Good morning Vietnaaaaaaammmm!!! Pat Black and SteveO hosting and toasting.
Mayhem, and it's only the first day.
Big Chaz Pineda.
Prequelliation: I have seen the future, and it is here and now...---
Go out and pick up any one of the major skate mags and flip through it. Try and look at it with an objective eye and then make a judgement call as to where you think the epicenter of skateboarding might currently lay. SF? HB? Los? Tampa? Barcy? You tell me, because frankly I think something huge happened and almost everybody missed it. Well, maybe everybody but the kids in the Pacific Northwest. Outside of the narrow spotlight, far away from the big stage, free of the big box retailer sponsorships and candyassed nonsense, the big one is coming. There is a massive faultline running through skateboarding and it begins at the Oregon border. And if you're looking for the epicenter at which the impending big one is going to be centered, simply start in Portland and move outward, following the shockwaves as they flow out in a concentric circle across the northwest. If you haven't felt the tremors yet, you will. If you think that kids like Kevin Kowalski, Donovan Rice, Johnny Turgesen, and Steve Reeves are the random oddities, the one-offs, well then you'd best think again. These guys are just the tip of the iceberg, the most visible fraction of a huge contingent of ripping skateboarders, that don't need stardom, coverage, and big dollar shoe contracts to validate their prowess. There are so many kids up there destroying everything around the clock, all-terrain monsters without sponsors, and they simply don't care. They are skateboarders. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less. If any sizable number of these kids migrated south to California, a lot of feelings would be hurt, a lot of egos would be crushed, and quite frankly a lot of team rosters might change in a hurry. Sorry to drop that information on you, but its just a simple fact. If you're jaded and you think skateboarding is in danger of sucking, just take a trip to the northwest and you'll have an entirely new perspective on things. This is the gospel of Red, his disciples are many and they are heavy, and he's not done cultivating the madness by any stretch. But wait, I'm getting way ahead of myself. I need to rewind.
If you want blood....
Greeks and Italians agree, beer is food.
Steve "Quit calling me the fucking ho-ho guy" Schneer. He claimed to have grabbed this shirt last year at Red's when it was abandoned.
Prefacation: Is it really 105 degrees here?---
Thursday. 74 degrees in Los Angeles upon departure. I should have known something was up when I had to change planes in my hometown of Oakland and it was hovering in the 90's. Wheels down in Portland and it all went to shit momentarily. I stepped out into the open air and felt like someone was trying to smother me with a hot wet towel. 105 degrees. The cheerful rent-a-car folks informed me it was only supposed to get worse over the weekend. Once I got out onto the 99 it was a good hour before the crisp ocean air began to creep into my rig. I arrived at Lincoln City at sunset and got my first look at the freshly poured snake run. I can tell you now that no photograph yet taken there does any justice to the gnar of it all. If you're looking for a place to test your manhood, start there. The fog rolled in and everyone rambled off into the darkness. I made my way to the casino to do battle with some evil penny slots until Ngoho started texting me about heading out to Red's for some sort of craziness. Red's compound was buzzing with activity (mostly beer-drinking) and I got my first glimpse of what I will refer to as the Vagina bowl. A 14 foot plus concrete hole in a barn, definitely not for the weak or people with a strong fear of death. Some ripping was going down with a few rebel Daggers and Kim Peterson attacking the gnar corner. Outside Red was staging motocross races in the dark and tending a large bonfire and by tending I mean lobbing large pyrotechnical devices into it sending the crowd running for cover. I decided to escape Redtopia and run for the shelter of a cheap motel room while I still was relatively free of second and third degree burns.
Josh Rodriguez even.
Skatopia collides with Redtopia. Morgan Burgess.
Lenny Byrd, spawning.
Rune the pilot.
Bruno Passos handled Lincoln City with authority, front rock and a roll into 1st place.
