2007 2007 ASR with OMA - By Mike Furst: Posted 8-26-07
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2007 ASR with OMA
The Old Man Army crew decided to take off for a weekend to go down to San Diego to see what all of the hoopla was about at the ASR show.
We also wanted to see a few of the people that we deal with in the industry who would be there as well as to see what new stuff people were doing in the industry. The only other thing on the agenda was to get a couple of pictures of the kooky skateboard gadgets for the Skate and Annoy crew.
We touched ground in San Diego early Friday morning and headed over to the convention center. We still needed to get passes to get inside the place as it’s pretty much locked down like San Quentin at sunset. I called my contact (John at Rebel Skates) who was going to hook us up with passes to get inside. John was running late to we headed for some breakfast before he arrived.
We meet up with the Rebel crew, grabbed our passes and headed inside. Upon entering, you get the feeling like ASR is just one big place for jabbing your jaw: basically a social engagement for extreme sports.
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The big fish in the skate industry are all soft goods companies that have managed to attach their claws to skateboarding. Most of these places like Volcom and such have these huge walls where you aren’t allowed in unless you have an appointment set up and are willing to drop tons of cash.
One of the first booths that we stopped at was the “Yo Baby” booth. Right off the bat, the owner of the company comes over to pitch his product to us like a sleazy car salesman. I’m standing there trying not to laugh my ass off in this guys face. My partner Brian is just going crazy snapping tons of pictures. Of course I had to stand on the stupid gadget and get a picture with my, “I don’t skate…I’m just a kook” tee shirt. The final thing this guy says to us…”why so many pictures?” Brian turns to him and tells him that we are just getting tons of pictures of all of the crappy skateboard gadgets. His jaw hit the floor as he knew he wasn’t making a sale from us and said, “Ohhhhhhh…okay, I see.” One more final picture was taken of the Yo Baby poster showing just how extreme it is…
Next up on the kooky skate gadgets was a company from China with some sort of roller skate looking thing. Some poor kid was trying them out and it looked like he already had damaged some low hanging fruit trying them out. I wasn’t about to give these things a go…and so we bailed. We ended up leaving to go surfing up the coast at sunset.
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Early next morning we hoped onto the train and headed back into the city. We wanted to get over to the Washington Street park before all of the crowds hit. We arrived, paid our donation and then hit it up. WS is a pretty burley park and it will set you back to beginner’s level very fast. I ended up getting a few good shots of Brian hitting up the kidney.
I look over and see Jimmy the Greek strolling into the park and then he proceeded to kill it. Just as we were about to leave, some big older guy comes walking up to us to say that he was grilling hotdogs in the back of the park and for us to go help ourselves. Just then I noticed that the guy grilling the dogs was none other then Skip Engblom of SMA fame. We had did an interview with Skip some time ago so it was really cool to have meet him and rapped for a bit.
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Just as we were about to leave and make the trek back to the train station, Jimmy asked us if we wanted to hitch a ride with him back to ASR…so we did. We ended our trip catching a ride with John from Rebel back to Encinetas and had some dinner with him. John has to be one of the coolest guys in the skate business…even if he does listen to 80’s rock and new wave in his car.
- Mike Furst - Old Man Army
2007 2007 ASR with OMA - By Mike Furst: Posted 8-26-07
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photos © Mike Furst