Omar Salazar #7.

Unsafe playground techniques.

Omar's wild slide hippie jump was in Mind Field, the Alien Workshop video from 2009. It's hard to tell in the sequence, but he's landing on the bottom of small bank or maybe even a quarterpipe. Omar rode for Foundation and Rasa Libre before Alien. Once the Workshop closed up, he expanded his Doomsayers project to include boards. Nike dug him enough to give him a pro model shoe. I like the freewheeling and reckless excitement of how Omar skates.

There has been rain over the week so I haven't been able to skateboard much. I set up a new board the other night. The old one was beat. I'm hoping the weather is better and I have a little more time to roll for the long weekend.

Vert Is Dead is taking a summer break.

I'm unsure when I'll fire this thing up again. It will probably be on Monday, September 8th. I don't have any ideas for scanning at the moment either. I was thinking maybe some Axion stuff. That's only speculation at this point. Have a good holiday weekend.

Slap - August 2008 Volume 17 Number 8

Guy Mariano #8.

Stoop trick.

I thought this trick was in Fully Flared, but it wasn't. It sure looks like something that would be in that video. I always forget Guy also skates a bunch of handrails in his part. As the years pass, Fully Flared starts to seem a tad less polarizing and more a document of a particular era of skateboarding, for better or worse. I don't see Nike's Nothing But The Truth aging in the same manner.

I used to be a fan of the Spitfire thins, maybe only because they looked cool. They reminded me of the small wheels of the low 1990s, but were larger so they were more functional than those silly bearing covers.

Slap - July 2008 Volume 17 Number 7

Massimo Cavedoni #2.

Inside track.

The former Real and Vans am takes a backside lipslide the distance on the inner side of a bench. He's venturing into some Torey Pudwill territory on this one, perhaps even before Torey was doing similar stunts. I'm not sure what happened to Massimo. He was really good at well crafted technical street skateboarding.

Slap - May 2008 Volume 17 Number 5

John Cardiel #20.

Cards slashes a frontside grind in a bowl. We are right about at the 30 year anniversary of Anti-Hero. The public debut of the company came in an ad in the September 1995 issue of Thrasher. The original team was John, Bob Burnquist, Julien Stranger, Sean Young, and Eric Jalovaara. A photo of Mick-e Reyes was also included in the advertisement. All hail.

Slap - April 2008 Volume 17 Number 4

Grant Taylor & James Hardy.

Classy Southern gentlemen.

A young Grant Taylor and the late James Hardy wreck some stair spots for Spitfire. They made a good call by sponsoring both of these guys. Since everybody is stoked on Johnny Wilson's new Spitfire video featuring his brother Andrew, Cyrus Bennett, Karim Callender, Antonio Durao, and Max Palmer, I thought a week of their older ads with none of those dudes in the video made sense.

Slap - February 2008 Volume 17 Number 2

Clint Peterson.

Mad ill switch crooks in the nite-nite.

Clint is part of the Minneapolis skate scene that produced Steve Nesser, Emeric Pratt, Seth McCalum, Todd Bratud, and a bunch of others. At a tradeshow in 2001, a possibly drunk Jake Phelps suggested to Consolidated that Clint should be pro. They honored Jake's request. Clint departed for Stereo in 2003 when Jason Lee and Chris Pastras restarted the company. He and Benny Fairfax were the first two new riders on the team. Clint had the connection to Chris from riding for Osiris. He is into woodworking and making art.

There has been occasional rain all week so skateboarding has been spotty. I did roll at the park for a little bit last night. One of teens who has been skating there often rigged up an old SONY video camera so it outputs to digital instead of a tape. I'm curious to see how it works. I'm not sure what I'll be posting next week. Have a good weekend.

For the info: Skateboarder - May 2006 Volume 15 Number 9

Transworld - August 2011 Volume 29 Number 8

Alex Schmidt.

Alex is from Leucadia, Califronia. He was on Toy Machine flow before landing on Stereo. As of 2007, his favorite food was sushi and the first video he saw was either Transworld's Uno or Etnies' High Five. He is presently pro for WKND. His other sponsors include Butter Goods and Pepper Griptape. Alex has appeared in videos for Josh Stewart and the Threads Collective.

That new Spitfire video with Karim Callender, Antonio Durio, Max Palmer, Cyrus Bennett, and more was really fun.

The photo is by Ryan Lusteg.

For the info: Skateboarder - April 2007 Volume 16 Number 8

Transworld - October 2011 Volume 29 Number 10