• brett dasovic
• brian aragon
• colorado
• conartist
• dan fabiano
• jeff dahmen
• jeremy spira
• kevin meland
• live update
• tour
• victor arias
• woodward

Sunday brought us day four of our Rocky Mountain road trip. Days like this are the days that start to really show the character of the skaters on the trip. The enthusiasm is beginning to wane and the tediousness of the trip begins to take its toll. This is how you separate the average skater from those who are extremely determined. In my opinion everyone on this trip showed this level of determination at some point over the last two days of the trip.

We met up with Courtney and Scott at Denny’s and headed about twenty-five minutes outside of Denver to a skate park in Longmont. Victor did several ridiculous and others got some good scenery of simple tricks with an amazing view of the mountains in the background, as I was helping tour photographer Andrew Murray pack up things to head to the first spot we just took a minute to stand there and marvel at how calm and peaceful it was in this location, open space as far as you could see and it was so quiet we would have heard an Allen wrench fall out of someone’s car.

We left the park to skate an amazing kink rail about five minutes from the skate park. Jeff Dahmen persevered through the clay on the side of the rail and the cars that seemed to always want to drive by the run up as he attempted his trick. The end result was worth it as he laced a legit true spin top acid through the kink, both the clip and picture turned out well and we headed back into town.

Courtney brought us to a curved handicap, this was awesome to me because absolutely everyone on the trip skated this spot and it was allot more like a session than an attempt to get footage. This spot lasted several hours, complete with a lot of joking around and even more tricks. Kevin soyaled through the curve, local Tyler Jones did a rather ridiculous truespin mizou rewind sweatstance. Jeff steadily worked his way through his truespin vocabulary on the inside curve rail and tour guest Jeph Howard came through with a truly amazing ao makio on the rail that curves the opposite way. The picture is quite good but it can’t do justice to how many times he managed to lace this trick so that Andrew and Dan could capture it just how they wanted. Jeph is a professional in every sense of the word and times like this are the proof.

The sun was now no place to be seen and the cool evening weather was upon us again, this is where Kevin Meland showed the Determination that I mentioned previously. We were all exhausted, especially us on the trip because the altitude was still a factor but working through the sore muscles and desire to just relax, Kevin brought us all back to Coors Stadium to land the trick he was trying the other day but was unable to land due to the security guard. We lept quiet as we approached the stadium and quickly Andrew set up his flashes and Dan got his camera ready to capture the moment on video. Twenty minutes later Kevin landed an incredible soul to transfer negative mistrial from the rail to the ledge and with yet another clip and picture to look at we called it a night on the skating and headed back to the hotel to relax before our last day in Colorado. I am not sure if anyone else would agree but that evening was my favorite night out of all of them. The whole team was in one room along with Tyler and Scott and we just hung out and talked, watched TV. And shared all sorts of stories from the last few days that were still fun to talk about. I was sitting there cleaning my skates and I looked up once at everyone around me and I smiled because I felt that rare feeling that you get when you realize you are part of something special. Sounds lame, but I wouldn’t trade anything that has happened in these last 4 days for the paycheck that I would have gotten if I had just worked my job and not gone on this trip. Sleep came eventually and with it came the feeling that even if I skated terrible on the last day, I still have the whole team and as not only fellow team members but as friends we would still have nights like that and other experiences along the way that show us exactly why we do what we do and love every minute of it.

Log in to add a comment | No comments yet!

Day three began at noon with Dan Walking into our room announcing that it was time to get up and let the street skating begin. The sight of the sun shining in through our hotel room window immediately squashed any grumbles about the sudden departure from dreamland. We all walked outside and upon feeling the warmth were instantly juiced to get out and skate.