A Briny Breakfast with Barnacle Bill.---
There is nothing quite like waking up to perfect smoked salmon, some sourdough bread, and beer for breakfast. Perfect food for a long day in the intermittent deep fog of Lincoln City. Add to this, the large number of independent coffee vendors with drive-thru service and it's my kind of place, complete with one of the burliest evolving skateparks on the planet. The setup was pretty simple, today's contest would encompass the original upper flow section and the newly added snake at the same time, in a jam format. Simple for everyone except maybe the judges, so much ripping was going on in both sections simultaneously that the proverbial eyes in the back of the head would have helped. I rounded a corner and came face to face with Skatelab local Corey Phillips, one of CD's favorite sons. Corey was coincidentally on a weeklong skate trip to the northwest with his dad, and had no idea the Trifecta was even going on. Corey is a gamer, it only took me about 12 seconds to convince him to enter, and he was on fire the whole weekend. Heat after heat went down with some of the most frenzied skateboarding ever witnessed. Kowalski, Chaz Pineda, Tyler Martin, Tim Johnson, Bruno Passos, Rune, and the entire northwest contingent were the standouts, along with Cardone, Martin Jurasek. In the masters division everybody was killing it, but Ngoho, Buck Smith, Lenny Byrd, Pat Black and Jason Parkes were definitely the guys to beat. The ladies' division was pretty much the Julie Kindstrand show, but a lot of young girl rippers like Erin Wolfkiel, Megan Brown, and Lexi Barclay were making her earn it for sure. Shit got dicey right off the bat. With the entire upper area and the snake in play you had heads blazing through up top, then flying down blindly into the snake. Upper Lincoln City is already a super collider, and the human pinballs were flying fast and furious. But the snake run is where some of the serious stuff went down. The top 5 Masters guys all took on the snake full bore. Lenny Byrd had blazing speed and carried his lines to the bottom and all the way back to the top. Parkes had his lip game dialed and was ollie-ing everything, everywhere. Pat Black abused the big bowl of the snake. In the end it was Ngoho and Buck battling for the top spot. Buck took a nasty digger on a hung lipslide that covered over half the big bowl, but he managed to reset himself and sneak past Ngoho to win it. The highlight of the Masters though, was Ngoho air transferring one of the deck launches rolling out frontside on the big bowl, and rolling in on the face just as Jason Parkes was screaming into the bowl, coming within a mere 12 inches of a trainwreck. In the pro division Chaz Pineda was looking like he had the upper hand, and after waiting through 9 heats of qualifying, you had to wonder just who hadn't stiffened up in the damp cold that had set in. Being from Denmark, you might think Rune had the advantage, but a broken shoulder and assorted other bodily trauma held him back, if only slightly. For the pros it really came down to the mossy, rough, past vert extension in the upper bowl and who had the best bangers on it. Upper Lincoln City is rough from years of skate abuse, and even getting speed to top the extension is true men's work. Tyler Martin, Kowalski, Tim Johnson, and Bruno Passos got straight down to some heavy one-upmanship, and in the end, Bruno was unstoppable. Front rocks and backside disasters on that crusty monolith sealed the deal, along with some heavy lip work at the bottom of the snake. Kowalski fell just short in 2nd, and Tim Johnson powered his way into 3rd. Chaz ended up in 4th, mostly only because he was destroying himself in the finals, trading a few nasty slams for some high performance moves. At the end of the day, some chose to stay in Lincoln City, but I headed back toward Portland to get mixed up in whatever was going down Friday night. Better to do the hour drive the night before than the day of the next event, and I needed to dig up Lord Raunchfeld, wherever he might be lurking.
POWERRIDERS!!!
Danny Tumia getting tight on some premium Tedders brand coping.
Woah, Tim Johnson!
Ngoho. "Yeah I'm all up in this shit."
PatFuckingBlack.
Jason Parkes, weightless tailslide.
Long is the road, and hard, that out of Hell leads up into light.---
Portland's nightlife pretty much rocks. Skate-based dive bars, affordable "gentlemen's clubs", and on these particular evenings, tepid to balmy weather conditions. Because the Trifecta is a 3 day all-out combat skate-a-thon, you might think most heads are in early and sleeping but that is hardly the case. Partying well into the morning hours, then catching a nap and starting up all over again is the norm. The bars are open until 3 AM. You just keep going because you have to, and everyone is up to the endurance challenge. I found myself at the Sandy Hut with Burger and Becky, the Yerman clan, Raunchy, Olson, Ngoho, Roger Harrel, Kim Peterson, Daphnos, and a wide assortment of other skate monsters, drinking top shelf whiskey and controlling the pool table for most of the evening, until Ngoho put the Venice smackdown on me. When they booted us at 3, everybody dispersed and got ready for day 2.
Froot Boot on the roof at LC.
Tigard overview, flow for days.
Even this tent couldn't prevent MyG from sunstroking out and letting Red cue Britney up more than once.
Michael O'Friel lays into one at Tigard.
Kowalski was on fire at Tigard.
Tyler Martin spent most of the afternoon in the skies above Tigard.
The Greek, gettin' some.
Reeves, haulin' ass.
