Tuesday, June 06, 2006

ATTACK OF THE 50 FT. COUCH

Sunday, June 4th kicked off the Zumiez Couch Tour in San Jose at Eastridge Mall. This is a place where skaters of all ages converge to watch their favorite skater do their thing and hopefully meet them, get a picture taken with them and get them to sign their boards, shoes, posters, or whatever. Then after the skate demo and signings there is a concert. All free of charge.

And of course all the sponsor tents selling their goods and giving away prizes through out the day. I never did make it over to the Jones Soda tent and where their bus was. I would have liked to have gotten a couple of shots of the bus. I did get a shot (film) of some kid getting ketchup and mustard all over his head though. I didn't pay much attention to which sponsors tent that was.

PARTICIPATING SKATE TEAMS
Flip - Geoff Rowley, Mark Appleyard, Rodrigo TX, Lance Mountain, Arto Saari, Eric Fletcher, Bob Burnquist, Shane Cross, David Gonzalez

Adio - Shaun White, Kenny Anderson, Ed Selego, Steve Nesser, Danny Montoya, Brian Sumner, Ernie Torres, Joey Brezinski, Nick Dompierre, Sean Eaton

Volcom - Geoff Rowley, Mark Appleyard, Dustin Dollin, Aaron Suski, Caswell Berry, Darrel Stanton, Ryan Sheckler

Element Skateboards - Bam Margera, Tosh Townend, Colt Cannon, Nyjah Huston, Jake Rupp, Mike Vallely, Brent Atchley

Vans - Dustin Dollin, Anthony Van Engelen, Christian Hosoi, Omar Hassan, Danny Wainwright, Raymond Molinar, Keegan Sauder, Angel Ramirez, Chima Fergusson

The skate team scheduled for San Jose was the Flip team. Unfortunately I missed the skate demo portion. I dropped in to visit with a friend in Fremont on my way down. But you can bet your sweet ass I would have been there for the demo if the Element team was there and watched Bam Margera and Mike Vallely do their thing. Knowing Bam, I'm sure he would have done some crazy ass shit. However, since it was the Flip team I kinda took my time getting down there. A shame though, I was hoping to get some skate shots. Oh well. I had a great time visiting with Miss Kimberly instead.

I did make it for the concert though. Mike Vallely's band Revolution Mother were the opening act with CKY closing. I ended up shooting 4 rolls of film and 100+ on my digital camera. I haven't gotten the rolls developed yet and knew that I'd take some time getting that done and figured I'd settle with whatever my digital would capture for the time being. A good majority of them came out pretty good considering. I'm not hopefully about many of the film shots to turn out too well. I did have my zoom lens with me, but I have a feeling that a good majority of those will come out blurry. I guess I'll find out once I get them bastards developed.

Revolution Mother weren't bad. CKY were great as usual. A few songs into the set Chad ended up feeding Cher Do You Believe In Love through the sound system. Then later on it was Whitney Houston I Will Always Love You. Trying to feel the love from the fans anyway they could. After they played their set Daren Miller, Jess Margera, and Mat Deis were over in the Adio tent signing autographs.

I had taken off to put all my equipment in my car and drove to a bank to get some money. I wanted to see if they were selling the Hellview City Limit Pop. 96 t-shirt that I've wanted for some time. Not even thinking about it, I went to the Adio tent to buy the shirt with out my digital camera. I could have gotten some great pictures of the guys signing my t-shirt. Dumb ass me not thinking!

While I was up front with them Jess had pulled off a big piece of skin off his hands from a blister and handed it to Daren. I thought it was pretty funny. All the guys were really cool, especially Matt. Matt... Mmmm... He looked cute up there on that stage. Lemme tell you, he looks even fucking cuter close up! Mmmm.... Yup... As I was saying before I got distracted, they are all a bunch of nice guys who definitely appreciate their fans. Just a bunch of guys that you'd hang out with at the bar and get shit faced with. Now that would be fun!

Anyway, here are the pictures that I took with the digital camera. After about 3 hours of sorting through them all and editing the ones that weren't too fucking blurry, this is what I ended up with.


Zumiez Couch Tour
Eastridge Mall, San Jose
Sunday, June 4th, 2006

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