Robert Brink - Writer

Pro Tec Pool Party 2009

July 28, 2009 | Skip To The Comments (0)

Pro-Tec Pool Party 2009
By Rob Brink
The Skateboard Mag, September 2009

Frosted, dirty blonde white trash mullet wig; allover print Speedo with the image of a woman’s face across his genitals; shirtless with a large bleeding cross carved into the center of his chest. (Safe to say the procedure wasn’t done with a precision, sterile, pain-minimizing instrument like a scalpel either.)

Apart from a watch, socks and red Vox shoes, this comprised Mark “Red” Scott’s Pro-Tec Pool Party contest attire. Shocking, hilarious, disturbing, absurd, brilliant… and he hadn’t even dropped in yet.

And no… he wasn’t wearing pads, you pussy.

Slayer was most likely blaring out of the speakers, filling the entire skatepark and mall parking lots with dissonance, while hundreds looked up from their iPhones, stopped talking to the person next to them, ceased chewing their free hot dogs, stood up, screamed, applauded… in other words… respected.

But if I had to take an educated guess, I’d say something other than Slayer was playing in Red’s head when he dropped in. Something way gnarlier than "Angel of Death" or "Reign in Blood." Perhaps the sounds of Boeing 747s colliding in mid-air while hundreds of passengers on board were screaming and puking. Or nuclear bombs detonating and nearby houses exploding and disintegrating into dust. Or dinosaurs scattering, stumbling, running for their lives, wailing and burning to death, as an asteroid was about to hit the Earth.

Or maybe there was nothing playing in his head at all—like an absolute peace. Silent.

Or, you know, like those scenes in movies when you’re supposed to be experiencing an attempt at the juxtaposition of utter turmoil mixed with serenity for some sort of dramatic effect? All sorts of people dying and suffering and crying while Louis Armstrong’s "What a Wonderful World" plays? Ya… that sorta thing.

Red’s complete disregard for just about everything in the building, including his own well-being, was easily the number one highlight in Pro-Tec Pool Party history… and dare I say a fine example of skateboarding in it’s purest form. He landed a few tricks, carved and grinded a bit, bailed a few tricks… but it really didn’t matter. Even better, the look on his face the entire time seemed to say, “Fuck you skateboarding. I love you.”

He pushed as fast as he could around the deck of the entire pool with a fervor unlike most have ever seen, taking out photographers, bloggers, videographers, industry infiltrators, women, fellow skateboarders and himself. Then sealed the deal by bailing some sort of strange mach 12, haywire air to boneless-type thing that wouldn’t, and couldn’t, have been landed in a million years. Breathtaking.

In "Northwest," a film by the Rick Charnoski and Coan Nichols about hand-sculpted concrete skateparks in the Pacific Northwest and the skaters who build and ride them, skateboarder and skatepark builder Red says:

“If you build a skatepark and it’s just the same old shit… it sucks. But if it’s different and it’s got some unique features… there you go… it’s different and it’s unique. That’s what people need to do. Make stuff that hasn’t been done before. We gotta take it to new levels.”

Thanks, Red.