Hey Tampa… let's party - Florida

Thrasher Magazine, June, 2002 by Patrick O'Dell

Koston won.

I've been waiting to confess this to my bosses at Thrasher for awhile. Every month or so I call somebody over at High Speed and ask for a package of shirts, sweatshirts, patches, buttons, stickers; whatever. I usually call a different person each time, so they don't catch on. I don't think they care what I do with the shirts really, but I think I'm supposed to be giving them to like the hot crew, dudes like Brian Wenning or something. I do some of that, but what I do with most of them is give them to bartenders. I drop off a shirt or two every once in awhile and I'm assured at least a week's worth of free beers. I figure they'll be rep'ing the shirt behind the bar all night and that's tons of free advertising right there. Now, I'm talking bartenders at places here in New York like Max Fish or Sweetwater, total skate bars. I love skate bars. People usually complain, "Aww man that place is a total sausage fest" or whatever, but I figure it's a good place to chill with the homies. At least when girls are there, they're cool and you can talk to them, and they aren't some skanky sorority chicks that ain't having nothing to do with your smelly skate-shirt wearing ass. That's the thing--in Tampa there was this skater douche bag trying to convince me to go to some over-the-top slut bar. I mean, you ain't getting laid dude. Those chicks are not going to talk to you. Forget it. If you want to look, go to a strip club. The trick is in almost reverse percentages. You can't walk up to a crew of chicks and expect one to break off from her friends for your ass. No man, you have to find a chick with a predisposition towards a guy like you--skater chicks or punker chicks or indie rock chicks, whatever. There are exceptions; some guys got game and get with any girls they want, but trust me, if you've gotten this far into an article in a skate mag, odds are you aren't one of them. Whatever. I'm trying to segue into an article about the Tampa Pro Contest and I'm having some trouble. The problem is that everything I wanted to write a bout is top secret or something. "You can't write about our pro skater friend making out with all those chicks" or "You can't write about what Carrie was doing" (who you may remember from my most epicly later'd Tampa article). I got all kinds of dirt. These edicts were not made from above, but just from friends trying to look out for other friends. I guess those are the breaks, and this was a professional skateboard contest after all.

Tampa Pro 2002

Where the Tampa Am contest generally consists of a couple hundred kids running around losing it and staying out past bed time, the pro event is a much calmer deal. Most of these guys have been doing it for years and are basically there to handle their business and see old friends. The street course is a little mellower, as the pros aren't on the same kind of kamikaze flail mission like some of the ams are. The pros have done this before. They warm up a little and do their run. They all have their tricks; consistency is the key. The ams are trying to get noticed.

"Oh my god! There's Nate Sherwood!"

When I flew in on Thursday, I saw Andrew Reynolds at the airport and he was nice enough to take me to I-Hop and then to the skatepark. Luke Ogden wasn't to be in town until that evening; the room was in his name, so I had to wait over at the park with all my stuff.

When Andrew got out of the car, he excitedly exclaimed "Oh my god! There's Nate Sherwood!" I headed over to see what the deal with that dude was. If you've been paying attention, he was the guy that had the Vision ad doing a 50-50 that was both 360 pressure flipped in to and out of.

An introduction was completely unnecessary. He saw me coming and was like "Hey, what's up dude? Do you ever wish you had like a claw, and when you did tricks you could use it to stay in the air? Oh, you take photos? That's so cool! I wish I could do that! But this film is so expensive! Sometimes when I'm shooting a sequence with my friend and I don't land it I feel so bad! I took some photos once! They didn't come out! Yeah!"

Whenever I saw him that weekend he would look over at me with the hugest smile and yell something like "Yeah, Getting some pictures today? Cool man! No way!"

I've never seen a weirder and happier dude.

Overkill

This year my job was easy. We had four Thrasher photographers on hand. I know that's overkill but that's how we're operating these days. If my photos come out sucking, we have three other dudes filling the slack.

First off there was Luke Ogden, the photo editor, basically holding it down. Luke is kind of my boss so I was afraid to be a total wasteoid around him. I'd find myself trying to act professional. At one point I had been drinking, and he was telling me about f-stops or some shit, and I just sort of nodded in agreement the whole time. Luke was definitely holding it down on the street course; I just stood back and let him work. At one point during the vert finals, me and Chris Pastras were sharing some beers on the deck of the vert ramp while Luke was slaving away getting the shots. But Luke liked to hang back at night, so I considered it my duty to go get the debauchery photos.