Foundation Skateboards Tour - chrisnieratko.com

Foundation Tour

[ photos by tobin yelland ]

I suppose in terms of skateboarding it's hard to justify bringing along a writer on a road trip. Questions of space and merit begin to fly everywhere at the thought of it. What will he do? Does he film or shoot photos? No. Does he skate? Yes and no. But from my point of view it makes perfect sense. You would not send a plumber into an operating room for him to perform open heart surgery, just as you wouldn't send a skateboard photographer to write an article, but, aside from Dimitry, who can also write a bowl of shit from time to time, anyone in this industry trying to write and shoot photos is a hack not worthy of writing the ingredients on a bottle of milk. But for some reason other publications are still cutting corners by having these photographers write. They are even paying them for the service of lessening the quality of their magazine. I don't think I'll ever understand it. I'd rather read any of San Francisco's gay men's magazines than an article in any other skate magazine. Why don't they just buy cute little monkeys and give them laptops and have them poke, poke, poke at the keys? The result, I'm sure, would be a more entertaining read. So when time came for me to get on board the Foundation Tour, it seemed like they assumed Tobin, who was on the tour already, was the writer. I've never read anything Tobin has written and I hope this comes as no offense to him, but I'm sure his best journalistic attempt still falls short of my worst drunken notes jotted down on a napkin at a bar. Why? Because I'm freakin' awesome. And once I explained this to Josh Beagle, Foundation's team manager, that I would write a freakin' awesome Foundation Tour story if he just let my fat ass in the van, he quickly realized no matter what he said or did he was going to be stuck with me for seven glorious days. And deep down inside, I think it made him happy.

The first day of the trip was rather uneventful. Drove from the office to Riverside where I met up with the Foundation team who were putting on a demo of sorts. Actually it was more of a best-trick show over a trailer with an ollie box on top of it. I'm not sure who did the best trick. I usually forget to pay attention to those things. And if I do try and watch I usually tune out within two minutes due to my severe ADD. What was I saying? Oh, right, the team consisted of Justin Strubing, Ethan Fowler, Jon West, Justin Roy, Daniel Shimizu, Mike Rusczyk and Josh Beagle, who had put on a few pounds since I last saw him. I felt happy knowing I needn't feel any shame in front of all the "athletes" with another fat ass in the mix. The highlight of the first day, for me, was a little kid getting hit by a speeding car while crossing the street to McDonald's and getting carted off in an ambulance. Did somebody say McLawsuit? Most people wouldn't see this as a positive highlight, and I guess those would be the good people in this world, but I'm just glad it wasn't me getting run over this time. After the demo all twelve of us got in the ten-passenger van with all our boards, luggage and product and headed for Arizona. Due to the tight space in the van, a few of the team members got to know each other in ways I dare not explain.

The heat during the day was sickening. I was afraid to drink for fear of dehydration and eventual death. There are worse ways to go. Like being hit by a car. My plan for the day was to sit in the air-conditioned hotel room and watch reruns of "MASH." Instead we picked up Markovich at the airport after breakfast. He frightened me the entire day. No beer, no whiskey, no booze at all the entire night. Instead he ate bananas, yogurt and salad. A disturbing picture, if you ask me. Before long, I fear he might stop eating raw meat. I'll never understand the life of an "athlete." After picking Kris up, our agenda shifted towards attaining and installing roof racks onto the van. The idea of clearing all the luggage out of the van and strapping it to the roof made everyone happy, especially little Danny who was forced to sit in the rear of the van on top of twelve uncomfortable skateboards. But little did we know that finding the right size roof racks in Arizona was about as easy as getting a handjob from a quadriplegic. It took three hours of shopping around before we eventually found the right size racks by which time the extreme heat demotivated everyone and rendered them useless when it came to assembling the damn things. Or, it could be that they are just plain lazy. As a boy I was also quite lazy. Not to say that I'm much less lazy now, but I know now that my mommy isn't going to wipe my ass anymore, therefore I must grab some toilet paper and stick my hand in shit all by myself or walk around smelling like shit all day. But in my lazier days I knew all the moves. When cleaning time came I would play sick, run and hide, even sit in the bathroom for four hours pretending I was pooping all to avoid doing housework. As we attempted to assemble the roof racks I felt like a mother who had to wipe a van full of shit-coated asses. Half of the guys hid under trees in order not to help put together the racks, some even hid under the van. Others went and got food. Tobin took photos of us working in the 104-degree heat, turning a 45-minute project into a four-hour ordeal and thus cancelling our trip to the water park. And my hot-flash delirium had me laughing like a madman the whole time, which I'm sure frightened most of the rest of the guys.

