Friday, February 22

Weekly Grind - 02/22/02

By Sean Mulligan
EXPN.com

It's been awhile but now that the snowboarding rail sessions are dying down it's time to get back to the (Not-So) Weekly Grind.

The last two months have been busy ones and it all began with the Tampa Am. Toy Machine ripper Caswell Berry took home the goods, with plenty of Feeble and Smith grinds to go around. Coming in second was young Danny Cerezini, representing for Flip. Third and fouth went to Illenium team members Austen Seaholm and Greg Lutzka. Seaholm has been on a tear lately, winning his second Vans World Amateur Skateboarding Championship earlier this month. Lutzka was shredding everthing in his path in Tampa and doing it all with lots of speed. Look out for this kid, I saw him last year at The Sound and the Fury in Seattle and it was obvious that he was ready to break out, so this is probably just the beginning.

In Alien Workshop news, Anthony Pappalardo is now on the team full time and will have some pro decks in stores soon. To go along with those, AWS has several new graphics lines out for their riders, just in time for spring. Check them out at the Alien site.

The new Alien/Habitat training facility in Philly is finished and is being worked over by O'Connor, Wenning, Pappalardo, Getz, Pluhowski, Kalis and the rest of the Philly crew.

Brian Wenning also scored the last Transworld cover with his switch backside 180 over the fountain gap at Love Park. There is also a two-page Habitat ad with the sequence in the same issue. Now everyone has the photos to go with the rumors.

In other big news, another ASR trade show is in the books and all of the heads were in attendance. Emerica was showing the teaser to their new video, "This is Skateboarding". Most of the Emerica riders had spots, but don't expect too much till the premier.

Flow master Chris Senn is back from entertaining the crowds at the Asian X Games in Malaysia. Senn was not only destroying it in the park, but he also moved over to show off his vert skills as well. Next stop: Australia for some shooting with the team.

Speaking of style, Bob Burnquist, Rick McCrank, Eric Koston and Arto Saari all got together to film a documentary called Technical Feature on the process of designing their pro shoes for eS. In the video the riders explaing how they helped to design the shoe, all the way from the choice of materials to how the style came about. The video premiered at ASR and the interviews should be on the eS site soon.

Rick McCrank has been a busy man of late, he just won the Globe World Cup event down in Australia, edging out Kerry Getz. Rick is also working on completing his own skate shop in Vancouver, named "Anti-Social". The shop should be up and running in time for Slam City Jam in May.

In other big news, Tom Penny will be moving out to Huntington Beach, CA sometime soon and he has finished up his part for the new Flip video, which should be out in April.

Also finishing up filming is Eric Koston this time for the new Girl video which will hopefully be out in June.

Finishing off the movie/video theme, Sony Pictures Classics and Vans are putting on a big old contest for the theatrical release of "Dogtown and Z-Boys". They are giving away $14,000 worth of prizes so go to www.dogtownmovie.com and get your share.

And a final congratulations to Arto Saari on being named skater of the year by Thrasher

RESULTS

Tampa Am
1. Caswell Berry
2. Danny Cerezini
3. Austin Seaholm
4. Greg Lutzka
5. Jared Brantingham
6. Kevin "Spanky" Long
7. Ryan Sheckler
8. Danny Morin
9. Zared Basset
10. Dylan Reider

2002 Vans World Amateur Skateboarding Championships
Vert (Saturday 2/9)
1. Ruda Lopes - 24 - Costa Mesa
2. Jeff Thrush - 30 - San Diego
3. Curtis Osborne - 25 - New Zealand

Street (Sunday 2/10)
1. Austen Seaholm - 15 - Orange County
2. Zeb Low - 24 - New Zealand
3. Willy Akers - 15 - Delaware

Globe World Cup Melbourne, Australia February 15 - 17, 2002
Street
1. Rick McCrank
2. Kerry Getz
3. Carlos de Andrade
4. Ryan Sheckler
5. Chris Senn
6. Jeff Williams
7. Tim McDougall
8. Greg Lutzka
9. Eric Koston
10.Brian Anderson

Vert
1. Bucky Lasek
2. Sandro Dias
3. Pierre-Luc Gagnon
4. Rune Glifberg
5. Jurgen Horrwarth
6. Jocke Olsson
7. Neal Hendrix
8. Renton Millar
9. Bob Burnquist
10.Mike Crum