austin skate notes

As you can see from the poll options to the right, I anticipated a healthy showing of pro skaters at this weekend’s Mabel Davis contest. When I heard that none were coming on Friday, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. That disappointment lasted just until the first heat started Saturday morning…

As spectators, we didn’t get a crowd of Hummer-driving, blinged-out, rock-star, pros who have professional stylists prepare their looks before photo sessions. Turns out, there was no purse to attract them. Just some cool hand-welded trophies and boxes of schwag for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd placers. So, the big-named pros took a pass on what ended up being the coolest Texas skate event I can remember this side of Shut Up and Skate 1991.

Those skating in the 2008 Toad & Salmon’s Chili Bowl Contest at Mabel Davis were hungry. And I’m not trying to work in some obvious connection to the Chili cooking contest that was also held that day. The mix of locals and out-of-towners who entered demonstrated a phenomenal spectrum of styles and talent. The announcer was awesome at remembering everyone’s name and cheering for even the beginner kids who were putting all they had into hitting a frontside grind while the likes of Jimmy the Greek blazed past them to set up for a frontside invert. Everybody really had a cool, positive attitude and even though the temps were unreal, it was hard not to have fun out there.

Out-of-state visitors ruled the day. In fact, the level of skating I saw surpassed what I had even seen from pros of higher career stature at Mabel Davis. Stuff that took other guys a bunch of tries to dial in came first-try and under contest pressure with other guys snaking runs at the same time on Saturday. The big standout for me was Josh Mattson. This guy drove from California, that’s how fucking serious Josh was about winning this contest. He made multiple 270-degree frontside bonelesses from the deck into the deep end of the bowl. He made a standard miller-flip in the deep, hand-on-coping, then later pulled a 540 miller-flip, or a ‘units’ as it were, also, hand-on-coping. He had an impressively deep bag of VERY difficult tricks, and his runs consisted of him basically dumping that bag upside down and whatever came out, was what we saw. Very improvised skating, which was standard fare out there on Saturday. Oh yeah, blunt ollie on the tall wall.

Jimmy the Greek took first, and was no slouch. He had more airs in the deep and also higher airs, but aside from the texas plants he displayed right in front of the judges table, I’m not sure what pushed him past Josh. I must admit that at one point during the finals he did something that had me standing up to applaud, and when I did, the blood rushed to my head and I blacked out, waking up on top of someone’s beer I fell onto. The blackout erased the trick from my memory, but I think it might have been a frontside invert-revert.

Otis brought furniture for people to sit on and his chili won him fourth place in the cook-off. Dave Watigny’s cajun brew placed second, while Ben Raney came from California to deliver first-place chili to the crowd. Lee Brooks also brought shade for the crowd in the form of a massive DIY canopy. Talk about hella-scene-supporter…

I really hope Toad & Salmon choose to hold the contest in Austin again next year and the same crowd of riders show up again to deliver the most thrash ever seen at Mabel Davis.