Koncepts video (I realized I had never seen one before – damn have I been missing out).  Eventually it was time to crash. One more day down.

On Sunday, Gordon picked back where he left off in terms of tour-guiding us around. Our first stop was on Treasure Island, which is the only exit along the Bay Bridge. Gordon showed us three spots, which are most likely the only three spots on the whole island. This was one of them:

I don’t know if you can see, but in the photo above on the pole there’s an Alena sticker. That was a skate shop in Montreal waaay back when I lived there, although at that time I had heard it was gonna close and just be an online shop. Not sure what happened in the end, but it was cool to see the sticker.

After checking out spots on Treasure Island, we moved on through the city of San Francisco to a sandwich/salad/cafe type place in Sunset for some food. Out next stop was this spot:

Even with the new fence in the middle, Jack still found a way to shred…So rad. The photo cred goes to Gordon, because I was busy learning how to film.

And then off to Baker’s Beach!

While I was busy admiring the view, Jack got to work…

At this point Jack started getting me prepped to film so Gordon took over with my camera…

Geez Gordon – thanks for the amazing Golden Gate Bridge shot. So beautiful.

From there we moved on yet another famous spot that I have never seen in person… Wallenberg. When we showed up we had no intention of actually skating here, but there was a little hucking that went down…

Jack surprised both Gordon and I when he kept rolling up faster and faster and faster until he finally just started jumping. Each time he kicked out, but by the last attempt he definitely cleared it. So crazy. Sorry for the crappiness of the pictures…

Jack ended up deciding that if he wanted to be able to skate at all for the rest of the trip it was time to call it quits. Then I ollied the bottom part (2-stair I suppose) with Gordon and then decided to try to kickflip it. After about an hour or so and approximately 100 attempts and a few lands, partial roll-aways and many many slams, it was time to call it quits. At first I admit I was bummed, but then we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge on the way home and ate at a Mac-n-Cheese restaurant for dinner. That and a bunch of beers, as well as coming home to these partying ladies……made up for it. Fun times. We watched more random skate videos, drank more beers and crashed. Woo. Thanks so much Gordon, you are a fabulous skate tour guide!

Sightseeing, skating and such. Part 2 of The epic Cali roadtrip 2012.

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Well, we made it! Thursday morning, Jack and I woke up in Oakland to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and breakfast sausage cooking. Jack opted for sleeping a little longer while I had an awesome breakfast with Gordon and Sandy. The first destination for the day was to Gordo’s Plaid Again Warehouse…

Gordon built a ramp in the back of the warehouse. So much fun. It got really hot really fast back there, but it was awesome to skate.

After our little session, it was time for our much-awaiting trip to In-N-Out.

I think I had been talking about In-N-Out ever since we hit Nevada two days earlier. I was so stoked…

… and I think everyone else was stoked. Ha.

Energized by such delicious fast food burgers and fries, we finally made it to San Francisco. Woo! First stop was at LowCard/Strange Bird Headquarters to say what’s up to Freddy and obviously had to drop by this spot…

The wind picked up while we were there so we decided to move on. A quick stop by the back manny spot where I think Jack might have snapped this photo…

… and then to check out the Icehouse gap. There were cars parked way too close, and even though we said we’d come back, we didn’t. Another time. Ha.

On the drive back to Oakland we took the first of many stops on Treasure Island. Best view of the city that I’ve seen.

Overall, even after the first day, it felt so different to be here with a car. I suddenly began to piece together the bay area. This moment was also my first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, despite the many other trips to SF I’ve taken in the past.

Once we got back to Oakland we grabbed some tall cans and chilled on the back deck at Gordon and Sandy’s til Gordon got home. Then we made moves to Sandy’s sister’s place for an awesome taco dinner, some drinks and some random hilarious tv-watching. Back to home base, more beers, time to crash.