Four hours later we headed towards the skatepark. After going in the opposite direction for an hour, we eventually made it to the Cowtown Skate Shop, who hosted demo, and all the kids were happy to see us. Well not me. No one is ever happy to see me. They were happy to see the team. So I thought. But actually they were only happy to see the 50 pizzas that the shop had brought. And when those pizzas were gone, so were most of the kids and parents, which was fine by me. The less kids to bother me the better, I think, but I found it odd that "FREE PIZZA" would be the top billing on a Foundation tour flyer. If I had a skateshop I'd probably do the same thing, but I'd probably wait until after the demo to give out the pizza, that way people actually watched the demo, and even then I'd probably throw slice by slice into the crowd like a product toss and make all those lecherous bastards fight for every sliver of dirt-covered cheese. At least then I would feel I got my money's worth. If I cared. Which I don't, since I was one of the assholes that forgot about the demo as soon as the pizzas arrived. I ate two whole pies by myself. Then puked it all back up when a band of skateboarding gypsies known as Team Oregon offered me boiling-hot whiskey to wash down the mushrooms. Why I drank it, seeing the steam come off the bottle, I'm still uncertain. But I did and for the next hour I puked pepperoni and mushrooms everywhere I went.

Woke up and felt like eight bucks. Then I went outside into the 100+ degree weather and felt much better. The good times were indeed killing me when I found out we had a nine-hour drive ahead and the A/C in the van was on the fritz. A few hours into the drive, to break up the monotony of 400 miles of replicated cacti, we stopped by some 50,000-year-old meteor crater that was over three miles in circumference. It was quite an impressive site, if you're into that kind of shit. Worth $10? I'd have to say no because at the end of the day it's still just a big hole in the ground and who gives a shit about big holes in the ground? On the other hand we saw the huge dinosaur statues from the movie Peewee's Big Adventure and that seemed to fascinate everyone more than the big hole. I'm not sure when but somewhere along the way Jon West bought a seven-dollar blow dart gun from a gas station. It was right around that time that everyone stopped sleeping peacefully in the van. I'm sure if Jon West wasn't such a blood-and-gore horror-movie freak, nobody would have been nervous, but since he is the rest of the tour was spent looking over our shoulder for incoming darts. When we reached Albuquerque, we got a room where all the whores bring their Johns to fuck. It smelled of death and cheap sex. I feared lying on the bed, unsure if I'd get stuck in the back with a needle. To ease my nerves I walked across the street to make sure the taps worked at the local pubs while the boys went and played skateboard until the sun came up.

I woke up this morning and didn't feel or look as handsome as I did when I passed out. So not to bum anyone out I went and bought a case of Bud and began making myself pretty for the team before they even woke up. By the time they had eaten breakfast and were ready to go to the park I must have looked like Prince Charming. I know I felt like it. Most people in Albuquerque don't like out of towners coming around, looking all handsome and shit and they tried to stop me every chance they got. One asshole in Taco Bell insisted that the restaurant was not BYOB and tried to make me leave. He was a big round bastard that didn't even work there and I hated his face. He looked as if every dream he'd ever had, every goal he'd ever set for himself had fallen short. And for some reason his goal at that moment was to keep me from drinking in Taco Bell. "Do you want to fight?" he asked. "No," I said. "I want a Chalupa." Then I laughed and walked passed him. I expected him to hit me in the back of the head. But he didn't. Another one of his dreams was ruined, and he was used to it. He just left without saying another word, probably off to beat his wife. She probably got a black eye that night, all because I wanted to drink in Taco Bell. Seems Albuquerque is a non-drinking town because we almost fought the park narc who wouldn't let me and the boys drink in the park. Even though I tried to make him understand that I couldn't watch the team skate without a beer in my hand, he still made me sit in the van, alone, with Justin Roy, looking handsome as shit. We hit the road after the park closed. The lady from the bar told me it was only a four-hour drive to Colorado Springs. The lady from the bar was a lying bitch. It was more like seven hours. And seven hours in a van with 12 skaters with ripe asses, ten pounds of beef jerky, eight chain smokers and one mad man with a blow gun can do crazy things to a man's mind. Ask Mike Rusczyk, who drank his own piss for five dollars. He'll tell you all about it.

