Braydon Szafranski #2.

Braydon takes a tailslide to 270 out down a low handrail. I think this rail was in Australia and was a popular destination of touring teams. It showed up in ads for Toy Machine and Chocolate.

The new City of Jamestown skatepark has a formal opening on Saturday, October 1st from noon to 2:00 PM. I have no clue where they built this thing, but it looks pretty good. Check it out if you happen to be in the area and know where the park is.

Skateboarder - January 2008 Volume 17 Number 5

Marquis Preston.

Big White Cloud.

Marquis is from Palmdale, California. His sponsors included Foundation and Emerica. He was super into playing Call of Duty back in the day and was ranked in the top 200 for that video game. Marquis had a full part in Stay Gold.

Skateboarder - November 2007 Volume 17 Number 3

Leo Romero #10.

Leo started taking tricks up obstacles in the later half of the 00s. This ultimately led to a cover of Skateboarder where he was 50-50 grinding up a handrail. He's still hitting obstacles at high speed and the wrong way. Some people are just wired different.

I think Leo would have been on Baker in 2007. He turned pro for Foundation, switched to Baker for a couple years, and then joined up with the squad at Toy Machine. He's still on Toy Machine. It's neat how he's ridden for Emerica for over twenty years, too.

Skateboarder - October 2007 Volume 17 Number 2

Kevin "Spanky" Long #9.

Kevin spins one of his signature tricks off the edge of the brick banks at L.A. High. It's always fascinating how skaters develop an attachment to spots that maybe aren't the greatest or easiest things to skate and then put in the effort to land some amazing tricks at them.

Skateboarder - October 2006 Volume 16 Number 2

Bryan Herman #6.

I think the story behind this spot is that the owner of Pharmacy Skateboard Shop built a hubba at his house so he could have the chaos happen in his own backyard. I believe it was even featured in an article in the Skateboard Mag. If by some coincidence this isn't that hubba, it's a good fill in for the actual spot and captures the spirit of the story.

Skateboarder - April 2006 Volume 15 Number 8

Unexpected Break.

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, September 26th. A couple unexpected health things came up over this last weekend which resulted in me having to take a break. I'm sure you can probably ballpark the cause of the problems. Everybody is OK and doing well. Keep wearing those masks and stay up to date on the ol' booster shots because this crap is a long way from over.

Kyle Leeper #3.

His dad used to take him to Laker games at The Forum during the heyday of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, A.C. Green, James Worthy, Magic Johnson, and Pat Riley.

The photograph is by Matt Mecaro.

For the info: Transworld - May 2005 Volume 23 Number 5

Skateboarder - June 2007 Volume 16 Number 10