MEANWHILE............BACK AT THE PARK 3

If there is a God, I assume he likes skateboarding, after a week of shit weather I got up on Saturday to face a scorcher of a day, result! By the time I'd gone to Third Planet, picked the gear up and got to the park the place was already busy. Yoshi was busy putting the finishing touches to his dog on wheels chasing cat on wheels mural and loads of people were skating.

After a lot of fucking about and waiting for the sound system to arrive, the under sixteen comp got under way. Local boy Phil emerged winner in the end (he was later dunked headfirst into a bin of water for his troubles), but the general standard was pretty high. Special respect to the three girls who entered. Surprise of the comp was Aubrey (real name not known), last time I saw him he was an annying little cunt on rollerblades. However he has been given a makeover by Camo Pete and the others and was turned into the king of hesh for the day. He skated in an Iron Maiden denim Jacket, mesh cap and mirrored cop shades, I nearly fell off my judges seat laughing, he's only been skating a week or two, but made some carves round the bowl and stuff, basically we agreed to put him in the final because we wanted to see him skate some more. Later all the kids complained to me about our biased judging!

Brewstah was soon predictably wasted and with a little persuasion he engouraged all the girls present to get jiggy. The winners of the jiggy chicks comp are pictured left, their prize was to get their picture taken next to me and a can of Miller each (which we were giving away free anyway but don't tell them that). Today was also the day the new Sidcup massive t-shirt was unveiled, "listen to Chas 'n' Dave" sold like fucking hot cakes, thanks to Brewstah for the advertising on the microphone. After a quick break to grab some food off the barby it was time for the big boys comp.

There was a lot more entries this year, but fortunately there was a clear winner and it wasn't too hard too judge. Tom Crowe went fucking crackers, I'd always assumed it would be a Dave Robinson, Jon Robinson, Emilio Arnanz combo in the top 3, but after Toms first run there was no doubt he was going for gold. Fuck me, he came out the gate with all guns blazing, it was so rad, especially considering he'd narrowly missed puking on my feet about half an hour earlier! Emilio, Jon and Dave all suffered from too many bails in there runs whereas Tom never put a foot wrong. His run included airwalk to fakie, tuck knee indy over the hip, ollie blunt on the extension, and as a grand finale he tried his party trick of ollieing out the bottom bowl over the steps. I don't think for one moment he expected to make it, he was probably glad to get away without ending up in hospital, the crowd went mental. If you go there take a look at the gap and you'll see what i mean when i say big.

Honourable mentions: Munson - miller flips and inverts on the extension as well as his favourite alley oop 270 over the hip, Dring - perfect b/s ollie to noseblunt, Essex Jamie - Melons over every hip, high and fast, broke a board in his run, Emilio - alley oop f/s nosegrind over the small hip, 540 the big hip after the comp, Manimal - high melon fakie over the small hip, alley oop f/s nollie over the same hip f/s 5-0 revert to backwards carve round the top bowl, Dave R - stylin as ever, casual as fuck alley oop b/s nollie over the small hip .

There was supposed to be a best trick comp but it never happened due to general pissedness of everyone involved. Then it was over, people dissipated, many headed off to the CIDE party, i helped pack up and joined the others in the beer garden of the Union for a relaxing evening.

Same time next year then.

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