i think the best place to begin this story is at the start. we left calgary at about 9 o'clock in the evening in dave's car. the car was filled by dave craig and myself, as well as a large amount of craig's junk to sell at his booth at slam city jam. dave was going along as driver, security for the booth and to generally just help out. craig was the mastermind behind he excursion, craig was in charge of everthing important, being as that he runs pride skateboards as well as wax magazine now. me, i was just along to take photos. we drove eleven hours straight thanks to dave's medication, we almost hit an elk square on within the first hour of driving. it's a damn good thing dave is a highway driving machine.

we reached ladner (a suburb of vancouver) at 7:30a.m. if i remember correctly, we immedeately fell asleep until about one that afternoon. the next few days involved going to skateshops, meeting skateboarders and skateshop staff and putting together the pride booth for slam city. slam city is amazing, not exclusively because of the skateboarding, but the whole spectacle that is slam city. the cool people, the dumbass people, the brutality of security, the size of the event, all the planning, the things to see the people to meet, everything.

the first thing that i shot when we arrived was gerry loughran, one of prides' skaters at the ladner park. myself, i only got to skate twice while we were in vancouver both times in ladner and both times well after 12:00 midnight. most of these shots i actually like.

the second thing i shot was the bar-b-que at richmond put on by vans. some of the pros attended but not many. this is where i first ran into who i think turned out to be one of the most impressive skaters i've seen in a while. josh faulk, who rides for anti-hero skateboards. josh was doing kick-flips, 180 kick-flips as well as some solid grabs over the pyramid in the centre of the park. big deal, right. you try doing a clean 180 kick-flip while five to seven feet above the top of a pyramid. josh rode in slam city as well but didn't throw down anything near as impressive.

third thing i shot was slam city itself, starting with the first day of qualifiers and continuing through all three days of the contest. we also showed up for the am contest to see gerry skate but the left after the second heat or so, i didn't shoot anything. highlights of slam city, although there was a lot of cool things going on, boiled down to three things:

     1. the fight between slam city security, mike vallely and lance mountain of all people. the fight (i use the term loosely) broke out after arto sari busted his head open. mike vallely seing arto go down went over to help him out and make sure he was alright. aparently security decided this wasn't a good scene and puled mike away from arto by the neck. at this point lance mountain stepped in to help out mike, security then promptly put lance in what looked to be a head-lock. at this point everyone else on the floor stepped in to help out mike and lance. i watched/shot the whole deal from atop the pyramid in the centre of the course.

     2. the girl who i photographed exsposing herself for a free t-shirt at the booth.

     3. mike vallely's spoken word performance on the second day. his poetry is rather on the questionable side of good, but you can't fault the guy for being honest especially when his anecdotes were so damn cool.

there were quite a few other notable cool things that i experienced on the trip but those were what i consider the best. other notable events include:

having steve caballero shake my hand, seeing a drag queen stop traffic, cutting open my palm with a piece of glass, being searched by canadian customs coming back from seattle, the burger i had on my birthday, getting directions from nardwar and having him mention slayer while doing so, and using the phrase "slam city jam stinks like dave"*.

we also went to seattle before returning home. seattle was built to cover up a sewer system.

d.

*dave had to sleep on the floor for two nights with gerry's roomate's dog that had been sprayed by a skunk.