Vans Downtown Showdown-Day 1 practice
Posted 10/11/2008 by Vans
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2223/2930287679_bef0a69c28.jpg" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br />Getting served at the Black Label bar,knox,lucero, matt moose <br /><br /><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3277/2930264963_7a00834e9d.jpg" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br />seth mcallum crailplant on the foundation star<br /><br />We arrived at Paramount Studios lot as they were just putting the finishing touches on the various obstacles. There were a few skaters hitting the stuff, but most of the heavy hitters had not arrived. We surveyed what was built, and it was pretty gnarly. The first thing we saw was the Creature feature, which just so happened to resemble a pentagram. Go figure. Imagine an upside down star where between the top two points there is a<br />small bowl corner with pool coping. Then on each side of that is two quarter pipes. On the bottom side of the star it has three steep banked sides. Just look at the pics and figure it out. <br /><br />Down the street was the Black Label bar. No, not a flat bar, a bar like in drinking that had two wedge ramps on each side with a flat bar across the drinking bar. See the photo for what was going on.<br /><br />Next up we went over to the Girl three pump dump, I think they were making some sort of play on words. Basically this was three wedge hips all spaced from each other in a line. Hit three ramps in a row, three<br />tricks, done. Better be consistent on this obstacle. Last of the four is the Foundation moon and star stairs. Pretty standard 9 stairs, but with a moon shaped hubba ledge and a star shaped manual pad sticking up mid stairs.<br /><br /><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3064/2931124296_068c47a041.jpg" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br />One footed ollie on the first pump of Girl's three pump dump<br /><br />After we made the rounds checking out the obstacles, someheavies were starting to make the way out to the course. A multitude of teams were present, girl, chocolate, foundation, element, crerature, black label,<br />mystery, zero, etc. I saw so many pros, Al partanen, bryan Anderson, Kenny Anderson, brayden safranski, omar hassan, David Gravette, marc Johnson, jake duncombe, to many to name. They are all there, and ripping, trying to get some tricks and lines so they can have a chance at the $85,000 in prize money. Dude, I cant wait to see the carnage that goes down tomorrow at the Vans Downtown Showdown, it is going to be epic!

