Where have all the skaters gone?

Is it me or has it been very quiet recently? We're getting the usual locals down but I'm sure it's normally busier than this. I've heard numerous conspiracy theories which all fall short of the mark. My personal theory is aliens. Aliens have taken the skaters and won't give them back unless we teach them how to drop in. I'm sure a lot of you are hoping that aliens will take you away because it's a whole lot more interesting than revision. I heard about a guy once that revised so much his head fell off, so BE CAREFUL. There's nowt worse than decapitation except maybe that thing where your board spins up and slaps you between your legs. Yeah, that's pretty painfull, too. And there's the times when you oly down or over something and the board hovers in an upright position just long enough for you land on top of it. It reminds me of a story I read about Tom Penny building a massive kicker with his mate and doing melon grabs out of it. They kept making the kicker bigger and bigger until it got to about six feet high and they were getting about the same amount of air out the top. Anyway, Penny pulls a massive Melon, messes it up and lands with the board, nose up, between his legs. The board sliced a hole, two inches deep into his under carriage. Nasty!

I've added a picture of a card tower that Sean Lomax made whilst working at the park. I hope this provides some inspiration for ideas to relieve your boredom.

Lord of the Park III - Return of the King

The King returned but due to a knee injury (you all know who I'm talking about, right? He's on the poster) he didn't enter Lord of the Park III, he simply returned and watched and cheered the proceedings on in a majestic kind of way. We now have a new King (or lord), Rob Smith! Yeah! (Applause). Rob Smith (Death Skateboards) dominated the park with an outstanding display, using every surface to his advantage. Foot-plants on the fence from the quater to fakie, his famous drop-in on the 12ft vert wall from an edge only just wide enough to get the tail of your board on, and massive air transfers from the quarter to flat bank. The list goes on and on. Close contenders for his majesty's position were Eddie Belvadere and Dan Wileman. The judges tell me that it was a very difficult contest to adjudicate because all the skaters were so good.

Fearless brought a great, big, red midi-ramp which seemed to attract a large crowd of southerners including Greg Nowick and Marc Churchill whose presence on the ramp caused a number our northern favourites to pull out of the comp! I always thought it was the taking part that counts...apparently not in a mini-ramp comp. Woody alone took away a prize for the Mancs and achieved a sweat-pain-guts and glory-filled third place. Churchill grabbed second place. But Greg Nowick proved himself ruler of all things transitioned with a no-holds-barred display of skating, the likes of which have never been seen under that bridge. The air space used by Greg is still recovering from the abuse. Greg also won almost all of the raffle prizes.




Best trick was phenomenal! Dan Wileman took it with ease and I think his winning trick was a frontside 270 tail slide but he did so many it's hard to remember. Rob Smith stole 2nd place from Woody with a (and I'm not certain about this one) footplant indy hand flip to fakie into the large quater, however it might have been his Indy Shuvit transfer from quarter to flatbank. Woody took third place with a wallride backside 180 to bank.









Nev (Matthew Nevitt) won first place in the under 16 park competition, Paul Hill won first place in the 16 and over comp and Paul Edmonson won the unsponsored mini-ramp contest.

Projekts would like to thank everyone that helped out on the day including Dunc, Ste and Dan and Bees for judging, Lucy Adams and Ben Gibbs for sitting at the entrance desk all day long, Ben Perry for holding the comp together with his brilliant MC and DJ skills, the Duds for a sterling performance, French Greg and Mukka for constantly finding work to do, Sean Lomax for filming the whole thing from 9:00AM to 8:00PM and Olly Whitehead for shooting the whole day. We would also like to thank all of our sponsors Shiner, A4 distribution, Kingpin Magazine, Distance, Manchester Leisure and Positive Futures (a department of Manchester City Council), Fos at Landscape, Nic at Power and Emma at Globe. A special thanks has to be given to Nic Powley for producing the amazing poster design for the event. I'm still getting comments about it.