Hawaiian Nick Yamasato had some of the fastest lines and bestest stuff.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
"It's gonna be like Sacto heat baby, I'm tempered for this shit!"---SteveO
Drive-through coffee. More specifically, drive-through iced coffee. My hotel was about 15 miles from Tigard, and I hit 2 stands on the way there. 10AM and it was already approaching 90 degrees. The nice thing about Tigard though, is that it is surrounded by shade trees and well-watered lawns. Not only that but it is one of the most uniquely designed parks I've ever seen. Seemingly random features like the turntable volcano and trannysaurus rex, and a beyond 90 degree square pool corner, make perfect sense and heads utilized every element of this park to the fullest. Right around start time, temperatures had soared well over 100, but nobody seemed to care. The skating was explosive to say the least. The entire park was in play, but most of the chaos occurred in the jam-packed flow section. Julie Kindstrand once again dominated in the women's division and took top honors. When the Masters division got underway, Yunker was charging. He had ripped at LC the day before, but Jon was on fire at Tigard and left a lot of people wondering "who the hell is THAT old guy?" Sean Black was also killing it and both of these dudes were looking to unseat top shredders Ngoho and Buck Smith under the merciless sun. Wally Inouye got in there for a minute as well. Jason Parkes was having another ripping day at the office and has a hell of a snap for an old man. In the end it was trannysaurus rex that would decide it all. Most people thought Ngoho had out-battled Buck to win it, but Buck's late in the finals backside boneless off of the head of t-rex sealed the deal by a hair. CD's own Raunchy took 7th and a cool $80. During pro qualifying, the heat may have been the contributing factor in the carnage that ensued. First Tyler Mumma took a horrendous double dome smacking at the base of the bank wall. Next, Chad Shetler went down in a collision and left a puddle of blood and cranial fluid in the flat. Chad was out cold for a time, but he came to and left in search of a medical evaluation. Chad received several stitches and most likely a headache, but was otherwise okay. Edwin Swaggerty joined the walking wounded by depositing two frontal incisors on the floor, but in true Trifecta fashion, he just kept skating. Red dropped some heavy artillery in the form of large pyrotechnics devices into the mix, and the police station was right next door...only in Oregon. The pro division was really looking too close to call, right down to the end of the final heats. You had a good number of guys who all rode at the outer limit of believability. Kowalski, Benji, Tim Johnson, Tyler Martin, Cardone, and the from out of nowhere Brice Niebuhr who blew everyone's minds. At the end of the day Cardone pulled off some ridiculous stuff like a head high stale fish through the pool corner to narrowly edge out Tim Johnson and Kowalski. I had Kowalski at the top of my card right down to the last 4 seconds of the finals, that's how close it was. Insanity.
Sky Siljeg under heavy surveillance.
Brice Niebuhr. In California this guy would make most people want to quit, he's just that good. Lucky for us, Brice is staying in Yakima, at least for a little while.
Might not look like much to you, but Skreech is really grinding THROUGH this corner. Retarded.
See that smallish hip way back there to the left? That's where Daniel Cardone is coming from and he's going to land on this facing wall in the foreground and you're just going to sit there and take it.
And for that, Cardone is carting this novelty check back to the land of linguine.
The house that a jogger built..---
I barely had time to pull my shit back together at the hotel before I had to roll over to the 300 degree Nike Skate Facility for the Grind For Life/Hurley-hosted Pool Rules art show and a knockdown-dragout skate session on the various terrain inside. Whatever your feelings are on the Nike subject, they opened their doors to everyone, the beer flowed, and some serious skating went down. Mike Rogers greeted everyone with a smile and the Pool Rules exhibition just keeps growing with each travel stop. I stayed long enough to get some rolling in and witness Corey Phillips destroy the bowled in mega mini ramp, somehow dodging some sketchy holes in the skatelite while getting up into the rafters. Rodolpho Ramos took Ngoho's shaka obstacle challenge and ollied it cleanly nearly clearing the entire pyramid. I rolled out of there to catch some sleep before the final day's mayhem.
Yunker. Other side of the lens.
Ngoho. Halo.
Dinosaurs and bonelesses are both prehistoric. Buck Smith isn't, just yet.
