Philly Skate Trip

Tuesday I received a text from Tyler B., asking if I wanted to Philly on Friday. He talked about going sometime in the summer before but this came up quick, we never even talked about the dates before. I quickly checked with my wife, and she was very supportive of me going on the trip. Luckily my job is pretty flexible, running a skatepark leaves lots of opportunities for things like this.

We left Friday around 5:30pm, not arriving to our Days Inn Hotel until about 11:30pm. As we drove into the hotel we knew this place was super sketchy. Signs in the parking lot read "We are not responsible for damages or things stolen from your car." As we walked inside, the front desk was shielded by glass separating the costumers from the employees. We stood there over hearing a conversation between the employee and the costumer next to us. The man complained and stated that the employee is lying to him as he complains about his room and how much they are charging him. When we arrive at our room, we open the door and see only one queen size bed, for all four of us to share. The brothers slept in the bed, as Dusty slept in the chair and I on the floor.

The first spot we hit the next day was the new street based skatepark, known as the Paine's Park. This is probably one of the best skateparks I've ever skated. It was mostly street based but had a really good flow with lots of tranny also. This park left many open options for lines and creativity.

Going to our next skate spot.

You can't go on a Philly skate trip without stopping in at Love park. Everyone has seen so many tricks go down here through skate videos. However, with the crowd and the wind blowing the fountain water everywhere we didn't stop to skate here, just to look at it.

The next spot we stopped at is one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It was the rail that Dane Burman fs 50-50 in the Zero "Cold War" video. This thing was enormous! Way bigger then it looked in the video. From the top of the rail it was a two story drop and coming off at the bottom of the rail is alone like jumping off a room of a building.

Dane Burman 50-50 on the Thrasher Cover

The plaza up at top of the rail, was flooded with skaters, I couldn't believe that these skaters weren't being kicked out be security by allowed to skate on all these objects. (Photo: Me - fs boardslide by Noah Blackert - edited by myself).

Tyler Blackert -bs board to fakie. Photo by Dale Nolan Jr. (Me)

There was plenty of homeless people asking us for money all day. However, after I refused to give this man cash, he asked me to take a picture of him, and to send it to him.

Being in Philly we had to stop at Kerry Getz's skateshop, Nocturnal. After we bought something to remember them buy, they directed us down the road to a pizza place to for lunch, known as Lorenzo & Son Pizza. For only $3.50, you get this giant slice of cheese pizza. I've never been so full I couldn't even finish the crust off a single slice.

Heading back to the car, we traveled through China town. It reminded me so much of Taiwan. I loved hearing the Chinese being spoken as we skated through the districts.

My phone had the gps location tagged to where we parked, however my phone died as we were getting close to Love Park. We skated for another five blocks trying to find were we parked but got a little lost and confused. Dusty was sure we parked near 20th st. No one was really sure though. Tyler B. insisted that it was on 9th and Arch. So we turned around and skated all the way back realizing that it was definitely not in this area. We skated all the way back to Love park again doing one big circle. Trying to retrace our steps, Tyler B. remembered that he had a ticket from the parking garage. He pulled it out revealing the street address of our car, on 21st St.

After we got back to our hotel, Tyler Blackert and I decided we wanted to ollie the rail across the street. It was getting pretty dark, which didn't make it easy nor did the rough cement that was our run up. However, we both managed to get an ollie over it.

The next morning, we hit up the Patrick Kerr Skatepark. It had some good objects, and some really bad ones. It was actually a really fun park for the horrible design, which kinda made it cool. 

While we skated, I got into contact with a friend from college, that lived 30min away. He and his wife managed to drive out to visit me, we got to chat for about 15min before we had to head back home. While we waited for them to arrive we explored the river.