Cash For Tricks At Active's Bling Fest 2007

Active’s Bling Fest is a contest that’s all about the tricks...and the cash. From the beginning (the first Bling Fest took place in 2004) the event has shunned the traditional contest format of having each participating skater get a timed run to show their stuff, in favor of what is essentially an extended Best Trick session, and since it’s been so successful each year there was no need to make any changes this time around.

 

The event started around noon at The Epicenter in Rancho Cucamonga, California with bands playing, kids walking around the open venue, and plenty of skaters practicing on the course. The course was a pretty small setup given the amount of skaters on it, with transitions lining all sides of the area, multiple manny pads in the middle, a triangular pyramid/platform on top of one the larger transitions, and the main stairs/rail ledge on the other side of the manny pads. Skaters that were seen out and about, whether skating or not (I’ll get to that later), included Chris Cole, Jamie Thomas, Andrew Reynolds, Terry Kennedy, Mike Vallely, Billy Marks, Adam Dyet, Danny Cerezini, and countless others that would take too long to list. Suffice it to say that the field was stacked. While the turnout was sizeable -- at certain points of the contest each barrier around the course had people up against it 3 heads deep, plus the packed bleachers -- the intensity (minus the practice session) really only picked up once event MCs Chad Muska and Jamey Stone got a hold of the mics and started directing traffic.

 

Up first was the hour-plus $100 Hammers Contest where each trick that was given the stamp of approval by the two MCs would net the skater who stomped it a crisp hundred-dollar bill on the spot. At the beginning of the session Muska and Stone were able to quickly flex their muscles by designating the different parts of the course that were going to be featured in the session, with each section getting around 10+ minutes of action.  The order was set so that the first area the skaters would hit would be the gap area at the top set, and once Muska gave the go ahead on the action there it quickly became apparent that this $100 Hammers Contest would be utterly chaotic. Tons of skaters would seemingly throw themselves at each obstacle at random. Lots of times two skaters would go at the obstacle at the same time and plenty of times there would be tricks that would have been cleanly landed had there not been someone’s board, or in plenty of cases just plain someone, in the way. It actually made for alright viewing in terms of there being wall-to-wall action but in terms of catching all the tricks and of keeping track of who did what, forget about it.

 

As the contest moved from section to section it became apparent that some of the pros (especially the top ones) weren’t going to focus on stuffing their pockets with bills, as they would casually skate in and out of the session itself sometimes choosing to just hit up a spot where the contest wasn’t at. You might catch a Jamie Thomas coming in and hitting up the transition that at that time was the session spot, then see him going at the quarter pipe at the other end of the course for the rest of the time. Terry Kennedy himself didn’t even really throw himself into the Hammers contest most of the time, choosing to go at the rail that had been reserved for the overall Best Trick contest that would take place after. Through it all you’d catch glimpses of great skating as part of the $100 session: Silas Baxter Neal hitting up the Quarterpipe hard, Gareth Stehr consistently landing dope tricks, Mike V. trying to stick a stall on the high transition, and Danny Cerezini going at the steep ledge along the side. The funny part was after about 20 minutes or so and with 2 more obstacles to hit all the cash set aside for the Hammers Session was already gone. Muska’s a generous guy.

 

Finally after the Hammers contest was done the crowd moved over to the double set for the $2,500 Best Trick competition sponsored by Krew. The actual Best Trick session would get about 30 minutes worth of action that became much more organized right away as Stone and Muska (mostly Stone) would start 86ing lots of the ams from competition, and pushing the field farther back so that there would be larger spaces between each skater’s attempt. Right away the skating got deep as Danny Cerezini got down with a nollie noseslide on the ledge. Brian "Slash" Hansen who had been all over the course the whole day came with a kickflip 50-50 on both the ledge and rail, but soon the ante was raised as Tyler Hendley began trying a crooked grind to nollie flip out. Henley was damn near landing the thing without landing the thing for much of the time, but everyone knew once he had it he’d head to the top of the heap, and that he did (albeit not entirely clean) later on. Meanwhile Adam Dyet was also upping the bar with a kickflip boardslide and late in the game an amazing nollie heelflip bigspin to a backside lipslide on the rail. Within no time Muska and Stone were calling for an end but not before Danny Cerezini hit the ledge with a tre flip noseslide. Other skaters that were really killing it included Derek "Deathwish" Elmendorf, Terrel Robinson, and Chris Cole who was going more for tricks down the double set.
 

After a few minutes of deliberation the MCs came back with news that the organizers would add 10 more minutes into the show and throw in another $2,500 for the overall best skater. That gave plenty of skaters more time to go off, like Henley with a hardflip down the double set, Robinson with a 360 flip lipslide, Greg Myers with a nollie backside heelflip, and Billy Marks with a backside kickflip big spin. When judgment time came it was decided that the $2,500 (handed out at the spot in cash) for the best overall skater would be split between three skaters, Billy Marks, Tyler Hendley, and Greg Myers, while the Krew $2,500 for the Best Trick went to Adam Dyet for his crazy nollie heelflip bigspin to a backside lipslide on the rail.

In all that was about $5,000 I saw exchange hands plus however much they handed out at the Hammers Session. See I told you all the event was all about the tricks and cash.