Posted on Jul 3, 2008
The éS Game of SKATE has never been held in Grand Rapids, or Michigan for that matter, and we weren’t sure what to expect. There was a Josh Kalis sighting as we were setting up, and we were very pleasantly surprised at the high level of ripping happening. There were probably 15 dudes skating who might’ve won any other éS Game of SKATE. The finals were amazing, with Chris McHugh, who was a feeder winner from the Slavic Village Games, Ohio, Nick Vandersloot, Ryan Skiver, and Joe Seimanowski. The éS crew had eyed Nick as a potential winner from round one, and he came out the winner with awesome, clean style with proper pop and good trick selection. Thanks to everyone at Modern for playing host to the Game of SKATE, we look forward to seeing more skate scenes generating this level of skateboarding all over the country.
Posted on Jul 3, 2008
Kenny Guinn Park. Thursday June 5th. A super hot day in Vegas? Surprise, surprise… Pharmacy Boardshop helped us set up a cool barbeque, there were 160 skaters in the contest, and the level of skateboarding was pretty high. There were all sorts of crazy Vegas things happening… one kid had gotten shot the night before while he was hanging on the block, and still made it out to the éS Game of SKATE. Another kid, Danny Artphagg or something like that, lied and said he’d made it past the first round. When asked about it later, he said “I’m a kid, of course I lied! I’m just trying to go far…” and his weak-ass gutter punk pals tried to start something that of course fizzled. The semi-finals and finals were super good: Eddie Perez, Matt Zicopula, Addie Fridy, and Chris Lingat all ripped, but in the end it was Matt Ortego who took the top spot with a switch front bigspin as the last trick. See you in Costa Mesa, Matt!
Posted on Jul 2, 2008
The éS Game of SKATE in New Jersey was held in the shuffleboard courts at the Sayreville Skatepark, in conjunction with NJ Skateshop. This was the first really hot and sticky weather of the tour, but that didn’t stop 144 skaters from coming out to spin and flip their boards and try to earn the trip to Cali. Ken Fernando was the crowd favorite early on, and made it to the finals; Chris Steinert skated fast and smooth; Brian Peacock looked good early but eventually lost before the finals; Michael and Timothy Lever were shove-it champs who met in the quarter-finals and Michael ended up in second place. Other noteables were Dylan Wisniewski, Danny Giblin and Noah Smith ripped; Joe Roxbury was an early favorite but played the eventual winner in his fourth round match-up and lost—that’s one of the deals with the Game of SKATE: the matchups are random and you can never tell who will play who. In the end the winner was Niko Clayton from Long Island, who will be making the trip to Cali in July!
Posted on Jul 2, 2008
After last year’s rainout, it was good to see mostly clear skies in Frederick, Maryland for the Father’s Day éS Game of SKATE. It was also good to see lots of familiar faces—old friends like Tim Reardon from PitCrew, Matt Willigan, Austin Requa, Allan Beers, and Matt and Cody Ray. This is always one of our favorite stops on tour—the PitCrew guys know what’s up, they come out and get involved, and the skateboarding is always good. Dante Benjamin, Nick DuClos, Matt Ray, Antonio Massey, Nick Hertges, Taylor Pieburn, Spencer Brown, and the Abdeldayem brothers all ripped, and one of the best games all day was Ehab Abdeldayem versus Freddy Obrecht in the quarterfinals, which went about 20 minutes! Another early ripping game was Spencer Brown, Chris Mentlik, and Allan Beers, which was a bummer matchup—all three were potential winners. In the end it was Freddy Obrecht who will be repping Baltimore in the OC in July! For having “barely skated” over the last few months, Freddy was killing it. Definitely a potential world champ!
Posted on Jul 1, 2008
Posted on Jul 1, 2008
On Sunday, June 22, 2008, over 50 skaters battled it out to name one champ in the éS Game of SKATE 2008 Toronto Eliminations! The competition took place at Scadding Court Skatepark, which is run by the City of Toronto. éS Footwear collaborated with the city to make this amazing event take place.
Posted on Jul 1, 2008
Posted on Jul 1, 2008
Winner: Yuta Nakasaka from Shizuoka Japan.
Posted on Jun 30, 2008
Stalin Plaza was the location.
