NBW

When my friend Natalie heard that my son was becoming a fan of the WWE she suggested the next time there was a NBW event that she'd let us know. She said what she meant and meant what she said, so earlier tonight we checked out the NBW New Brand Wrestling Spring Fever event at the Ellice Theatre.

It was the first time I've attended a wrestling type event in my entire life. Watching wrestling on T.V. has never really done it for me. This performance was a completely different experience.

I wasn't there to get the greatest shots from the best angles...I was there to take in the action, witness some kids laughing and smiling while other kids cursed and heckled. I did bring my camera so I figured I'd grab the odd shot right from my seat...because trying to describe the event without pictures would be selling it short.

Cory Diamond interrogating the audience in an attempt to find out who hospitalized Billy Blaze.

"The Rebel" Bobby Collins taking his chances in Winnipeg's West End with his confederate flag.

"The Great" Pepito with his "mamacita".

Leo London fans come in all ages.

...and I do mean all ages! Note: Leo London is on the left.

Cory Diamond and his lady.

The merch table.

The wrench swinging bell ringer.

Finally... the out of hand main event.

Redemption!

I felt I had to redeem myself for not taking pictures yesterday by ensuring I got some fresh pics taken after my session tonight. We lucked out by choosing Park West for our Friday night skateboarding adventure. There was a good deal of talent abound coming from some of our favourite St. James locals.

Grady with a one foot 5-0 or... Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon!

Sometimes it takes a photo to show you just how close a front slide slash turned in to a near death experience. I think the nose grab saved Mike's life on this one.

Grady with a clean ollie on the vert quarter.

Devin's crooked grind to fakie.

Keiran with his first try flip back lip.

The daylight was dwindling fast. Keiran gets in one lightning speed smith grind before we packed up and called it a night.

That's that!

Pinch Hitter

While skating at Komenda Skate Park tonight I got a chance to witness Evan Burchuk tear the place up with out of the ordinary and unique lines, busting stylish tricks from corner to corner. My own session was about to turn from skateboarding to picture taking when blood from some mystery injury started to roll down the palm of my hand? I was just about to take my camera out when something came up and our night was cut short. I am determined to capture Evan's stylish skating in the near future.

Since I came up empty handed tonight I asked for some photos from local skater Mike Sudoma. He's been picking up the camera in his downtime caused by the occasional injury. Last year after an ankle break (if memory serves correct) he swore off skateboarding. Delirium can cause people to say the silliest things. I'm glad to see Mike is out doing both skateboarding and taking pictures of his friends skateboarding.

Who better to hone your camera skills on than Grady with his bag of tricks!

Grady puts in the hours and then some. Recharge!

Thanks for the photos Mike! As always Grady...big ups to you as well!

She had me at "do you like the Gorilla Biscuits"?

A few years ago my friend Jacqui opened my eyes up to the world of girls in skateboarding. That was the first year we were lucky enough to host the
Chicks Flip Out contest at the Plaza in Winnipeg.

One of the crews that showed up for the contest was Skate Like A Girl. Every single contestant that weekend blew me away, but I'd have to say one skater left an impression on me more than anyone else. Not because her work with SLAG said a lot about her character or her obvious skills helped her take 1st place in the contest, but because she asked me one simple question at the after party..."do you like the Gorilla Biscuits"?

I assume it was because I was wearing a band shirt that particular night that would have indicated my taste in music. Regardless, she obviously had a good taste in music as far as I was concerned. She went from rad to super rad just like that.

Kristin Ebeling 2008

Having the knowledge that Kristin was a fan of some things hardcore or punk rock it was no surprise to me to learn from the Grrls On Deck blog that Kristin was on MTV's Tue Life:"I'm Going To Skatopia".

Check out the blog for all of the Skatopia episodes and remember...don't jump back in the cesspool that people piss in!

The Love Boat....

...the Hate Taaaaank! -M.O.D.

I was looking for something fun to do...problem solved! Took the Ponton out tonight for the first ride around the block for 2011.

I could have left it parked for just awhile longer, but after Dave's visit with his new 51' Buick the other day I was inspired to take it out just that much sooner.

Barge At Will

A post packed full of images should help both explain and make up for a short hiatus while we've been busy getting as much done in a long weekend as possible.

This weekend kicked off with a Thursday night get together for some Chinese Food. It was smiles all around.

Who doesn't love Chinese Food?

Especially when kicking off a long weekend.

Friday morning started off with a visit from Carl and Jim when the rain started to dry up.

Carl loves customizing his boards top to bottom. He had an image of himself taken by Stefan Isfeld turned in to a deck sized decal for this one ...and why NOT!?

You'll notice the bearing race used as a ring. That's to show his commitment to his love of skateboarding obviously.

After the visit they hinted that Komenda was the place to be, so we easily fell for their positive peer pressure and headed that way too.

A little bit of peer pressure came in to play as well at the park when Scott confirmed with me if I had my camera and then suggested his buddy Dylan would show me his ollie from top to bottom of this bank. Just imagine how many stairs would fit right there.

Saturday's skateboarding involved meeting our Thursday night Chinese Food companions at the Selkirk Skate Park. The City of Selkirk had other plans...

