28 days later'd: Baker bus tour

Thrasher Magazine, Sept, 2004 by Patrick O'Dell

LATELY I'VE GOTTEN A REPUTATION for going on a lot of Baker related tours; some might say even too many. Phelps was like, "How come you only go on Baker tours? Our other photographers go on tours with a bunch of different companies." But if Andrew Reynolds called you on the horn and said, "Broseph, come on tour with us!" What would you say? No?

It's common sense, really. Think of the crew: Bryan Herman, Spanky, Drew, Jeff Lenoce, Erik Ellington, Braydon, Robin and Beagle ... I'll go on tours with those dudes anytime, forever. And not only are they are my favorite skaters, they're totally awesome dudesephs as well.

THE TRIP STARTED off in Florida. The Boss hadn't shown up yet, so the crew was on a broverload pile-out mish. Ellington was beating everyone up, as he always does when he's wasted. He does this thing where he binges out like a beast and becomes the gnarliest dude on the planet, then wakes up with a two-day hangover and keeps it clean for a couple.

I noticed that when The Boss shows up, the partyin' takes a back seat and everyone gets busy with the skating. When we were in New York, Drew went to Eww-yer-weird Transylvania to see this totally shocking eww-yer band that is so notoriously terrible I'm forbidden to even tell you the name of the situaish. What I'm trying to say is, Drew left and everyone got loc'd out on the scene. Pro athletes turned to cripples by dawn. Spanky got especially lit but managed to meet the new love of his life, a woman almost old enough to be his mother, code-named "Y'all's mad at me." Wait ... Spanky, is that not material? Sorry.

In the Baker Torture Rico article, I wrote a typical Spanky lingo sentence: "What I Do Gangster Situation." Since then things have gone to new levels, so that "Gangsterwise dipset status on the East Coast West Coast Scene, what it is, what it was, what it will, situaish, keep it green, eww-yer-weird Broseph, funked out with a gangster twist; but tiga, this is not material" ... is seriously a normal statement that will come out of his mouth at any time. And to him, it's plain English.

I just read the last sentence back to him to make sure it was right, and he was like, "It's pretty trueseph."

BRAYDON always has to be the loudest person in the room, and the rightest. He'll get wasted and argue the same side with you; you can agree with him totally but he'll still yell. "No! It's like this!" Skatewise, the dude kicked it off every night. Most of the skaters would be interested in going street skating after the demos, but Braydon would always be down. And as soon as we'd start packing up for the mission, the rest of the guys would suddenly get amped and want to come along, too. I know if it wasn't for Braydon's take-charge desire to skate, everyone would be sitting in a hotel room drinking beer and playing video games.

BRYAN HERMAN is obsessed with Kill Bill. He watched that film every day on tour; sometime three times in a day. He bought a Samurai sword in Seattle.

Herm is totally bro, don't get me wrong--and he'll hate me for saying this--but he can be a bit burnt. You know that game you play where you say the initials of a skater and everyone tries to guess who you're talking about? Like, you say "OH," and everyone guesses names of skaters whose initials are "OH" until someone guesses the correct name; in this case "Ocean Howell." You know what I mean.

So it's Herman's turn and he says "BL." We're racking our brains; "Brian Lotti?"

"Nope."

We guess for 45 minutes, asking for clues and everything, but to no avail. Finally everyone gives up, and he proudly announces: "Baxter Lussier!" "Dude! That's not even his name, you tard! It's Daxter!"

It was like he wasted so much time out of our lives. When it's his turn again, he says "EB," or "ESB." and we're all "This better not be another Baxter Lussier!"

"I swear it's not!" says Herman.

So we're all guessing again, torturing ourselves, thinking of all the skaters that could possibly have those initials. Thirty minutes later and our minds are blank. We give up. "OK, who is it?"

Herman, confidently: "Ed Selego Boyce!"

Let's just say we abandoned that game for the rest of the trip.

Another burnt situaish involved Herman again, wasted drunk on his 18th birthday, taking Bam's Hummer for a beer run and smashing it into the side of Ryan Gee's BMW M3. Gee was of course totally bummed and totally pissed. But everyone whose car it wasn't was psyched.

THE REALLY GANGSTER PART of the tour was that Boost Mobile threw in some heavy cash and rented us a tour bus. This thing was epic--it had two living rooms, a fridge, a microwave, an X-Box, satellite television, and 12 bunks. The bunks were coffin-sized and usually to save money we'd just sleep in the bus instead of getting hotel rooms. I sleeping in the bus anyway. We had an awesome driver named Jimmy, a big older man from Nashville who's driven Garth Brooks in the past. In fact, he once bought a tractor off Garth in exchange for a taco.

In Vegas we stayed at the Hard Shock Cafe Hotel, and as admittedly later'd as that is, it was still gangster to see Slash's jean jacket in the lobby. The pool was filled with strippers who I'm sure laughed at our white-boy farmers' tans. Being in the bubble of skateboarding, it's weird for me to see the people of this country sometimes. Everywhere you go, people will interject their perplexing rules on us: "You can't skate here," "You can't stand here." "Put on a shirt," "This is private property," "Skate or die ..." It's a common lament in skateboarding writing, but I really do feel as if I was born on another planet.