What’s “Frisco” without seeing some graf? Unfortunately for us the weather wasn’t the “peachiest” around the time we visited so we weren’t able to check out the yards and tunnels while we were out there, however, we were able to walk around Haight & Ashbury for a quick lunch at some pizza spot and was able to bench whatever we saw. “The Haight” reminds me somewhat of a San Francisco “Melrose” with alot of hippies. You have your occasional main street where heads come to meet/hangout surrounded by graffiti, shops and restaurants. Pretty cool spot to visit if you’re around these neck of the woods. You can read the wikipedia description over HERE.
We usually come up with our own content when it comes to blogging but sometimes it’s hard to go out, party, have a good time and try to document everything, especially if you’re not in the mood for taking pics aka too fucked up to take pics. Down below is a little video (compliments of AlwaysHustle.com) of a performance by DJ Exile, DJ Day & Fashawn that went down at The Elbo Room in San Francisco that we attended. You might have never heard of these guys before but be on the lookout for them cause they’re on the come up. DJ Exile is in the process of creating an album with Fashawn in the near future, hence the collaboration performance at The Elbo Room. If you think you’ve never heard of any DJ Exile tracks before then I recommend listening to Mobb Deep featuring 50 Cent – Pearly Gates track HERE (Yah, EXILE produced that.) or check out another artist/album that EXILE helped produced named BLU. While you’re at it you might as well check out EXILE’s VIMBY segment AQUI.
Our first stop upon our arrival in the bay was at an art gallery/shop called the 1AM Gallery located somewhere on Howard Street. You might remember hearing about this gallery if you ever caught the VIMBY spotlight with MEAR a couple of months back. They had a show with well known bay area graf writers, ICP, hence the name of the show “Inner City Prophets”. Get it? Got it? Good. How keeewwwlll. We arrived fashionably late (per usual) and was able to catch a quick glimpse of everything and take photos. Enjoy.
LUMBO (Peep his Clip Of The Week coming up this Sunday.)
Sorry for the lack of updates the past couple of days. Been out of town (San Francisco) playing and had very limited computer access. The homegirl Nicole recently hit me up to take a trip up north to keep her company while she was playing “tour guide” for her Jersey friends that she met in Puerto Rico. Little did I know the 6 hour drive from LA to SF ended up being a scenic 12 hour one instead?!
Our first stop was at Big Sur where there was a rest stop to watch lazy Elephant Seals bath on the sunny beaches near San Simeon. I guess that these guys were near extinction but somehow recovered due to the (MMPA) Marine Mammal Protection Act? You can find out more information about them HERE if you’re really interested.
I’m not much of a nature person but the most amusing and entertaining part of this place was probably feeding the hyper little chipmunks Mike & Ike’s. These ruthless little characters just about grub on anything. Haha. Back on the road again…
For some odd reason lately our myspace friends have been asking us (me) the same question over & over again, “How do you keep yourself motivated to keep it going with skateboarding & graffiti?” To answer the question, “I really don’t know?” Have you ever found something in your life that you truly believed in and loved?Well skateboarding (and painting) is that something. (At least to me.) Through all the good times and bad times, no matter what the outcomes are, you persevere and find ways to keep it going. As with everything in life though, you encounter situations in which you face the reality of not being able to “keep it going” no matter how hard you try. The video down below was a moment in my life that had me thinking if I was even capable of doing just that.
Back around the Summer of 03′ (When we were dropping occasional hammers here and there.) we found a loading dock rail at UCSB that had an adjustable height to it. It had one of those buttons where you can press/hold and the loading dock contraption would go up and down. (You’ll know what I’m talking about when you watch the video.) The runway was a run & jump 8ft slide along with an additional 8 ft drop off. It was Frontside for me so it wasn’t quite as easy to bail out of as if you were doing it Backside. In order to do the trick you either had to stay committed or not commit and eat shit trying. Sometimes shit never goes quite the way you want it and on that sunny summer day that was the case. The slam below was probably one of the gnarliest slams that I have ever encountered in my life skateboarding and had be believing that I was unable to skate OR paint anymore. A dislocated elbow (that popped backed into place) that required surgery, rehab and 6 years later; still here trying to rip it up and doing my thing, committed.
Well it looks like some of the graffheads over in Rome, Italy benched some of our stuff while we visited a couple of months ago. A website by the name of HelloMyNameIs.IT benched the throwies that were (and are) currently running in the Rome River.
This past weekend we met up with the homeys Adriano and “The Doc” up north in Santa Barbara to get a skate session going and if we were lucky enough, maybe catch some footage for our CLIP OF THE WEEK’s. After warming up at the Santa Barbara skatepark we went to a school called Crane Country Day School located out in Montecito, CA. Remember a couple of weeks back when we were Poolspotting in a area called Montecito? (Yah, same spot/vicinity/area/district/hole in the world.) After the rainstorm that passed by Southern California the weather was peachy and optimal for a crispy day of filming.
Crane Country Day School
1795 San Leandro Ln
Santa Barbara, CA 93108 Directions
Right as we arrived into the school we saw this sign that was pretty damn entertaining. It said, “Skate Or Die, Just Not Here”. Whoever made the sign was a genius, except we weren’t paying attention to it. Haha!
Skate Or Die, Just Not Here. Thank You.
Right as Adriano was setting up the camera, we were messing around on the basketball courts and taking pics of ourselves dunking. It must have been the All Star Weekend that was going on or something cause we had the b-ball fever! I did the “Dee Brown Tribute” while The Doc did the “Kobe Tribute”.
From the left side of the front entrance to the school are basketball courts with smooth ground and 2 cheesegrater styled, green benches. Even though they look like they don’t grind or slide, TRUST, after a little bit of wax they slide smoother than your hot sister’s freshly shaven vagina, mad buttery.
Front Smith Kickflip Out?
Wax On, Wax Off
VX2100
Stress Time!
Backteezy by Doc Octeezy, All Steezy…
Adriano – Frontside Smith
After skating the benches and not landing our lines (per usual) we skated around the school and found these other little gems to skate. The ledge below looked like it use to be buttery, but they are now KNOBBED. The picture doesn’t quite show the knobs too well. All you can do here is probably just skate it as a manual pad.
Manual or Automatic?
Right as you get deeper into the school they have a 2 Step Up and 3 Step down where you can place a plastic table on the first stair of the 3 Step and skate it as a Hubba. Wish we could show you some footage of us skating but we didn’t feel like jumping down and getting hurt that day.
Hubba Bubba
Located towards the front of the school are these 2 wooden benches connected together. After a bit of wax they will grind. Adriano said that his boy from Brazil did a Frontside Nosegrind to 180 out on this a while back.
If you’re currently wearing tight pants and all hesher’ed out wanting to skate rails we got this bad boy for you. A gap to straight rail to drop. Might need to bring some extra plywood for the landing though.
Gap to Ledge? Wow, there’s mad spots here. It will be a quick grind if you decide to handle this.
There’s no runway to this huge 4 block but if you got skills then you can handle it no problem. Once again, you will need plywood for the landing.
This is the front entrance of the school. Right when you get off your car from the parking lot there is a Curb to 5 Stair Drop. You can’t see it from this angle but you have to ollie up the curb to hit the 5 stairs. Nose Manuals to Nollie Flip anyone?
There is a huge grass gap that I don’t believe anyone has done before, but I could be wrong. Any takers?
After taking some photos of the school while unsuccessfully landing my shit it was my turn to grab the camera and play filmer.
After about another hour of filming and not landing the tricks that we wanted, we were getting pretty delirious…