We headed to a perfect square down rail that has been seen in many videos and everyone got out of the car excited to skate. Five minutes after we arrived some of the locals showed up to blade and the session began. Stuff immediately started going down, local Danny McCabe laced an amazing alley oop fishbrain and Courtney Caine put his steeze into everything and it was sick to watch. Kevin meland overcame his broken thumb and laced a perfect zero soul 360 off and also a smooth inspin sweatstance. Victor did things as effortlessly as ever, his full cab true savannah and 360 front unity to true savannah looked almost too easy for him. After about two hours and half a dozen solid photos later we packed up our gear and headed to spot two.

Jeff Dahmen who was not all that keen on the first spot had us make a pit stop at a stair ledge on the way to the next location and after about ten minutes jumped over a wall to ao unity on the inside of the ledge. Once Jeff had done it to his liking for the photo we traveled ten minutes down the road to a perfect stair ledge that a lot of the kids on the trip were really excited to skate. Danny McCabe did a truespin pornstar that was too clean and Jeremy Spira did a flawless 270 backroyale to truespin soul 360 off. I am not really sure what it is with Colorado kids and having amazing style but I intend to get to the bottom of it and when I figure it out I will spill the secret to the masses. Kevin who was the most juiced out of all of us to skate this spot laced a sick negative mistrial to soul and with that being done we headed to the back of the school to watch Tyler Jones get a quick clip on the handicap.

With the sun going down and everyone’s energy on the wane we decided to call it a day and head to Tokyo Joe’s for some after session grub. Fast-forward an hour and we are back at the hotel, Victor is threatening Andrew that if we stay in the hotel and don’t go out for a third night in a row he is going to get violent. Andrew took the hint and we took a break from the photo updating and clip capturing to spend a night in downtown Denver. Needless to say this evening belonged to Tyler who not only pointed out the cutest girl in the club, but also somehow managed to get her to spend the whole night teaching him how to dance. We left the club at about two and after a few more hours of discussing the day’s events back at the hotel room we all crashed and prepared ourselves for what Sunday had to bring us.

Log in to add a comment | No comments yet!

Day two of our adventure in Colorado began at about 11:30 P.M., except for Mr. Dahmen who is conditioned for an early wake every morning due to his work as a electrician and went for breakfast four hours before the rest of us even woke up. In typical rollerblader fashion we managed to sit around for quite sometime before we set out for our morning meal at 1:30 P.M. at a local restaurant that tour photographer Andrew Murray had been to on a previous trip with a snowboarding company he had shot for. Everyone ordered their food and the waitress had a minor seizure when we told her that we did indeed want all the meals on a separate tab.

We set out for the downtown Denver skatepark with high hopes after seeing it the day before but being unable to skate it due to the rain that was burdening the city upon our arrival. The whole team flowed the park for about half an hour despite the wind that was pushing everyone around. Victor maneuvered the park in his effortless fashion (J.S.F bitch!) and even team manager Dan Fabiano got nice on one of the parks many square kinks. Jeremy Spira showed up green pants in full force with his friend Ty and we left the park to cause some havoc on downtown Denver. The street skating began at famed Coors field however before kids got into the real business security showed up to put a damper on everyone’s mood. Undiscouraged we skated down the road the a loading dock with a metal edge that was slick as you could ever hope and after a store owner gave us the go ahead for five jumps each on the ledge everyone did their thing, Victors alley-oop
negative Mistrial 360 off was particularly effortless and after 30 minutes of sessioning we headed to our automobiles and set off for the next spot.

A small pit stop at Walgreen’s for DV tapes and Arizona iced tea ensued and then we found ourselves at an 18 stair down rail in the middle of the stairs. Jeff Dahmen gave me a look that told me plainly that he had been waiting for a spot like this since the trip had started. After about 10 minutes at the rail it was obvious that his desire was for good reason. He laid down a large number of truespins out of his extensive trick vocabulary. Half an hour and many truepspins from Jeff later we left the rail for a gas station. Drinks were purchased and we rolled up to a school with many different obstacles. I myself found an outrail to drop over stairs that was too good to be ignored and but on the other side of the school Jeff was adding to his deepening bag of tricks by doing a disaster true spin topsoyale and an incredible true savannah on a triple kink.