We had a little slower start on Friday but started the day by hitting the road into SF. This next photo was taken by Jack while I was driving around (probably lost) in SF…

…yup. Okay, anyways. We dropped by Cruz to check out the shop, drop off some Null boards and 4 mags, and say hello to Sandy. From there… Eagle Donuts! Sherri’s bagel sandwiches were better than ever and she actually remembered me. I was so blown away. After that amazing experience, we cut across town to stop by DLX and say what’s up Reed. (Fuckin Reed! So good to see this dude.)  And drop off some more 4 mags! When Terry was in the shop a few days later he even insisted on Jack and I sign the “bathroom copy”. Ha. Such a honor!

From there we skated down to the 3-up-3-down for a session. While we were there a Zumiez tour bus/van rolled up with dudes ready to skate, film, take photos, etc. I hadn’t even tried to ollie on it. And I seriously didn’t know if I was going to make it…. but after a few tries it was all good and after awhiiiiiiiile I ollied up and kickflipped down. All while some dude out of the tour bus was almost landing front feeble across the entire thing. Ha.

We trekked it back up to DLX and got advise from Reed to check out some black marble ledges (or something like that) at the top of upper Haight. We ended up going on a little stroll through a huge park instead since apparently we went the wrong way when we got there. So we just wondered around and took a ton of photos…

Yup, lots of photos. We finally found our way out of the park and headed back to DLX. There we met up with Mike KP, who I was met for the first time. Mike, Jack and I ended up at Potrero park for awhile. At first we just watched people skate and some kids play dice in the middle of the park, but then we all skated for a bit.

After the park we headed back across town towards a party Reed told us to come to. On the way we found our new favorite pizza joint on Haight and then struggled for about 20 minutes or so to find a place to park. The party was awesome. I haven’t been to a real dirty crowded house party in awhile. There was a band that played, I think, but maybe only one song. We tried to go on the roof at one point, but the girl who fell off the roof at the previous party demanded that we not go up there. Riiight, well then. Back and forth, in and out of the “smoking section”, a crowded little back entrance to the apartment with a space for people to chill wedged around the hot water heater and laundry machines, until it was time to head back to Oakland. Fun times. Besides Jack almost getting in a fight on the way back to the car (haha jk), we made it back smoothly. Once again, more beers on the back deck in Oakland and then crash time.

Cell phone gems

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I recently got an adapter that will work with the micro SD card I have. The same one from my old “crackberry”, with all those amazing photos. Since I left the smart phone era and traveled back in time slightly, I’ve still been trying to document life on the regular. Unfortunately my new phone makes me actually save the photos I take. So many times I’ve taken a photo and just hit “END” and lost the photo immediately. Tragic. Here are the ones that survived.

Starting in December 2010, in Rhode Island…

Seth

Clay

Chip

The Kraken

Four Loko warning

My best drawing. Age 5.

Parking at the Pier

Surfers at the Pier

A note from Seth

Mandi

Math humor

Chip and a beast

Tig Notaro standup

latte art

the AWESOME discount

Bathroom art in SF

My bloody hand

Wallace

Super parking job

Strange?

very strange.

tulip

Null sighting

BIG burrito

Life is hard.

Herbie!

More crappy fisheye film photos – round 3 and 4

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Beginning a little ways back… can’t even remember how long ago this Denver session was. Late January I believe…

This next photo is a personal mystery…
If anyone has any idea who is in this photo or where this photo was taken, please let me know… I’m super curious. Actually, I think it might be Mandi from the day we did some school work on Pearl and then made our way down to Boulder Cafe… but from the photo it’s hard to tell.

Glen and Jack at the 303 ramp jam

Mikey – another Denver session

San Fran photos… (!!!)

my bmore son Joey… missing his grab. boo… ha… he sure was bummed…

Leaving SF sucked… but my roommate Elle Pizzle is the shizz…

The last couple photos are from Sunday with the Meta van…

Max!

notice how smooth and perfect the ground is.

