Hello folks, homies, patnas, cronies, juiced, sucka, foos.....
Erick Garcia here to let you know how Barnburner 2007 went down for myself and for some of my other norcal homies.
To say the least, it was a great weekend with its perks and downsides, even though the downsides only affected me and no one else. So with that said, let me tell you guys how it all went down...
Thursday 3/22/07, I get off work around 6pm only to be stuck with washing my clothes and packing since I always do this last minute anyway's. I usually like to start out weekend trips like this by doing something fun to start up the weekend i.e. go to a Golden State Warriors game, maybe go to a bar with some friends or hook up with chicks, but none of these options were available to me this time around, so like a lame ass, I stayed home and washed my clothes and packed. Now, for a lot of you who don't know me, I get really antsy about getting on planes and going out of town, which means I can never go to sleep because all I think about is how the trip is going to be and what will happen. When I was a youngster, I used to stress about the skating and wondering if I'd skate good in these types of contests, but as I've grown I only stress about the important things in life. These important things are which restaurants I'm going to dine at, how drunk I'm going to get and most importantly whether or not my rental car will have an E-brake (trust me, this is VERY important). So as the hours whisk away, I already notice it's 4am! and I haven't gone to sleep yet. My flight left at 9am out of Oakland and of course I couldn't go on a trip like this without the man himself, Brandon Smith. On these types of trips I consider Brandon my traveling buddy and personal photographer and I have to say, to know you have photographer with you, its only inevitable that you strike a pose and vogue ever so often. Now being a photographer as Brandon is, you still have to remember that paying the bills and making extra cash only means working at a doughnut shop which is where Brandon works currently (he'll be out of there by June '07). Brandon was forced to stay up during the night to work as I was just a little bitch and couldn't go to sleep, anyway's...8am comes around and B and I meet up at Oakland airport to make our way to Seattle Washington.
Like always, whenever I take days off work to go on trips I am always bombarded with phone calls from my work as I have to make sure things are running OK while I'm gone. And NOT to my surprise, when we got off the plane and arrived into Seattle, my cell phone was ringing and voicemail's were coming through like crazy. I handled my priorities while walking to baggage claim and now it was off to get the rental car. You must accept my apology as I am going to get a little deep into talking about rental cars and how much they mean to me. Hertz was my victim and little did they know the E-brake master was in town. As I am at the counter getting my rental, the lady helping me asked if I would need to insure the car and of course as responsible as I am I took the damage wavier which cost me an extra $14 a day. Trust me! you always want to get the damage wavier when renting a car so your never responsible for any dents, scratches or just any damage to the car you may have cause during your rental period (god I sound like the fucken policy statement). With that being said, the next question from the lady was do you want GPS navigation in your car? I accepted because I always like to play with those things and I feel as others would say, like a "baller". Now my original rental car was supposed to be a Toyota Camry, but none of these cars came with GPS navigation, so instead they gave me a Mercury Grand Marquise (luxury baby!). To say the least to say, I was juiced! Brandon and I hopped into the car and we were off to downtown Seattle to take care of some year old business.
Now Seattle is Seattle and yes , it was raining. In fact, it rained all damn weekend! Which actually worked out for me because my rental was rear wheel drive and getting sideways was my main goal for the weekend. We arrived into downtown Seattle to go to a shoe shop I wanted to buy shoes at (Sneaker City). This place has great exclusive shoes and I was juiced to buy a pair. As I was looking, I found a couple pair that were hot and when I asked to get a size 10 (cough cough...I mean a size 16 for you ladies) they told me they did not have my size, so my immediate reaction was to leave and I did. Brandon and I decided to get some lunch so we ate at Johnny Rockets for some hamburgers and fries. Afterwards, we were off to the hotel so we could get our room as Brandon at this point had not slept a bit since the day before, so he was running on empty. We get to our hotel and check in and get on the elevator to go to the 2nd floor. As the elevator doors open, the friendly face of Will Cosgrove appeared and already the norcal folks were coming together. Brandon crashed in the room while Will and I went to his room to make the place as Jamaican as can be (yurple purple). Will and I decided to head over to the Skatebarn to skate. When we got there, we found Ivan Narez, Justin Hertel, Sneaky, Nikko, Vinny Minton, Joey H and Mike LaShore were already getting their skate on. I skated until 9pm and by that time my legs, back and feet were killing me. One thing I must point out, is that I consider myself a master at sess sliding and damn was I reppin for sess sliders across the globe. Back to the story, by this time Brandon had already woke up and got his sleep in. Dinner time aroused and B and I figured lets go to this place called "The Keg". Its a great steakhouse and since I went there last year, this was one of my stops I had to make on this trip or else I would have been kicking myself in the ass for not going when I got back home. Anyway's, the table was for 2 and I must say it was a bit strange walking to our table as the setting was dark and there was a fireplace next to our table. Brandon and I looked at each other and immediately knew this looked a bit tooty fruity, but fuck it, we are 2 good friends going out to enjoy a great meal, despite that we probably did look like a gay couple going out to dinner and taking pictures of our food haha. I swear though, I'm as straight as an arrow and I love girls (blondes especially). I shouldn't have had to explain myself, but I feel better now. Dinner was great and we were both stuffed. Our next goal for this trip was to go bowling and that's exactly what we did. Ivan and his posse meet up with us and we headed to Acme Bowl in lovely Renton Washington. When we got in, the guy working there said no one under 21 after midnight and by this time it was already 11:30pm. We said fuck you and have a nice day and left. 2 years ago I went bowling at another alley in Renton called Cascade Bowl, so we headed there. This place is actually amazing because its a bowling alley and casino with blackjack tables. To say the least I was juiced! We bowled a couple games and yes I killed Ivan because he is so damn weak at bowling even after buying his own ball. Before we left I had to play some blackjack and so I pulled out $100 and sat at the table. In no time I was joined by Hertel and Ivan. I hate talking about how I lose my money, so in short, I lost my $100 and we left (fuck you Cascade Bowl!).
