The one thing that seemed obvious (and a little nerve racking) was that we couldn't be this far into Ohio and NOT go to
SKATOPIA . My camera battery died a hour or so after arriving so this post will be a collage of my photos and others. I felt it was fitting because there was no way my camera was going to capture how Gnarly this place is.
After driving down dirt roads, up and down private drives, and back again, we found a mailbox for skatopia. A quick turn and a hundred yards up another dirt road and we were met with the famous gates to
88 Acres Of Anarchy, the ones that are always open, lead to a patch of land controlled by Brewce Martin, policed by a gang called the C.I.A., and maintained by all that live or visit there. EVERYONE gives something.
It was 11:30 at night when we finally arrived, our van packed full of beer for us and for the mandatory donation, and followed by the car. Someone popped out of one of the graffiti covered trailers and I got out of the van to meet him.
We shook hands and he just looked past me to the van and car.
"You got 2 cars?"
"Yeah, Man. Thanks for having us."
"We ain't accepted you yet."
We didn't see any burning cars, but you can seriously feel the energy and excitement of being on land where no one was concerned with what the fu@k you did. While we were there the locals were content with the beer bribe for the night and friendly in a eery kind of way. I did feel our numbers helped. I imagined a group of four or five could have easily been stripped of all beer,food, money,or clean clothes they had, but in a
FRIENDLY kind of way.
We made ourselves at home and ran around the farm peeking around every corner we could, running up and down the huge staircase to the wooden bowl. 13' deep, a 6' shallow, and a 7' waterfall, all pool coping and full gnar, complete with passed out mom.
Packed
This pipe is huge. Brenden tripping on it
one of thirteen dogs on the farm.
check the hight by Dustin in the back ground
I can't find the photos or video but I'm pretty sure Rune ollied this gap.
We set up camp in a far corner of the top field. The one thing that kept going through my mind was we were essentially sleeping on the track they raced along in the
BowlJam videos. I just imagined if I was ready for bed, some Skatopian might just be ready to light up one of the various cars and trucks and take a lap right through us. I told myself, after he hit the first couple tents he would probably stop, and I was able to sleep.
We set up by headlights. It was real dark, not city dark. Every star in the sky I recognized was buffered by hundreds more.
The next morning our Skatopia tour took off again. You had your choice of wake up calls, Someone skating the concrete bowl at the top of the hill, dogs fighting in the distance , or a lone helicopter peeking around. I slept threw all of them and awoke to Cult leader Brewce peeling out in a pick up truck up to our camp.
He seemed excited to see us, asking how we slept, telling us we picked a great spot ,and getting the dogs in a wrestle for our entertainment telling us " Watch out thats how Vic started."
We had plans of leaving sooner then later so we weren't held as labor ALL day.
Brewce put it on the table
"You guys want to do a couple hours of work? Or do you want to go right to the museum and spend a couple hundred bucks?"
We were all quiet, not wanting to upset our host till I said " Museum sounds like a good start"
We all bought shirts and stickers and looked at the amazing collection of boards he has. Not just boards, but a history and timeline of styles, fads, and inovation. The local crew is the CIA and Brewce asked if everyone was familiar with the
Iran Contra scandal, dropping some knowledge on some of our travelers that were being born when it surfaced.
After we dropped some cash on T's Brewce was on fire again and making us feel more and more at home, insisting we couldn't leave until we skated the concrete bowl with HellSkull and that we "woulldn't be disspointed". How could we resist?
We hiked back up the hill with boards, beers, and Bros. Although Brewce fell off a lader and couldn't skate with us ( "Some Hippy wasn't holding the bottom") he did walk up and hang out with us, Telling stories about the locals and asking for ideas about a street course.
Brewce was really nice and down to earth. Even remembering names and on more then one occasion I heard him saying things like "Pale Phil is over there trying to stay out the sun." and " Where's Dustin, He got one." I thought it was so rad he was spending time with us and not just
watching us. He was right ,HellSkull and the bowl did not disappoint. His upfront attitude and energy had me tripping again over the fact that this is the guy who has the last word over a place that encourages chaos. Behind the smile and jokes you could still see the power and danger that lies below this entire compound. Every story had me rethinking how someplace like this can exist. The answer seems to be skateboarding, it's the only thing that connects these people and you can feel that Brewce really LOVES skating and all it entails.
SLAP footy
Mike kept the van running the entire trip
and every stop back to PA...well you know,
