. . .skate a little longer.

Sundays Episode 48 - Night Moves from peter w. on Vimeo.

. . .build a dumb ramp.

It feels good to be back.  Chicago's winter was the worst that I could remember.  We had our first 60 degree day and what do we do?  Build a dumb ramp out of scrap wood in Randy's backyard, it makes sense if you think about it...
So yeah, most of the plywood that Randy had was only two feet wide so that's how wide it ended up being.  Two feet is way narrower than you think.  Oh, and the coping was made of branches.

. . .get a job.

Sundays Ep. 45 Red Bull Daily Grind from peter w. on Vimeo.

If you watch only one office skatepark themed video with a Dolly Parton soundtrack, make it this one! 

Every once in a while, I get lucky enough to work on something that involves skateboarding.  It's great when passions collide (That may be the name of my next romance novel).  Back in November, we worked on Daily Grind with Red Bull.  Pretty much the idea was to build a skatepark on the 23rd floor of an epic office building in Chicago's loop.  Unfortunately, I wasn't going to be shooting this one but I was there to make it look like a real functioning office. Not ideal but still really fun. So we put up some cubes, hung a bunch of terrible posters, and so on.  It turned out really well, I think?

Even more fun than the set dressing (that's an odd statement),  was the skating.  The Daily Grind was actually skateable for about 3 weeks or so.  If you've ever been in Chicago in November, you know how much you need an indoor skatespot come winter.  Somehow, the Sundays crew was able to get in there and get a little bit of shred on (See shredding above).

Here's Red Bull's edit.
 

Sundays Ep. 44 All City Showdown Chicago from peter w. on Vimeo.

Two, maybe three, months ago the Sundays crew signed up for Uprise's All City Showdown (ACSC).  Inspired from the Seattle contest of the same name.  How it works is you have a team of 3 skaters and one filmer and you get 8 hours to get clips.  At the end of the day, everyone turns in their raw footage and they make a video out of everyone's footy.  So, probably the most epic Chicago skate video was made over the span of 8 hours.  I think there were 29 teams (That might be high) in the contest this year.  Crew's came from Michigan, Ohio, Dax even flew in from Arizona for it.  Needless to say, Team Last Place (That was our team name) was in for some stiff competition.  Spoiler alert, we did not win.  We had a few clips in the final edit, which you can buy from Uprise.

So, this is my edit of our footage from that day.  I decided to forgo the GoPro and use a big boy camera for the day, I rented a Sony FS700 from the boys at Magnanimous Media and borrowed a slider from Mo.  Not going to lie, I was really pulling for Best Use of Books Found Under a Bridge or Most Dramatic Shot of Sweeping but to my dismay, neither of those are real categories.

No one on our team thought we would win but this is skateboarding, it's not about winning.  It's about the experience and getting rad...which, I think we did a pretty good job.

Thanks again Uprise. Also, big thanks to Team Last Place: Randy Korwin, Zach Martin, Bill Wiora, and Larry Dobson (Life Coach)

. . .duck and cover.

Michigan City has one of my all time favorite spots but we haven't been out there for like eight years?  It's only an hour or so away, who knows... But yeah, it's always rad to get out there and shred.  It's kind of an eerie ghost town on Sundays, which works out fine.  We did manage to hook up with a local, Gordy Tharp, who destroyed the bank spot with some casual originality.  Gordy's trying to keep his scene alive out in Michigan City.  Here's a link to download his 'zine "The Lurker."

. . .fall down, sometimes.

It's not that often that you see the filmer (in this case, me) fall and manage to still get the shot of the skater who then slams too. I'm pretty sure if you watch this clip, it'll open up a worm hole or something like that.

. . .skate some more

Holy crap.  This is the 40th Sundays episode?  Crazy.  Tons of skating in this one.  We had a tight crew and actually fit into one car or skated from spot to spot.  Larry was our tour guide and totally came through with some random/awesome spots.  I kinda feel like everyone (but me) stepped up their game for this one.  Even crazier, we skated for 9 hours...

. . .hang out in the garage today.

It was hot so we go started early this time.  Then the rains came so we got our mid '90's on and skated manny pads in a parking garage.  Of course, our warm up spot became our all day spot!  Randy channeled his inner Ronnie Creager and moves were made.  Also, we had had a guest filmer for some of this.  Jeff made his Sundays debut, thanks for the help!

. . .skate longer than an hour.

Sundays Episode 37 - Keep Going from peter w. on Vimeo.

Some old dudes skating all day long long? Yup, that kinda happened. Two Skateparks and some street spots! Villa Park and Woodridge and some random crusty ledges in between.

. . .uh, I don't know anymore.

So, I'm not too into the big name takeover in the skate shoe world (I know, I've owned a bunch of Nikes blah blah blah). I'd like to think I'm reformed or born again when it comes to supporting anything Skater owned/operated. However, the one thing I really appreciate with these bigger companies coming in is the time and money they put behind their videos (Hopefully, guys like Russell Houghten are making some money). It really gives these guys, the filmmakers, a great chance to do something different.  Don't get me wrong, I still love the gritty GX1000 series but the camera nerd in me loves to see new technology and techniques put to work.  This New Balance Numeric video, "A Place in the Sun," is a pretty great example of that.

I'm so confused...and hungry.

A Place in the Sun from New Balance Numeric on Vimeo.

. . .try going west sometime.

Finally we had a break in the weather and I had a break from work.  We rallied some troops and headed west to the Roselle skatepark and a pretty rad street spot.  Not shown, is our trip to Yeah Boardshop where we all stocked up on skate goodies. Thanks again Dav!

. . .use it or lose it.

A day in my life, when it's nice outside. from peter w. on Vimeo.