Two months ago, my friend Shonn packed Ryan Hamburg, Clint Beswick and I into his little hatchback and brought us to a backyard pool in Anaheim, CA. The pool was supposedly at an old hippie commune, where all you had to do to skate was knock on their door and ask for permission. When we showed up, we were greeted by a guy named Roy who introduced himself and lead us back to the pool. After skating for an hour, some of the other people living at the Commune started popping up on the pool deck saying how they’d love to invite more people to come skate and to maybe throw an event one day.
When I went back to the pool a month and a half later, they informed me the property owners had finally decided to sell. They told me they only had three weeks left before they were kicked out and the pool was to be demolished. Roy said it would be cool if we threw a celebratory skate session with bands as a sort of last hurrah to the fifty plus years of living as a “Hippy Commune.” I hit up my friends in the LA band Mountain Tamer and before I even left the pool that day I had a date set and a band booked. I found some sponsors in Happy Hour Shades and Pizzanista, made a flyer and it was on.