San Fran trip 2011 – Day 6

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Last day in SF. Time flies. To keep with tradition, a trip to Eagle Donuts was a necessity…

 Best bagel sandwich.  One more shot…

Nate also had to get some photographic evidence of his amazing bagel sandwich.

Fuzz was stoked too.

After our last delicious bagel sandwich for who knows how long, we headed back to Gordon’s to find a crew for our last SF skate session of the trip. First spot, 3 up 3 down:

Next spot, just some random street for some cruising and powerslides…

So I’ve never taken a photo of anyone powersliding before….

…and damn! it looks pretty silly. (sorry that you got chosen as the model Fuzz, everyone’s photos looked pretty silly!)

Time to move on until we found a nice tall ledge.

Fuzz

Nate

 Glen

Fauver

 

Food stop up next… probably the healthiest food we ate all trip.

Then it was time to skate back towards Gordons. One last stop at Deluxe…

Good Bye Reed!

 Back to Gordon’s…

Then some hugs and goodbyes and to the airport. We all sat together in one row…

Take off…

… and that was that. Back to Colorado.

Super big thank you to Gordon and Sandy for the being the most amazing host and hostess ever. Ever ever. Thanks to Glen for at least taking your camera out of your bag (sike) and huge thanks to everyone that came out for skating, partying, whatever to make this trip into the amazing adventure that I was so anxiously anticipating!!

San Fran trip 2011 – Day 5 (part 2)

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The highly anticipated eating contest. Trash talking had been going back and forth from day 1. Points could be scored by eating chili dogs and drinking beer… but only a max of one beer per chili dog. No standing up. First to bail and leave the table had to take a shot of hot tub water – and considering how much use this hot tub was getting over the last few days, the possibility of such a penalty was reason enough to not enter this contest. But the table was filled with competitors. I took sooo many photos, mostly cause Lee let me borrow his fish eye lens – a special treat. Unfortunately I failing hard. ha. I tried to shoot photos in manual mode, but the auto focus was only working when the camera was set on auto. Sadly enough it took me awhile to figure this out (not the case with my 2 lenses – I swear!)… but I did realize in the process that I can’t manually focus a fish eye lens even if my life depended on it. So I’m sorry for so many out of focus photos in this set…



That’s when my camera died. Glen finished in first place with 7 chili dogs and 6 beers. And he said he could’ve drank a 7th beer no problem if it had come to it. What a competitor. Congratulations Glen on your 2nd win and thanks to Lee for letting me play around with a different lens.

San Fran trip 2011 – Day 5 (part 1)

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Monday came with sun shining and me in better shape than the rest of the crew. I thought I wouldn’t be able to skate though – my body was still aching, but a delicious breakfast compliments of Gordon and some medical assistance from Fauver got me back on my feet… and my board.

Our skate crew for the day: Fauver, Glen, Nate, Fuzz, Neil, Jason (for a bit), a random long boarder (also for a bit), and me. We started at a wallride we spotted during our walk in the rain the previous day…

Fauver

Fuzz

We moved on because the street was actually crazy windy and had lots of random traffic. While cruising we found another street… super smooth, a little bit of a hill, less wind, and this manny spot…

random long boarder… killin it with these one-footed mannies. He also busted out some coffin rides through traffic intersections… kinda sketch. I think he also mentioned how his friend punched a pigeon once.

Next up was this crazy bank… and lots of wind…

I don’t think any tricks at all went down… way too windy. So back to cruisin the streets…

This photo is dedicated to Chad – just so you know your pants are not the holiest of all pants.

Next spot…

Glen took a photo above of my ollie, but he didn’t like his timing. I thought the actual ollie was the better one so I put it on here anyways, but here’s the photo Glen liked better:

I started going for pop shuv. Nate picked up my camera and before I told him not to take sequences (I can be demanding some times), he got a sweet one of my slam. Fauver said I bounced off the ground… I just remember slapping my already bloody hand on the bricks. Pretty sweet…

Gif Created on Make A Gif

Anyways, I did land one…

Super weird… or cool… how much my board lined up perfectly with the rail. It probably wouldn’t even be visible if it weren’t for the wheels sticking out below.