Un-Civil war in unfamiliar territory.---
Day 3. Battle Ground, Washington. Who's ever heard of crossing state lines during a skate contest? Some 30 minutes out of Oregon, and well into redneck country, that's where Battle Ground is. I discovered pretty quickly that aside from the friendly folks at Plan Z Skateshop, Battle Ground doesn't exactly put out the welcome mat for hundreds of visiting skateboarders from around the world. The local bar/grill had a flyer on the door that proclaimed "Welcome Skaters!" The reality was, you couldn't even get table service, and the large number of cowboy hat adorned necks at the bar was all we needed to shine it. Meanwhile over at the park, things were getting hot. The weather shifted minute by minute, mostly hot and insanely humid. Still, it was a bit better than Tigard the day before. I found myself jetting around the street section of the park having a blast with the local kids, and getting into a fun little clover bowl session with Steve Brockway, Alan Barclay, Bryce Kanights, Sasha, and a few other veteran heads. The youth showed respect, and the vibe was perfect. Once again Julie won the women's division, sliding by Megan Brown and feeling comfortable in the big square from all of that Combi skating. In the Masters division, Salba came in to mix things up after skipping Tigard and Lincoln City, and swiped 4th place with some precise linework in traffic. Jason Parkes mixed up some modern moves with classic flow and used then entire flow section to his advantage to handle 3rd. Once again it was a duel between Ngoho and Buck for the top spot. The true vert of the square probably favored Buck a bit, being a longstanding vert dog, but he may have gotten locked into a bit too much of a halfpipe line. Ngoho on the other hand was driven to put his wheels on every inch of the area, and his slide and rolls up the escalator and ridiculously long ones through the corner along with some huge airs and cradle hits put his lock on 1st place. On a side note I was super stoked to come across one of my old nor-cal compatriots in the form of 'Des' Troy Sliter, who entered the Masters and put in a respectable showing with some evil fakie vert lines in the big square. It's always good to bump into old friends on the road. Under some rather threatening skies, the pros got down to business. Last day, last shot, and the energy of the heats was off the charts. Even during practice, things were completely out of control. Example A. Rob Aaron out of Daleville, AL "just fucking around" pulls out the hand-me-down, well beyond 10 O'clock in the cradle. If you don't know what this is, look for a BK sequence of it somewhere soon, just to completely destroy your comprehension of what is possible on a skateboard. By the time the final heats got ready to start, everybody was beyond amped, and in the distance, deafening thunder was making its way toward Battle Ground. The apocalypse, the end times, the air raid sirens. The first final heat started and within seconds every rider was in the bowl all at once. The roar of the crowd began to be punctuated with "oh no's" of utter disbelief. Close call doesn't even begin to describe how hectic it was becoming, and something had to give. Taylor Bingaman was on fire, and going about mach 50, and as he barged through traffic out of the big bowl hurled himself over the hip into the no flat bottom halfpipe flume upstream, where he was introduced to a speeding Nolan Munroe coming the opposite direction. They connected head on in the bottom and Tayor took the worst of it. It probably would have been a good idea to have on-scene medics in this instance, being that Taylor looked like he had gone 10 rounds with Kimbo Slice. Fortunately after a hospital trip, Taylor came away with a few good cuts, a broken nose and cheekbone and a fighting attitude, He was more pissed about getting his finals cut short than getting diced up, and actually tried to check himself out of the hospital mere hours after being admitted. Taylor is one tough motherfucker. Right after this incident, the skies opened up with lightning, thunder and a short downpour. Reeves hair doubled as a mop and several bodies sopped up the remaining water. Once things dried, it was on once again, but the earlier incident didn't deter anyone from running at full bore all the way to the bloody end. Sky Siljeg was in serious danger of leaving the cradle entirely because he was hitting it so high, Skreech was pure chaos. Donovan Rice stepped up and blew minds, and Linderman was pure Linderman, bringing out the 540 with seconds to spare. Basically, your top 5 just pushed things beyond any sane limits. Bruno terrorized in his typical flowing fashion to take 5th. Back in his home state of Washington, Brice Niebuhr attacked everything and everyone, literally going up and over people when there was no other way around. Look out for this dude, he's the real deal. The top 3 slots could have gone any which way, and you still would have had a Bacon sweep. In 3rd, Kowalski, who many thought might have stolen it, rode his pork product with a vengeance, securing himself 400 dollars. Between Benji and Tim Johnson, the level of skating was something seldom witnessed anywhere. Tim brought his explosive air game and contortionist act out in such an aggressive fashion it felt as if the park might sympathetically crumble under his relentless attack. Benji mixed up his power with just about every trick that currently exists and somehow managed to avoid about 30 imminent collisions. Again almost too close to call, but in the end Benji just had ever so slightly more and handled 1st place by fractional margins. Everyone in the house had been waiting to exhale for 3 solid days, and only when it ended did the reality of what happened really sink in. 72 hours of straight mayhem, experienced by hundreds of people, it doesn't get any better than this. The top performers for the Trifecta were Tim Johnson, Buck Smith, and Julie Kindstrand. This is now a matter of record, but really every single person who attended and entered these events came out on top. It's really that simple.
