Team eS

Thrasher Magazine, Jan, 2004 by Luke Ogden

IN THE BEGINNING,

Thrasher had the idea to pit four or five teams against each other in a race across the country to skate as much stuff as possible. Once all the teams were decided, I had to pick one of them to shoot along the way. To my relief, someone on eS requested that I go with them. I couldn't have had a better group of guys--Koston, McCrank, Paul Rodriguez, PJ Ladd--and the only girl, Alexis Sablone. Filling in the video guy positions were Scuba Steve and eS team guy, Tony Evjenth.

With only a week to go before the start of the trip, I saw Eric in SE and he said he didn't think Paul was going to make it because he was afraid of flying. But thanks to Tony and a few sedatives, most of the crew was on its way to Philadelphia on time, except for Eric and Rick, who had already committed to some contest the weekend that started off the trip. We would pick them in Pittsburgh two days later.

We spent our first two days in Philly dealing with FedEx, because the KOTR packages hadn't shown up to all the other teams on account of the East Coast blackouts. Finally, everyone arrived at the hotel. That first night, we all went out front and started to tackle the flat-ground page in the deKoTR book. PJ started at 10:30pm and finished eight out of nine tricks by 1:30am. I broke out back to my room and passed out. When I woke up two hours later, I looked out the window, and PJ was still there.

The next day we opened up the Philly envelope. The first of three things we had to do was eat lunch at Love Park, which was a no-brainer. The next question was where we should skate next. "Duh, stupid, right here." P J, Paul, and Alexis started attacking some ledges, until from out of nowhere appeared an undercover piggy, wearing nut-hugger jogging shorts and a tank top, carrying a walkie-talkie, waving his badge, and saying shit we already knew. Everyone scattered in different directions, and it took about an hour to regroup and get in the van.

Before we hit the road the next day, we had two more challenges; the first was to find and skate with Serge Trudnowski, who we were told was living outside Philly on a organic farm, or Matt Reason, who was living in an organic hut, whatever that means. The second was to grind the over-vert section at FDR Park. We failed, and then we drove to Pittsburgh to pick up Eric and Rick.

Upon arriving, we thought we were completely lost, merging from four lanes into one lane to an exit over a bridge through a tunnel to grandma's house we go." This place is worse than Boston." But all of a sudden, there we were at the hotel, As we were checking in, the receptionist saw all the boards and went right into a "When I was a kid, I would get my older sister's roller skates and nail 'em to a blah blah blah" story. Just give us the key and shut your face. We all put our shit in our rooms, grabbed our boards and whatever else we needed, and ventured out to find some shit to skate. Getting lost in a city where you've never been is usually the best way to go; you can get a reaction from the locals the next day, like, "You skated what? We get busted there every time we even think about that spot!"

There happened to be a mall close to the hotel, and by that time it was one in the morning, so the place was a ghost town ... except for that pickup truck with the flashing light on top that we could see from a mile away. Paul went around the back of an oddly-placed office building and found a rail he wanted to hit up, and before I knew it, Scuba and Paul had filmed a f/s crooks first try. That doesn't really do it for me, though (hello ... magazine ... photos), so I asked him to do it two more times. And being the nice guy that he is, Paul said okay. That made it three for three. The kid is amazing.

We packed up and went exploring. We passed a few schools and checked them out, but there was nothing but steep rails with kinks. We moved on to downtown and found a few ledges/manual pads, which the guys sessioned while I filled the sandbags for the lights and Tony drove around looking unsuccessfully for more stuff, it was 3:30am by then, so we called it a night and decided to call a skateshop the next day to find a tour guide.

THE SUN CAME UP TOO SOON, and checkout time was too early, but we had to go pick up Eric and Rick at the aeropuerto. It became a two-hour ordeal, but we finally got in the van and went to buy some gadgets and supplies at the local lumberyard and electronics store. Eric and Rick need cameras and video games to keep their minds occupied on the long stretches between cities, which wasn't a bad idea, as I figured out later after all the mags and newspapers were read two hours into a five-hour drive. We met up with the eS rep in Pittsburgh and went to the skateshop to schmooze with the locals and get them to cough up the spots. They were more than happy to oblige.

They took us to a high school with a nice little bank, curvy ledge, and steep, sketchy bricky drop-in with a bump in the middle. Rich didn't think twice about dropping in switch multiple times. On the bank, Rick also threw down a f/s tailslide to fakie the hard way. After all lines had been exhausted, we packed it up and went to eat.