jackassworld

We’ve started documenting Jake Brown’s return to the mega ramp. He got pretty banged up from that fall and took some time off from skating, but he’s back on board now. We got an intro done, we’ve filmed a few interviews, got a little “training” (read “partying”) footage, etc., it’s coming along nicely and it’s the sort of thing you can expect to see on www.bigbrotherskateboarding.com when we launch it in the next month (we hope). One of the things we’ve been looking forward to shooting, though, is Jake’s first time on the mega ramp since the fall in last year’s XGames. That first session went down last week (Thursday, April 24). There’s an interesting story, however, that precedes the event.

Jake decided he was ready to skate Bob’s mega ramp, but for some reason I became the person in charge of setting the whole thing up. I think it’s because I’m slightly less retarded than Jake, Weiss and Dimitry? None of them would call Bob and set it up. Fine. I’ll do it. So I get Bob’s number and as I’m dialing it, I think, “Oh shit.” After last year’s mega ramp contest, I wrote a rather nasty little review of the contest on my Whale Cock blog and didn’t paint a very nice picture of my friend Bob.

“Hello?” said a voice on the other end.

“Hey Bob!” I said all cheery. Maybe he never read it? “What’s up!? It’s Dave Carnie!”

“Oh,” he groaned after hearing my voice. “Hi.”

No, he read it. I could hear it in his voice. And so for the rest of the short conversation I awkwardly stumbled about trying to get permission to go out to his mega ramp and film Jake. He basically told me to have Jake call him and they’d work it out. Yeah, totally not uncomfortable at all.

Later that night, I got an email from Bob. “Dave, I spoke to Jake earlier,” he wrote. “You guys can go out there… though I have to mention something to you man… I read an article you wrote on the XGames Mega and I really was upset. You could’ve at least called me to find out how I felt. I felt that whole thing as much as everyone else and if not worse, because I had to go next. I’ve really enjoyed Jake’s skating for a long time and he’s been one of my favorites. He was amazing that day and basically walked on water. The Gold medal or any medal was and is pointless. Anyways, I had to get that out, because it felt a little awkward speaking to you today and I don’t like to be in bad terms with anyone. I rather get it out, so there it is. Your welcome at my house and enjoy yourself watching Jake get back on it.”

One of the things I love about Bob is that he’s an adult and he handles his shit in a mature manner. Something that’s fairly rare in the world of skateboarding.

So I wrote him back and apologized and tried to explain the circumstances around what I wrote. Which, in hindsight, was very irresponsible of me. The article [which you can read here] was written right after the contest and was posted on my Whale Cock blog . The problem with it is that I wrote it for my blog, which at the time, I kind of considered to be a forum somewhere below the level of a magazine. “Hey, it’s just my fuckin’ blog, I can say whatever the fuck I want!” It was only after the article “blew up” that I realized my blog is on a computer and everyone in the fucking world has a computer. The article flew around the skateboard industry and people I hadn’t spoken to in years were writing me, “Fuck yeah, Carnie! Right on!” Shit.

I realized my mistake immediately and followed the article with another post that read, “I would also like to say that I have nothing against Bob. There’s a lot of Bob hating going on here, and I don’t want to condone that. I think Bob could have performed a little differently, I think he would have looked a lot better if he had stepped away, but he’s still a friend and an amazing skater.” Obviously, Bob, and apparently no one else, read this disclaimer.

In the end, I stand by what I originally wrote, but if I had known it was going to go around the world like it did, I probably would have written it from a little more balanced perspective and not harshed on Bob so hard. And I should have called him and gotten his take on it. Bad Dave, and I said I’m sorry for that.

That said, it’s still an interesting subject for discussion: the mega ramp, the mega ramp contest, and judging not only the mega ramp, but judging any skateboard contest. It’s something I’d like to revisit in the coming weeks as we continue to track Jake’s return.

So with that all squared away, Dimitry and I make plans to drive down to Bob’s ramp in San Diego, but then even that got weird. The night before Dimitry ran into Chris Casey (of Captain and Casey fame) and Heath Kirchart at the Burgundy Room.

“They want to go,” he said. Okay.

Such a weird crew in a car driving down to San Diego to skate the mega ramp: me, Casey, Dimitry and Heath Kirchart. I like weird.

We had to pick up Heath on Melrose. “Is that him?” I asked pointing at the weird guy on the corner. He was wearing all white and on his head was an enormous floppy sun hat.