We moved over closer to the street for this tall ledge. Everyone started getting down with boardslides. Fuzz pulled off a boardslide to fakie if I remember correctly and Fauver went for nose slide…

Glen

Nate

Fuzz

Glen looking super intense

Fauver

Once again it was time to move on, so we cruised down to Pier 7…

This just reminded me of Baltimore… guess they have Ride the Ducks in a lot of cities, but I thought it was appropriate considering the Baltimore-San Francisco connection going on with our crew.

Apparently we got kicked out… I didn’t see it go down though. We hung around for a bit longer and then started cruising along the water…

psyched on my spectator… or maybe he was psyched on me? ha

Our skate crew for the day.

Awesome session. Time to push back to thee parkside… next up: eating contest!

San Fran trip 2011 – Day 4

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Sunday. Woke up to rain. It actually rained all night… the kind of drizzly rain that makes things all wet but bearable to walk around in. I got in the hot tub first thing, hoping to help out my sore muscles. It was also time for some serious nutrition…

Most of the morning and afternoon we just hung out around the house. At one point, Glen, Nate, Fuzz, Neil and I went for a walking adventure in the drizzly rain to search for covered or indoor street spots. We were on our own for this one because Gordon made it clear he hadn’t looked for such a thing since he was 15 years old. We found some cool outdoor spots and stopped into deluxe before heading back to Gordon’s.

After 3, we headed out to Pacifico to the log shop, a surf/skate shop with an indoor bowl and small space to skate flat, a ledge, a rail, a bank and a quarter. I tried to skate but could not physically do it. My body was so beat. Figures the one time I had to pay for skating I couldn’t even do it. So instead I resorted to taking some crappy photos. Sorry, I’m only saying they’re crappy because I put no effort into moving around to get a good shot… the actual skating that was going down was rad.

gordon

 

brian


gordon over the death channel

 

lazer blur invert… i think gordon is cheerleading

 

brian over the death channel

 

joey blunt to axle stall (i believe)

 

gordon

 

After the log shop, we headed back to the mission. I struck a deal with Gordon to pick up people that were stranded from Reed’s car and got to borrow his truck to visit my college friends Molly and Shayda for dinner. It was a hard toss-up, I’d be missing the party bus to the roller skating rink… but there was no way that I was going to come out to SF and not visit these girls. I took Joey with me, because he had a flight to catch and wouldn’t be able to make the party bus anyways and headed over to Russian hill… or wherever those girls were. What an adventure! My first time driving in SF, it was raining and wet, in a stick shift truck that I had never been in before that day. Wild! I admit I was soooo nervous at first, but I think by the end of the night I got the hang of it. I did learn that there are hills (actually the hill that both Molly and Shayda were living on) that you can only go up in 1st gear… 2nd gear won’t cut it. Seriously, news to me.

Anyways, I did make it there and we had some yummy tacos for dinner and got to catch up on new things, old friends, and old stories. Good times. Eventually it was time for the girls to go to bed (since the next was Monday and some people weren’t on vacation ha) and me to head back and meet up with the boys.

I had no idea what was in store for me. I figured they’d all get a little wild on the party bus and at the roller skating rink, but I had no idea just how wild that would be. I met them all at the Argus and rolled up on a very drunk topless scene. So, I did my usual – just took a ton of photos… (oh sorry to anyone that maybe didn’t think these photos would surface, but I think everyone knows better than that)

Geeeeez… no idea what they did on the party bus to get this buck. I’m a little happy I missed it though because I don’t think I would’ve been able to recover the next day if I was on that party bus. Ha. Either way it was fully entertaining and yet another rad day in SF.