The larger sections of Battle Ground.
Salba, slob.
Local wildlife.
Barefooted Dagger mayhem.
Kowalski, frontal lipment.
Roy Starin. The favorite of scooterists far and wide.
Bruno, jumbo mute. Battle Ground.
Julie Kindstrand, pool warm up sesh.
One bad minute, and the road to perdition.---
After party, or supposed one. Some party house near old Portland. It didn't even start until midnight, at which point most of the people who showed up were being sacked for $20 just to get in, then being double-dipped for drinks inside. I scammed my way past the cover charge by being media, but a watery whiskey and soda and 10 minutes of that was all I could stomach. The Acropolis Steak House was nearby and provided a much better warmdown environment. Go there yourself, and ask for Roxy. The Crop is one of those legendary spots, that you just need to experience on your own. Monday morning, and a rainstorm was cranking. I ran into Ngoho at PDX and we tried to put some sort of framework around the past 3 days. It's just not possible. How do you describe this sort of thing to someone who doesn't know? I don't know, and I've obviously failed the more discerning readers out in internetland. Sorry, but next year, hop a train, get on the hound, or get a plane ticket and come up with your own definition of the facts and or fiction.
Its not about money, its about skateboarding...---
Last year nobody got paid. Rumors fluttered about like so many uncollected dollars in one of those crude lottery boxes. It was thought, for a time, that the Trifecta was done. But this year Double A and the good folks at Hurley stepped in to let the good times roll once again. Even so, the cash purse was not huge, but that really isn't the point. No big networks are profiteering from these events, and the atmosphere is the antithesis of the highly regulated and exclusive air at a big TV affair. No security, no prison fence enclosures, no bad tripping cam guys in short shorts. The only things here are clean air, high voltage skateboarding and a different state of mind in different states of the union. Top pros showing up when there is small money on the line should tell you a lot. Rune just came off of his X superpark victory to mix it up in the Northwest, along with some of the heaviest heads in the business. Absent were the throngs of non-skating couch potatoes seeking autographs and momentary brushes with fame. Nobody missed them. If you were here then there isn't anything I can tell you that you don't already know. If you weren't here, then you had better start planning your trip for next year. Call it a pilgrimage to Redtopia, call it a mission, call it whatever you like, but until you witness it with your own senses, you should call it something you need to experience before you take that permanent dirt nap. I think that should cover it. And if you're wondering about the Britney graphics, well all I can say is, if you were there, you know.
Parting shot. Yunker and Raunchy come up on cash money at Tigard. Gentlemen, AND Rippers both.
Check the video clips below.
Lincoln City Pro Heat #2
Oregon Trifecta - Lincoln City Pro Heat #2 Rune Glifberg, Chaz Pineda, Bruno Passos, Mark 'Red' Scott, Kevin Kowalski, Tim Johnson
Oregon Trifecta - Tigard Pro Heat #1 (11:32)
Johnny Turgeson, Tim Johnson, Daniel Cardone, Raven Tershy, Sky Siljeg, Brice Niebuhr
Oregon Trifecta 2008 - Tigard Pro Heat #2
Benji Galloway, Bruno Passos, Steve Reeves, Rune Glifberg, Tyler Martin, Kevin Kowalski
Oregon Trifecta 2008 - Tigard Masters Finals Buck Smith, Pat Ngoho, Pat Black, Jason Parkes, Jon Yunker, Shawn Black
Oregon Trifecta 2008 - Battleground Masters Final
Pat Ngoho, Buck Smith, Jason Parkes, Steve Alba, Pat Black, Steve Grover,
Oregon Trifecta 2008 - Battleground Pro Final Heat #1 Josh Sandoval, Donovan Rice, Rion Linderman, Danny Tumia, Tyler Martin, Brice Niebuhr
Oregon Trifecta 2008 - Battleground Pro Final Heat #2 Tim Johnson, Benji Galloway, Bruno Passos, Sky Siljeg, Kevin Kowalski, Daniel Cardone
-BLKPRJKT // PHOTOS JON YUNKER & RAUNCHY
Tuesday 26th 2008f August 2008 16:41 Print this Page
