Introduction, story and edit by Kato Mateu.
No better way to start this tour than at the legendary Revolution Thursday Night Skate in Phoenix: the shop is a skater’s dream ran by dedicated owners (James and Gretchen) where you know you’ll always end up meeting bladers from all around Arizona & beyond, and the TNS formula is simple: show up at around 5PM @ Revolution skateshop and let James guide you. Guaranteed blast on blades. Thursday Night Skate in Phoenix is going strong for 3 years non stop now. No wonder.
20+ heads were hanging out at revolution when we showed up, ranging from the usual AZ suspects like Remz flow Andrew Scherf to out of town cats like this crazy crew from Colorado partying in front of the shop, and also Jon Bolino. We chilled on the couch for a minute watching videos, killed a pile of pizzas, and everybody was waiting for James to official start this new TNS.
Thunderbird skatepark, 7PM, we were there. So were a lot of other bladers. I couldn’t skate for shit (luckily there were several other old timers trying to keep up with the 31yo shop owner) but everyone else was having a blast so I grabbed the camera for some shaky footage, you know…
Chris Haffey 2.0 Cali Tour – first stop from Be-Mag on Vimeo.
Managed to capture a few tricks from Remz local boy Andrew, and of course from mister Haffey who took a first harsh bail but came back for more and proceeded to murder the long ledge switch and regular before taking yet another hard fall, on the hip this time (which he hurt at the Clash and again at BCSD). This was the chill signal for him. Chris sat down with the locals and we hung out for another half hour or so until the park ranger came to kick everyone out at 10PM, thus ending another great Revolution Thursday Night Skate in Phoenix.
Haffey decided to take the road back to Los Angeles that night (a 6h drive), Jon Bolino proposed to join him, and off they went. As for myself, I’m gonna spend the weekend here with my fam and meet up again with everyone for at least one more session + barbeque Sunday afternoon, then drive back to LA to meet up again with Chris and continue on to Norcal to bring you some more tour updates!
As I’m writing this I get a new text from James: “DL is having a party tonight. We’re skating for a bit, then rolling out.” ….”
Stay tuned for some more updates. There are six more wild tour stops on their agenda:
March 23: Rocklin CA. Roller Warehouse http://rollerwarehouse.com/
March 24: Sunnyvale CA. Aggressive Mall http://www.aggressivemall.com
March 25: San Luis Obispo, CA. Inline Warehouse http://www.inlinewarehouse.com/
March 26: Bakersfield CA. Intuition Skateshop http://www.intuitionskate.com/
March 27: Long Beach CA. Urban Rolling http://urbanrolling.com/
March 29: Escondido CA. SDSF Skateshop http://www.thesdsf.com/
