| Date: October 19th, 2003 Organisation: 2Hip www.2hip.com: About a week before MTS, Juan Carlos and Josh Shlenz from Denver came down to INTERBIKE in Las VegASS to help party and then to go build ramps in Santa Cruz the next week. Vegas zoomed by in a drunken blur for most and soon enough it was time to head back home and start building ramps. Juan had the idea to build some crazy stuff and I pictured some weird shit too, so together we started to draw out what we wanted and what materials we would need. Grabbing the 2-HIp gold card we rolled to Home Depot at 8:45pm on Wednesday night, Home Depot closes at 9:00pm so it didn't give us much time to grab what we needed. Making jokes about the amount of "wood" in Home Depot was funny, especially since the checkout operators were pissed because we made them stay an extra 20 minutes after closing time. We got the wood and drove off into the San Jose night towards Santa Cruz, in need of sleep and eager to build. Thursday morning rolled in and soon we were down the local ramps building like crazy. Troy McMurrey and his boys from Denver came down to help and drink beer, and take the piss out of Juan, which got a little tedious at times. We got busy eating pizza and building Juan's bank to jersey barrier/ spine/ sub box-thing, whilst the Denver boys got rocking on the 11 foot over vert quarter. Within a day and a half we had it all built and we started picking the other ramps to take, ronw. in the meantime was somewhere in San Francisco haul assing around in a 40ft flatbed truck. We eventually had the truck and the ramps selected (including Jon DeMers' hottie ramp)by Friday afternoon and we started to load them up. It took more than 8 men to lift the spine onto the truck but somehow we got it up there. All the ramps, the bikes and the people were now in convoy mode. We woke up early Saturday morning and loaded into the 2HIp van and the truck, heading for SanFrancisco. Its about an hour drive and most of the way was filled listening to Juan and Jon talk shit and cracking jokes about the gay bars in SanFran, namely "The Stud". If that ain't a classic name for a gay bar I don't know what is. Soon we were bombing the hills in SanFran and we pulled up to the site where MTS was to be. Already there were riders gathered which was cool to see, more than enough were prepared to help too, which was dope. We had to ferry a few more truckloads of ramps in from the Pier but soon enough the course was taking shape. Unfortunately we learn't that the giant wallride had been "stolen" much to everyones disbelief, "How do you steal something so big?" was all you could hear. A Dodge Charger was enlisted to be the car to trash this year and soon we had hips, The Hottie, an oververt beast, a big curved wallride, a couple of spines, a driveway, and Juan's crazy Jersey hybrid ramp on the course. Things were looking good. 6:30pm rolled in and it was time to try and start shutting things down or we'd get rumbled by the police, shouts go to Steve Anzel's boys, Tomy and Jackson, and the crazy boys and girl from Oregon for chilling at the ramps most of the night to keep watch. I was introduced to Fat Slice Pizza, which rules, and there was a good liqour store just down from Fat Slice which rules too! We headed back after eating at Fat Slice to discover a bunch of tramps chilling with the riders which was bizarre. The night mostly consisted of story telling, beer drinking, full-pipe stories, me freezing with half a manquin in the truck, and one of Anzel's boys trying it on with a she-tramp named Sky?too funny. Sunday morning arrived and it was chilly outside, cold enough for a hoody. We moved the ramps around and discussed the previous nights "Burning Bag incident" which had a lot of people laughing. Soon the course was arranged and riders were pouring in. Many local groups, websites, crews, bums etc, were repping and I felt like MTS pulls it all together which was a dope feeling. Signups started, groups were filling up fast, ronw was on the mic, Red Bull was being drunk, and the sun was out- it's all good then. The toilets were opened for the first time and I counted 20 people hit it up, I went in later that morning and already it was a disaster area? "Go back to where you are hated" was tagged on the wall. |
