Gabe's summer of shred: Vancouver Radness
Email arrived last Thursday from Gabe, I forgot to post it up, here it is:
G'day Hop, since Danger Bay weekend it has been a bit of a blur and the weeks since have been just skating and enjoying the summer. Here's what's going down in Van.
In summer, Vancouver is easily the best place to be. Beautiful weather, rad hills and a bunch of rad skaters to shred the hills with, you just cant beat it. The shredding is constant. If you hook up with the right crews at races like Danger Bay and Gold Rush (Britannia Classic) you'll be skating every day in Vancouver and its so easy to find a crew keen to drive the 4 hours it takes to get to Giants Head, Summerland.
I've spent the last 2 weeks staying at Fern St, which is a 10 minute drive to some of the best technical runs in Vancouver. The British Properties (BP's) are just up the road and are filled with rad, slippery technical runs. You can pretty much start at the top and work your way down however you want. Another rad feature is the driveways of all the huge mansions and villa's. There are beastly early grabs and banks to slash everywhere you look. Some smooth and banked, some gnarly and covered in moss, the possibilities are endless...
Myself, George and Tony Graves are going up there later on today and tomorrow to do some filming, hopefully we'll have a video done by the end of the week.
The Vernon DH is coming up this weekend, which means a detour to my favorite hill in the world, Giants Head. The weekend after is Kewlona followed by the much anticipated Whistler race. 8 consecutive hairpins and 2 days of riding and racing one of the sickest roads in the country is going to be amazing.
After Whistler I'll be hanging around Vancouver for the Sullivan Challenge and Ride the Giant (The Giants Head Freeride) before heading back down to the Skatehouse in LA via San Francisco for some epic shredding, FUCK YEAH EPIC SKATE TRIP!
May the steeze be with you.
Gabe
Hop's question to Gabe: Is BP an immediate bust?
No, as long as you stay low key and don't skate like a noob in the wrong lane you can get a few hours in no worries.
So far I have only had one encounter with a cop. We had a 20 person session going and it was getting a bit rowdy and after about an hour of skating he rolled up as we were chilling in the carpark at the bottom after a run. He was mega friendly and thought what we were doing was rad. But as usual he had received a complaint and had to ask us to leave. He chilled for a bit and explained that if we kept getting big crews of people, there would be more and more complaints. Eventually there would be a bylaw enforced which would give police and bylaw officers (council workers with a bit more power) the power to take our boards which we would then have to pay something like a hundred bucks to get them back.