Dew Tour- Surviving the Heat
Bucky Lasek- brought his backyard bowl skills to become winner of the semi finals
Surviving the Heat
The weather was so gnarly that it was actually too hot to go to the beach. According to news sources the heat index was 113 degrees which meant that skating the bowl felt like skating in a microwave. Despite the heat the skating was on point and the action hotter than the damn temperature. After the qualifiers yesterday today was semi finals where 35 skaters were whittled down to 10 finalists. With such a varied group of skaters, judging it must have been hard but the results seem to indicate that using the deep and shallow ends of the bowl, staying on, and doing a variety of tricks put guys through to the finals. Sounds simple enough but some guys ripping may have not made their way to the deep end quite enough while others did some halfpipe style lines. Other skaters that definitely had the skills to get into the finals had too many bails. Others just didn’t give a f___, they were just having a blast.
The readers of CD are well educated as far as skateboarding goes and can look at the top 10 and guess what went down but here’s some highlights. Ben Raybourn has got a new sponsor (Slave) but his endless bag of fun ass looking tricks is still very much intact. Rune and Omar made it to the finals as one would expect. Benji Galloway is back, it was a pleasure to watch him skate. Kevin Kowalski is becoming one of my favorite guys to watch, loose but in control and with smooth style. I don’t care what you say, Andy Mac is good. Pedro seemed to be holding back a little bit, maybe he was saving some gas for his vert semi finals. Of course Pedro holding back is turning it to 11 for anyone else.
On a related note, Pedro, Rune and Bucky are the only skaters that skated in both bowl and vert events today, Pedro and Bucky made both finals. Nolan Munroe has been coming on strong for a few years and qualified 3rd. Ben Hatchell seemed to cruise in practice but crushed it when the event started, doing tricks, well, everywhere, qualifying second for the finals. Then there was Bucky. The crowd was definitely behind the Maryland native as he took to the bowl. Bucky looked right at home, bringing his years of experience in the Pool Party and his backyard to the beach. He had a tricky transfer line backside over the hip from shallow to deep dialed in, even taking it to fakie. According to Mr. Lasek “Bucky got Lucky” but if you consider the fact that Bucky also qualified first for vert it was much more than luck. – George Crosland
Thank you to George Crosland for the images & text. Skate- Ozzie
Click on the link for Dew finals article- www.concretedisciples.com/feature-skateboarding-articles/item/4342-pedro-goes-bowling-on-the-beach.html