Thursday, April 26

The Weekly Grind

By Kevin Marks
Skateboarding.com

The Circafootwear Europe Tour starts June 3 in Oslo, Norway and bounces all over the continent. It ends June 17 in Milan, Italy. The guys going will be Chad, Jamie, Lopez, Appleyard, Colt, and also John Rattray, Chris Cole, and Sammy Baptista. James Craig won't be attending because he just had knee surgery about two weeks ago. It's going to be insane -- the first time Chad and Jamie have toured together in forever.

Chapman's Jereme Rogers is on Circa flow and he's super hyped.

Laban Pheidias, Jason "Wee-Man" Acuna and Gary Smith are now riding for Epik Footwear.

Jon Klein is the new team manager of Rookie Skateboards. He's still riding for them. too.

Real to Reel, the new Real video, will have a San Diego premiere at 8 p.m. on May 5 at The Honey Bee Hive. Contact Street Machine for more info: 619-687-0270.

Brian Anderson is going to be a character in the new Transworld Skateboarding skateboard game by Infogrames. No other info except that it should be good.

The Mad Scientist, Josh Beagle, is putting together the Foundation tour video These Good Times are Killing Me. It's a perfect follow up to ART BARS. Also, watch out for ART BARS on DVD, containing never-before-seen footy.

Toy Machine has kicked into high gear planning its summer tour. Ed Templeton, Brian Anderson, Brad Staba, Elissa Steamer and Austin Stephens will be touring, as will newly confirmed Toy Machine am, Vinny Vegas. The tour will start on May 12 in Massachusetts. Check www.tumyeto.com for more info. The new TOY video is in hyperproduction this summer. The title is top secret until the thing comes out. A lot of the video will be shot while on tour this summer.

Templeton and Justin Strubing just arrived home from a tour of Japan with TumYeto. Justin is now on his way to Australia with fellow Emerica rider Jon West for another TumYeto tour. Justin will then be staying an extra week or so longer to get some street shots with Transworld photographer Skin.

Tosh Townend and Corey Duffle were at the Network17 demo in Costa Mesa, Calif., last week ripping it up for the masses.

Heath Kirchart just got back from New York where he was on a filming trip with Jon Holland and Greg Hunt to collect footage for his upcoming part in Transworld's Sight Unseen.

Andrew Reynolds and Jim Greco spent the weekend skating around L.A. and collecting footage with Emerica videographer Jon Miner for the upcoming Emerica video. No title known at this time.

Emericaand Real am Dennis Busenitz is turning many heads as more and more people see the Real video. Until now, Dennis has been a local hero, but this video should let the world in on what an amazing talent this kid is.

Germany's Jan Kliewer is the latest addition to the amateur ranks at Cliché Skateboards. The current pros are Pontus Alv (Sweden), Ricardo Foncesca (Portugal) and Jéremie Daclin (France). They have an amazing new video recently made available in the USA called Europa.Get your hands on a copy today.

Paul Rodriguez is preparing for a road trip with his City Stars Skateboards teammates, taking the 101 all the way up to Vancouver for Slam City Jam in early May.

Tom Pennywill be competing in the Dortmund, Germany, WCS (World Cup Skateboarding) contest this summer.

On March 26, Mike Vallely suffered a severe injury to his foot during the Southside Skatepark demo in Houston, Texas. Here's the deal with Mike's broken foot. He will be in a cast for the next four weeks. It's taken awhile to figure out, but he has a very rare but significant crush type injury in his foot. It's called a Lisfranc joint injury and it's uncertain whether he has a mild fracture or a moderate sprain (he had a CT Scan but it was encouragingly inconclusive; conclusive would have meant surgery and him being out of commission for six months). Either way, now he is in a cast for a month. The pain and swelling have been really bad and he's been unable to bear weight for the last week. However, he's feeling a lot better and the cast he has is a weight bearing/walking cast. The hope is to immobilize the foot for a month and than start rehabbing with some physical therapy. He is supposed to go on the Tony Hawk Tour in six weeks and he plans on showing up.

Rob Gonzalez is finally getting back into the swing of things after his injury. He has been skating on a regular basis. He says that his foot is finally starting to feel better. Although he hasn't been able to jump down anything major, he has been getting his flips, balance, etc. back. He is also really looking forward to going on tour in Canada after Slam City Jam.

Fabrizio Santos is back in Southern California where he will be filming with the New Deal Skateboards crew for the next couple of weeks until Slam City Jam.

The Sound and the Fury am contest is this weekend in Seattle. All the hottest ams will be there. The Sound and the Fury is going to go off because most of the nation's hottest ams are already signed up (Paul Rodriguez, Ryan Sheckler, Adam Alfaro, Billy Marks, Ruben Garcia, Austin Seaholm, Bryan London, Joey Brezinsky, etc.).

There will be a private party on Saturday night, April 28 at Rain City Skate Park with performances from Portrait of Poverty, Old Man Smithers, The Vaccines and more. This should be a rough session with loud music and stories to tell. On Friday, April 27 at Rain City Skate Park, there will be a hip-hop show featuring guest emcees including the Living Legends, Oldominion, Chapter 29 and more. Also DJ Apollo. The Friday evening event will be $10 or $5 for competitors of Sound and the Fury. Stay tuned for results next week.

Ryan Sheckler left Friday, April 6 to go to Vancouver, B.C. to be in a movie. Alex Chalmers hooked that one up. He will be making regular trips up there until the movie is finished.

Duffs is doing a Northwest tour after Slam City Jam from May 7-15. The list of riders on the tour is: Stacy Lowery, Brian Howard, Dave Duren, Matt Hensley (until May 11).

"AMATEUR?" the all am video is about finished. Look for newfaces like Don Nguyen, Anthony Moseley, and Steve Kindle. Should be out in stores in middle May.

Zoo Yorkis doing a Northeast tour starting May 1; check out the schedule on their web site, ZooYork.com Zoo is going to be in Japan from April 14-24. Jesse Fritsch is now on Zoo and has been doing very well in the pro contests this year. He just recently placed third in Sweden.

Anthony Acosta of Network 17 fame is a new am rider on Dynasty.

Kien Lieu and Satva Leung are going to Hong Kong with Bluetorch at the end of this month to film a documentary on Chinese skaters.

Jason O'Dell and Damian Smith are new ams on Santa Cruz.

Max Schaafis now riding for TSG safety equipment.

The annual Tim Brauch Memorial Skate Jam is May 13 at Greer Park in Palo Alto, Calif. All are invited to attend.

Mike Rafter is now employed as Expedition One's fulltime filmer for their full length video to be released at the end of summer.

Dragon Optical is proud to announce two new team additions. Dragon welcome amateur rulers Gianni Zattoni and Caswell Berry to the 2001 Dragon skate team.

Skateboard Canada Video Magazine will be putting out issue No. 6 in June. Look out for a big section on Calgary, Alberta, including the new Millenium Park.

Maple's Adam Louder won the sponsored division at The Next Cup contest series kick off this past week at the Mission Valley YMCA Skatepark in San Diego. Every other Saturday there is a contest at a San Diego County skatepark. This coming weekend will be at Carlsbad public Skatepark. Visit www.thenextcup.com for all the details.

New Randoms riders: Jake Brown, Neil Heddings, Kyle Berard and Dom Kekitch.

And Ryan Johnson is busy filming new part for new deal video, skating mass pools in Fresno. Josh Kasper is skating again after his motorcycle accident.