Paul Zitzer samples the vert ramp at the Thrash and Jam in Baltimore, Maryland. This is what Zitzer does when he's not blogging
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The Paul Zitzer's Road to the Dew Tour
Jun 30 2006 / Louisville, Kentucky
Update 6/25/06
Anytime there ís a BMX contest, I always ask: "who wants to watch a few guys go the hospital?" Career ending slams are a dime a dozen to the bikers, but they always seem to be riding a week later. I walked into Freedom Hall today for the BMX vert finals and the very first thing I saw was my co-blogger, John Parker, bouncing his head off the flat bottom of the ramp. He managed to get up a few minutes later, I hope he is okay. Actually, I'm sure he ís okay, but it was a bad one. Get well soon John.
The skate contest started right after the bikers finished up. Like I've already said, I didn't qualify to skate, but NBC wanted a skater in the booth to commentate with their usual crew, and they picked me. Standing in front of a camera on live television is a strange thing, but definitely a lot easier than trying to put a run together. It turns out I've been writing and talking about skating a whole lot more than I've been doing it. Weak. The contest was as gnarly as ever, and it was cool to see Bob Burnquist take home a win. He did the normal Bob run, which is to say completely abnormal for a human being. Good job Bob. Bucky came second, Andy Mac third, not many surprises there.
Well, I'm beat. Iím going to go get something to eat, and as far as I know, I'm heading to Chicago tomorrow morning for a big time demo deal. I'll update you in a few days.
-Peace, The Zizzla
Update 6/24/06
All right all right. It ís Saturday night and I just finished watching the vert prelims for the Dew Tour Louisville stop. It ís hard for me to say that: watching, but whatever. I don't care if you're a street skater, a janitor, or an extreme unicycle rider, if you've ever been to a pro vert contest, you've been converted. Vert rules. If you've only seen them on TV, go ahead and hate, but you're missing out.
This contest got off to a bit of a slow start with a lot of the top guys bailing their runs and missing the cut tothe finals. I wasn't terribly shocked to see Shawn White knee slide his way into last place because it was pretty obvious he hasn't had enough time back on his skateboard to get to the level he wants to be riding, but I'm sure the sponsors and promoters were tripping. I went to a press conference yesterday where Shawn was sitting at a table with a microphone in front of about 10 cameras and a thousand journalists, just like he is the President only a little funnier.
After the contest, when the final scores were tallied, Bob Burnquist ended up qualified first with another display of skating that no one can touch. Andy Mac came in second, and rounding out the top three is the NKOB, Jean Postec from France. He just moved to California this past year, mastered English, and came up on the vert scene. He rips.
Well, I'm about to drop off today's installment at the blog-o-mat and go check out the street, err, park course finals. The question on everyone's lips: Will Sheckler come up on another hundred or so grand this year too? My guess is that he will, I just wonder what he's going to spend it on.
Till Next Time,
Count Blogula AKA Zitzer
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Update 6/18/06
Finally! I’m back in the good ol’ US of A. At our last meeting, I told you I was waiting for the results of the Slam Trick in Italy…well, things didn’t pan out quite as I’d hoped, but skating goes on. Anyways, yesterday was the Open Qualifier for vert at stop one of the Dew Tour in Louisville. Since I live here now I should have had some sort of home court advantage, but I didn’t really feel it. I skated like a pile. The open qualifier is for the dudes that didn’t skate well enough last year to be in the top 13, so there were seven spots to be had. I came in eighth. I threw my helmet and had a tantrum.
The skating yesterday was good. People were employing a lot of strategy because nobody cared about winning; they only cared about staying on and qualifying. Buster, Jake Brown, Jean Postec, and Danny Mayer all ripped, they’re in.
So dudes, I’ll be filling you in again soon about what’s going down. Okay? Bye.
-Zitzer
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Bonjourno from Italy. After a 24-hour and some odd minute trek from Louisville by plane, boat and pack mule I finally arrived in Ravenna. Which is a fairly typical European city on Italy’s west coast. Three interesting things about Italy, off the top of my head.: People drive scooters in droves and all seem to have a death wish. Everything and everyone is late, behind schedule or postponed by at least an hour. And people look and act more Italian in New York City than they do here in Ravenna.
I came out here for the Slam Trick Contest, which is an annual event with street and vert best trick contests. The entrants are almost all from Europe with the only Americans being the Zoo York Team, Tony Magnusson and myself. Saturday was the vert contest. The ramp is the biggest vert ramp in the world with 13-foot trannies, 2 feet of vert and about eighty feet wide. Giorgio Zattoni, the hometown hero and one of my all time favorites was killing it; going nine feet with ease, or three meters as they say here. Other standouts were Renton Miller from Australia who three sixty flipped over the ten-foot channel with no hands and Jess Anderson from Denmark. Vert lives in Europe. On my very last try of the contest and after slamming my brains out I finally made a shove it noseslide 180 into the channel. I was hyped. We find out the results today. I’ll let you know who got what next week
On a side note, last night was the Italy vs. USA World Cup match, and I think I’m probably the only person in the whole country that didn’t hang around to see who won.
-Ciao……Zitzer.
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Hey ya’ll, what’s crackin’? Well, I safely made the move from Philly to Louisville last weekend, so goodbye cheese steaks, hello bluegrass. I got the chance to skate the park there the other day where I had the opportunity to get fully tubed in the full pipe. No loops though. Right now I’m out in California wine country for a wedding, then it’s a quick stopover back at home on Tuesday before I go out to Giorgio’s house in Italy for a vertical shred fest. Due to my not having had much of a chance to skate the last two weeks, the trip could go either way. You’ll be able to find out soon enough, right here. I can tell you can’t wait. Thanks for giving this a read, and I’ll be sending out another blog-o-whirl next week. Oh word? Word.
-Paul
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Hello there. Parker told me I better find some time to start reporting…I mean blogging about what I’ve been up to as we approach this years Dew Tour contests, so here goes. First of all, the last thing on my mind right now is skateboarding, actually, that’s not entirely true, the last thing on my mind is blogging, but then coming in a close second is skateboarding.
I did manage to make it out to Louisville this past week to do some vert demos at Churchill Downs. In case you don’t already know, that’s where they run the Kentucky Derby every year. Furlong was the other skater on the pipe, along with DMC and Chad Kagy on BMX. It was about 96 degrees in the shade, and Big Furls wanted to know what I’d rather do, if given the choice between skating in the demos, or running around the race track with a fur coat on while carrying around a little kid that may or may not be kicking me in the ribs…in case you didn’t pick up on it, he was referring to what the horses must have felt like racing in the heat that we were skating in. I decided that skating sounded like the better bet. We had a good time, and then we watched as a 50 year old grown man separated his shoulder and broke his wrist into equal parts while trying to drop in on the kid friendly mini ramp (I guess nobody said nothing about it being man friendly now did they?).
Anyway, the reason skating hasn’t been at the top of my priority list is because I’m in the middle of moving to Louisville--the fact that the demo took place there was nothing more than a coincidence, I think. But whether it was or whether it wasn’t is irrelevant when you consider the fact that I just spent the last 12 hours packing almost everything I own into the back of a moving truck, which I’ll be driving straight out of Philly first thing in the morning, and yet here I am, blog blog blogging along. It’s 12:19 a.m., I’m beat, and I’ll talk to you--I mean blog at you--sometime next week. Seeeeeeeya.
-Paul Zitzer