|
| Squirrel took control of the mic and Good class started up. Jackson Ratima threw a no handed peg stall on the sub rail, Tomy Prince and Sterling Erikkson pulled handplants and downside footplants on the spines and the Dodge rear window. Elijah Wright and Nick Chapman were ding some cool street stuff on the driveway, Clit Crew were in effect with the ever present bum rush on the driveway, I saw a manual to barspin 180 from a guy with a shaved head, red bike? nice. Tyson was ruling the Sub rail and the sub box and "Ralph" had one of the lines of the day with a monster truck over the Dodge which was so street it was unreal. "Good" came and went and it had real good riding, pretty much everyone who rode had some good stuff going on and to list it all would take too long! "Great" started up and shit started happening fast. Steve "Ted" Anzel shrugged off the previous nights activities and pulled out some good stuff for the win, Sequoyah Faulk came out with some good stuff too but just missed placing. Ben Kilgrim was ruling with smooth runs and good moves, Jeff Knedleweed also deserves a mention mixing burly with smooth. I was distracted during "Great" due to a big Bumfight going on which looked like a scene from Platoon (Especially when the fireworks started flying and the kid went down, not good) and the need to top up the results from "Good". People were getting rowdy at the bottom of the course and after some crazy hiphop jukebox request, a dude pulled his first ever 360 over the spine, much to the delight of the Clit Crew who promptly went nuts. Some guy also did a backflip over the spine whilst his headtube was attached with Duct tape, after casing frontwheel on the curved wallride took his frame out. There was an interlude after "Great" for some riding and for the scores to get topped up. During the break I saw Cory from Denver almost land a bunnyhop 360 tailwhip into a flatbank which was wild, more driveway action than you could shake a stick at, and some guy taking it hard trying a downside whip over the Dodge Charger hip, burly. "Really Great" rolled in with a Jam format getting ditched quickly basically because it would be too hard to judge. Ryan "Patchy" Fowler rose to the occasion with a handplant 180 over the spine subrail and even a couple 360 handplant attempts over said obstacle. Also, a BIG icepick on the oververt quarter to flat bottom lander, which from over 11ft up is damn street. Alley oop over icepick to back over was another hammer that Ryan Threw down. Joel Hulsey was in the house with super human powers. He blasted the jersey barrier higher than anyone and easily cleared 6 feet out of the top of it (Just riding the thing was hard but to blast that high was unreal.). Also, curved wallrides to table out and a huge gap to feeble across the whole driveway made Joels runs scary to watch. I must add that Joel rode during WWF's impromptu appearance behind the curved wallride which involved some drunk white guy with an afro and Troy McMurrey deciding fighting was better than ignoring each other. After fighting, he also bitched as to why Troy gave him a fake phone number??? What? The same white guy with an afro gave Juan Carlos some shit and then bitched as to why Juan threw him off the curved wallride. It reminded me of Summer Slam 1991 with Sgt. Slaughter and the Ultimate Warrior, pretty retarded. What's the point in coming to an event to fight and throw fireworks, possibly jeopardizing the whole future existence of the event??? Anyway, Joel still rode, even if most of the sheep were more interested in the fighting then the real reason they were there. Scott Foster pulled a handplant to fastplant over the spine subrail which I've never seen before, also a downside whip over the Dodge Charger hip and an over icepick to fakie which was crazy. Chad Bautista rode good and looked