etnies

Pre-Turkey Day Team Report!

Posted by: Brink | Tuesday, November 22, 2005 | 10 comments

Love!

It’s been close to a month, and a lot has gone on, so here is the latest and greatest with the etnies family of skateboarders...

You’ve read about it already here on the etnies site, but the Flip/Firm F’East Tour is going down on the East Coast as we speak. Photos, etc. have been put in the galleries, so check it out. Arto Saari, Bastien Salabanzi, Rune Glifberg, and Eric Fletcher are all participating. The tour ends Sunday the 28th, and everyone will be flying back home.

Crew!

Besides that, here is what else has been happening:

Arto, Rune, Ryan Sheckler, Ronnie Creager, Kyle Leeper, Conhuir Lynn, and etnies Canada rider Nathan LaCoste all went out to stay at Ronnie’s house in the Phoenix area November 5–13. The mission was simple. Skate!!! Well, there was also one other mission of the trip, which was to do a signing with Industrial Rideshop, at their Desert Ridge location. Nine days in Arizona can create quite a few stories, and obviously these all can’t be printed here now, so the highlights are what we’ll focus on.

The crew headed out on the 5th, and met up with Matt Price (photographer from The Skateboard Mag) and Mike Manzoori (etnies filmer extraordinaire) to shoot photos, film, sign autographs, and have a good time in general (this is very possibly at Ronnie’s house!). So, the four missions were:

More signing!

1. Shoot photos. After leaving, I think Matt said he got somewhere between 35 and 40 skate photos. That is a success, and you can likely count on seeing a bunch of them in an article in The Skateboard Mag in a few months. That’s just the skate photos. 100’s of random photos came of the trip as well.
2. Film. Well, Manzoori was there capturing all the stuff Matt shot, so footage was collected as well. It must also be mentioned that random bits of footage was collected, some pretty hilarious shit.
3. Sign autographs. Industrial Rideshop hosted the etnies team on Thursday, November 10 at their Desert Ridge location. This was a bit of a 50/60 situation as the security were complete assholes. The signing was scheduled from 6 to 8 pm (we showed up at 6:30, sorry!), and they wouldn’t let us go past 7:30! So half the kids that showed up didn’t even get an autograph. But, thanks to the quick thinking of Travis at Industrial, we decided to head to the Paradise Valley skatepark for a sort of demo/random team approach session. It seemed to work out; hopefully the kids weren’t too disappointed. Again, more lame security guards in this world with something to prove! Thanks to Industrial for having us out!
4. Have a good time in general. Of course, when you are on a trip, plenty of good times are had. That’s expected. But when you are staying at Ronnie Creager’s Desert Oasis, the good times will flow more than normally expected. We’ll just leave it at pool, J-smoothi (Jacuzzi), Arto’s birthday and billiards.

Happy Birthday Arto!

All in all, the trip to Phoenix was a complete success. Thanks to everyone involved for kicking ass!

The last few weeks of Arto’s life has basically been mentioned above. The Phoenix trip, the current Flip tour, and celebrating his 24th birthday November 9th. Oh yeah, one more thing. Apparently he has the cover of the newest Skateboard Mag, issue 22. We haven’t seen it yet, but be sure to check back over the next couple days, as it should land at etnies any day now. Congratulations Arto!!!!!

Bastien Salabanzi finally received his new VISA (business papers, to quote "The Dude," for non US citizens), so he is cleared to go in and out of the States as he pleases for the next few years. He arrived back in the States a few days before the Flip tour, and will be back after that to get back on the coverage mission, and to continue filming for the Flip video. Oh yeah, and last (but certainly not least), as you already read here, Bastien celebrated his 20th birthday on November 18th. The same day he flew out for the Flip tour. Happy Birthday Bastien!!!

Conhuir Noseblunt!

Ryan Sheckler has been at home since getting back from the Arizona mission shooting photos and collecting footage. His first pro shoe with etnies drops in a couple months, and he just got us a nice photo for the ad. Wait ‘til you see it! And be sure to buy his shoes when they come out. Amazing they are!

Ronnie Creager stayed out in AZ for a week after everyone left. Probably to clean up the place, but also to take care of some unfinished skateboarding business. He is now back in The OC, focused on getting photos. No travel or contests for a while, so photo mission is the mission.

Kyle signs another...

Kyle Leeper was in Texas over the weekend doing a couple autograph signings for Quiksilver. Keep your eyes peeled for his team page to launch real soon. He’ll also be working on ad photos for etnies, as his first etnies ad is due real soon.

Rune Glifberg was out in AZ for the last half of the Phoenix mission, and he didn’t waste anytime getting photos. The first day he got a bunch of stuff in a pretty gnarly pool. Then he spent some time skating the Encinitas YMCA down in San Diego, and is currently on the Flip tour on the East Coast. When he returns, it will be back to the mission of collecting more photos. Pretty sure he has a trip planned to Dubai in December.

Rune!

Stefan Janoski has been up in Sacramento the last few weeks skating. Oliver Barton (TWS photographer) was up there for a week or so trying to finish off his interview for TransWorld. Just wait for this one, should be amazing!

Conhuir Lynn is back in Belfast, Ireland. He flew back the day after the AZ trip to spend the holidays with his family before a hectic travel schedule starting in January with the Tampa Am contest at the Skatepark of Tampa. Even though the weather is complete shit over there at the moment, he plans to hook up with Sidewalk magazine and Document magazine to try and get some UK coverage.

Boo Boo

Check out all the photos from this Team Report in the Gallery!

Quite the report. That's all for now! More to come real soon!