Slam City Jam 1999 - Diary of a Drunk Man

    Target : Slam City Jam, April 30, May 1 & 2, 1999. Vancouver B.C. Canada 

Preparation…Wed. April 28. Make a checklist of stuff so you know you’ll forget everything on it. Purchase film, gas car up and drink a couple beers. Confirm plans with the whole posse spread throughout Seattle to Vancouver B.C. Get some sleep. 

Ben Butler - Slayer Pool Grind	Slayer Pool - Overview

Day 1… Thursday April 29. Sleep in. Wake up and pack clothes bag.  Go to the bank and exchange some US currency to Canadian funny money.  Need batteries for flash. Go to grocery store. Stoke out wife since I’m leaving her for a day with some treats.  Pet the dog goodbye. Try to leave. Come back after one block since I remebered I needed to bring Bobcat a deck to ride. ( personal reminder : Bobcat you still owe me some $).  Try to leave again, get back out of car to grab CD’s for the trip. Try to leave again. 1 mile down the road memory comes to me that I’ll be needing a sleeping bag. Duh! Back home. Leave for real this time. 11:00. Pick up Todd and his case of beer. 11:30 pick up Bobcat. (and out of nowhere Butler is waiting as well) OK, I didn’t plan on the x-tra body, but cool. SLAYER drops into the player and we’re good to go! On to the beer store for 3 more cases of Lucky’s.  Next stop Slayer Bowl in Bellingham. Hoping to meet Evil Dave and crew there. Butler throws down some gnarly grinds, we toss a few back, throw a couple carves in the bowl, meet some locals who had been skating the bowl for a while. Check out the completely destroyed house. Enjoy the sunshine because it’s likely to disappear forever. More traveling ahead. 

Frank Hirata - Flip grab	Tony Hawk - Indy Air

Day 2… Top of the gas tank at the border. Meet border crossing lady. Get interrogated while in car. " Can you please pull your car over to the right" We pull over and proceed to get interrogated and searched even better. We see lots of our other skater comrades getting the same treatment. After a long while they let us through with lots of illegal imports. But they couldn’t find any illegal drugs. They reluctantly let us go. OK, it’s another country and we’re immune to any laws so let’s get cracking. Brew’s open and we’re headed to Whiterock for the 2nd annual Board Bash. Many, many, many people. More than last year. This is a fun place to be. You get all the rubberneckers, hot amateurs, and pro’s all ripping apart one of the best ever skateparks. It’s not so fun for me since I can’t skate with a broken back. So I toss a few back with Todd and we enjoy some sweet skate action. We also hook up with Kraunbauer. He’s key since our heads will be resting on his floor tonight. Getting a nice buzz at this point. More travel. 

Matt Beach - Noseblunt Slide off a ledge	Brian Anderson - Hurricane on the rail

Day 3… It was time to check Butler in to the arena so we made our way up to the PNE. We figured the only way to make space in the car was to drink the beer we dragged over the border so we kept pulling them from the trunk through the secret fold down console. By the time we got to the arena to check things out we were pretty lit. So~ what else should we do except skate! Even my back wasn’t feeling any pain so I took a few death defying runs out on the course. It was huge! Nothing I can remember resembled anything you could find on the street. After the adrenaline poured through my veins for a while I felt the need to get my buzz back on because my back was coming back to life. Out to the car, let Bobcat & Butler go there own way after a few power slides in the parking lot. On to Kraunbauers… 

Neil Hendrix - Frontside Tailgrabber

Day 4… The Transworld Skater of the Year Awards were tonight, so we headed on over to Mr. K’s to freshen up and drop off our sleeping gear. Pick up the girl detour, and we were back in action in no time.  Todd could only giggle, Kraunbauer was baffled, and I was lost. ‘No Fear’ though because our USA immunity force field was protecting us even as we approached another parking garage. A little vandalism right in front of the ticket booth was sure to get us in some trouble. But again, nothing seems to make these Canadians irate. Here’s where the alcohol finally played a role in everything. I was hazy. I forgot peoples names and was just a general nuisance. At least my friends were too! Reality notched a mark in our belt as we had to pay for any alcoholic beverages. I thought Transworld was big time. ( They were probably just smart!) 
TWS  Awards… 
TWS...(best in...)

