. . .hang out in the garage.

A couple of things fell through/in line to make this episode happen. The first was work, I had a shoot cancel with about one week's notice. Sweet, now I can be a part of the All City Showdown that Uprise was putting on..or so I thought. Well, that didn't work out either, we were too late to sign up. So, that left me with a Panasonic GH4 package for the day with nothing to do. Cut to 5 minutes later and get a call about painting some skateboard decks in friends garage...perfect. I think I was more excited to shoot this then any of the other opportunities that had fallen through that day. Lots of fun/beer was had and we even found a new spot. I've said it before, it's the surprise sessions that always turn out to be the best.

Skateboarding is still fun

. . .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.

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)

. . .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!

. . .go back there.

"Yeah, I ollied that hip...in 1994," I said as we walked up to the spot.  Chad said he hadn't skated the downhill bank thing since 1990.  Crap, we're old. What you don't see in the edit is the horrible time we had at the Lockport park.  That place sucks.  We once found a bag of knives there and met a kid who made his own cologne in his closet.  Real talk.

. . .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.