agro all the time, big 360's over the spine and some consitant runs made for good watching. Jon Demers threw a trye grab 360 over the spine which was dope, also he was the only rider in the three groups to dare touch the hottie ramp in his runs, "Hottie's Got Pop". He icepicked to fakied it which was cool. Nick Bonner threw a real nice truckdriver over the spine whilst his Denver counterpart Troy Brookshire killed himself trying a flair to double peg which ended up with him clearing the jersey subbox to flat bottom knee casing landing, not nice to see. Cameron Birdwell was in attendance and was riding the curved wallride like a man, both ways and brakeless. Cam threw the biggest superman seatgrab over a spine I've since Joe Rich in '99 in Birmingham England? hell yeah. Sean Parker threw down some burly flatlanding in his run for the crowd, you know it gets them hyped, props for originality Sean! Ryan Armstrong was rocking in a nice shirt and glasses and was all over the course killing it. Smooth and dialed and real fun to watch. Really Great was all about Kurtis Elwell and he went home with the win. Big moves and burliness, hurricanes on the Jersey Sub and some super high carves on the oververt? there's too much to list from Kurtis, nice one. Really Great ended with Puker O'Connel flairing outta the oververt to taco shell landing which I didn't think was do-able. Everytime he went for it the crowd would go quiet then crazy. I couldn't see for all the people but I'm sure he was close to landing it, maybe if there was a better landing available? After Puker shut the place down things started to wrap up. There was so much litter it was unreal! Red Bull cans were everyhere and people were pulling their bikes from the 30+ bike pile, I pity the fool who's bike was on the bottom. Once the results were announced some were happy, some were sad, but that's life. MTS went off this year, maybe a little too much. If Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior hadn't shown up with their group of tag alongs then maybe it would have been a bit more managable, but still it was fun to watch the idiots. It was late when we pulled out of San Francisco after the weekends madness, maybe 1:30am. A bum asked us if we were going to Heaven or Hell and this Bebop-Scatman-Teddyboy interrupted us and said it reminded him of when he was asked the same thing by a Swiss poet, San Francisco is full of nutters. SPONSORED BY: REDBULL ENERGY DRINK PRIZES DONATED BY: UGP / Shadow Conspiracy EmpireBMX / 2HIp Yellow Designs / Soul Video SST / Pryme |
GOOD CLASS: 1.Tyson Fitz 2.Josh Sereglou 3.Sterling Erikson 4.Ramone Maraquin 5.Ryan Rodriguez 6.Tomy Prince 7.Mark Kennedy 8.Chris Lagne 9.Timmy Nicholls 10.Lorin Adams 11.Jeff Benett 12.Elijah Wright 13.Nick Chapman 14.Jackson Ratima 15.Steve Kinghan (tie) 15.Chris Knapp (tie) 17.Chad Romine 18.Devin Hill 19.Anthony Lynch 20.Jody Colbert 21.Nik Schwarzenbok 22.Eric Ambrecht 23.Jason Johnson 24.Jacob Counsell 25.Anthony Quiroz 26.Jorge Bayley 27.Ralph 28.Josh Boothby 29.Chris Rodgers 30.Christophe Ruiz 31.Roberto Acevado 32.Nik Rose 33.Alex Vasquez GREAT CLASS: 1.Steve "Ted" Anzel 2.Jeff Kendleweed 3.Ben Kelgrim 4.Andrew Lang 5.Aaron 6.Jesse Buerster 7.Timmy Makin 8.Mike McNamara 9.Kelvin Coup 10.Jason C. 11.Sequoyah Faulk 12.Chris Savoy (tie) 12.Tyler (tie) 14.Devin West 15.Steve Tairol 16.Thomas Re 17.Brandon Bains 18.Wes Rhoe 18.Richard Warner 20.Colby Kanawah 21.Derek Humphrey 22.Frank Abney 23.Fellipe Gonzales REALLY GREAT: 1.Kurtis Elwell 2.Scott Foster 3.Cameron Birdwell 4.Jon DeMers 5.Ryan Fowler 6.Joel Hulsey 7.Nick Bonner 8.Chad Bautista 9.Ryan O'Connell 10.Ryan Armstrong 11.Ben Brassfield 12.Troy Brookshire 13.Mike Kraniech 14.Ian Hanson 15.Sean Parker 16.Mike Krnaich |
