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AoS-Fest II : The Return of the Green Monkey

Intro & Preface Friday 1  2  3  4  5   ) Saturday 1  2  3  4  5  6  7   ) Sunday 1   ) Afterwards Sponsors

Day 1: Friday October 1st

The Road trip begins…(or Getting There is Half the Battle)

AlvaCollector: Thursday August 31st...Woke up bright and early, started the beast and let it run the entire time I was making myself pretty 3 minutes later I loaded up the gear(1 board, 1 backpack neither of which were used during the trip). My biggest fear is that we were leaving during rush hour and Chicago rush hour is nowhere to have a 1978 Jeep that you know nothing about. I put my fears aside and headed over to Naperville to meet up with EM Dash. Dash and I headed over to Indiana to meet up with ShackleMeNot. To my surprise there was no traffic. Its like the Jeep was Moses parting the traffic to get us to our destination. We arrive at Shackle's house after getting lost in a network of twisted roads in his neighborhood. We said our hellos and then Shackle proceeds to load up half is house in the truck. Apparently, he's moving to Nashville, at least for the weekend that is. Finally we hit the open road.......Having never met Mike before we had plenty of time to get to know each other on the way to Nashville. The one thing I noticed is...Mike likes soda. He informs me that he's been up all night so I tell him I'll drive so he can get some rest its going to be a long weekend. Instead of rest he opts to drink 4 gallons of Mountain Dew and ask us to pull over about every 15 minutes so he can piss. A little frustrating but knowing the gas gauge didn't work on the Jeep I used these opportunites to top off the tank of the Jeep. I was pretty much a nervous wreck the whole drive, I just wanted to get to Nashville so I wouldn't have to deal with this Jeep anymore. As the drive went on I found myself more and more stressed. The last hour of the drive seemed like a week! We finally arrive in Nashville and phone Lush as to where the hell we can stay. He gives us directions to a hotel that was about twice as much as Shackle and I wanted to spend but once we saw the room we would have paid twice as much for it. We decided to head out and grab some dinner and I needed a beer. The Alabama Bar and Grill was our place of choice. The food was about as good as Alabama's music. They should rename the place Alabama's Road and Kill. I was a little nervous driving back to the hotel and I'd only had two beers. The Jeep wobbles and shakes to it looks like your driving drunk even when you're not. We made a quick stop to pick up some beer and smokes and headed to our room. We didn't sleep too well due to the excitement of seeing our bros the next day. Plus, everytime I fell asleep Shackle's girl would call. While he was asleep and oblivious to the annoying ring, I was not.
ShackleMeNot: Thursday morning Jeff (AlvaCollector), and Mark (EM Dash) arrived at my house around 9:00am, I had been up all night at my girlfriend's house and had just finished up drilling new truck patterns into my SC Jeff Kendall deck. We quickly packed all my stuff into the now infamous JEEP (more on that later) and took off. We hit the road and I directed AC and EM through the back roads of Indiana to get to the main highway which we would take all the way down to Nashville. We made it there very quickly, however an old man in front of us delayed the trip a bit because he was doing 20mph under the speed limit and swerving all over. I believe he was either very senile or having a stroke. The first part of the drive was very nice, I had never met Jeff before, so we talked most of the way down, just shooting the shit. From skateboards, to music, to our shared hatred for Indiana, it was great. We pulled off a few times, because I was in the proccess of drinking 2 two liters of Mountain Dew Live Wire, and constantly had to urinate. I then earned the nickname "Bladder Boy". We stopped at a Wendy's somewhere south of Indy to grab some food, I thought it was pretty shitty, although I bought 4 chicken nuggets and got 6 instead. Good deal. The rest of the drive was pretty boring as far as scenery goes, except for Louisville, and getting in to Nashville. The only bad part was that the Jeep has no working gas gauge, so we had to keep stopping on the way to fill up every 150 miles or so. We made it to Nashville in about 8 hours, and Jeff and I drove around downtown a bit to look for the hotel that some of the other portions of the crew were staying. We called Lush, and got directions to a hotel near the park and made our way around the city to get there. The hotel was very nice, Hotel Preston on Briley Parkway. Nice room, awesome bed, and killer view of the parking lot. We hung around the room for a few and went to get some dinner...and beer. We decided on eating in the South the right way and went to the restaurant owned by the band Alabama, at the Opry Mills Mall. Pretty funny place. After that, we hit the arcade/bar and I wasted some money while Jeff had a beer in preparation for the next day. We wandered around the mall for a few and went back to the hotel, stopping on the way to get beer. Fell asleep early. Friday morning, after our second shift of sleeping we went to get breakfast, and went directly to the park. I got started skating, while Jeff got started drinking. Not too long after our arrival, Steve (The Green Monkey) showed up, as well as Mark. I stopped to talk to people once in awhile, but I just wanted to get a feel for the park and start throwing tricks.
Amorone: My trip began Friday morning...almost. I had planned on leaving around 11am and being at the park by 2pm-ish to get things underway. I had flown in from my project in San Antonio the night before. I got up Friday and had to organize getting my junk together, riding over to my pal, Little Jon's place, and then the two of us went to the airport to pick up an Avis rental car...my car was too small and his truck would not make the trip. So anyways, by the time that was all said and done, we were on the road after leaving Avis at around 2pm. They gave us possibly the shittiest car they had too...and I am an Avis Preferred member from al my traveling for work!!! The ride was uneventful for the most part...aside from me stopping to get beer in one of Alabama's dry counties….doh! We got into Nashville, called Lush to let him know and headed first to the hotel to check in. Again, from traveling, I got hooked up with two rooms at the Marriott Courtyard right downtown 2 blocks away from Printer's Alley and Second Avenue. Location, location, location. Haha So after that, Jon and I were starving and decided to walk down and hit Hooters for beers, hooters and crappy food. We asked about the skatepark and explained why we were in town. A manager there was all too happy to give us directions to the park. We said "thanks" but soon found out, he had given us possibly the longest way to get there! It took forever! Around 6:30pm, we finally rolled up at the park. Immediately, I picked out AlvaCollector, Gusto and Green Monkey hanging out with another small group (who I later found out was ShackleMeNot and others).

