2008 marked the 3rd consecutive year for New York City’s premiere skate culture event series.
LMS once again showcased NYC’s incredibly diverse skate terrain & some of skatings best talents past & present. This years competition series, which included 3 stops: the Twisted Trick Comp, Battle My Crew and the LMS Finals is the East Coasts longest running multi stop grassroots level event. The series founder & producer Victor Callender of Wheels In Motion, a 18 year veteran & ambassador of in-line skate culture, has independently produced the event since its inception.
This successful event series is the anchor for NYC’s skate community & has repeatedly proven itself to be the epicenter of the culture/sport in our community. With the success of the 2008 series we are approaching the 2009 season with great momentum & with the support of our sponsors this coming years events will prove to be the best yet.
The 2008 Last Man Standing Series video is a look into the East Coasts premiere skate event series. Coverage includes: Stop # 1 the Twisted Trick Comp, Stop # 2 Battle My Crew and the LMS Finals This event series, which was independently organized & produced by Victor Callender is the longest running skate event series on the East Coast.
In addition to the live events Wheels In Motion has partnered with Ray Mendez (New Amsterdam Films), Mark Carranceja (Noisemaker Media), Chris Cofer (Evotek Media), & Navin Hardyal (Skeptic Media) and Suren Karapetyan who are all skate culture filmmakers to capture the essence of these events on film & bring that to the world audience at large.
Thanks to our sponsors: Integrated Distribution, Rollerblade, Sixwonsix, Valo, Edthirteen ThemGoods, Ground Control, Eulogy and the skate community and spectators for supporting this movement.
LMS CONTEST REVIEW
The Last Man Standing Street Series Competition finals went down on September 20th, 08 in New York City and was brought to you by Victor Callender founder of Wheels In Motion. Hosted by Rahmaan Mazone a.k.a. “Rah Boggie” & Jon Ortiz 2 the LMS is now in its third year, approaching its 4th season (in 2009) and is growing in popularity. This year’s events saw skaters came from as far as Florida, California & Puerto Rico just to compete in one of the summer’s most anticipated street competition on the East Coast. Our 2008 guest list included the likes of such notable skaters as: Billy “Fish” O’ Neil, Mike “Murda” Johnson, Tom Hyser, The Brown Brothers (of B Unique & Co.), Joey G., Matt Andrews, Ray Mendez, Ron Hunter, Davee Blair, Gill Vasquez, Harry and Josea Disla, Ramelle Knight, Dave Ortega, & Ryan Jacklone to name a few. This years competitive skaters were talents such as: Robert Guerrero (California), Trevor Johnson, Lavelle Wimberly, Julian Bah (Atlanta), Alex Nunez, Sam Williams, Hector Gonzalez (Puerto Rico), Ariel Surun and a slew of other extremely talented individuals.
The LMS was held at the world famous Brooklyn Banks. There had never been an Inline skate competition held at the banks before the LMS, which set the precedent for every Banks contest that followed. This year’s LMS Finals was blessed with a beautiful NYC day & after making a few adjustments the competition was well on its way. There was a great turnout with an estimated 500 people in attendance.
Judging the final contest this year was: NYC Legend Ron Hunter, Mike Hazard and Hector Rodriguez. The format was: three rounds of 50 skaters broken up into groups of five (5) and timed (4) minutes in each heat. The top ten skaters who made it through the prelims qualified for the final round.
SPOT #1, was a 16 foot ledge with angle iron. Out of the three rounds this round was the longest. Weeding through all the competitors to find the skaters who had their best stuff showing on this day. Although this obstacle ran the longest length of time it provided that everyone who entered was able to skate & show their arsenal of tricks. It also set the anticipation level high for the preceding rounds.
SPOT #2, was a 3ft high 8 foot long ledge. This obstacle was the favorite in the 2007 LMS competition so we decided to include it this year. One of the highlights in this round was Lavall’s 180 across the entire ledge from end-to-end. This trick was a definite crowd pleaser & got the energy level up to an electrifying level. Another skater that always impresses the judges was 11yrs old James Maray a.k.a. “Little Man”. James arrived on the scene at the LMS 5 Borough King of Queens Competition in 2007 Standing about four foot tall (with skates on!) you would think it would be difficult to get up the obstacles that everyone else was skating, but he surely proved to everyone that even though he’s small he could still hold his ground.
SPOT #3, was a 2’ (H) 8’ (L) 2’ (W) grind box which name was later dubbed the “disaster box”. This box was placed on a platform that was built on the steps of the 10 step drop off rail. The reason why it earned its name the “disaster box” was because in order to grind this box you had to gap over four steps to reach it. Within moments of its completion we noticed a huge crowd of skaters stated to gather atop of the steps.
Observing, it seems as though they were trying to figure what trick they were going to attempt. With 20 minutes on the stop clock the first trick on the box was a disaster soul grind. After that all mayhem broke loose. The skaters were launching themselves, with wreckless abandon, at the ledge pulling off all kinds of difficult maneuvers. At one point we attempted to stop the event because the P.V.C pipe (that they were grinding) broke and the smell of burning plastic polluted the air. But it simply was just was not happening. The skaters just would not stop, regardless of the damaged obstacle. The energy level at this point was inexplicable. The entire event was electrified by the tenacity & ferocity that the skaters were unleashing. Crashes, bails, & perfectly executed tricks caused us all to go into a state that I can only describe, for a lack of a better word, as “bonkers”. Eventually we did get them to stop. And after 25 minutes of hard core skating (5 min over the allotted time frame) we had to call it despite the chants of spectators and skaters for “two more minutes”. Taking the title of the “Last Man Standing” & winning $500 cash was Trevor Johnson with his signature 360 & 450 spin disaster tricks. Congrats to Trevor & a big Thank You to everyone who make this year’s LMS series a resounding success. We are in full gear heading into next year & you can be sure that although it will be difficult, 2009 will prove to be even better.
