Bash at the Beach Episode 3

theshrew13

• June 25 2002
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The Mervyn’s Beach Bash has been an annual event since I moved to California three years ago.It’s basically a chance for various companies that are trying to market to people that participate or are interested in action sports (mostly those that are interested; participants rarely have extra cash) to display their wares, dole out free soft drinks, and sign people up for credit cards with low, low interest rates of 21.9%. Oh, there are a couple of contests and a beach volleyball competition as well. Speaking of beach volleyball, have you ever seen those girls? They’re huge. Not at all what I would expect (or hope) to see from a few Bettys that hang out at the beach all the time in skimpy bikinis. But alas, that is another story and if I continue I’ll have some rather muscular women out to get me. So, where was I? Oh yeah, back to the beach.

If you’ve been to a Beach Bash you’ve discovered two things. Wearing skate shoes and walking in sand sucks, and it takes a hundred car jacks to keep a bowled in vert ramp level when it’s set up on sand. That’s right, sand. The Levi’s Fly Bowl (formerly called the Soul Bowl) is set up smack dab in the middle of Redondo Beach, on the beach. Due to this it takes a team of one person (okay, so he isn’t really a team) constantly checking and adjusting the jacks to keep the bowl from falling apart, or at the very least from sinking into the sand. The bowl is the host to skateboard, inline, and bike vert contests, which stretch over the weekend. Bike vert qualifiers are held on Saturday and finals on Sunday.

Saturday morning started off rather cold, and I was hating the fact that I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket and was too lazy to hike back to my car to get one. That brings me to another off topic point¿parking. It sucks. I had to park a mile away and hoof it to the beach. Qualifiers went down pretty much as I expected, except for one thing¿Koji Kraft. I hadn’t seen him ride since last year and it does look like his ankle injury has tamed him a lot. Gone is the reckless youth that spent as much time lying on the flat bottom as he did in the air. Now Koji is riding with a calm confidence that has definitely benefited his riding. It was also good to see Jay Miron riding at the contest, and let me say one thing about Jay’s riding¿fast. Jay flew all over the bowl at mach speed making his runs all the more interesting. Of course, Jamie Bestwick and Kevin Robinson were there to round out my four favorites for the weekend. Unfortunately Kevin wasn’t able to advance to the finals due to a no-handed flair-to-whiplash that knocked him out for a short while. This was Kevin’s second concussion in as many weeks and it prevented him from finishing his qualifying runs. Qualifiers went down fairly quietly with nothing too insane happening, but there was a lot of very solid riding.

After qualifiers were over, a high air contest was held. Despite the concerns of his friends, K-Rob came back for this contest and missed getting the highest air by less than a foot. Talk about an iron man, Kevin’s desire to push himself is endless. The highest air of the day went to Jamie Bestwick, who followed up his first place qualifying with a 12′ air that snagged him a cool grand.

I had to DJ at a club that night, so I took off as soon as the high air contest was over to get some rest. Unfortunately, I ended up playing a lot longer than I thhought and didn’t get home until close to 5am. That combined with entirely too many refreshments throughout the night made waking up on Sunday morning very difficult. By some stroke of luck, a mid-sleep bathroom call woke me up just in time to take a quick shower, drink a ton of water, and make the drive back to Redondo Beach. As I made my way to the contest I once again silently bitched about the lack of public parking in California’s beach communities and strolled towards the contest area (albeit at a somewhat slower pace than I had on the previous day). I showed up just in time to get a pre-contest snack at the athlete’s tent and made my way up to the judges’ booth for a good view of the contest.

Chad Kagy injured his foot shooting a Hoffman ad after qualifiers so he wasn’t able to ride in the finals. He took eighth by default. Jim Burgess took seventh and Jay Eggleston took sixth. Koji wasn’t able to continue his momentum from qualifying and had a few bails that led to a fifth place finish while his mentor Jimmy Walker snagged fourth. John Parker came in third place and came very close to pulling a double-tailwhip. Jay Miron, took home second place with a superman-tailwhip and a smooth-as-glass downside-whip. Jay also impressed all the riders on hand by being the only person to air over the hip. Oh yeah, Jay called it out before he did it, too! That’s determination. First place went to Jamie Bestwick, who is on fire right now. Jamie can do just about every trick in the book both ways, and does so regularly. His trick of the day was almost a footplant-to-flair but he just barely missed it and was too tired to go for it again.

After the competition was over I hightailed it home to get some much needed sleep. Besides, the snacks they provided the athletes with this year weren’t up to the standards that have been set in the past, so why would I bother to hang around?