Sunday at Lohrman's

MIKE'S RAMP is actually at his mom's house in Mission Viejo. I think Mom owns a cosmetics company or something like that, but whatever the case, the place is really nice-killer view, nice swim pool, bling bling blab blah. I've probably been over live times and it's pretty much been the same scene: hip, punk types lounging about the pooL, Mike's mom hanging with friends in the house, and heavy shreddagegoing down on the ramp. Let's call it poolside posh punk. The sessions on the metal ramp have ranged from mellow to complete barge patrol. A couple of times it's been all out madness...

The last time I was over, me and Rob walked into a big session going full steam. No time for warming up, just barge and forget about your shaky legs. Jockeying for a spot on deck was a bitch with 20 heads all snaking each other at random. The line-up was varied as always, with yesterday's superstars mixing freely with the gnar-dogs of the present. Grosso dropped into trademark stalled inverts on the extensions, while Kyle Yanagimoto slid backside tailslides across a good 16-feet of ramp. Duane Peters was his hazardous self, landing every trick to tailblock or revert or both. That man is the picture of high punk fashion! Jim Gagne popped gay twists and generally terrorized while tattooed rockabilly chicks sauntered around looking mean and sexy. Some local dude did like 25 frontside grinds in a row and then slammed hard due to dizziness.

Out of the blue, Hackett shows up with T-Mag (huh?) and in a fine melding of old and new, the Hack busts out one of those Osiris stereo backpacks and starts blasting the Nugel The '70s soundtrack pumping, Hackett throws down slash grinds that look just like the one on the Thrasher logo. In between runs I spied him covertly taking sips of my Dr Pepper on the opposite deck. I can't prove this or anything, but after I finished that soda, I felt like my grinds had become markedly meatier.

As always, Mike was cool and collected on his own little metal-surfaced playground, laying it back all over the damn thing and dishing out praise where it was necessary. He can slash with the best of 'em, but don't you dare ask him to do a fake rock.

With the dark of evening coming on, we took our final runs on the ramp and the day of skating was done, Sunday at Lohrman's ramp, as usual, was a gas.

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