We just got back from shooting the Skatopia/CIA skate team at the Evolution Skatepark Bowl Jam in Canton, OH. It’s got a killer wooden bowl built by Team Pain, two hips, 10 foot deep end, lots of speed lines. The CIA guys dominated – a skatopia jihad as their shirts say – Brandon, Busta, Morgan, and Dan took 4 out of the top 5 place in Expert. Adam took second in intermediate. Brandon raged consistently, high, and every grab in the book. I don’t know how he can hit so many airs back to back. Dan stuck a backside ollie to disaster onto the extension after the judges had already walked away… Morgan’s layback revert was pretty old school for someone only 12. Busta pulled a sick cliff hanger/gorilla grab off the metal beam that I think won best trick. He also made killer trophies: mounted Sasquatch heads with eyes that lit up – no hunting season on them in Ohio.

Brewce is shipping the new Draven Skatopia shoe to skaters worldwide. Using the proceeds to buy more concrete, rebar, gravel… all that good stuff that makes Skatopia work. Finally got myself a pair… now I’m wearing them out doing everything but skating.

And our son no longer says “fuck you”, but all the way home from Canton we did have to listen to him saying “I named Brewce”. Whoa.

Over the next season, we’ll be living down there & shooting the stuff that happens. Next fall and winter we’ll be editing. We’ll keep new stuff coming on the web site up until the movie’s release, and we won’t give the ending away!

Also, we’d like to thank the academy for recognizing us…whoops, got ahead of myself. But we do want to thank everyone who got us footage and stills to help get this web site up. Dan Rea from PoolsnPipes.com gave us footage of Brewce and photos of the bowls at Skatopia. We got flying car footage from Mikie Swartz at WhiplashDVD.com and Turtle flying OFF the car from Chris Gomez with the Old Skars & Upstarts Tour. And finally, our awesome and talented friend Raegan Kelly made this web site happen. Thank you Raegan.

Don’t forget: Buy Skatopia shoes, shirts, decks – contribute for more concrete! www.skatopia.org.

Posted by Colin Powers at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The epic June party was coming up, so we committed ourselves to shooting the party without ever visiting Skatopia. We were paying for this ourselves, so our crew consisted of one camera guy and ourselves (Laurie & Colin). We also brought our son Liam (15 months old) and his babysitter. Yes, we did have second thoughts about bringing a young, pretty babysitter & our small child to Skatopia, based on the stuff we’d heard about it. Not much choice however. We found a pop-up trailer (Camp Documentary) and headed off. We made it very clear to our nanny and camera person – we don’t know how many hours you’ll have to work, we don’t know if the rumors about rape and guns, etc are true, and we don’t know if you’ll be able to shower or where you’ll be able to take a shit.

Upon arriving, we scored one and lost one. We did have the cameras out right from the start (score one for camp documentary – something is always happening at Skatopia!), but we didn’t make it all the way up the gravel driveway (minus one for camp documentary and Colin’s manhood, since he was driving). We looked out to see Brewce Martin - amidst a pack of howling pitbulls and mutts – cackling at the city slickers stuck on the gravel drive.

Brewce was a great host. Despite his reputation as a wild man he kindly helped us find the best spot to park our trailer so that the baby could occasionally get some sleep. He also took great delight in telling us when our cameras missed something great. 88 acres & 2 cameras. Sorry Brewce.

We had arrived not really knowing if we were going to find pure evil or if there would even be a story there. But we left really, really psyched about the film. We knew we could make a film that would be a totally hot film for skaters but also a great movie even if you’d never touched a board.

And though we didn’t know it at the time, we all left changed personally. In fact, during the next week, I made several really unsafe driving decisions and briefly took up smoking. Our son came back saying “git” and “fuck you”. But mostly, Skatopia was a big bucket of cold bracing water in our faces – a reminder to live and not just to exist.

Well, that’s enough history for now.

Posted by Colin Powers at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colin Powers writes:
In ’94 I moved to Oregon and had to check out the infamous Burnside. A concrete vert park built by skaters on abandoned city land, how cool. Went with my old skate buddy, Peter. (We built a whole bunch of driveway ramps in ’76 and ’77 and then a halfpipe in “78 as soon as we saw the first “Rampage” pipe in Skateboarder.) So Pete and I skated Burnside like the old guys that we were, trying to find lines that didn’t involve ollies or dropping in.

There was this guy absolutely tearing the place to pieces – finding high speed lines everywhere, hitting inverts and super-long grinds. Seemed like he knew everyone there, but when he saw our old school boards we started talking. Pretty high energy guy.

Turned out he was from West Virginia, doing a big west coat trip. Living out of some shitty little car with his kid who was about 8 and skating around with oversize pads. Had a young looking girlfriend, too, I think. He wrote out his name on a piece of brown shopping bag – Brewce Martin. Said he had a farm with some big ramps in Appalachia – next time I was in the area, I should check it out. I thought, yeah. right.

Over the years I’d kind of bump into that piece of paper, in an old wallet, desk drawers… always kind of laughed at the “ew”. Finally lost that scrap.

In spring of ’05, Laurie and I were talking about new documentary ideas and I wondered out loud what ever happened to Brewce…sitting at the computer... I googled… holy shit! ………skatopia!

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Posted by Colin Powers at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)