With the sunlight gone and the temperature falling fast we set off to find sustenance. What Is the answer to hunger problems when you are traveling with a group of rollerbladers who are watching their wallets? Little Caesar of course. Five dollars provides you with a large pizza and after a quick stop at the liquor store you head back to your room and eat to a good of balding. Stomachs full we spend the rest of the night relaxing and watching crappy hotel cable and complaining about the unreliable WiFi. Kevin Meland even got an offer from a hooker staying on the same floor as us. A Friday afternoon and a relaxing Friday night will lead us into a hopefully beautiful Saturday with a lot of sun and even more footage to collect. Check back tomorrow afternoon and see what is next to come from the Con•Artist team as the explore more of the Colorado skate scene.

Log in to add a comment | Show comments (1)

So another Con.Artist tour is upon us, and this time it’s to the glorious state of Colorado. Even between full-time jobs, girlfriends, and school we were still able to pull a good crew for this tour.

Victor flew out from California to Minneapolis, Kevin Meland, Jeff Dahmen, Brett Dasovic and myself all took off work, and Jeph Howard wanted to tag along to get some clips for Brett Dasovic’s new film coming out Feb 09’ titled: A Tale of Twin Cities. We also had Andrew Murray who is the new photographer in town come along for the ride to capture all the moments. I decided to take the team and Howard to some new foreign terrain and see what damage we could do. We headed out of Minneapolis at 11:00pm, on our 13 hour voyage. Let me just say that usually these long drives are easy, quick, and fun and this one was a bit just, well not fun. Since we left so late, which is obviously a stupid reason – each of the drivers were way to tired to keep up the usual three hour shifts, so instead of like 4-5 stops we ended up taking around 10 stops, which not only shifted our arrival, but just drowned the excitement of getting there and skating right away.

We arrived in Denver around 1:45pm of the 1st of May and to our dismay it was 36 degrees, and raining. Not only was that a huge downer, we got even more depressed when our directions led us to the Denver Skatepark, which is a massive cement skate plaza – which was unskatable due to the weather. We ended up picking up Jeremy Spira at his apartment and drove to the Woodward indoor park to get our skate on. We arrived at the park an hour before it opened, and thanks to Tyler Jones who worked there, he hooked it up and we were able to get in and skate the park. Since it was pretty shitty outside, we ended up staying at the park for about three hours. A few locals came out, and Brian Aragon ended up coming out to blade as well. The park was well maintained, and had some good transistional obstacles. Jeph was super
tired but busted out a few solid tricks, Victor flowed through the entire park showing all of us his abilities to skate park and skate any obstacle with ease, Dasovic threw down with his hyper steeze – like always, and the rest of the crew was on the slow-mo and took it easy but had a good time and still came through with some footage. Andrew ended up taking a few prime photos, and we got a tiny bit of filming down for this live Be-Mag update. You will see all the footage in an edit at the end of the tour.

The weather brightened up, and the grounds ended up drying up enough to go out and get some street accomplished. In all honesty, nobody was ready to go out and keep skating due to most of us being up for close to 24 hours. Dahmen even passed out on the couch at the park, but we took the journey anyways. We ended up going to this school that was pretty
decent: steep rails, kinked rails, curve ledges, just any type of obstacle you wanted to skate, you could have a decent time. Brett got all hyper and decided to do some backslides on the steep rails, Victor, Jeph and Spira sessioned this high curve ledge, and Dahmen tried to back backslide this weird kink rail, but fell a few times on the landing and didn’t feel it was worth it to continue since he was so exhausted. Courtney Cain met up and ended up bringing us out to eat, and where we could find a cheap place for the night. Since we were so exhausted we ended up getting two rooms and just passing out for the night after a few smokes and a couple tall boys.

update by dan fabiano

Log in to add a comment | No comments yet!