This Friday Westside Skates is premiering Emerica’s Stay Gold in their theater room at 9:00p.  It’s $2 to get in and the money goes to the Lakewood Bowl at theLakewood Skatepark. You will also be able to but raffle tickets for prizes.  The raffle money also goes towards the bowl.

Come out and see the long awaited video and give a little towards a much needed feature of the Lakewood Skatepark.  See you there!

Sometimes, when you are at places like a skatepark you can’t help but see people who seem to be trying to emulate someone. You have all seen the kid who was convinced he was part of the Piss Drunks, SK8 MAFIA or some other clique from the past or present. It happens, and I’m not hating on the kids who do it because I think it’s fun to see the level of detail some people get into with it.

I like to play a game called “my favorite…” when I see people at the park. Now that I am armed with a video camera in my phone, we can let everyone play the game. I was at the park early in the day, so there weren’t a lot of people to choose from to honor with being the first in this series, but this guy Kahlil was down to play.

Did you guess right?

Dan put the heat on me to post, so here is the beginning.

Grindline provided some renderings of the updated design for the Cleveland Skateboard Park.  Some of the notable features are the snake run, with the street section along side it, and the detached bowl.

Now is the time to speak up about any changes you would like to see in the design of the park.  Send in an email and include pictures if possible and I’ll pass on the word to Grindline.

Public Square Group put on what I think was their 2nd anual Big Race.  It’s pretty simple, push off from the starting line and the first one to the bottom wins.  There’s a class for Big Wheels, a class for skateboards ridden coffin style, and an open class for the weirdo rides.  There was a solid crowd and some wild gravity powered contraptions.  Some were built like tanks and others simply self destructed under their own weight from the g-forces.

The location for the event was the old E.W. Massacre spot that we used to race coffin style on our lunchbreaks at Jakprints when we were on W78th.  It starts from the end of W65th and goes down through the pedestrian tunnel to Edgewater Park. Hence the name E.W. Massacre.  Get it, “E” for Edge and “W” for Water?  Anyways, PSG decided on a less brutal name and so the Big Race was born.

Here’s the gal from one of the sponsors of the event, Root Cafe (think her name is Julia), Kristian, and Eddie looking over the action from above the tunnel.  I pulled the old “stand there with the camera like I’m about to take a picture until they do anything but ignore me” move.  A thumbs up, a distant gaze, and a large grin.  Not too shabby.

Ah yes, Mr. Vince Frantz from PSG doing what he does best, run things.  He usually has some type of microphone, walkie-talkie, or megaphone at these events as well as a clipboard.  This time he went all out with three clipboards.  Keep up the great work buddy.

Then there’s the man behind the lens.  Jurgen!  How are you going to have me setup a login for you to make posts on here and not even mess around a little?  If anyone wants to take over Jurgen’s spot the only requirement is that you do anything at all with the site.  Just email info@savemefromordinary.com with the subject line “I can do better than Jurgen, which obviously isn’t hard.” and I’ll set you up.  Maybe that light a fire under him…

Onto the racers rides. The big wheel is the Skull Crusher complete with ape hanger bars and extra Duct tape on the front forks for added hillbilly edge.  The little one in front is the Stinky Pinky.  They even added dingle berries.  Nice touch.

Here’s the HMS Hellbelly.  This thing is built like a brick shit house.  In the preliminaries I saw him run down two trannies in the tunnel like it was nothing.  I think he actually went faster after he hit them.  Now that’s impressive.  Real quality craftsmanship.

…and on the completely opposite end of the spectrum is this little example of “how not to build a Big Race machine”.  The one thing that the Big Race will show you is where the weak spot is.  Whether it’s your bike’s frame or your mortal soul, whatever the weak spot is the Big Race will push until it gives.

Finally some action.  This is the middle pack of the open class coming in hot around turn two.

The walk back up the hill is always great for photo ops.  Jules actually traded a set of Nike SB Blazers in exchange for Ben to write WESTSIDE in his own blood on his Big Wheel.  It actually turned out pretty good.

Piss off!

Jacob!  He’s the real big brother, always around to capture the good footage.

No pictures please!  Are those firecrackers in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Hey Gorby, we’ll take a round on the house.  I think he should win best board.

Westside Shark Bait.

Dunbar was the lineman at the race, well the man on the finish line that is.  Har har har.

The Wrecker posing.  Surfs up brah!

And the winners is…

Open Class: First place went to Sean Scott and second went to Troy Tekavcic.

Big Wheel Class: First place went to “Bloody” Ben Groto and second to Adri Tekavcic.

Skateboard Coffin Class: First place went to Jerry Malafa and second to Ringo Coburn.

Better show up next year or this bloody clown will get into your dreams with his rainbow wig and Hot Wheels shirt and keep you from getting a good night’s rest.

Or this guy will drive his bitchin’ ‘Vette into your living room and do a huge burnout.  Though some people may thing that’s cool.  The point is the Big Race is great and you should go next year if you missed it this year.

Support these local sponsors who helped make this and many other events possible in your fair city of Cleveland: Public Square Group, Now That’s Class, Spitfire, Root Cafe, Jakprints, Scene, Crazy Mullets, Westside, and Pizza Den.  See you next year!

Got tons of pictures from the Big Race that Public Square Group put on.  Until their all sorted here’s a taste of the action.  Jerry coming around the bend at full speed in the final run.

Kochy sent in these pics from his travels this summer.  It’s amazing how people end up with styles that have absolutely  zero function.  I bet she has four more t-shirts on under this one.

Note the little girl’s face in the red t-shirt.  Pure disgust.  Good thing she was there to stop her friend from riding right into the middle of this train wreck.

President and CEO of Dreamland Skateparks, Mark “Red” Scott hosted a pre-party for the Oregon Trifecta last Saturday.  Dreamland is based out of Oregon and is responsible for some of the best concrete skateparks in the world.  Hopefully they’ll be involved with the build of the Cleveland Skateboard Park too.

If you’ve ever been to a bowl jam then you know that it usually involves other things besides skateboarding including, but not limited to, fireworks.  This party was no exception…

Allegedly two guys were having a roman candle war and one of the flaming balls of fire shot into a can of gas.  Guests looked on in shock while the barn was engulfed in flames.

The result was the barn burning to the ground.  I would imagine that this was quite a buzzkill overall.  The barn was completely wasted but it looks like the a good portion of Red’s bowl is intact and apparently no one was injured in the fire.

The destruction pics are from Concrete Disciples and the one of Red in a Speedo is from Robert Brink.