Click on the image below to see all the pics from Friday night!

So, yes TK didn’t show up for Skate the Shop like he was supposed to. But hey, the guys over at KR3W said they would make it up to us real soon, and send the whole damn team to the shop on Nov 1st. And Skate the Shop looks like it turned out to be quite the kick-ass good time anyway. Big thanks to Keith and his bummer of a website www.bummer.ws for the pictures.

Skate the Shop @ 9Star (minus TK)…

DJ OMG & DJ Apples…

The Winners…

The Girl Skatepark Bus Trip went down this past Friday, and if you missed out you missed one hec of a good time. We crammed on couple of old school busses and headed to Torrance CA, to the Girl & Chocolate Skateboards warehouse for a day of seshing their private park. We rolled in around noon and rocked the warehouse into the afternoon. There were plenty of cookies, raisins, waters and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches flowing. It was pretty tight in there but everyone was having a good time. Justin Eldridge, Rick Howard, Mike Carroll, Guy Mariano and a couple other dudes from the office where hanging out, and getting in on some of the pb&j action. Then the pro skaters hosted a couple best trick comps, one for the little kids and one for the older guys. Nine Star team riders took the top spots with Vitor Borger taking first place, Jeremiah Bohnet taking second, Nate Principato taking third and Ziggy rounding out fourth place. They all got gear from girl and chocolate. All in all it was an awesome time had by everyone, that is everybody but the Mission Viejo bus driver, you can scroll to the bottom to read that story. Check a video from the day below, and the grip of photos thanks to Reza Patrick Borghei.

The bus headed back to Mission Viejo had the craziest bus driver in the world. When we were almost back to Nine Star she pulled over the bus in a Huntington Beach parking lot, open the doors and ran out of the bus crying. No one knew what was up. Was there a problem with the bus, had she just found out her cat died? It was nuts! It turned out she couldn't handle 50 sweaty 9 to 13 year old skate rats yelling and peeing in gatorade bottles, who knew? The bus ride was everything you would expect from a bunch of rowdy skaters, but apparently this lady was under the impression she was going to be driving the Hearts and Hugs Foundation Children's Choir. I'm not sure what she was thinking, but locking up 50 tied and hungry skaters on a stinking hot bus for an hour while you re-compose yourself is the worst idea ever. Everybody on the bus was going nuts, while we tried to reason with the bus company to find another driver. To make a long story short, the Huntington Beach police came and said "get these kids the &^%$ home", so she reluctantly got on the bus and drove us back. But not before she pulled over a second time, so we had to promise to sit in the seats silently the last 15 miles to the store. Needless to say we're skipping that bus company next time. Big thanks to everyone at Girl Skateboards for making this possible, and thanks to all the parents that came along on the trip. We'll see you all on the next bus trip!

Pick up a copy of the new Automatic Mag and check out our own Andrew Gallagher on the cover getting nasty on an 18 stair! If you catch him working in Nine Star Los Angeles, be sure to get an autograph…

Check it out, video footy of our X Games victory! Thanks to Vimby.com for the vids

Also, check out Nine Star team rider Jeremiah Bohnet stomp out 1st place in the NHSSA comp earlier that day.
Click here to for the full story.

Nine Star skate team came thru huge today by putting together solid lines all day to take X-Games 14 Shop Gold medal. The team took silver last year and upped the ante this year by bringing home the gold medal this time around. The day started on a good note when Nine Star's own Jeremiah Bohnet beat 15 other skaters from the top high school in the NHSSA division to become the X-Games' best high school skater in the nation. He threw down hard and big and claimed top high school skater midway thru his jam session and took first place unanimously. After the High School X-Games The Shop Challenge began. United eliminated ZJ Boarding house and moved onto the final while Nine Star battled Active ride shop and eliminated last year's champs. The battle between United board shop and Nine Star was a very tight one. Both teams were skating very hard and fast. The United skaters were throwing down consistent big tricks over the grass gap and then moved onto the roof gap. This pumped up the Nine Star Skate Team even more and they decided to spice things up. Andrew Gallagher was throwing huge Benihana's off the grass gap while Aryeh Kraus was ollying over the hubba ledge of 5 flat 5 to the side of the obstacle. Andrew Pott was also busy stomping hard flips and front side flips off the roof gap. Wen it all came down to it, team Nine Star just had too much momentum and ammo and brought home the gold medal! Congrats to Team Nine Star and everyone who came down to cheer on the team. All you skate rats who woke up early and took the bus just to come down to staples, we appreciate the support.

Here are some photos from the X-Games, Enjoy.

The Element Team BBQ was rad on Sunday, i broke my camera which was not rad, so I only have pictures from like, half the event. Thanks to Element we have some sick pics they posted on their site this morning. Check em out below:

So the ESPY awards went down in LA at the Nokia theater last week, and guess who was at the official after party?! The Nine Star skate team was invited to warm up the big stair set in the middle of the party before a demo by Koston, P-rod, TK and Jeremy Rogers. It was a blast, Sean got a bunch of pictures and then lost his camera so you will all have to make do with my digi-shots I took as I ran around eating and drinking all the free sushi, in-and-out, open bars and bacon wrapped hot-dogs.

Plus check out the video shot by the ESPN folks.

In case you weren't  following the Maloof Cup over the weekend, Paul Rodriguez just beat out every major skater in the world for a $100,000 check! Click the photo for the full results.

Check it out, lots of familiar faces in this vid, and the rap at the end is funny.

Our skate team made it to the quarter finals on Saturday during the X Games Shop Challenge, that means we are going to the X Games on Aug 2nd to compete against the 3 other top shop teams for gold, silver or bronze. Here are a couple photos and video from the event.

UPDATE: here is what the guys at Globe had to say about the event, it seems everyones favorite tough guys came to do what they do best.

 Mason  is working hard on putting together a banger part that i can't wait to see! Mason is one of my favorite kids to watch skate, He is coming up!

So untill it's finnished everyone can enjoy his old montage.

I got this from my boy Dave Anderson a while back but forgot to post it (must of had some brain cells die on me). Scott's got balance…he beat me with in the first twenty feet!!! check it out.

After all the kids in the store have been watching those videos below and having Nate teach them how to do flip tricks properly (it's funny how many kids kick down instead of out) I decided I better post the PROOF trailer with his steezy hard flip in the beginning. See kids, all that work really does pay off…

And now, the rest of those "How to" videos with Nate Principato, do as the master instructs. Will someone please post a comment with the story of how these came to be, they're actually pretty good little vids? 

 

Skate the Shop went off last Sunday with the Maloof Money Cup sponsoring and Jake Brown & Pierre-Luc Gagnon judging. Everyone had a good time and Globe & Blind threw down the prizes. Check out the pictures below and check out the Maloof Money Cup on July 11th to 13th at the Orange County Fair Grounds, or at www.maloofmoneycup.com

I have no idea where this came from, and it looks like it's like a million years old but it is definitely worth a post just cause of the awesome negative transition effects and all the zooming in and out. So here it is, the first in a series of How-to's from Nate Principato… "How to drop in on a skateboard"