austin skate notes

• A blurb promoting this weekend’s chili & skate competition at Mabel Davis appeared in the Food & Life section of today’s Austin American Statesman.

• Tuesday’s Statesman used Mabel Davis photos to illustrate the heat that has arrived in the area.
• The Huck Jam tour kicks off in San Antonio in July and also boom-booms in Houston and Corpus.
• McRad is scheduled to play at the Broken Neck next Friday. There’s also a film festival there this weekend, but I don’t have details because mySpace is total fucking bullshit that I don’t have time for.

The other day I dropped by Lanier High School where its skate club was holding an after-school session. The club is in its second year and boasts a strong membership among Lanier students. They skate together on campus at least once a week, and this session boasted a special guest. No-Comply shop owner, Jake Nunn, came by to ride and hand out stickers and sun glasses. Here are some photos from the session.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, JFA, play this Saturday with ANS and Bark Hard.

The skate notes knuckle tattoo generator has been offline for quite a hell of a long time. Just fixed it a few minutes ago. Get your digits inked.

Phone calls came in fast and furious this evening reporting a Chaz Pineda sighting at Round Rock. Utter carnage. Can’t imagine what next month’s pro contest is going to be like at Mabel Davis. As a reality check, I phoned up Bob Burnquist using the number he gave me when I bumped into him at Whole Foods a few months ago. I told him Chaz has been riding Mabel Davis regularly and asked him if that would pose a challenge for him at the Thrasher-sponsored competition. Here’s a recording of his response.

Got this flyer yesterday afternoon from Matt @ Mustache. It’s another mustache contest, but this time it looks to be at the skatepark instead of a bar on Red River.

I posted some photos from a skate demo Adobe put on at their SXSW party. Cary Jackson and Jason Schmale built the mini-ramp, Dave and Jason ripped the demo. Free food and beer kept them fueled. I believe the ramp will end up in Schmale’s backyard.

Speaking of mini-ramps, people interested in the Patterson Park Mini-ramp project can show up @ noon on Saturday to lend a hand with site preparation. Now that the rain seems to be over and the endless (?) political hurdles cleared, progress should resume.

NASA decided to torture the astronauts on the Space Shuttle this morning by waking them with a nu-Metallica song (post-Justice).

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The roster of free SXSW events are locking down in anticipation of the upcoming spring music and film festival. Badges and wrist bands continue to sail beyond the reach of the common man, but fortunately the free, corporate-sponsored events are plentiful. The top one to come across the ASN dashboard so far is the Transmission-organized Mess With Texas fest over at Waterloo Park. Music and comedy acts filled out by the Breeders, Municipal Waste, Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, and Janeane Garafalo are sure to please.

The first of the 4 PARD long-range planning meetings made good progress last week for drawing attention to our need for more skate terrain spread throughout Austin. I posted a write-up about the meeting along with flyers and dates for the upcoming Parks and Recreation input meetings on the APSAC site.

Progress is also showing on the concrete mini-ramp project. A week was lost thanks to a grumpy tennis player demanding the ramp be relocated for fear skate noise might distract nearby tennis players. To placate the lone complaining powerbroker tennis player, the city has committed to provide a streetlight for the ramp at the new site within the park.

The art-on-deck show over the weekend was well attended by skateboarders and looky-loos. The demo on Saturday by Find-and-Grind’s watchless team riders enjoyed an abandoned van in the parking lot of the gallery. Perhaps someone in the audience enjoyed the un-ending reggae coming out of the PA system. Some crappy camera-phone pictures of the event are here.

Roy Scheider, the oscar-nominated star of several movies, died yesterday at the age of 75. His catch-phrase was a line he improvised in Spielberg’s 1975 movie, “Jaws.” It inspired local warp-tourers, Riverboat Gamblers, to incorporate it in their song, “What’s What.”

In that Riverboat Gamblers music video, the astute viewer might recognize the boom-chica-boom go-go dancers shaking it at Beerland. On Saturday night, half of that duo served as a judge at the second-annual Misprint Magazine Mustache (& beard) Competition at Club DeVille. It was a phenomenal event with shaggy competitors.

Think you know someone with a large skateboard collection? It’s nothing. Absolutely nothing compares to Warren McKinney’s collection. This evening and tomorrow you can see approximately half of Austin’s largest deck collection at the United States Art Authority gallery, which is conveniently located adjacent to the Spiderhouse Coffee shop and I Luv Video (2906 Fruth Street). I dropped by for a preview and was astonished at Warren’s holdings. He’s got an entire wall set up dedicated to band-issued decks.
There’s another wall covered in decks featuring photos of Drew Barrymore from when she was hot. And then there’s bunches of walls emblazoned with obscurities and collectibles I had never seen before.

Bands and videos will play at the opening friday and saturday boasts a demo by the Find-&-Grind skate team. The show is free on Friday from 6 until 9, and I think all day Saturday. There is a full bar on site.

Once you’ve browsed all the crazy permutations of Jason Lee’s decks mocking George Powell’s company, you might get a hankering to step over to I Luv Video to pick up that Steve Rocco documentary. It’ll probably be checked out, though. Another hot documentary that would be an excellent second choice is the recently-released “King of Kong: Fistfull of Quarters.” As a movie, it’s exponentially better than the Rocco flick. It’s a story filled with good guys, an evil villain, and a herculean challenge: score more than a million points on a classic Donkey Kong arcade machine. One of the top 5 films of last year, I’d wager.