“So you going to light off any fireworks back there, fireworks guy?” I asked after he got in and crammed himself in the back seat with Casey.

“I don’t do that anymore,” he replied. “I’m older now.”

The drive down was uneventful, but we did learn a few things about Heath. He’s wearing all white, all the time, apparently, because he’s filming an all white video part. (?) Second, Heath invented the mega ramp when he was very young. We did not know this. And it’s been his life long dream to skate it.

“So are you going to try it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Most of the drive was spent calling everyone from Atiba to Ty Evans, to find out how to get to Bob’s house because I had neglected to get directions. Eventually it was Dave Swift who came through with directions that were the least sketchy. He told us to go like we were going to Trans World. Which is where our first pit stop was. Dimitry had to pee. In TWS.

“Maybe they know where a bar is?” he said wandering into the TWS lobby. He emerged a few minutes later with a stack of magazines in his hands. “There’s a bar right down there at the end of the street,” he said excitedly. I was excited too. We had gotten word that Jake still hadn’t woken up and Dimitry and I were hungover. We needed to waste time and have some drinks. Heath refrained because he was still thinking he was going to skate. He had a hamburger with cheese. We learned that Heath hates vegetables.

Alcohol maintenance complete, we found our way to Bob’s house where the crew in attendance for the session got even weirder. I mean, we’re all skaters, but it was still an odd group: Besides myself, Heath, Casey and Dimitry, there was Weiss and Jake, then Pierre Luc showed up, followed by Pat Duffy, big gay Shelton and Dave Swift. Nobody but PLG and Jake had ridden the ramp. Oh and Duffy, but we don’t like to talk about the one time he rode it.

The session began on the landing ramp. You roll down the landing ramp and hit the giant quarter pipe. Heath, being the least cautious of all of us, took to rolling in from the top right off the bat. I worked my up and eventually gathered the courage to roll down the giant landing ramp and up the quarter pipe. It doesn’t look that high, but you get going pretty fast. Enough speed to hit coping. My eyes teared up. I wasn’t riding a mega board with 215s, just my board, so I got a little wobble. But I made it to the ¼ pipe and I went up, up, up, and did the biggest kickturn in my life. It felt like I was at coping, but in reality I think I was probably about six feet from the top. Nevertheless, I was very pleased with myself.

Meanwhile Heath had padded up and was at the top of the hill, contemplating rolling in and doing the gap. “Is he really going to go for it?” To everyone’s surprise, he dropped in. No sooner had he hit full speed, he jumped off his board and went to his knees. Dyrdek had done the same thing when he tried. Heath gave it a few more tries, but he never committed. He later said that he needed to be in a different “place” to try it again. “Like maybe if I hated myself,” he said.

With the opening act completed, the monkeys retired to the hillside to watch the big guns go at it. Jake said he wasn’t nervous, and judging by the b/s 360 he hucked over the gap on his first attempt in nearly a year, he looked like he hadn’t stopped skating at all. He made the b/s 360 on his third try, but as he sped down the landing ramp and headed for the quarter, we were all wondering the same thing: repeat?

He rode up the transition comfortably and clacked out a big b/s air. For a second I thought he had done the same thing and shot out over the flat bottom. But everything was fine, he kicked his board away, bailed, and landed on his knees high in the transition and gently slid back to earth.

“I wasn’t nervous when I got here,” he said later, “but as I was heading across the flat bottom and looking at the transition, I was like, ‘Oh shit.’”

PLG had just returned from China and was complaining of stomach cramps. Without a partner, Jake only skated for a little while longer. Nothing much happened on the quarter, but he did make an impressive 360 b/s ollie across the gap.

We retired to Matt Hensley’s bar, aptly named “Hensley’s,” for drinks and to celebrate Jake’s return to the mega ramp. He’s back on the horse.

It quickly became apparent that the assembled crew of dirtbags were going to be heading down a very dark and debaucherous path that evening. I had stuff to do, and chose to make a quick exit and drive back to LA. Dimitry looked like he was enjoying himself, though.

“Maybe you should stay?” I suggested, “and film Jake tonight?” I could see it in Dimitry’s eyes. Part of him wanted to stay and party, but another part of him knew what that meant. He hemmed and hawed, but eventually chose to stay.

I called him the next morning.

“I hate you,” he said when he answered the phone.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Where the fuck do you think I am?” he said. “I’m sleeping on the floor at the DC ramp.”

“Sounds like you had a good time.”