This event recap comes from the good dudes over at Sketch Skateboards. Thanks for stoking the masses Taylor.

photos: Olivier Seguin Leduc via Team Quebec

I got out of work at 5:30pm on Friday and had a load of laundry in the drier from the morning but nothing packed. While halfway out of town, on my way to borrow a gopro case I realized that I had no sleeping bag or quality sweatshirt or jacket. I was smart enough to remember extra clothes, socks and shoes because of rain in the forecast and that was more crucial than anything else. I said fuck it and went on my way. Hell, I made it through a week in New Mexico with just a backpack and a weekend in Portland/Washington with that same backpack so I should be fine with a car and great friends that are more like extended family than acquaintances through skating.

The six hour drive from Ithaca, NY to Burlington, VT landed me at Will and Jakes at 1a.m. with the party slowly dying and just in time to say good night to Jake. Jraw was on the porch with a beer to greet me and that turned the night into morning way quicker than you think is possible. I think we got to sleep around 5:30 and in the blink of an eye the gray, overcast light burned through the fog of my eyelids as morning shuffling flooded my ear canals. Two hours of sleep after a night of consumption is rough to skate on although fairly standard it seems but then throw in the cold rainy fall day and you’re just kind of pissed. But not this time because after a wonderful breakfast at a local espresso bar with the French Canadians there was coffee, muffins, cheese and clementines waiting under the cover of popup tents on the race hill. There was a selection of coffee at that, and not shit that tastes like ass that you get from the gas station or 7-11, but the real genuine indulgent coffee that my tastes are acquiring from the northern regions.
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Despite the incredible hospitality and the hype from last years event, the rain drove about half the people that registered away. The crew that was left were some of the most talented east coast downhill rippers. The entire Team Quebec was there plus the OG team Quebec like Rookie and AJ. Jraw and Will Miranda were there repping for Soda Factory. Newly professional, former caveman, Keith Rabbleweiner made the drive with Brian Peck and Lauren Suchoki as well. There were other shredders there for sure but I was pretty tired so it’s kind of hard to remember who else was there but it was nothing but good times skating. Ludo, last year’s winner, showed up just in time to jump into the final heat with myself and MGR and win the heat with no practice and more hungover than everyone.

The racing went fast with only 30 or so competitors there to fight with mother nature. By the finals there were no regular skaters left as the right hairpin with the wet conditions proved in favor of the goofy footers. In the semifinals I remember seeing that Jake was still in and killing it all day. I told him he should just win it and he laughed and said he’d try. Well, fuck trying, he took that race down. Ludo snuck into second somehow with Will hot on his heels for third. It was amazing that somehow through the whole day no one got hurt. Some hay was destroyed and Tom even flipped over the bales on one run but everyone played safe.

Once the podium was done a lot of people helped huck hay and clean up the race course before seeking shelter from the miserable conditions. Rookie knew of an indoor bowl so after getting on some dry clothes and warming up for a while a slow migration to the skatepark began. It’s funny seeing a group of downhill skaters take over a bowl. The style of skating is so different from people who skate a lot of street or tranny mostly. We intimidated the little kids with our basic grinds and ability to actually pump and carve the corners. Some older kid had a 5boro fuck longboards street deck, which was amusing in the middle of our session of longskates. After the skatepark it was time for the after party brought to us by Switchback beer. I think they’re still enjoying the keg remnants up there in Burlington right now too. Everyone was pretty beat and a lot of the Canadians headed back that night.

Day two started promising, with only patchy wet areas but after a run or two the sky opened back up and it was all soaked once again. The hill for the slide contest was sick regardless with a right sweepy followed by a beautiful left hairpin right next to a hydro electric dam. The best part of the day was watching the little groms going for it in the rain. Groms skating hard is awesome in general but when they’re out there in the rain and cold it is just heart warming. One day those kids will be full out shredders for sure. The contest turned into just giving them prizes because they honestly deserved it more since everyone else is either sponsored or on the bro system. There was too much shredding that went down to really say what happened. I was in a daze of running back up the hill constantly, enjoying myself way too much.

It was one of those weekends that makes you not want to drive back home for responsibilities but to instead keep driving and skating. On to the next event and gnarlier shredding. Luckily the next few weeks are packed with more weekends like this and hopefully we’ll get to the point were we can have some east coasters that are living that dream of full skate life soon. Here’s to future shredding and to Tom, Will and Jake for making this weekend so incredible and being shining examples of why downhill skating is my favorite thing in the world.

