Annex
By Westin Porter
westinjay@gmail.com
Go Skateboarding Day made for a grip of awesome events throughout the city and its surrounding areas. To celebrate the holy-day and pay homage to the skateboarding gods I attended Annex Skate Shop’s demo held at the Bountiful Bowery.
Annex’s founder, Ezra Moss, is making a name for himself and the shop quickly through the demos and comps he puts on, and while this one was a little bit more low-key, it did not disappoint. Annex had the Bountiful Bowery in full skate park mode with four boxes of different shapes and sizes, two quarter pipes lined against the walls, a few kickers and rails, and, of course, Annex’s signature coffin boards for a coffin race held later that evening. Kids from all over Bountiful gathered to shred the shaded and smooth makeshift park, and to watch the local sponsored skaters tear it up as well. All the while Moss manned the grill cooking up heaps of hamburgers and hot dogs while the DJ played mash-ups like Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” and The Doors “Riders on the Storm.” The sound of music playing weaved with the clacking of boards against concrete, and the aroma of the grill mixed with the faint smell of chlorine from the Bountiful Bubble drifting across the park, resulting in a perfect setting for the Go Skate Day celebration.
Jordan Brown and Burke Nixon put on a clinic of technicality while the shop groms around them attempted rocket flips and backside board-slides with endless persistence. The trick of the day (besides my almost back-heel off the kicker) came when Nixon bolted a Reynolds-esque big flip off of the kicker. Annex is gearing up to open their new location soon, which will include a park of their own. Check out footage from the Bountiful demo here.
Blindside
By Dylan Chadwick
dylanchadwick@gmail.com
Next to Halloween, Turkey Day and maybe the World Series, Go Skateboarding Day ranks as my favorite national holiday. So much so, that my teenie heart nearly burst open at the sight of so many unified wood-pushers bustin' ass midst the heat this past Thursday. Skaters can be a psychotic bunch, and this crew's ragged devotion to shredding and frying on the Fairmont concrete proved extra potent and inspiring, given the sweltering clime.
The festivities, hosted by Blindside Skateshop in Sugarhouse, adopted a communal "free for all" tone with skaters of all board shapes and shoe sizes, peddling their skills on the hip, the flat bar and a few other street obstacles. Though Lizard King, clad in a straw farmers hat and a Dewey Cox tee, lurked within the crowd recesses, contest entrants were resoundingly fresh-faced, many even pre-pubescent, and so the gamut of aerial trickery ran wide and varied.
The obvious contest highlight was the "Cash Drop," conducted on the steep drop-off by the bank, a cozy ampitheater-style spectacle in which spectators lined the quarter pipe and entrants pushed down the middle. Kickflip roast beef, floater 180s and a straight, hood-level, frontside flipsy all caught my eye, but more impressive was the bumper-cars action taking place at the bottom. Fifteen or sixteen near-collisions kept entrants honest, and a few snapped decks kept things raw. In an astonishing testament to the continual progression of skateboarding youngsters, one lil' knee-high even popped off a slick boneless all the way to the bottom.
