Phoenix SkaterCon is the brainchild of Adam Richards. Adam is not, by any means, an atypical skater. He’s a blue-collar working man, a husband, a collector, a bowl rider, a ditch skater, a fan – pretty much your average Joe, through and through. The only things that make him extraordinary are that he happens to be the ringleader of Phoenix’s “old guy skate club,”the Gray Beard Crew (which you can find on Facebook under “Prevent This Tragedy”), and that he happens to be slightly more motivated than the rest of us to dream up really big events, get his hands dusty, promote the hell out of his vision and make stuff happen.
This is the story of just one of his achievements.
SkaterCon takes just a little bit of explaining, because there’s nothing quite like it anywhere, at least as far as I’ve seen. The basic idea is that it’s a “Comic-Con for skaters” – and that is, admittedly, a great point of departure. But SkaterCon is much more diverse. It’s part public trade show, part skate demo, part amateur contest, part party insanity, part jam session, part Q&A and part meet-and-greet. For the lucky reporter with press passes, it’s also a pretty convenient place to grab a quick story and get a little bit of miscellaneous “work” done.
When Adam plans “an event,” it’s not just your ho-hum, run-of-the-mill, one-day- and-done sort of affair. No, buddy! When Adam plans an event, it’s a weekend- long funfest that leaves you completely spent, utterly exhausted and totally sassified. My weekend started on Friday evening at Joe’s Grotto, a watering hole and music venue on Phoenix’s northeast side. This “Kickoff Party” to the weekend’s festivities started around 7 p.m. and lasted until well after midnight, way past my conservative bedtime regimen these days.
There were four really, really loud bands that played the Kickoff: The Bathless Bastards, the Earlygrabs, Dephinger and the Father Figures. The Earlygrabs and the Father Figures are both fan favorites that ripped fast, punk-infused sets. The Father Figures feature Cornelius from JFA, which gives them instant-locallegend credibility, and a depth and breadth of musical influences, while the Earlygrabs stuck with what I might call classic skate thrash. But the big surprise of the night was the Bathless Bastards from Texas, who struck me as being a bit grubbier and a much more metal version of Motörhead, if you can imagine such a wondrous thing.
Unfortunately, I missed the entirety of Dephinger’s set because I was pretty busy working the room. Because of Phoenix’s close proximity to Southern California – Los Angeles is, after all, a mere six-hour drive away – SkaterCon attracts a lot of living legends and luminaries. This year’s list included Eric Dressen, Rick “Spidey” De Montrond, Marty “Jinx” Jimenez, Jim Jam Gray, Dave Duncan, Steve Steadham and Jesse Martinez, along with SkaterCon alum Chuck Treece, Dave Bergthold, Steve Alba, Billy Ruff, Patti McGee, Bill Danforth, MoFo and collecting connoisseur Daymond Dodge. The big surprise of the weekend was Jonas Wray, who was on hand to promote Wray Bros, the brand that he co-helms with his brother Jeremy. Almost all of them stopped in to take in a set or two at the Grotto. So, sorry Dephinger. I’ll try to catch ya next time.
This years’ SkaterCon was held at Paradise Valley Skatepark, one of Phoenix’s many concrete outdoor oases. The public trade show area was across the driveway from the skatepark in an expansive parking lot that could easily accommodate up to 30 vendor tents, plus the main music stage, all in one easy-to-browse spot. The best part about the venue was that you could hear the music from the main stage, quite clearly, almost anywhere on the premises; the acoustics were simply amazing.
One of the unintended advantages to this easy-breezy modus operandi is that the attendees can not only get their grubby hands on the latest and greatest people and products, they can also go right over to the skatepark and try them out for themselves. Almost as soon as I waltzed into the venue, I was standing on a Hosoi downhill prototype that Jesse Martinez was rocking, discussing the finer points of concave concepts. I also got to take a roll on those new Avenue suspension trucks, which worked far better than I might have originally imagined. I then spent the better part of my Saturday tooling around with Mike Kitchen, and sampling the entirety of Millennium’s new deck lineup. Really, all skateboarding trade shows should be set up like this, i.e., a giant public product demo party. After experiencing SkaterCon for myself, I’m really sort of surprised that they aren’t. Agenda actually starts to look a little bit stale and starched, when mentally compared to this vibrant and vivacious rule- and ground-breaking newcomer.
There were what seemed like a zillion small companies in attendance at SkaterCon. I almost forgot to mention that part. Every time I turned around, I was being confronted by yet another small startup newcomer to the marketplace, while the “Bigger Brands” were conspicuously and notably absent. It struck me immediately as a bit of a missed opportunity for them to solidify their standing, and left a gaping hole for the smaller, smarter and nimbler newcomers to wade through, much to their obvious advantage.
The biggest “brand” on hand this weekend was probably Steve Steadham. When his bus rolls into town, everybody takes notice; it’s definitely an impressive example of eye-catching hugeness. Parking it showside takes a lot of determined skill and patience, so much so that I assumed that Steve had a professional driver at the helm of his personal ark. When I discovered that Steve actually drives his own bus, I was completely bowled over by his chops. That man has talent!
