You gotta’ love Surf Expo. It’s the only place in Florida where you have a room full of the Who’s Who in the surf and skate industry at one location. Store owners and retailers flock to Orlando to meet with manufacturers and distributors who are exhibiting the upcoming season’s lines of apparel and latest hard goods. The Surf Expo has all skate and surf merch you can possibly imagine. Even with all that going on, in years past the skateboarding has been the highlight of the show.
Master builder Tim Payne was the first person I saw when arriving at the Orange County Convention Center, the long-time home of the Expo. Tim and his crew were getting started constructing the mini ramp, which was once again sponsored by Volcom and hosted by the Skate Park of Tampa. Once finished, the mini ramp was an ultra-wide 6-footer with extensions and kinks—Mayhem was born.
Mike Peterson, Chris Kendall, Ben Rayborne, Mike “darkness” Barnes, Grant Taylor, Dylan Durkin, Dalton Dern and slews of others were attacking the ramp. There were so many people on the ramp that I felt like I was in the way when I was shooting video (coming soon) —but I didn’t care.
It’s funny to think of how many years it has taken the sport to evolve to where there are tons of Ams skating the “demo ramp”. It’s great to finally see companies getting behind their Am riders.
After the comp, I spoke with Dylan Durkin who didn’t place too well, “I put on brand new wheels before practice and couldn’t feel the ramp. I was sliding out until I went back to the car and changed them again.”
Just to get an idea of how fierce the comp was, Dylan fully ripped and still only placed 24th out of 40 in the Am comp, but 24th in that pool of serious talent is like winning the Olympics.
I got hungry so I walked to the Vans booth and I got a waffle poured up by Mr. Steve Van Doren himself, the man whose family name puts the “Van” in Vans. They like to celebrate their grippy “waffle” sole by ironing up waffles for the people!
Origin trucks are going to be the future of trucks. They are very similar to Indy’s but they have over forty percent more grinding area and the metal is poured under pressure to make the trucks stronger. I had to get me a set! I’ll post a review soon.
I wrapped up the weekend with a conversation with Bruce Walker who is an originator on Florida’s skateboarding scene and a staple at any skate or surf industry function. We spoke a little about getting together for a skate/video session back at the Cocoa Beach Skate Park.
Bruce mentioned the possibility of getting Kelly Slater to come with us as long as we kept it on the down low. I happened to have stolen a copy of the key to the park during skate camp this past summer, so I told Bruce we could make that happen for sure—stay tuned for that!
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—Scooter
