Koston Tea Party… Whatever That Means

April 29, 2010 By Dew Tour

By Paul Zitzer Well kids, you missed your chance to beat Koston. You should have come and entered. After hours and hours of preliminary madness, one thing was certain when the final seconds ticked away: Koston will not be being crowned the 2009 World Champion. I think it may have all started when he missed practice. Whoops. It continued when he started the jam skating on the wrong side of the course. Wrong meaning they were judging based on what people were doing on the other side of the course. From there, he appeared to be, well, I guess, over it? Now, being a…trying to think of a word bigger than huge…Koston fan, along with everybody else who’s ever ridden a skateboard, I was hoping we’d be seeing more of him on the course tomorrow. But…maybe next time?

Anyway, I don’t think I mentioned that the contest is happening inside the famous TD Banknorth Garden (what a great name by the way). I think a basketball team plays here? The place was closed to the public up until just before the prelims started, when they finally opened the floodgates, the spectators, (maybe I should say Shecklertators) poured in, consisting of no less than 82% of girls between the ages of 15 and 15 and a quarter.

I decided the most effective way to blog my way through 6000 minutes of jams is to pass along the top ten things that I saw that made more of an impression than the infinite millions of things that didn’t. Is this even making any sense?

1. The fleet of foot Dennis Busenitz torpedoing his way around the course in order to get as quickly as possible to the next obstacle where he would do something awesomely great.

2. The appearance of Tony Hawk (heard of him?) to which the crowd reacted as if Michael Jackson had returned from the dead and come to the Skate Open to see Chaz Ortiz…or something. The funny thing about the whole Birdman scenario is that the same enthralled group didn’t bother following him over to the vert ramp where it’s rumored he tore it up (I didn’t follow him either).

3. Peter Ramondetta, who I can’t recall having seen before in the flesh, looking way skinnier and less intimidating than he does in magazines, especially sans beard, but skating bigger and deffer than ever with the properest (that is a word) back tail on the Hubba of the day, and an equally as proper backside flip down what Duncan is calling the ‘double set’ but which is in reality a big two.

4. Tyler White Chocolate Hendley’s backside flip over the basketball hoop. Which he somehow managed to do in slow motion (and in high definition!). Did I mention there’s a basketball hoop on the course? No? Well there is…I don’t think it’s regulation height though.

5. Robert Lopez Mont coming all the way from Puerto Rico, and dressed like some sort of high fashion lumberjack, steam rollering his way all over the course, worrying the course technicians that they’d have to stay up all night replacing damaged areas of their precious baby. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a course technician. How do you get that job?

6. The fact that David Gonzalez is skating on the Dew Tour. Oh, and his ollie impossible frontside fifty down the Hubba.

7. Chris Cole, who you already know CAN do every trick, actually doing every trick, including a willy grind and and an OVER willy grind. You know you’re starting to get good when you include joke tricks in your run and still end up in first.

8. The backboard back tail by semi-local (he’s not technically from Boston) Nick Dompierre. Boo. Yeah.

9. Dave Bachinsky getting the crowd genuinely stoked after a zillion hours of skating due to the exceptionally high caliber of his shred. Which included tricks like a perfect hardflip to nosebash on the quarterpipe. I think he should name that the runny nose.

10. Koston placing 43rd out of 43 skaters.

That’s it for today. Semis and Finals are tomorrow. Below are some photo highlights from Chris Ortiz.

Ryan Decenzo bluntslides down hubba