Was that an original Banksy? Doubtful. Regardless we made our own sign adjustments to gain official authorization to barge at will.

Will was popping clean ollies all over the place!

A little someone pulled some "monkey see, monkey do" action and tried to one up Will shirt off and all.

Jason with a smooth front side air.

I was having a mini hang out Saturday night with an old friend when there was a surprise knock on the door and the mini hang out turned in to a 4 person long time/no see reunion of sorts. It turns out that my friend Dave rolled up a few hours after the journey from Florida back to Winnipeg after driving his new acquisition the 2000+ mile trip home!

I love surprises and this one was very cool.

This 51 Buick was turned in to a rod in the early 80's.

It's currently called the "Wild Flower". Dave and his twin brother and fellow car customizer Dean already have some plans in motion for their new ride. I'm not sure if a name change is one of them. Regardless; they're off to a great start with this fun looking machine!

Rhyme Syndicate

I often dip in to the archives just to come up for some air when I'm deep in to one particular project or another. I do refer to it as procrastinating some days, but other days I realize that it's fun to finish something simple when you're only half way through something much larger. It keeps me motivated.

Afrika Islam at the Winnipeg Convention Centre 1989 (could be 1990 if my calculations are wrong) performing with Donald D and Ice T.

Strictly business.

There's an equal amount of procrastinating and work being put in around here so all I've got going on is a teaser from Sunday part III.

Things got silly and it was awesome.

Get over it, get on with it. The p.m. edition.

This is Sunday part II. We were still in full stride from the morning in "get on with it" mode. We met our musician/skateboarder/surfer/teacher friend Derek for lunch.

Lunch was superb. We parted ways with Derek and wrapped up any outstanding Sunday errands. Shortly after we were invited out for gelati milkshakes by our friend Carolyn. She said she was bringing an old school 35mm Mamiya to show me. Who am I to say no to cameras and yummy treats?

After milkshake consumption (dairy free of course) I noticed this sign. It's like saying "hey check me out...come and skateboard over here...but wait...You're not allowed!?"

That was that. So it turns out the Mamiya was broken which was sad, but there were still three other cameras looking for attention so we headed down to this blue wall in my neighborhood that I have favoured in the past for Sunday afternoon head shots and voila...

If I can get around to processing the many rolls of film staring at me, I may just have to extend this post to the late night edition of my Sunday adventures.

Get over it, get on with it. The a.m. edition.

Yesterday was going to the movies to see Hanna with some friends. I would like to share that I enjoyed it enough to say that I would watch it again.

Today was supposed to start off with swimming a few laps at the local pool and heading to the skate park despite the second coming of winter. Trying to stay on top of things; I checked the pool schedule before we headed out and it looked like we were go! When we arrived at the pool it was a different story. The massive parking lot was overflowing with cars forcing people to park on the street indicated an event of some sort was going down. Upon further investigation we learned that there were numerous events going down preventing us from swimming, so we shook our fists at the synchronized swimmers and adjusted our schedule accordingly. We didn't actually see synchronized swimmers, I just added that for excitement.

We headed to the skate park to escape the madness only to find a very similar scene! The only difference was that parking on the street didn't appear to be an option as there were street work signs posted on one side and the community club was charging $2 to park so that they could take advantage of the fact that the bike auction was being held inside the community club. We managed to negotiate our way out of the $2 based on the fact that we didn't care about the bike auction, what the money was going towards and mostly the fact that we didn't bring any money to go skateboarding?

Sure that makes me sound cheap, but I didn't charge the community club a dime for cleaning up the garbage in the park or sweeping the entire place to clear away the broken glass, rocks etc... I felt that was fair for today.

After jumping the minor hurdles to get our day started we were finally good to go. I would be surprised if it was even above zero degrees today which was actually a good thing. Sometimes breathing in the fresh cold air while skateboarding takes me back to the days when I first got turned on to skateboarding. We would skate up till the day the snow fell and we'd sweep the streets and skateboard the first day there was a dry spot of pavement to skate. This tradition repeats itself for most Winnipeg skateboarders year after year, but every time I breath in the cold fresh air it always brings me back to the first time.

Some of us take skateboarding in the cold to the next level. Andrew showed up to the park today Slurpee in hand. If you're gonna get thirsty in the cold, you might as well have an ice cold drink on hand.

This is Andrew.

Andrew loves to power slide all over the place it's fun to watch.

Cold or no cold, it was a fun session.

Good news for my naked friends.

My naked friends and I were quite please when we stumbled across...

...THIS!

I'm not going to deny it...I am intrigued and possibly looking forward to this.

If it's not broken, don't fix it...

...apparently that's my motto when it comes to my interior design theme.

My idea of what a wall should look like circa high school...

...My idea of what a wall should look like today.

I know, it's hard to believe I don't make a living in interior design.

Work, work, work!

Moving forward, stuck somewhere in the middle...got to get it all done!

Grady soars to new heights...

...truth be told, he's been known to ollie this high on a regular basis. This time he put himself to the test and shortly after puling off an ollie north over a pallet standing 48" on it's side at the top of a bank, he takes this pallet standing 53" on it's side and...

Represent!