1 MGR
2 SAM C.
3 CHARLES O
4 JFT
5 FRANCIS CT
6 PATE
7 SEB L
8 LAURENT G.
9 MAX R
10 ANDRE N
11 NIKO
12 GAB C
13 K-MONEY
14 MAX B
15 KARIM
16 VICI
17 ARNEAU
18 MATT P
19 KALIE
20 DIMM
21 STEVE S
22 MARC
23 MIGUEL T
24 BASH
25 ABF
26 XL
27 CRISS G
28 SAM L
29 J-G
30 ERIC H
31 TRISTAN
32 ANTOINE M-J
33 GAB L
34 ALEX M
35 CHARLES ANTOINE
36 JEROME G
37 ROOF
38 MAUER
39 OLI C
40 JASON
41 SIMON A
42 CLAUDIE
43 FRED D.

FELICITATION A TOUS!

Men’s Downhill

1. Will Royce
2. Will Miranda
3. Jeff Vyain & Brian Bishop

Women’s Downhill

1. Sara Paulshock
2. Laura Nocka
3. Cordelia Welch

Men’s Freeride

1. Eric Roth
2. Norman Plante & Steve Kong (tied)
3. Bruce Clark
4. Josh Wright
5. Will Royce

Check out Serge’s report and videos from the race on Silverfish.

St. Marie

Slopestyle:
1- K-Money 200$
2- Ben Lavoie
3-

DH:
1.Matt 400$
2.Dimm
3.Niko
4.John Barnet

5- MGR
6- Leili
7- Fred G
8- PM

GS Slalom :
1- Louis 200$
2- MGR
3- Niko
4- Matt

Big air :
1- K-Money

1- Flavor-Flâv (Équipe France)

Luge:
1- Fred D 100$

Beast of the East

GS

1st – Evan StClair
2nd – Dave Tolley (WVA in tha house)
3rd – Mark Nix

DOWNHILL

A Bracket

1st – Evan StClair
2nd – Sean Russum (first time racer)
3rd – Doug Henry
4th – Bert Lumpkin

B Bracket

1st – Bayley Cashion
2nd – Wes Ormond
3rd – Darren “Chuey” Hodges
4th – Brad Scott

SLIDE

1st – Matt Deitch
2nd – Sean Russum

SLIDE BOWLING

Mark “Shi tbird” Nix (yes, that is the way it’s written) With an untouchable 9 pins.

OVERALL for the event goes to Evan StClair for sweeping day 1. The Beast head Stays home this year.

The Baltimore Slide Jam is the biggest slide event I’ve ever been to. There were 68 people signed up to compete and at least that many on the sidelines watching and cheering everyone on. It was incredible to have such a turnout considering the number of events going on this past weekend. I think a big part of the draw was the fact that Sergio Yuppie was a judge. If you have not seen any videos of him skating and you longboard you live under a rock and are probably a kook. On top of that we had Brad Edwards as a second judge, which may not mean anything to the younger generation but I grew up on these guys and the Gravity “Flow” dvd. I encourage you to go check that skate video out to understand that side of longboarding. The third and final judge was Andriy Daschenych, a younger ripper who skates for Earthwing that you’ve probably had your face melted by at some point in the past year. Basically we were set to have one hell of a time just based on the judges but crews rolled deep from NYC, DC, all over Maryland, Virginia and beyond to build more excitement.

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One thing that really astounded me was that although the number of riders was large everyone was being super polite and giving each other space while taking runs. I come from street and park skating where you jump in or else you get snaked. If you aren’t proactive and sometimes dropping in on other people you aren’t getting a run in for fifteen minutes and that’s when there are far less than 60 people at the park. I think that the incredible age range had something to do with it and the usual chill demeanor that longboarders seem to have who never skated other styles. Either way that tripped me out. It was also messed up because the number of soft wheel competitors vs. the number of hard was like 6 to 1. This means there were lots of people doing stand up 180s and check slides the whole day, everyone’s favorite thing to watch on a straight hill for hours.

