After all the insane crashes by Danny Way at X-games 14, I was hoping things would run smoother for everyone at #15 and they did… a lot more polished routines with cleaner falls.  Nonetheless, these folks still take a beating on every bad landing, which amazes me how they can stay so competitive.  Mark, Marina, Kennen and Shawn our bamboosk8 interns drove up and joined me at the Staples Center for the festitivities.  This years event was nearly sold out for all the good seats, but I was able to wheel-n-deal one for $50 for the preferred seating area, although it still wasn’t that great of a seat like years past right down by the bottom of the ramp.  It was great to see Jake Brown get Gold with his backside 360 over the gap into a 20 foot high mctwist over the half pipe.  Silver went to 2 time back-to-back winner Bob Burnquist and bronze to Rob Lorifice.

After the event, we watched the motorcycles go for highest air, which is pretty amazing for them to high jump 34 feet in the air.  I ended up leaving early so I could get to the premiere across the street of the X-games in 3D at the Nokia Theatre.  The red carpet was laid out for this event with celebrities such as Pamela Anderson, Slash, Hayden Penitier, and more, as well as many action sports athletes and industry folks.  How all those celebrities can handle all those bright lights and photos is beyond me, so I decided to do my own filming and photography of them… video to come soon.  Funny thing is – all we had was regular passes to enter the theatre, not do the whole red carpet crap, but I was able to make a girl laugh as I told her I was a X-games champion.  She said, “where’s your athelete badge”?  I said, “I can’t compete my knee is blown out in 12 different places”.  She looked at me and saw i had no cast or anything and she just laughed and said, “Have a good time and don’t do anything stupid.”  So, I decided to strip down to my underwear and run across the red carpet…  no, just kidding.

Coming out soon also is a really rad video of the Next X, which is 5 young kids (Mitchie Brusco is one of them) who get to meet their heroes for a week at Camp Woodward – check it out on Disney.

rock and roll,

Geoff Koboldt

Geoff with Slash

Andy Mac with Shawn

With it being the first conference of its kind, in collaboration with the X-games, I wasn’t sure what to expect from it.  Anytime you get a group of people together, they all have different expecations which poses some difficulty for the panel, if they haven’t been prepped with the right questions, as well as if the moderator doesn’t keep it moving along interestingly.  In this case, I personally didn’t walk away with anything new but was inspired by some peoples rebellion to what the others thought as truth or at least what has worked for them in business.  I have found that most companies situations are so unique to them, that you will never get to the depths of intellectual discussion in a 45 minute panel discussion.  For the most part, you get the watered-down version and have to take what you can from it.  To make things worse, the motorcycle riders were practicing right below and behind the glass suites we were in.  This combined with a weak PA system, made it very difficult for many to hear.  group Y did its best but it was an incredible struggle for many to hear, which led many to just get up and walk around or start talking or play on their cell phones.

The real component of these type of things is meeting new people and seeing the old ones.  I arrived at the Home Depot Center at 8am to have breakfast and mingle.  I met a young college kid from Florida who flew out for the conference to get his chance at getting into the action sports world to sitting down with the Chairman of Skull Candy to meeting a girl who is trying to grow the Canadian skate market to chatting with the President of a major marketing firm, to meeting X-game athletes, etc.

Oh, and another really important piece to learn was just how many X-games athletes don’t even get health insurance from their sponsors.  These guys risk their lives and make their sponsors $$millions, and they can’t even get a basic insurance plan; pretty disgusting if you ask me!  Nonethless, the athletes do it because they love what they do…

Special thanks to fellow Michigan State graduate Bill from Fuse for the bottle of wine and conversation, Jeff from Skull Candy who really inspired me with the humble breakdown of what it has taken to get Skull Candy where it is, as well as group Y for making it all happen.  I am sure next year will be drastically different.

- Geoff Koboldt

Kevin Robinson, Troy - Target, Brad – Wasserman Media, Mark – Fast company and Pat – Oakley; Panel 1 – Exploring relationships between brands, athletes and mangers

Bill – Fuse, Vipe – Monster, Rob – Transworld, Scot – Fuel, Braden – New Era; Panel 2 – Authentic branding and marketing within the action sports realm

Ric Alesandri – X games, Tiffany – shop-eat-surf, CJ – Fuel

Jessica – Womans Sports Foundation, Miki – Tony Hawk foundation, Gary – Woodward, Kathleen – Label Networks, Tim – Motorcycle Industry Council, and Adam – Disney; Panel 3 – Addressing retention and growth of the next generation

 X-games half-pipe

Ron has been busy taking his motorhome and a trailer full of ramps around and setting up a mobile skatepark on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1:30-6:30 at a San Diego church called “the Connection”.  If you are around, please stop by and say hello to Ron and enjoy a game of skate or just having fun riding the ramps.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-skate23-2009jul23,0,1117712.story

BambooSK8 was found this weekend at the Maloof Money Cup not only to promote the bambooSK8 brand but to see all the intense competition for the huge $ prize money; $100,000 went to Chris Cole for winning the street contest.  Everyone and their brother from the industry was out, so it was nice catching up with all the folks who make it happen…  The fans were going crazy beating those little aired up bats like they use to do at the baseball games, which became annoying but nonetheless, we all appreciated the spirit.  Quite a few people were found stealing seats, which sucked for us that had assigned seats in specific areas under the shade (still about 90 degrees) so we had to yell a few times.  Since we were at the Orange County fair, we even took a moment to ride an elephant.

TRANSWORLD:

The second annual Maloof Money Cup went off today at the Orange County Fairgrounds with (just like we said last year), some of the gnarliest skateboarding we’ve ever seen in a contest. Young vert ripper Alex Perelson nailed a 900 and first place in the vert comp, Adam Dyet landed a kickflip back tail down the Rincon rail and took the Best Trick, and Black Box dominated the street course with Chris Cole taking first and the 100 Gs and Tommy Sandoval coming in second. Not too bad for a day’s work. Photos, videos, interviews, and everything else in between will be coming to you in the next couple of days. Stay tuned.

STREET RESULTS:
1. Chris Cole
2. Tommy Sandoval
3. Nyjah Huston
4. Torey Pudwill
5. Ryan Sheckler
6. Sean Malto
7. Greg Lutzka
8. David Gonzalez
9. Paul Rodriguez
10. Mark Appleyard

BEST TRICK:
Adam Dyet

VERT RESULTS:
1. Alex Perelson
2. PLG
3. Bob Burnquist
4. Andy MacDonald
5. Buckey Lasek

GIRL’S STREET RESULTS:
1. Leticia Bufoni
2. Lacey Baker
3. Elissa Steamer
4. Amy Caron
5. Marisa Dal Santo

BambooSK8 interns Mo, Alyx and Andrew got to spend an evening on a yacht in San Diego after Bamboosk8 got an invitation to try out one of the latest boats.  We had to make it official with our bamboosk8 decks going on the cruize through the harbor as well.  Check out the “I’m on a boat” – reference to Andy Sambergs SNL digital “I’m on a boat” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOvaCV6uQp8

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