Some days were better than others and this was one of the best. The skating was amazing, the partying and debauchery were off the hook and, surprisingly, no one got hurt. Most of the day was spent at a fun little cement park with a snakerun with a bunch of banks and pyramids peppered all around it. Markovich did a b/s 360 from the snakerun to the pyramid, a distance of 15 or so feet. Right afterwards Justin Strubing did a b/s 180 indy over the same trench. Together they might have been the most unbelievable tricks the entire trip. I wish you could see for yourself but Tobin only shot stills and they didn't turn out. After all the skateboarding nonsense was done and over, kids flocked to the "athletes" for their autographs. Beagle looked on, remembering, even longing for the days when young ladies would offer their boobs to be used as notepads. And just as the memories seemed to be too painful to bear, a girl went up to Josh and begged him to sign her ass. And so he did, not knowing that the girl's hippy mom was watching in the distance. As we tried to get out of the parking lot and back to the hotel and the beer that awaited us there, kids blocked our exit begging for free shirts, socks and boards. One lucky kid earned himself a board by letting dart man Jon West shoot him in the ass with his blow darts. Later that night we met up with Jerry, Markovich's friend who owned a tattoo shop in Colorado Springs. He offered all of us free tattoos and we all partied 'til the sun came up.

Still recouping from last night. Only got an hour of sleep, then spent the rest of the night face down in a toilet looking for my contact lens. The last few days we'd heard talk of romantic hot springs in the next town over from Colorado Springs and we decided on this day to go hunt them down. We searched all over the hippy town for them and when we asked the locals where they might be they pointed up the road a ways and noted that the hot springs were actually "cold as fuck." We learned they weren't lying, but only after jumping in the water and nearly catching hypothermia. The rest of the day was spent trying to get the blood flowing in our legs again and watching the waterfalls fall and wishing that Hawaii were located in the southwest part of the continental United States. The night was wasted in the hotel watching "Colombo." No one really said much. I think they were all sad that I was leaving the next day. If they weren't, I know I was. Today's demo was on top of a hill at some cheesy pre-fab park in Lakewood. The wind was unbearable. The skies promised rain and we hoped it'd come sooner than later 'cause the park sucked. But the boys made the best of it and entertained all the local little shits. And since the rain never came, they were doing it for some time. The highlight of the demo was probably that no one blew off the mountain and died. The wind felt like nothing short of a hurricane. It's a good thing no one was worried about messing their hair up because they would've been pretty bummed. I tried to rustle everyone up as fast as I could but they insisted on skating far past their allotted time. Which I would usually be cool with, but this being my last day with the team, I'd hoped to get a few drinks with them at a bar in Denver before hopping on my plane back to LAX. We eventually did and I nearly missed my flight home as a result. And also because some asshole at the ticket counter gave me a ticket that read "Susan Connor" and the folks at the boarding gate didn't think I looked like a Susan Connor, so they tried to detain me and keep me from boarding the plane. Being of unsound mind and body I began swearing and threatening to sue and soon I was passed out in my aisle seat dreaming of jamming with the Stones. The next day I returned to work and the team went on to Omaha where the town welcomed them with open arms and open bar tabs. Josh Beagle called me to let me know they were drinking the town dry in my honor and that I should get a plane ticket and fly out and meet them in Chicago. I almost did. Instead I went to lunch.

Comments

popshuva
17 Nov 2007, 10:06

KEEP THESE COMING THEIR GOLD!!!1

guy
18 Nov 2007, 18:08

You made a grammatical error in your request for comments. It should be "Keep these coming they're gold" as in "they are". Instead, you used "their" which is the possessive. Fortunately for you, most people are too illiterate to know the difference. I guess I should have quite while I was ahead.

girl
19 Nov 2007, 01:20

I'm pretty sure that guy meant "keep the articles coming," sure his spelling was poor... but you don't have to point out everything people do wrong, internet nazi.
You should definitely "quite" whilst you were behind.

maddin
22 Nov 2007, 06:14

whaha! in your face guy!

girl
22 Nov 2007, 08:08

lol :)