STREET 
1. Eric Koston
2. Guy Mariano
3. Rick McCrank

BEST VERT
1. Bob Burnquist
2. Tony Hawk
3. Colin McKay

BEST OVERALL
1. Bob Burnquist
2. Chany Jeanguenin
3. Danny Way

BEST STYLE
1. Mark Gonzales
2. Erik Koston
3. Rick Howard

BEST VIDEO 1998
1. Birdhouse - The End
2. Shortys - Fulfill The Dream
3. Transworld - Transmission 7

BEST VIDEO PART
1. Andrew Reynolds - The End
2. Steve Berra - The End
3. Peter Smolik - Fulfill The Dream

BEST TEAM
1. Girl
2. Birdhouse
3. Element

Best Street Girl
1. Elissa Steamer 

 Best Vert Girl
1.  Cara-Beth Burnside

Readers Choice...

BEST STREET
1. Chad Muska
2. Jamie Thomas
3. Andrew Reynolds 

BEST VERT
1. Tony Hawk
2. Bob Burnquist
3. Andy Macdonald

BEST OVERALL
1. Andy Macdonald
2. Chad Muska
3. Tony Hawk

BEST STYLE
1. Peter Smolik
2. Chad Muska
3. Erik Koston

BEST VIDEO 1998
1. Shortys - Fulfill The Dream
2. Birdhouse - The End
3. Toy Machine - Jump Off The Building

BEST VIDEO PART
1. Peter Smolik - Fulfill The Dream
2. Chad Muska - Fulfill The Dream
3. Andrew Reynolds - The End

BEST TEAM
1. Shortys
2. A-Team
3. Birdhouse
Muska was the highlight as usual. 
 Then the crew was assembling over at the Ivanhoe. Canada’s finest establishment! A round of beer was demanded. Received, drank. Complete inebriation  was in effect. The fireworks went off and we were out the door! Booted! Mission accomplished! 

Kristian Svitak - Huge Gap backside kickflip 180

 Get to Kraunbauers  floor and Crash! 

Day 2… Wake up! OOOOOHHHHH! Ouch! OW OW OW! My fucking head feels 3 feet thick! Aspirins! OW! Lets eat and get some beer to wash away this insane hangover. The food is good and the beer is better. It helps the hangover but definitely not completely.  Oops, wrong hotel. We meet up  anyway with my girl, Shannon, and Mike then head over to the Granville to check in to our room. Rest feels mighty good! More food, back to the arena, and back for more food then back to the arena to catch the Vandals. They Rocked of course! Then back to the Ivanhoe. I get thrown in the doghouse by my wife for my stupid actions the previous day. Finally go back and get some sleep. 

Day3… Still shitty feeling. Mike and Todd plow into some breakfast brews. We cut away from the scene for a while to skate the New Richmond B.C. park. It’s a great park, but you get tired fast from pushing around. We session for several hours and have a blast.  The Elimination’s, meantime, are going on full steam. It was complete chaos when we got back to the arena later that day. Trick after trick after trick were blazing on every square inch of the street course. Ryan Johnson impressed me with a huge backside 180 transfer over the 10 foot gap to fakie, through traffic. He was smooth as butter through all the chaos. Muska took a huge crapper from the nasty rail. He was out of the running. We decided to split hastily as we'd had our brains bent hard from watching a constant insane barrage of skating for the last 3 days. We wanted to save a little for the finals. 
 

Mattias Ringstrom - Flip rab to 1st place	Someone pulling and Indy Kickflip

 

 Day4...  The Finals. Only the Strong survived to ride again until today. We walked in on the Girls Jam Elimination. Ellissa Streamer and Jessie Van Rochoudt were way up to the task in the womens division. It was a beautiful nightmare altogether. There were so many photographers and camera men the skaters hardly had room to ride. the vert finals were tore up by Mathias Ringstrom. Beating out all viable competition. Street was mastered by the local favorite Rick McCrank. We were out of there by now and missed out on the best trick contest.

Other Links about Slam City Jam:.... WCS- Slam City Jam