Steadham is not only a seriously skilled mega-bus driver, a talented skateboarder and an entire industry unto himself, the guy can rock a reggae set like you wouldn’t believe. The one thing that he is not particularly attentive at, however, is being a sales rep for Steadham Industries. At some point on Saturday, I swung by to check out his ambitious new shoe lines. That’s “lines,” plural, because he is an avid entrepreneur par excellence. He kindly asked me to look after his tent “for a few minutes” while he ran a quick errand. Thirty minutes later, I’m really starting to worry, asking myself, where did this guy take off to, and is he all right? That’s when Travis (from Millennium) points out that Steadham’s on stage, cutting himself a reggae rug. You’ve gotta be kidding me, right? So I leave Travis in charge of Steadham Incorporated for a few minutes, and saunter straight to the stage to check this all out for myself. Sure enough, there he is, manning four different keyboards and crooning away while Chuck Treece is laying down subtle licks on his guitar. And he sounds really, really good up there. Is there anything this guy can’t do, and do well? He’s nothing less than a one-man everything!
Somewhere along the line, there was a bowl contest that I completely missed out on. There was simply too much stuff to do, see and experience; there was no simply way in heck you could ever take it all in within one puny little weekend.
JFA was Saturday’s headliner band. They were the band I was most excited to experience. After all, I’ve been skating for well over 30 years now, yet I’ve never seen JFA live. So this was a perfect opportunity to put that travesty to bed and kick another must-do off my personal bucket list. During their set, they instigated one of the best things I saw all weekend: a skateboarding circle pit that included kids of all ages, boys and girls, right alongside old guys and geezers, rolling around in symbiotic harmony. Everyone was in there, and everyone was having the time of their lives to the soundtrack of one of the alltime best skate rock bands ever.
Saturday night was the local premiere of Made in Venice, the Jesse Martinez documentary. Once again, Adam left no hour unscheduled; there was something going on, somewhere, all weekend long. The premiere was held at a local theater, naturally enough, and quite a few of the day’s attendees made it to the evening event as well. The movie largely picked up where Dogtown and Z-Boys left off, and chronicled Venice’s skate history between the late 1970s through the current era, including the locals’ extremely tenacious efforts (to put it mildly) to get a free, public concrete skatepark in Venice, and to maintain it in the face of constant attacks from extremely energetic vandals.
Sunday was a bit more mellow and laid back, probably because Saturday had been so hectic and busy that everybody (myself included) was simply exhausted from the previous day. That didn’t stop the street kids from seizing a jump ramp from the Gator Skins guys and tossing up an impromptu (and epic) launch-ramp session. Chris Roberts won the trick of the day straight away with a benihana varial, while Mike Kitchen won the “dedication award” for repeatedly tossing his bulk high into the air and piloting strong-armed methods with his 44-year-old frame. I’m glad Is merely there to document the day, because my knees were aching painfully enough just watching him stomp those solid landings.
“The Time Traveler” was the handsdown hit of the weekend. Nobody seemed to know his real name; he was wrapped in a shroud of mystery and mystique, which was magnified because unlike most skaters, you couldn’t get him to talk very much (if at all), even if you tried your damnedest (which I most definitely did). He couldn’t have been a day over 16 years old, if that, but he had a pretty close to period-correct Powell-Peralta Vato Rat deck (outfitted with Aces and G-Bones), accentuated by a complementary, period-correct outfit, complete with baby blue Vans Highs, bold red-and-yellow Rectors and a fullcoverage Pro-tec. He carved the bowls with intense speed and concentration and a rubbery style reminiscent of Rick Blackhart, while busting spontaneous laybacks that would have made Duane pretty damned proud. The Time Traveler was an extremely modest fellow, but that still didn’t stop him from being the subject of the better part of the weekend’s bubbling banter.
The very last band to play on Sunday was the Ziggens, the perfect band to button up the weekend’s wonders. The Ziggens are not really a “punk” band at all, much to my eardrums’ delight, but rather a ’60s-inspired surf-’n’-drag sensation that sounded like a cross between the Challengers and the Cramps. They knew how to have a good time, that’s for sure. The crowd sat squarely on the fine line between “WTF?” and “Holy wow, that’s f’n awesome!”, which created a fun and playful dynamic that only seemed to feed the band’s already raucous set of feel-good, fuzzy reverb rockers.
There are probably more than enough “thanks” that could (and should) be floated around, including toward Adam himself; his extremely supportive wife, Sandy; the staff of excellent volunteers, who were extremely adept at making sure everyone was having a grand time; all the brands that bought booths; all the bands that rocked the house down; the living legends and luminaries that gave us all a reason to fully fan out; the city of Phoenix for allowing us all to have a bit of fun; and of course the skaters who kept it all lively and luscious.
But personally speaking, I think the attendees that bought and paid for the tickets might be the biggest heroes of them all. Without real and tangible financial support from the skateboarding community, these sorts of groundbreaking events would be unsustainable. So thanks for coming, everyone! I hope you had as much fun as I did! See all y’all on next years Phoenix Skatercon.
A special thanks to Michael Brooke at Concrete Wave Magazine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lMZKza1fro
Phoenix Skatercon 2017 was a success! Check out some highlights!