Rockdale Skate JamYesterday Kevin and I travelled about an hour northeast of Austin to skate at the Rockdale Skate Jam. The event was intended to drum up support in Rockdale for a public skatepark and seems to have succeeded well at that goal. Several hundred people attended. Doug King brought out bunches of his props, including his trailer-mounted halfpipe. Local parent, James Willis, had set up a fiberglass bowl rescued from a San Marcos waterpark. Jamie brought out a bunch of props from the Skatepark of Austin, too. Local angst-teen-band, Shopping Cart Madness, Andy Mack @ Banana Farm Rampperformed for hours. The enthusiasm for skateboarding was unmeasurable. You’d see it in the local kids who have basically nothing to skate in Rockdale trying their hand at fakies in the big halfpipe. It was also great to see the support among all the Rockdale adults at the event. Their plan is to station the fiberglass bowl(s) in a public park as a temporary skate spot until the community can raise the money to build a permanent concrete skatepark there.

A whole bunch of people gathered at the Banana Farm Ramp on Sunday. The future of this ramp is in doubt as the landlord has recently contacted Travis Burke asking that he dismantle the behemoth. Mike Star’s birthday was also incorporated into the event.Crawfish were devoured by the hundreds. For the first time ever in the history of the Banana Farm Ramp, there were more kids in the backyard than dogs, and more girls than kids.

Here are the photos.

Donald D sent me another letter from prison. It’s full of a lot of clarifications on stuff. For starters, he cleared up an issue Kevin and I wanted to know the real truth of– Who took Justin Lynch out of skateboarding? Some say it was Jeff Phillips with a clothesline. Others mention Ben Schroeder. Donald D says it was both. Two different ramp skating collisions added up to a spinal injury that ended his professional skateboarding career. Double D also has some input on our longrunning pursuit of the best madonnas… His answer came in the form of this rap song–

So many sessions, so many madonnas
So many hot girls turnin into young mommas.
They know my name / so now I’m being hunted /
the test are in
where to begin – another damn
kid born out of sin-
Shit G all he asked was
who done the best madonnas
Not who’s carrying your kid-
My bad-word- Adam Luxford