Canadian bad dream - Slam City Jam - Brief Article

Thrasher Magazine, August, 2002 by Joe Hammeke

THIS YEAR'S Slam City Jam was more about what happened outside the PNE than what happened inside. To start it off, Dogtown and Z-Boys premiered on Thursday night, and every skateboarder should see this movie. It lets you in on one of the biggest transitions in skateboarding: carving and style.

Carving did not seem to be a concern of the course designers at Slam City and style hasn't really been a top priority for the judges ever. You can win by tricks alone, but style will only take you so far at the Triple Crown. The course, of course, was not very carvable. Lots of back and forth like a tennis match for most of the contestants. Some people pull it off no matter where they are--Trujillo, Gonz, Senn, Josh Evans, and a few others managed to skate more than just back and forth across the street course. Most everyone else stuck to the standard skate across, jump off your board, turn around and attack.

Outside on Friday is where the real skating went on. No timed runs, no order of competitors or even really a competition, except for the $5,000 dollars to be handed out to anyone who ripped. Who ripped? Chalmers, Krahn, Sluggo, Patch, Josh Evans, Omar Hassan, and park designer Jim Barnum. If there were judges, they would have a hard time calling it between Chalmers and Ben Krahn. Chalmers had the speed lines and the big air, but Krahn can and did do nearly every trick that Rene Rene requested. He even pushed it. When a simple request such as grind to fakie was called, he would do a backside Smith backside revert. The grand finale was a "last man standing" run for the remaining $400. At least 20 skaters dropped in at once, trying to avoid wheel bite and each other. Some even tried to avoid the coping in hopes of lasting longer. Krahn took the second to last out with a swipe to the midsection and was the last man standing.

You really want to know what went on inside? Watch the coverage on NBC. CookieHead will fill you in, or look on one of the countless websites out there. I recommend John Doe 'Zine.

RELATED ARTICLE

* Sandro Diaz rolling in to one of the biggest 540s. The rest of his line included three other 540s, one of which was judo

* Trujillo skating sick--literally with the flu--on a borrowed board during qualifications.

* Mark Gonzales and Duane Peters skating the course while The Faction played live