The Craptastic Avis rental
(it actually looks better here than in person)

Little Jon at least got something on our pit stop
The Green Monkey: On the way down, I stopped for gas in Metropolis, Illinois--the boyhood home of Superman. The gas station I stopped at was half Superman shrine/gift shop, and half grungy southern Illinois gas station. I couldn't resist the opportunity to purchase an overpriced ($4.99) refrigerator magnet with Superman in the process of throwing an old Packard. In typical southern Illinois fashion, I couldn't pay for my gas and my trinket at the same register. Of course. How reasonable. After milling about outside for a few minutes, I found a local redneck to snap a picture for me. Instead of standing with my head above the Superman cutout, I thought that it would be a much funnier picture for me to just appear to be hanging out with a headless Superman. The redneck didn't understand why I would want such a picture, nor did he grasp what I thought was very straightforward humor. Nevertheless, he agreed to take the photo, although I got the feeling that he felt somehow sacrilegious and profane afterwards. Here's the picture. Christopher Reeve died three days after this picture was taken. I'm very sorry for whatever role I played in killing Superman.
TGM and the headless Superman cutout
LUSH: Let's see, my weekend began with Gusto's plane 3 hours late (allegedly NOT his fault...) then running out of gas in a contstruction zone at 5 PM rush hour (again, Gusto riding shotgun...a pattern perhaps?) - it refired and we made it to the parking lot of ill repute - ShackleMeNot followed me in the illegal JEEP (after a few laps to "test" the brakes) when it really ran out of gas, pushed me up the off ramp to score some fuel - "trust me", I think I said...
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