As far as summer road trips go, the cross-country trek is a classic for skaters and randoms alike. But in reality, if your final destination is the greatest city in the world, New York City, why bother wasting precious time driving through the shitty states like Kansas or Oklahoma? Our hospitable homies on the East Coast, who come to visit us in Phoenix during the winter, invited us to come stay with them. Chip, Adrian, and myself finally saved up enough greenbacks to fly directly to Newark to kick off a 9 day adventure tour of New Jersey, Philadelphia, and the Big Apple to start our summer.
John Gardner, Tran Man Extraordinaire, was waiting at Newark to swoop us back to his stomping grounds of Whitehouse Station, NJ, but not before a quick stop at a mini ramp/bonfire in the woods courtesy of the Spooner brothers. Their rural setup was wicked fun and the beers, bowls, and bros welcome was well received. New Jersey would prove to be a Build-Your-Own Ramp haven over the next few days, with multiple sessions at the Gesko’s backyard setup, a prep school with a skatepark in the basement (thanks Nob) and Ann Van skatepark, which was renovated by the locals. After some drizzly days of street and park skating, and a kicking college graduation party for our man Paul Overstrom, we made the drive to Philly for three reasons every skater should know: Love, Park, FDR, and OG 3 Block.
We sparked the day in Philly with some warm up runs at 9th and Poplar and worked our way to “the blob,” a Sloan Palder creation. We headed to FDR to meet up with Andrew and Mitchell Wilson returning from Florida, and they killed it fresh off the plane. After some grinding there, we returned to the crib, and prepared for a night of souling through Philadelphia. The rush of pushing through the streets is incomparable to anywhere back home, and we rolled about 10 deep up to Love after dark. We got a good hour long session before two boards were broken and so was our spirit for the night. We skated back to Paul’s to watch skate videos while Chip duct-taped Mickey’s 40s to his hands.
We made the drive into Brooklyn the next day, and went straight to Johnny, Colin, Paul, Dylan, and Andrew’s place. The Wilson’s and everyone showed us a great time right away, taking us to the colors manual pads in the projects, a proper city welcome. The next 4(?) days were a blur consisting of $11 packs of Newports, $1.50 Coors Banquet tall cans, weed delivery, spliffs, pushing around Brooklyn, BBQs, Kennedy Pizza at 2 a.m, and skating some of the best, worst, and most known spots and parks that Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Queens had to offer. There was a good session everyday and multiple nights, since a lot of the homies were in town for Johnny’s Vid to premiere. The premiere party/art show was more fun than a barrel of monkeys, with photos by Joe Scordo, Phil Jackson and others I think, and the video was overboard stoke! Everyone killed it in there, and the music was choice, and then some bands played after. We managed to get two more Manhattan night sessions with the notorious Kevin Winters, before we had to call it a trip and get back to real life. John was nice enough to take us back to Newark for our flight home before he headed to Woodward for the summer.
When asked what his favorite thing about the East was, Adrian automatically says, “Bodegas!” While Chip had to say that his was, “Buying beer with Haar.” My personal favorite thing is a tie between the actual streets, and the slices of pizza, both so New York. Even with slight spots of rain, food poisoning, broken boards, overcrowded cars, and seeing that bum pissing at the street in broad daylight, the trip went as perfect as possible and it was all thanks to everyone that we skated with, stayed with, and drank with, smoked with, and made friends with. You all know who is what and who what. Thanks to Skate Jawn, Tran John, and everyone out East for helping us make this happen. AZ Connect, we out yo.
