This was the first time I met Anthony Napolitan, who I’ve shot an awful lot since then. At the time, Anthony was a flow rider for the distributor System Cycle, and lived right down the road from the skatepark pictured above, Section 8 in Columbus, Ohio. Section 8 was a bad-ass bike oriented skatepark, producing some amazing riders over the years. I had recently moved to Pennsylvania, and took trip out there with Kevin Robinson, Alistair Whitton, and a few other guys. Anthony was killing the mini ramp, and the pink bike was a nice spark of color in a dark indoor park, so we shot for while that night. This photo was used in BMX Plus Magazine a few months later. Seven years later, Anthony’s still killing it. He’s all grown up now, and went on to win X Games medals, and a Dew Cup in Dirt.

I’m a bit slow in posting this one… just pretend I had to get the film processed. Anyway, about a week ago, right before driving to California, I shot a Red Bull skate contest at Marginal Way skatepark in Seattle. It was an elimination, jam format contest, where teams from different Washington area codes competed against each other. At the end the winners got some cash, as well as a donation in their names to the skatepark. The final round was amazing. All three of the guys on the team had some insane lines through the park. Check out a few more after the jump. You can blow them up by clicking.

A little while back, FBM Bikes Team Legend Mike Tagliavento (or Mike Tag as we all know him) was diagnosed with cancer. Aside from being all together shitty, we all know that stuff like that is unbelievably expensive to treat. FBM immediately set up a fund for Tag, and riders all over the globe have been coming together to kick in money. Today’s gathering in Hillsboro, Oregon was organized by some locals including Pro rider Chester Blacksmith, in an effort to raise some money through prize raffles and a BBQ. From a turnout perspective, this was one of the larger Northwest jams I’ve been too, which hopefully resulted in some decent help for Tag. If you’d like to help out Mike, here’s a link to the FBM Bikes page where you can do so.

Above is Portland’s favorite former Huffy rider, Josh “Boyd” Cornell, who took some time off of the Party Planet and shredded some lookbacks. You can check out some more photos after the jump (the horizontal photos, including the one above can be blown up by clicking them). High turndown ration warning.

Evan Abernathy.

Pauly Cvikevich, turndown 180 over a hip.

Jake is a Glenhaven local with toboggans on lockdown.

Snotty regulating/selling raffle tickets.

Ben Hucke, 270 turndown over the hip.

Mike Lund, with a Shad Johnson approved turndown.

Just over a week ago I posted a photo of Snotty riding Burnside and meant to do something with this photo at the same time. I forgot about it in my current catalog production chaos, and it’s been sitting on my desktop since. Anyway, it’s a brakeless walltap out of the big wall.

Portland’s most famous skatepark/spot (and one of the most famous in the world for that matter), Burnside Skatepark, turned 20 this year. While bikes are frowned upon at the park still, Snotty has been a local there pretty much every morning for the last few years, and recently put in some manual labor on the park’s new addition. Hopefully that’s earned him a hall pass with the sticklers. I went and shot a few photos there this morning, and got this frame-grab toboggan, incorporating some of the new graffiti from the 20th Anniversary Halloween party last week. There’s a transition in back of that quarterpipe, and he’s transferring into the main part of the park from there. Click the photo to go bigger.

Shad Johnson (pictured above) from Goods BMX, a shop here in Portland, put together a day of riding at some of the local skateparks, aimed at getting some of the older riders from the area together (and or back on their bikes). A bunch of the older crew came out, some from as far away as Ashland (the legendary Dave Nourie), and a bunch of the younger generation met up with us as well. Things got started out a little rocky, with some rain and clouds coming in and out, but by mid-day things had cleared up, and shredding had ensued. I skipped the first stop (West Linn) thinking it would be rained out (it wasn’t), but made it to Tigard in time for the second spot of the day. We followed up Tigard with a stop in Vancouver, WA, and ended the day in Battleground, WA. Check out some photos after the jump. Like the day itself, it’s a mix of older and younger riders. Horizontal shots can be enlarged by clicking.

Kyle Harris. Footjam at Tigard.

Snotty at Tigard.

Chester Blacksmith, can-can footplant, Tigard

Dave Nourie, Gumby atop a spinning pyramid in Tigard. 360 Gumby?

Mark Rainha, X-up at Tigard.

Caleb Quanbeck, no-hander at Vancouver.

Kyle Harris, bermslider out of an 11-foot quarter in Vancouver.

Codie Larsen, toboggan at Vancouver.

Vancouver Local.

Kyle Harris. Large invert at Vancouver. Kyle kills it, as you can see.

Ryan Barrett, wall tap out of an 11-foot deep corner at Vancouver.

Codie Larsen, invert out of the clover bowl at Battleground.

Back in 2004 I drove from Central Pennsylvania to Chicago for Kevin Porter’s birthday party. It was a 10 hour drive each way, and I stayed in town for less than a day. Kevin was about two weeks into recovering from having his spleen removed, and definitely shouldn’t have been riding his bike. We hit a skatepark by his house in Burbank for the afternoon, and got this photo of a transfer from a quarter in the back into a wedge in the foreground. Not a bad table for a guy with organs hanging out of his abdomen. This shot ran in BMX Plus magazine a few months later.

Here’s another image from a shoot with Chester Blacksmith from a few weeks back… a top-side handplant type trick in a full-pipe. In a way, this sort of reminds me of the footplants Blyther did at the Pipeline back in the early ’80s.

Brian Hunt, one-footed invert, Oregon City, Oregon. Not much more to say about this one.

A couple weeks back I hit the Hillsboro, OR skatepark with a crew of guys including Tony Neyer, Johnny Devlin, Ben Hucke, Codie Larsen, and Caleb Quanbeck. This video is the result. I’ve placed it on my Vimeo page for my own HD archive purposes, so embedding is turned off, but you can get it on the ESPN site here.