April Randoms.

So this is just a collection of random stuff I've made this month that I haven't got around to posting in a blog yet.

First of all I want to say thanks to Huck and his friends who run The Stache Life. Huck wrote up a ridiculously flattering little piece about me and posted it up along with some of my photos. You can check that out here. Thanks again Huck!

I made Any Block #2 a few weeks ago. It was a small crew of Suraj Bharj, Joey Lee, and myself. We ended up in this super wealthy residential area with seemingly nothing to skate but we made a good time out of it for sure.


Volcom invited ZJ's down to the OC to shred their private park and make a little monty of it. I guess it's part of some shop team competition to see who can make the best video. As you would expect the whole team killed it, but I wasn't really shooting any photos because I was having fun skating myself and I didn't feel like setting up flashes in people's way. Anyway, I did however set up and shoot this photo of Alec Beck's back crail slide on top of the super steep quarter. I really don't understand how he got enough speed to mash up that bank and then get up to the lip on that quarter. I got to see the monty at the shop the other day, but I haven't seen it online anywhere. Someone should let me know if they find it so I can link it up.


So we tried to do another Any Block, but despite picking a pretty good block we pretty much failed. We only really skated one little part of the block and people got over it pretty fast. So we packed up early and drove across town to this gnarly handicap ramp spot outside an asbestos contaminated abandoned building where Josh got a banger. The skaters in the video are Josh Campos, Jesus Grajeda, Suraj Bharj, Jake Eames (who can't really skate cause he's still injured) and myself. I definitely recommend double clicking on the video and watching it in high quality (HQ).


Went to this Venice Beach ledge spot the other day. Justin Cefai was coming through with some proper back tails. This thing is way harder to skate than it looks.


Another Cefai back tail.


Another angle kinda showing how you have to curve pretty harshly to hit the ledge.


Just posting this one so you can see Justin's epic ninja steeze.


Alright, last back tail photo, I swear.


When you are always climbing up on top of random shit to shoot skate photos sometimes you look around and see other things as well.


I might be hard to tell, but that Max Schwartz tweaking out a front 5-0 on the ledge back there.


Another 5-0 from Max.


Cefai coming through with a crook all the way through the top. This is kinda a rip off my own photo: Campos Crooks.


Shot this as a total joke, but how real does it look? I really doubt that anyone could back noseblunt this beast, but Max sure does make it look sexy.


Went on a photo mission with Alec Beck a few days ago and he came through with this awesome gap to crail grab tail tapper.


He also tossed a 180 melon first try.


A long lens view of the crail tapper.


One more crail tapper.


And last is Any Block #3, which we did this last Saturday. This time we ended up at Pico and Exposition, right where the Fantasy Island strip club is. Justin Cefai and Colin Cook racked up most of the footage, but Corpsey, Christian Schultz and myself make an appearance as well. The audio sounds horrible a lot of the time because it was really fucking windy.

EDIT: Shit, I almost forgot to link up Christian's blog: Nevermind. Check out the photos he shot during the Any Block #3 festivities. Get pumped for the next Any Block.

One Ditch, Any Block.

So the other day we hit up this ditch spot. When first got there all that was skateable was the little hip thingy on the side, but thanks to Justin and Austin's brooms we swept the whole thing out and had a dandy time. Unfortunately a few days later Alec, Colin, Justin, and Austin all realized they got poison oaked from this spot. So be careful if you ever go there.


Justin Cefai and Austin Squire get their nollie on, back to back.


A still of Justin's nollie back heel. This bank is nothing like the one at your local skate park.


It's mind boggling trying to figure out how Alec Beck even got enough speed to get into this noseblunt, let alone hold it and pop back in with only a few inches of dirt to stall on.


At the end of the session Alec filmed this line with Ben Duffy, who was experimenting with a new butt-boarding filming technique haha. Alec actually stuck this line three times cause he didn't like his switch tre flip.


So I've started working on a fun little series of videos that I'm calling "Any Block." The idea is to randomly pick any block and then go skate there and try to film as much stuff as possible. I guess the purpose is to show that you can have fun skating anywhere and you don't really need perfect skate spots. This first one features Alec Beck, Suraj Bharj, and myself getting gnar gnar around Ocean Park and 14th in Santa Monica. Look out for Any Block #2 soon.