Revival - Vidcast 43 - The Last Hurrah 2008
Jeff Kolada hit us up about making a vidcast of the Last Hurrah event. As with all street events sometimes things don’t go to plan - but we have an edit for you anyway! Keep reading to check out the event report. Here are a few words from Jeff -
“The Last Hurrah competition in Athens, OH did not go exactly as planned. After being kicked out of our three competition spots during warmups, and running out of options, the contest was cancelled and everyone agreed to just skate for fun and just have a good time. Enjoy my edit of the day, and I would like to thank Rolling Revival, Oke Clothing, and John Hoch for making the edit and event possible.”
You can also check it out on our youtube page if you so desire. Thankyou to Jeff for the edit!
The Last Hurrah 2008 Report
June 21, 2008
The day started out like any other for me…EARLY. Sleep in Saturday? Nope, woke up at 8:00 am to get ready to head down to Athens, Ohio for a day I had hoped to be filled with good times and good people.
Friends started to trickle in to the Athens City Skatepark around 11:00am. As each started to arrive I quickly learned that a good number came out to watch the contest. Only a few came to actually skate and be judged to win money. It was when I hit this wall of, What if I don’t have enough people show up? What will I do?” Thank goodness the REAL reason we all get together is to skate and share stories since we last saw one another. So making a decision to have the day end up being a session rather than competition was an easy adjustment for everyone that came out.
I still wanted to follow the same route of spots to make the day go by hopefully a little more smooth than just picking and choosing spots. But thanks to “Johnny Law” they seemed to make the decisions for us. We were busted by Ohio University Police at the first spot, which were ledges underneath OU’s Music Building. So that took care of any other campus spots I had in mind. The second was located at Athens High School which was everyone’s favorite wavy handi-rail. Due to an Annual Bee Keepers Association meeting taking place our fun was put to a timely halt by one angry Bee Keeper. Luckily a couple of the girls with us made it out alive from their little hive in time with some honey from one nice old man who gladly gave to them for free, wish he had more pull in the bee hive than the ass that kicked us out. So with us basically kicked out of Athens we hopped into our gas guzzling automobiles to ride ten miles up to Hocking College, our last hope. Within five minutes of everyone arriving and getting out of their cars Hocking College’s hope for a better tomorrow also known as the rent-a-cop came out to tell us the age old story, “I don’t care, but the people who sign my checks want you to leave.” So down but not out we huddled together to see if there was anything else left out there to skate because we had a good amount of sun light to burn. While our brains bounced ideas off one another, Dax tried to hop on with Hocking College’s construction crew, but was met with WTF expressions from the hardened men. Thankfully Jeff and Mike knew about some old rails underneath some over passes back in Athens. So once again we piled into our cars and drove back to Athens to skate a nice handi-rail on a bike path near the Hocking River. Other than the occasional bicycle enthusiast we had the little safe haven we had been looking for.
All day long people kept a positive attitude which is what kept us going when we were booted and banished for doing something we love and are passionate about. The way I see it, everyone won on that day. We did not let anything get in the way of our good time. It is always a wonderful experience to host an event like this. When I found out no one really wanted to skate in the contest I was a little hurt. But having my friends there helped me see it is not about a contest, judging people on who is better or not, it is about all of us getting together to have a good time and do what we love, skate.
When I first envisioned this event, I wanted it to be about people coming together from different walks of life to do something we all find enjoyment in. Contest are great, our sport has a good thing going with the AIL and they should be supported. So from here on out The Last Hurrah will fall on Labor Day weekend as originally intended. To be a weekend before life gets boggled down by obligations to work or school where we can meet up with friends and skate. No need for judges or prize money. No sponsor could ever dish out what we all got out of this past Saturday. We as rollerbladers never give up when faced with diversity. We were told not to skate. We did anyway.
See you next year!!
- Hoch
3 comments June 27th, 2008
