Canada. Three of us ventured up to Vancouver B.C. from the Portland area one fine weekend in January 2004. Our secret weapon was resident alien Eugene Lardizabal, who was a Canadian living in the U.S. We got hassled a little at the border because Steve Grover only had a driver’s license and no Passport. It used to not be not much of a problem, but this was post 9-11 hysteria I guess. Once they got to check Eugenes’s Cannuck credentials they sent us in. I’m sure they would have let us in anyway, but probably just wanted to hassle some Americans, and who can blame ‘em?
We skated the fairly new RDS park that appeared in some of the skate mags shortly thereafter. Present were some North American vert pros Max Dufour, Pierre Luc Gagnon, and Art and Steve Godoy, as well as a bunch of locals. (If you see any misnamed captions or can fill in any of the blanks, please do, even if you already did.) If you think the vert ramp in RDS is huge, you’re right. HUGE! But that didn’t keep some long boarders from hitting it, none of which I captured, unfortunately. The facility was enormous, which made it all the more curious that the wooden bowl was shallow and small, almost like an afterthought. RDS also has a massive reconfigurable street area which we promptly ignored. The bowl was slippery and at one point it felt like someone pulled a rug out from under a certain skater’s feet. He slammed hard on his face which gave him a nice bloody scab on his chin and forehead, which was fortunate because it allowed for a much more believable excuse for skipping work on Monday. A messed up face makes it hard to question an unscheduled trip to the hospital that makes you miss work, even if the real reason is that you are in Canada. This happy coincidence prompted the observation that you aren’t really a true skater unless skateboarding somehow intrudes on your job or has the potential to get you into trouble.
So the weather was mostly crappy the weekend we were there – well it was January… So most of the action took place at RDS. The trip was initiated because I was interviewing the Godoy’s for Concrete Wave magazine, and I wanted to get some recent pictures, none of which they decided to use, unfortunately. We tooled around town waiting for the Godoys to finish up various tattoo appointments that they had going on at Art’s Funhouse Tattoos. Eugene got a super wussy (small) tattoo of the Canadian maple leaf on his arm from Steve Godoy. We went to China Creek but it was raining so we just drank Canadian beer and dorked around.
Most of the locals were friendly. Even the cute new wave punque girls at the liquor store were overtly friendly, but not the fake friendly that you get at a strip bar, not that I would know… So everyone was cool with the exception of the employee at PD’s Hot Shop, home of legendary Skull Skates. I had over $300 (Canadian) worth of gear, including sweat shirts, T’s, and a long board on the counter ready to pay up. The employee refused to sell me the deck after I told him that we had our own small skate company. All this after reminiscing about the glory days of Skull and how at one time I had made a pilgrimage from the Midwest to the old Skull Skates shop in L.A. during the eighties. The guy said that other companies are always trying to steal their shapes and he wasn’t allowed to sell me a deck, but I could still by all the other stuff. I thought that was insane because I could have just bought the same shit in Portland, home of Cal Skates, the USA’s only dealer (at the time) for Skull Skates products. I had decided instead to give the cash directly to the source in a show of support, plus it was another good reason to get in the car. I was pissed, having planned the trip for over a year. What a buzz kill. So much for brotherhood. Fuck ‘em. I spent some of my money at I spent some of my money at Girl pro Rick McCrank’s Antisocial skate shop instead. Their loss. Damn! I promised to let it slide, but just thinking about it gets my blood boiling. Fuck You Heroes? Yes, indeed. Maybe it was just the employee and not the attitude of the whole company. P.D. seems nice enough. He gave us a review copy of the new Skull Skates video Resist Control, but then again he probably didn’t know I have a small company. The video is good though, not the same old tired format you’ve become complacent with, see the review. I don’t know. The guy at the shop (not P.D.) really bummed me out though.
On our last day we met the Godoys and their respective mates for a hearty breakfast and some hilarious stories at a funky little Dutch diner. It was some sort of Scandinavian place, I can’t remember. Afterwards, the sun was coming out so we hit Hastings skate park, which was mostly dry and a lot of fun, although we didn’t have a lot of time to spend getting loose. A little session was starting that included local Cody Maky and Donald (I think) from Seattle. We hit the road. After we drove through Seattle we stopped to eat dinner at an exit near the Sea-Tac airport that turned out to have a little street plaza type skate park. While not exactly our ideal terrain, we decided when in Rome to do as the Romans, and had a fun session. I snapped a pic of the only other person there and forgot his name. It doesn’t matter because he said he didn’t have a computer or an email address so there was no way to get a copy to him. We passed a billboard with a picture of a blood corpuscle on a skateboard. We’ll be back. Vancouver is a cool city.
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