We had about two hours of practice while everyone tried to figure out the incredibly grippy, wavy and crack laden hill. The contest was set up in heats so that there would be 9 people at a time jamming on the hill for about 15 minutes. Once all the heats were done the judges picked the top people in each heat and there was one final jam session of 15 people. The last session saw some insane stuff go down. The first thing that I think of is the bigspin slide that I saw Petter from Original do. He was also holding out massive standers and ending them with a shove it the entire session like it was his job. Will and Freddy Gnardog from DC were doing their normal balls to the wall, go as fast as possible big slides. In the end though Josh Wright was going bigger than everyone, boosting ginormous airs of the kicker and holding out massive slides.

Once the softwheel heats where done it was time for the hard wheel and women to shred face. I was so stoked that there was a women’s category in general. Jessica Corchia had come down with the Earthwing crew and obviously dominated. Jenica Davenport of Push Culture was also shredding and got some gnarly road rash as a result of skating in short shorts, which is super hot. For the hard wheel category there was some cool stuff going down. Steeze Kong was clearly hurting but threw down like always. The funny thing about the hard wheel podium was that Andriy took second even though he was supposed to be a judge and has a torn ACL. I’m still not sure how that works but the kid shreds and deserves recognition.

After the awards ceremony it started raining almost immediately. It was like the weather waited just long enough for us to get everything done before taking a piss on the day. The majority of people rolled out to drive to PA for the Mustache Derby or NYC for the Super Session hosted by Earthwing. The few brave souls that stayed in Baltimore got treated to a sweet after party with some local bands and a keg. All in all this was a sick event and it went off without a hitch. In fact the park rangers stopped by and took pictures and were stoked on the whole thing.

I must throw out a huge thanks to John Kreutter for being the catalyst for this event and making it so big. Also a huge thanks to Casey Jackson for running the top of the hill, Ave. Skateshop for being the main sponsor and our legendary judges Sergio Yuppie and Brad Edwards for making everything run smoothly.

Results

Softwheel:

1st place: Josh Wright, 2nd Place: Will Pike, 3rd Place: Matt Rosberg

Hardwheel:

1st place: Steve Kong, 2nd Place: Andriy Dashboard , 3rd Place: Nino Almazon

Womens:

1st place: Jessica Corchia, 2nd Place: Jenica Davenport, 3rd Place: Sarah

Photos: Blair Caldwell (as always! much love Blair!)

Open Results:

1st Ludo

2nd MGR

3rd Scott

4th Stephen

Girls results:

1st Emilie

2nd Anna

3rd Lauren

What you can’t see in the girls podium shot is all the road rash covering Anna and Lauren. These girls took a gnarly crash in the chicane and got up like champs. Between this and the Bmore slide jam I have come to realize that skating in short shorts are a bad idea! I have so much respect for girls who charge hills, eat it and get up like it’s no big deal where I know guys that would make more out of it. You girls rip!

Speaking of crashes, there were two that sent people to the hospital before I even showed up. I heard of a broken foot and I think the other kid checked out alright. I also saw at least two other wrecks into the guard rail. I implore everyone to do their best to ride safely and in control/within your limits. Do not throw unnecessary slides in front of a pack. Do not start carving hard in front of other rides. If you know you are slower than someone don’t kick out in front if you can’t handle what’s coming up. These things put everyone at risk and I’ve been seeing it happen entirely too often. That’s not to say these are the exact causes of crashes this weekend it’s just food for thought based on recent experiences.

I got a chance to make it down to Penn State for the Longboard Club’s first race in State College, Pennsylvania.  They separated the event into two classes, a novice and an open class.  I showed up a little late… not expecting to get a chance to race, but eager to at least hang out and skate a bit.  I was really happy when I showed up and they were just starting the first heats of the open class, so I caught up with everyone and joined in on the fun.

The turn out for racers was better than expected, with a little over 30 riders entered… which was a great turn out for the club’s first event.  The race hill was in a local neighborhood, just off campus.  The hill was a great place for a lot of these kids to get in on their first race.

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Everything went down without any problems and no major injuries.  Stoke levels were high, with everyone seeming to walk away from the event with a great experience and most with a little swag donated by Skate Penn Skate Shop, Phat Deanz, Bliss, Jati Boards, Loaded, Never Summer, Orangatang, Sector 9, Artic Boyz, and Daddies Boardshop.  Thanks to PSU Longboard Club for putting together a great event.  It was great to get out and skate with everyone and meet some new people stoked on downhill.

Open Class

1st Sean Graves

2nd Austin Barnett

3rd Jamie Reis

4th Mike Jen

Novice Class

1st Izzy Beauchamps

2nd Diego Betts

3rd John Zelhart

4th Andrew ?