We went back to the hotel to kick back, drink and shoot the shit. While we were at the hotel we meet up with Casey Bagozzi, Sapata Fofana-Dura, Peter D, Jeff Jackson and Vince Camarillo. We hung out late since the contest the next day didn't start until 7pm, so the funniest thing happened. It was about 3:30am and we here a knock on the door. Who do know comes in...its Vinny Minton, drunk as hell and I gotta tell you, something was different about him. The others couldn't pick it out, but I knew it right when he walked in....Vinny lost his fucken voice partying and getting hyphy at the clubs in downtown Seattle that night. For me it was funny as hell, but the first thing out of my mouth was "Vinny! you lost your voice, you gotta MC the contest tomorrow!" Now imitating Vinny's raspy ass voice through words is impossible, so for anyone that knows Vinny you know what I'm talking about. Since I was one of the judges for the contest, Vinny asked if I could switch with him and he would be a judge and I would MC. Of course I agreed but to be honest, I was a bit scared about MCing. I have only MC'd my Kindgrind Classic comps that I have in Norcal so its a bit different. So the night ends and we all pass out ready for the next day.
Morning comes around and B and I are hungry for some breakfast. B also has to make it to a Home Depot to buy some stuff to setup his flashes throughout the skatepark (he's a professional). We buy the goods from Home Depot and now its off to breakfast. We decide to go to IHOP and we enter the info into the nice little navigation system. Now I said I like to use these things, but following the directions on there is a different story. Basically, I got lost and we had to sidetrack. Now back to this good old rental car I have been driving. As I get off the freeway to turn around I am antsy and love to spin the tires out. As I am doing this, Brandon always chuckles and that's a sign that he is ready for anything. As I am getting off the freeway exit I come to a stop and try to lock up the back tires and do a brake stand (spin the back tires). These damn Grand Marquise come with traction control so the car wasn't feeling this at all and the tires would not spin out but for only 1 second and then the traction control would kick in and stop the tires from spinning anymore. I was frustrated because I never rent cars that are rear wheel drive and none the less that are as lavish as this car. So I say to B "damn I wish I could spin these tires up". Brandon says to me "There's probably a button to turn the traction control off". I say "you think?". Now I start to look around the steering wheel at all the different buttons and I find a button with a little car symbol and 2 squiggly lines following the tires. There's an 'OFF" button on it and of course I push it, only to see the "OFF" button light turn on. I say to myself, "I think I did it". I give it another try by spinning the tires up and what do you know....skkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeeeeettssssskkkiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrttttttttt!!!! the back tires continue to spin! I have turned off the traction control ladies and gentleman! This was a huge discovery for me and my trip had now started. Mean while, Brandon is laughing his ass off because I'm screaming at the top of my lungs and expressing how juiced I am to make such a discovery, we finally make it to IHOP. From this point on, every single corner and stop I make I am roasting the tires up. I make it very clear to B that we are going to do some doughnuts, so after eating we make our way to the Skatebarn to check out the AIL contest happening before the Barnburner. As we make our way into the parking lot, I get silly and start hitting doughnuts....Brandon told me the MPH gauge was at 90 while I was doing this, so that made me very proud to be a Bay Area born and raised individual.
OK, now to the contest. People start showing up and start to skate. We have heads from all over for this contest and I have to say, it was great knowing I was MCing this contest now. We had Julian Bah, Franky Morales, Brian Aragon, Rachard Johnson, Randy Juarez, Mike Johnson, Chris Haffey, Jeff Stockwell, Shane Lapoint, Victor Arias, Soichiro Kanashima, Erik Bailey and so many others in the house for this contest. I was handed the mic and I got straight to work. I made sure everyone knew who I was and was going to remember what they heard because I know for a fact I made one thing known to everyone in attendance and that's the "YADIDADADAS!!!" Now to anyone that can't even pronounce what that is, it's basically a bay area thing that expresses your excitement and pretty much shows how juiced you are. I threw this out throughout the whole contest because people were lacing tricks back to back to back! Now I can go into who did what and all that jive, but it really comes down to who won. Of course, the man himself, Brian Aragon won, showing he has got the skills to pay the bills. In second place was Chris Haffey and in third was Josh Cardinez (very cool guy by the way). There was also a best line and that was awarded to Jeff Stockwell and there was also a best trick and that was awarded to Brian Aragon for doing a disaster 540 AO Porn 360 out on the HUGE Bauer Box. At the end of the contest, my voice was shot and I was ready to go to sleep to catch my flight the next morning at 9am.
Brandon and I got back home the next day around noon. Perfect time to kick back at home and watch the basketball games for the day.
Make sure you come to the next Barnburner which should be this year actually. Should be in about 6 months.
Until then...stay Juiced, stay Sucka and stay Foos!
JSF loves you.
-El Presendente de JSF-