My good homie
Jason Park finally got the chance to come through from Hawai'i and visit California thanks to the people over at
Element Skateboards.
Jason took first at
Element's "Make it Count" contest in Hawaii so they flew him out here to come and shred. He was hyped! He also inspired his lady
Paula Kim to come through and check out the greater Los Angeles with us. Big thanks to
Paula for all the photo coverage...
The first couple of days they took it easy and played tourists.
The shredding then began and we went to work.
Jason was super excited to skate this spot so I took him here for breakfast one morning and he killed it! I'd say this is one of those spots that's way gnarlier in real life. Even so,
Jason managed to avoid some serious slams and came through with numerous tricks into the
deadly Queen Mary bank.
Here's a light leak from this fun bump to street nearby. We we're pumped on it and got lots of tricks in. There was some random teacher here who claimed, "I never see skaters jump it, flip it, and land it. I don't think I ever will."
Jason proved him wrong.
Scoped the footy.
Then we got a sit down by Signal Hill's finest. I was pretty bummed because we had to listen to another dead end cop rant about how wrong skateboarding is and how we know it's not allowed. Luckily in the end we didn't get tickets.
The next day we missioned up the 605 towards Walnut and met up with
Eric Guerra and his homies. We checked out this school with a gap to manual pad.
Mikey then confessed his love for
Eric.
Feeling bored and unmotivated to film a manual trick,
Mikey picked me up and started spinning me for what felt like days.
We were so dizzy we both just collapsed. It felt like the
Gravitron.
Later in the day
Jason and
Paula insisted on tacos so we went to this legit taqueria spot in Downey.
No complaints. Ended our day on a good note thanks to the legit tacos from El Atacor.
For
Jason's last day in California we met up with renowned staff photographer
Scott Pommier in Venice.
Jason won some other skateboarding contest and earned himself a sequence in an upcoming issue of
The Skateboard Mag. Be on the lookout for it!
Here
Jason can be seen warming up for his big moment.
Scott Pommier doing what he does best.
After all was said and done
Jason and
Paula packed up their things in preparation for home. Even though it was six in the morning I somehow managed to sum up enough energy to drive them to the airport and bid them a proper farewell. Hope to see you guys in California again soon!
It doesn't stop there... That very same day I got my homie's back and flew to Hawai'i with my girlfriend! Shout out to my lady
Molida Tor for capturing most of our excursion through the island...
The first couple of days we took it easy as well and played tourists in Hawai'i. We went for a quick swim here at Sunset Beach on the North Shore of Oahu.
Here's a nice view of Waikiki from the classic Cannon Club skate spot.
Downtown Waikiki... Footsteps from where we stayed.
In between all the touristy wildness and skateboarding hi jinx I managed to apply myself into filming yet another wedding. For those of you who don't already know, I actually do wedding videos on the side but don't plan on doing anymore, anytime soon... Hopefully... :-/
As you can see,
Molida and I were stoked on meeting all of
Jason's homies.
The good times went on for the next couple days and we managed to pull together a few clips...
Yet as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Here I am at the airport waiting to take the dive back into reality. Overall we had an awesome trip and met some really good people. Everyone will be super psyched on what
Jason brings to the table for "
Ground Control."
We started our mission out by lurking on this untouched ledge. It was made with some really high grade concrete so all it needed was a little bit of wax before it was grinding like no other.