| Kevin McAvoy, www.ridebmx.com, october 2003: Ron Wilkerson took over a section of Golden Gate Park once again on Oct. 19, bringing the Meet the Street circus to the masses. Ron stepped things up this year, obtaining a sound permit and surrounding the contest area with metal police fencing, finally keeping the overzealous crowd off the ramps. The ramps themselves were definitely in better shape than in the previous couple of years, and there were even some slightly different obstacles and a welcome lack of a box jump. Two classes of amateurs took the better part of the day to run, so several people took to partying and setting off fireworks to pass the time, which eventually led to a stupid fight. There seems to be a fight every year, but Ron's cries of "Who came here to see a bike contest?" got the crowd back behind the fence and back to cheering for the riders. As usual, practice was pretty crazy (all entrants were fueled by free RedBull), but at least the riders didn't have to contend with the encroaching crowd, so they had access to every ramp on the course. There was a spine, a spine with a sub rail, a curved wallride, some grind ledges, an over-vert "clamshell" quarter, an old Dodge SUV, and a crazy ramp with a sub on one side and a transitioned jersey barrier-type obstacle on the other. Joel Hulsey somehow managed to blast huge airs out of it. Local hero Kurtis Elwell was busting 540s, hurricanes on the spine rail, and big whips all over the place. Scott Foster three-whipped the spine and jumped icepicks over the spine rail to fakie, but lost momentum while trying to pull a whip-to-icepick on the sub. Cameron Birdwell slipped into the third place spot with his patented dose of burly tricks. |
|
| Steve, www.fatbmx.com, december 2003: Meet the Street was crazy! The course was a mixture of spine ramps, subrail spines, a driveway +grindbox, curved wallride, an 11ft beast of an oververt quarter, a Dodge Charger with ramps on three sides, and the craziest jerseybarrier / spine / subbox / flatbank / quarter ramp ive ever seen. The riders were hyped and so was the crowd. 'Good' class hit up the course and killed it. 'Great' class came and went with Steve Anzel shrugging off minimal sleep for the win with style and balls, Sequoyah Faulk killed it but just missed placing, as did an unknown rider with a purple/lavender seat who was throwing in-downs and no handers 6ft high over the spine. A Cory Nastazio look-a-like bumrushed the course and trained one of the riders, without the rider even noticing!!! Big barshags, bowleggers and ballrides from the Nasty Man kept the crowd on his side. During 'Great' the local bums decided to have a soft toy fight with the bmxers, this was temporarily halted by a hail of fireworks but I still couldnt figure out who won. During the interval between 'Great' and 'Really Great' a rider ate shit after attempting to whip the Dodge Hip, but Cory from Denver didnt as he almost pulled the elusive bunnyhop whip 360... street. The jam format for Really Great was ditched straight away because it would be too hard to judge. Ryan Fowler didnt seem to mind and pulled a handplant 180 over the spine subrail and came too close to a 360 one aswell, next time for sure. Also an alley-oop over icepick to back over and high downtable 360s over the spine were more hammers from Ryan. Scott Foster nailed the spine subrail with a fastplant to handplant and a tailwhip 360 over the spine. Downside whips over the Dodge Hip and a downside whip in the over vert were more highlights from Scott. Joel Hulsy was in the hosue and loving it, blasting the jersey barrier a clear 6ft higher than anyone else... impossible! This ramp is nuts and Joel wasnt scared to blast high. Big gaps to feebles and a huge curved wallride to table out from Joel made his runs super scary (but fun) to watch (All during an impromptu fight between Troy McMurrey and a load of drunk idiots). Chad Bautista was all over the course kicking ass, as was Jon DeMers with tyre grab 360's and a crazy icepick to fakie on the ever tight and vertical 3ft 'Hottie Ramp'. All in all, 'Really Great' had some amazing riding from every entrant and it was good to see Cameron Birdwell and Mike Krnaich riding hard. Meet The Street was a success again this year, apart from the drunk idiots. Make it out to San Francisco next year and you wont be dissapointed! |
|