Emerica Team Report 07.22.02
Well its been a while, but we're back.
Sorry the news hasn't been updated lately, but your humble narrator has just returned home from an extended European skate trip with your favorite Emerica team rider, Erik Ellington. Updates from the road are still too futuristic for a simple man like yours, truly to comprehend.
On Saturday, June 29, I met up with Kevin Long, Bryan Herman, and Erik Ellington, at the lavish Emerica Mansion in Hollywood, California. Once together, the group headed to LAX to catch an 8:PM flight to Paris, where Patrick O'Dell from Thrasher Magazine would be waiting, having arrived earlier in the day, from NYC. Noticeably absent from the scene at LAX was Trainwreck, who decided that staying home and jumping down sets of stairs on his skateboard in front of a video camera would be better for his health than flying.
Rather than get into a lengthy recounting of every detail of the journey as it happened, I will give you the succinct version. For the former version, you'll have to wait to read O'Dell's upcoming article in a future issue of Thrasher Mag.
The trip went as follows:
June 30th--Arrive in Paris. Meet up with O'Dell.
July 1st--Meet up with Ed Templeton, Austin Stephens, and Toy Machine dudes. Paris rains.
July 2nd--Emerica/Toy Machine demo in Paris. Special guests: Kareem Campbell, Mikey Taylor, Lee Smith, Enrique Lorenzo, others. Ed gets stitches.
July 3rd--Skate Paris.
July 4th--Travel to Lausanne, Switzerland for Grand Prix of Skateboarding contest. 8 hours.
July 5th - 7th--Skate contest. Spanky gets 3rd place in best trick. Wins $300. We make Spanky buy us dinner.
July 8th--Travel to Lyon, France. 2 1/2 hours. Among a bunch of other spots, Lyon has the long red hubbas that Ali darkslides in the Flip video and the weird corner pocket hubba that Geoff had the cover of Thrasher gapping out to and Ali had the cover of Skateboarder 180 nosegrinding. We check out the city.
July 9th--Meet up with Toy dudes again. Lyon rains.
July 10th--Dry day. Skate Lyon.
July 11th--Travel to Dortmund, Germany for the World Cup of Skateboarding contest. 9 1/2 hours.
July 12th - 14th--Contest daze. Spanky qualifies in 1st place. Chokes in finals, but still wins $1000 for qualifying first. Senn has amazing run. Gets 2nd place overall. Ed comes in 7th. Dinner on Spanky again.
July 15th--Spanky and Herman run away to Barcelona rather than return home on the 17th with Erik, O'Dell, and yours, truly. Remaining crew travels to Amsterdam. 2 hours.
July 16th--Patrick gets his first hooker.
July 17th--Depart Amsterdam for LA.
July 18th - now--Catch up on missed sleep.
While we were away:
Andrew Reynolds came home to Hollywood for a few weeks and put the hammer down. The boss is switch bluntsliding rails these days. Real ones.
Tosh Townend is back on his board after nearly a half year off due to ankle surgeries. Filming is already back underway and as of this writing, Tosh is in Portland skating Burnside and some other Oregon parks. He says the tranny skating is good therapy. Expect a well rounded part from Tosh in This is Skateboarding (don't worry, the street hammers will be in there too, this is Tosh we're talking about).
Chris Senn went on to compete in the Mystic Cup skateboard contest in Prague and came home with 5th place, just behind a ripping Donny Barley who ended up in 4th. This was Donny's best contest finish since Radlands '00. Congratulations Donny! Just behind Senn was the contest destroyer himself, Chad Bartie in 6th place. Emerica, at the forefront of contest domination!
Heath Kirchart has been staying home in Los Angeles, making regular filming missions in the wee hours of the night working on his part for This is Skateboarding.
Braydon Szafranski received his knee surgery and found out some positive news. Despite the original prognosis, Braydon's ACL was only 60% ripped, not 100% as originally thought. This means that Braydon will be back on his board in a couple of months with time left to film some more for his Emerica part. Previously, the doctors were giving him 6 months off his board. Needless to say, Braydon is STOKED!
Spanky, Bryan if you're out there somewhere in Europe reading this, we love you. We miss you and we want you to come home. Come home, please.
