Last Man Standing: Staten Island - 07/06/12

The news of another New York City competition brought to me emotions of pride and joy since the competition scene in NYC has been far too few and far between. But when I found out that this year's 1st installment of the "Last Man Standing" series was going to take place in Staten Island, it brought to me feelings of nausea and disgust. Not because it is in Staten Island......but because I get boat sick and I have to take the Staten Island Ferry in order to get there. The only thought running through my mind right now is "This comp better be worth my internal battle going on right now"...............and when it was all said and done, it was well worth all the discomfort that I may have had.


HECTOR RODRIGUEZ with one of his many custom switch-ups. Here is a ALLEY-OOP PORNSTAR to TOPSOUL to ALLEY-OOP SOUL.

Around 11:30a.m., right after I finished playing a game of "SKATE" by myself, slowly skaters started showing up. About every few minutes another skater showed up and then another. By now every 15-20 minutes is another boatload of skaters, not too many at a time but a nice steady build up. My ballpark estimate at the moment is about 60 skaters in total which is a pretty good turn out to say the least. There was a pretty cool warm-up session going on but unfortunately a skater seemed to have dislocated his elbow so I had to call the ambulance to take care of him. It kind of saddened me since he had just arrived and he came off of a wrist injury............GET WELL SOON! Since New Yorkers aren't known for our tardiness we are giving the late-comers until 1:00 o' clock to arrive and sign up with the comp beginning shortly after. And since NYC'ers are also known for our generosity we decided to give the skaters until 2:00p.m. instead haha. 26 entrants later and we have a competition. The judges for this event are Victor Callender, Jon Ortiz, Keithfe Bailey, Franco Cammayo and extra input by yours truly. We all had our work cut out for us since Victor's P.A. system decided not to work so we had to raise our voices in order for us to get everybody's attention to announce the rounds. Luckily, one of the skaters' Mother had a cooler with some much needed ice cold water which was sold for $1. She was a life saver because it felt like Africa out there. I turned red and I am just waiting for my skin to start peeling. Aloe Vera here I come.

Spot 1: Boardwalk Ledges
- This spot is a nice loooooooong waxed ledge with some dents in it probably from bikers which makes this ledge a slight challenge since you can easily get thrown off of a boot trick. But since the ledge is so lengthy at this spot is was judged more on lines than single tricks. The way that we see it, it is pretty easy lacing a solid trick on an endless ledge so let's see who is consistent and can lace tricks back to back. Everything was going good with amazing tricks being laced by some of the Tri-Boroughs finest and before the last of the rounds on this first
spot an over-crazed Jesus addict with his partner in tow decides to come and interupt the comp with his radical recruitment approach that just irritated Victor
Callender and made for some good bonus footage for all the cameras that were
in their face. This continued for about a 15 minutes but once Victor pulled them to the side and banished them and we finally got the first round done.

Spot 2: Parking Lot Transfer Ledges
The insanity that went down at this spot which was incomprehensible. There were some sick ledge to ledge variations going down but mostly from one of the most slept on skaters in NYC Hector Rodriguez. He was lacing some sick transfers such as Pornstar-to Soyale-to Outspin Soul Tansfer-to 270 Back Royal. Trust me, somebody will have an edit up.....hopefully soon! ( come on filmers, get it together ). We did have a BIG scare at this spot when b.unique's JOHN STEPHENS was going for a rail to ledge transfer and ended up hitting the broken part of the rail, falling and hanging by his foot with half of his barefoot dangling out of his skate. Thank GOD he is ok and it wasn't too serious. He just jacked up 2 of his toes pretty bad but once the blood dries up and the skin heals he'll be back.


JEPH HOWARD grabbed Backslide on the high declining ledge.

Spot 3: Big Stadium Ledge & Rail
If you don't know about this spot than please look it up. This is a spot where the big boys play. And being here looking at the gap that Fish did in Accidental Machines gave me then chills, it is insane and I don't know how he laced that but he IS the man. Hammers were laced all around so I will name a few such as Jeph Howard jumping over the gate to grabbed fishbrain on the outside of the ledge, Jesus Medina ledge roll to 540 Gap attempt that he came so close to landing, Austin Paz doing back to back tricks on the 2 down rail flawlessly and more.


Left: NYC Legend Victor Callender.........do your homework ;)
Right: VICTOR and FRANCO CAMMAYO discussing who advances into the next round.

The Final Wrap-Up
AFter the smoke cleared the judges had a kind of long meeting about what went down. I refrained from judging this comp since i wanted more of a background role this time around and I wanted to help out with some other things but I did have some input. I do admit that I am happy with the results and here they are....

1. Anthony Chen
2. Hector Rodriguez
3. Jeph Howard


The Last MEN Standing...........JEPH HOWARD, ANTHONY CHEN & HECTOR RODRIGUEZ

**I would like to thank each and everyone of you who attended this comp and made it an enjoyable time for everyone who attended. Of course there were complainers and moaners but you can never please everybody all at once. Victor came out of his own pocket for some of the prizes since some of the companies that he spoken too probably "forgot" to send him the giveaways/prizes since they "probably" had something better to do...... ( I won't call out any names but I see how some people work ). On a high not the next LAST MAN STANDING competition is scheduled to take place on [b]JUNE 9th in Queens and Jon Ortiz will be on hand here to update us with the 1st meeting spot. Until then, peace and keep rolling.

- Lord Brian

Tags: anthony chen franco cammayo hector rodriguez jeph howard last man standing lord brian nyc staten island victor callender