Tumyeto army

Thrasher Magazine, Jan, 2004 by Michael Burnett

"What?!" Ethan said.

He was momentarily stung. Then you could see him kind of settle back and absorb the charge. From the look on his face you could kind of tell he knew it was not that far-fetched of an accusation.

"Fuck. Fuck it!" he laughed.

We all laughed and then slowly, one by one, we each told stories about how Ethan had been a dick to us, or to people we knew, before we'd formally met him. Ethan nodded his head and smiled as we went around the table.

DENVER

DENVER WAS OUR NEXT STOP, and I was excited because I used to live there and because I knew that's where all the teams would be meeting up.

Our first point of business: picking up our mystery guest. Although I knew who all the guests were, I didn't know who we'd be getting so it was still sort of a surprise. Jake, who had flown to Denver for the day, called me that morning.

"You're getting Black Arm!" he announced.

While Gareth went to get his Thrasher tattoo from Beagle's friend Rob Hostetter, Diego made a special Black Arm sign and he and Johnny and I went to the airport. One by one, each of the mystery guests came off the terminal train--first Harold, then Randy Colvin and finally SAD, but no Black Arm. It seems that we were the only team who made the effort to actually park the car and pick our guest up in person. All the others were circling the baggage claim area and I had to play cruise director to get all the guests to their proper rides. Finally Black Arm came up the escalator, all hugs and smiles.

The mood in the van immediately Changed as the stage was cleared for the Scott Bourne show.

"The last I heard you were French--and gay!" I told him.

"Well, Mike, I'll tell ya...."

Scott dove into one of his famous monologues that captivated everyone (and may have even frightened some of our younger teammates). It lasted until we got to the downtown Denver park where we were required to appear by 5pm.

The park was abuzz as all the teams' skaters were thrashing around. You could hear the younger locals chattering with amazement.

"Look, there's Koston! There's Paul Rodriguez! Is that Tony Trujillo?"

A heavy sesh soon blossomed in the big peanut bowl and Remy, Rune, McCrank, Phares, TNT, Bourne, Phelps and even Mark "Munk" Hubbard were tearing it up.

Tony and Paul started working the new "ditch of death" section until Spawn came flying through with a gigantic kickflip frontside air that went six-feet high and probably 16-feet long. Then we all packed up and went to the backyard barbecue jam.

BBQ JAM

A COUPLE OF DAYS EARLIER I'd gotten in touch with my friend Bruce Adams, the owner of Surf Colorado and an insane backyard ramp/bowl thing, to see if we could get a session going. He was down. When we showed up, the decks were already packed to the coping with little kids, chicks, locals in Fly-Aways and PDs and every other type of ripper. The ramp has avert section, an over-vert extension and one end is completely bowled in with pool coping. Soon the KOTR dudes were mixing it up with the locals in full Texas Death Match style! Tony ollied up to and then rolled into the over vert. Rune tailslid it. Koston sliced Smiths up the escalator. Spawn packed on a kickflip frontside 50-50 attempt up the tombstone and then Remy launched the massive channel from the 3/4 pipe, all the way across the face wall. into the bowled in corner.