o.g. venice ripper that straight-clobbers any terrain with speed. dressen's speed freaks opener still gets me hyped to this day. total devastation.
and honestly, i never knew eric invented the salad grind until about a half hour ago. never got the play on words... i just thought he did them real well. (shrugs)i do miss nonsensical 80's trick names though... granted you had no idea what half of the tricks actually were at the time, but that just added to it. (to this day, i'm still not exactly sure what trick a "sex change" involves.... or a "jellymambo" for that matter.)
now everything's so precise and serious... kinda takes the fun out of it.
i knew the day when "wheelies" became "manual rolls" that we were in trouble.
19 comments:
get happy again Chops, because the one and only Tim O'connor invented the "Scoliosis Grind" in 2009, and I think he invented "the Timmy" which is essentially a back 5-0 front shuv out (in the middle of the ledge) which significantly increases the difficulty at hand. For he is a true pioneer, a real innovator if you will.
o'connor rules... and dude definitely gets shortchanged a bit i think just because he's so funny. dude rips and has done so for a very long time.
and yeah, there's definitely some exceptions to this trend... lazer flips, dolphin flips, my dicks, etc... but i really think it largely has to do with the 80's having just so many eccentric personalities pushing the boundaries.
god bless blender.
saw dressen skate a demo (maybe just by himself. i don't remember any other pros being there) in '88 at astro skate in new port richey, fl. i had read in an interview that he hated doing autographs. i was so determined to stand in line and just thank him for coming and not get an autograph. about 5 dudes from getting to the front of the line i got freaked out and just had him sign my hat. still bummed i chickened out.
First pro I ever met in my life. 12 years old, first trip to Cali w my parents and who do I see skating down the beach? Dressen and Scott Oster. I was shook. My dad made me introduce myself to them, and honestly Dressen couldnt have been nicer. ATV ripper for sure
I remember when I would see Dressen in Thrasher back in the 80's. He always had such awesome pictures and his style looked amazing. One of my early faves for sure. I was shocked though when I first saw actual footage of him skating at some contest (Savannah Slamma?) and he was pushing mongo!!! I couldn't believe it. I have to admit that I was pretty bummed about that. I learned that you can't always tell how someone really skates through pictures. He obviously remedied that situation and definitely cemented his status as a legend. I don't have any tattoos, but if I did, I wouldn't mind getting one from him.
He also alternates between pushing normally in that Savanna Slamma video. We used to do that back in the day to keep one leg from getting bigger (before we got cars).
I think in the Old Oceanside contest video nearly everybody pushes mongo.
I think a jolly mambo is like a straight armed Miller Flip or like a frontside invert revert where you stall the invert?and a sex change is body varial? and Dressen was my first favorite skater along with Tom Knox.
Another one of my all time favorites..
I must of owned about 10 of his DogTown boards...Still have a bunch of those stickers the back to back 87-88 street champion...
A true legend....
O yeah i stole his salad grind on ramps and on ledges..Thanks Eric..
I still call nose manuals nose wheelies haha
The ghetto bird was coined several years ago LOL
Dressen always had that surfer-like carve and style. Totally stoked on it. All the Venice guys seemed to have it.
That Speed Freaks opener is so great. Anybody could get psyched to skate watching that - that should be used as some kind of litmus test.
Wish there wasn't so much snow on the ground so I could just go do powerslides for an hour.
In an old Big Brother, I think Carnie said that backside noseblunt slides should be called EK Rippers; he said this in a caption of Koston doing one. More recently I told my homie Davis, who's made a name for himself doing nollie frontside hurricanes, that he should call that a DT ripper, an obvious Carnie bite, but better than the cumbersome descriptive name. Alas, neither name has caught on.
I remember first seeing Eric D's ads and I thought he looked so smooth. Then I saw him skate in Risk It (or maybe Speed Freaks or Reason, whichever was first) and couldn't believe how versatile he was. He ripped on street, pools, vert, mini. And just as fast and smooth as I had imagined.
As popular as he was, he was still underrated in my opinion. The dude first turned pro at like 12, and then came back and held his own with the likes of Natas and Gonz. He wasn't as artsy as them, but he absolutely KILLED IT.
So glad he's part of the Veterans Division at SC and still ripping it up. Much respect to Eric D. He's one pro I hope to have the chance to meet and shake hands with some day.
skating with him last night. dude is still killing it, and nice as ever.
thanks guys.
never saw dressen skate in person but can only imagine. i definitely think he's one of those early street pioneers whose contributions get glossed over a bit.
econo, no idea about the jellies but i think you're right on the sex changes. haha
keith, one of my favorite dickhead old guy things to do at a skatepark is to compliment 13-year-olds on their "kickflips to wheelies"... drives them nuts.
plat, cbi's got davis' back. dude kills it. that long-ass bs smith in boondoggle... wowzers. and dt rippers just sound nasty.
dedleg, i feel your pain. we just got some more today.
think i've mentioned it on here before but i loved dressen in 1st and hope. definitely still kills it.
on ramps they used to call em rollouts. I learned em before we knew what the name was and figured you'd just call it an ollie rollout. I was bummed when someone finally said they'd heard they were called manuals.
never saw Dressen skate really, but did see him down at Venice Beach one time. he was just sitting on his board against the wall, chilling in the little skate area. and I don't remember if they came with him or just appeared after he sat down, but all of a sudden he had a hot chick sitting on either side of him. true story.
Dressen: style for days. Skated everything. Speed Freaks is still one of my faves mainly for the sheer variety of terrain and rippers. Some great tunes of there too. Had the pleasure of seeing Eric at one of the Savannah Slammah contests when I was maybe 13.
p.s
A "Jolly Mamba" is a fully stalled frontside invert over-rotated to fakie. Kinda like a Miller flip except it's stalled. Way harder. Neil Blender trick. Only him and Lance used did them. Maybe Hewitt.
Replying to the first comment, way late : how did a good old "sugarcane grind" start being called "a scoliosis grind"? And since when is a ridiculous name replaced by a ridiculous-er name?
Fuck yeah... Dressen, on my all time list for sure. 'Member a Dressen, Natas demo... Thought my head was going to explode.
I must have had 10 dog down boards (think they were all Dressen's)... The first time I ever went to Venice I was SOOOOOOO hyped... Didn't see him or anyone else of note for that matter but was so amped.... Spent hours trying frontside wall rides on the boardwalk (finally landed one in SD on the same trip). Also of note... My buddy broke his board and when we went to the skate shop to get him a new one... the shop guy freaked out cuz my buddy wanted grip tape covering the whole top of the board (oh the 80s)...
and if memory serves me... a sex change was a giddy up varial.
So I'm checkin out Thrasher and they have a video of BA doing the blunt slide in their new video and he mentions it was on a Ben Schroeder board. Then I somehow made it to his website... www.ben10schroeder.com. I'm checkin' it out and he's claiming the salad grind was his.
Soooo.... who did it first?
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