I awoke refreshed from a good nights sleep, after recovering from my Reading experience, phone calls were made to King and Chesson and plans hatched for the days trip to Brighton for the comp at "The Level". My Sidcup GTi had an international flavour for the day, the passengers consisted of Pete (resident Bexleyheath scumbag), Sophie (visiting Danish female) and Renton Millar (visiting Australian pro). The journey down was spent discussing the fact that all Europeans are in fact Germans and they should just admit it, and that all Euros have moustaches, mullets and clogs as well as explaining the basic theory behind being a "GEEZER" to Renton. We drove through a few showers but when we arrived in Brighton it was dry although not that sunny. The Level was buzzing with activity with lots of "faces" hitting up the newly constructed obstacles. One of the first things I saw was Alan Rushbrooke trying backside ollie to tail on the scary looking vert wall. The course had all the familiar looking obstacles including driveway, banks of various steepnesses, bars, quarter pipes, you get the picture. There was a reasonable sized crowd, a lot of whom didn't look like skaters. I didn't see all of the skating as chilling seemed to be the primary mission on the agenda for the day, but here's the things I did manage to spy. On the mini ramp:- Marky Mark Brewster - blunt kickflip in, Greg Nowik - double kickflip fakie and blunt melon in, Rusty (Chris Oliver) - backside ollie 360, Ali Boulala - Prince Charming fancy dress costume, RJ (a Level legend according to Brewster) - Sick inverts and f/s indys there was also another Brighton guy who did the raddest blunt-slide 180's in. Greg Nowik won the comp, which isn't surprising because he is one of the best mini ramp skaters I've seen. I didn't see the qualifiers for the street comp because we went to the pub for a feed. There weren't that many people in the finals but here goes: Chris Oliver - k-grind and b/s lipslide on the driveway bar, alley-oop f/s indy from quarter to quarter, Greg Nowik - tweaked mute over the jump box, RJ - Benihana over the jump box, Mark Churchill - 360 flip up the gap, f/s nosegrind on the driveway bar, Flynn Trotman - kickflip boardslide down the handrail, Ali Boulala - nollie front foot flip to fakie on the flat bank. Rusty won this one, the little ginger bastard done good. I missed the best trick comp but Ali Boulala won it by f/s flipping out of a bank over a fence, Rusty kickflip meloned it. Well done to Justin Ashby who organised the whole deal and to Ali Boulala for being Ali Boulala.
Ali Boulala, massive f/s flip in fancy dress
We gathered together a reasonable sized posse and headed for the seafront for food and drink, we found a suitable looking establishment and settled down. Pete and Renton were soon evicted because the management took a dislike to their brand of "special" cigarettes, but the rest of us tucked in heartily. As we were at the seaside we decided to make the obligatory trip along the pier. I opted out of joining all of the other monkeys for a go on the "Crazy Mouse" rollercoaster, which apparently sucked. Next up was Dodgems which was absolute fucking carnage! A special mention goes out to Parrothead who managed to drive backwards for the whole duration of the ride, resulting in me coming very close to pissing myself. Last up was "The Ranger", which is one of those swinging things that ends up doing somersaults. All our early shouting was soon silenced as the thing got going, notably Chesson who proclaimed "That's it I'm going to be sick", we all got off feeling like someone had liquidized our guts!
Monkeys at the seaside
Rusty did a K-grind while we were waiting
We headed off to another pub to meet up with Pete and his crew, Pete, Renton and Sophie had been drinking all day and Pete obviously had the fire in his belly and tried his best to get me to go out for the night, but it wasn't happening. The evening ended with Chesson and Parrothead having a vicious slapping match, then we headed home.
souvenir