Photo and words by: Brooks Fritz

Here it is. The conclusion to my trip out to Arizona.

After the alcohol only store we ended up all with vision like this at a place called Toy land.

This place is crazy. Made out of wood, foam and concrete.

Ever had a Gunslinger before? Its when you drop a shot of whiskey (preferably crown royal) into a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon with root beer schnapps  and slam it. A few of those fueled Cobra long enough to get a few Plexiglas wall rides.

Toy Land’s skate Museum.

Seen a couple wooden wheels in there.

Vaster’s school work earned him a A+

A better view of Toy Land  the next day.

Finally. The journey to the center of the earth begins…

“Where the hell are we going?” ” See those peaks on the Horizon? ”

” I bet this is what it feels like to be a Mexican! ” Run to the hills! ”

Sticker bush madness. No way around it. Your going to have to walk through it for a long long time. Glad I was wearing pants.

Mud tromping. Another thing that cant be avoided. Are we seriously going skateboarding or just torturing ourselves?

” No one told me you had to wear fucking pants!” I couldn’t stop laughing. The whole time I could hear Kyle pissed because he wore shorts. Picture walking miles in this shit. All for some kick turns.

We made it. Welcome to the best thing in the world.

I thought I was going to rag doll to my death getting down there.

Whats up Danny Way? Bob Burnquist?  That mega ramp shit you guys do is nuts. Much respect to you, but lets see you tackle this one. Roll into this thing and carve the outer edge of the pit of death. Get a hold of me if your into it.

it’s pretty surreal being in here…

Kind of gives you a size reference. Jump off from there and your going to the flats…

Kyle, mach 5 frontside. Should of seen the ones I didn’t get a photo of.

Sizar

Bart Steed

” Great, now we gotta get out of this thing. ” It’s way steeper then you think. Pretty much the scariest place you can skate. If you break yourself off in this thing you are doomed. Even if you dont break yourself off it’s hard as hell to get out of. Some of the crew had to take their shoes off to get out. I was tripping for a few minutes there. With my big stupid heavy camera bag I thought I might not be able to get out. It took a good five or six attempts to make it. The wind rushes through and you have to wait for a window of opportunity of no wind for you to get a good run at it.

Then even if you were to get out of the pipe which wouldn’t happen unless you have a 100ft of rope which of course you wouldn’t have with you you still have a long hike back to civilization.

Busted.

After the hell hike being moments away from being back to the truck I spotted a Fish & Game officer all camoed out in the bushes with binos. Who knows how long he was looking for us but I knew right then and there we were done for. Luckily no one ran and luckily when we did get popped it wasn’t on federal land where the hole is. If that had happened we would of been screwed. Huge fine, pretty much banned from Canada, put on the terror alert list and pretty much cut from all big natural pipe missions again….

Have a good weekend. -Brooks

ps. I know, we geeked it leaving a a car on the road….

The funnest and scariest time on the four wheel wooden toy…

Photos & words by: Brooks Fritz

At the end of part one we ended our day at a local dive bar with some beers after skating a couple of Arizona’s finest pools. The next day I woke up in the morning with one hell of a stomach ache and knew instantly it was a severe case of the mud butt. I’m not sure if it was the food we ate from the mud butt mobile on the way out to AZ or the shitty keg beer at the bar we drank or the sketchy pizza we ate the end of the night. I suspect it was the combination of all three. So after the 7th shit of the day all before noon we made our way to the local swap meet. On the way there we got pulled over by a motorcycle cop. Something about looking suspicious. He asked Kyle for his drivers license and Kyle asked if he could get out of the car to get his license since it was in the door. The cop said no and walked back to his car. He was gone a good five minutes most likely running Kyle’s plates and all four us Davey, Kyle, Sizar and myself were about to shit our pants. Not because we were stressing on the cop but because we all drank a bunch of coffee and seriously were about to shit our pants. The cop finally came back to the truck and asked Kyle why he was shaking acting so nervous. Kyle was straight up with the cop and told him we all just had a bunch of coffee and had to take dumps. The cop laughed and said we shouldn’t be in this neighborhood and that’s why he pulled us over in the first place. After he said that he let us go on our way. Just shows for the most part if you are straight with the cops they will be straight with you. Not always but you know what I mean right?

Here’s Kyle’s with his swap meet purchase. A ski mask and some imitation Blue Blockers. Not bad for 3 bucks.

So you want to skate a pool? OK. Well drive around and find one. It’s that simple. No excuses needed. You don’t have to rent a plane like they did in Gleaming the Cube or know the right people. Just get in your car, on your bike or simply just skate though your local neighborhood and find one. That’s exactly what we did with this one. After the swap meet we just took a random turn on a random street and found this random house with this random pool. The only problem was it was covered up with a janky wood deck. Not really a deck but more of a way to discourage people from getting into the pool. It didn’t work. Piece by piece we ripped that thing up.

I’ve never seen so many black widows before.

It was super loud ripping the plywood off of the 2×6’s. So loud I thought for sure one of the neighbors was going to freak. But no one did. No one came out. No hassles what so ever.

Cleaned up nicely.

The Black Widow Pool: Yeah, it’s pretty much perfect. The side wall is perfect. shallow end is perfect. Deep end is perfect. No kinks anywhere. Just a perfect backyard pool. Good transition everywhere. Even the shallow end stairs were in a perfect spot. No one could find anything to complain about with this pool. Unlike your local shitty skate park “pool” that was made to skate by so called experts yet it’s nothing like a pool and completely sucks to skate. Just because it has tiles and pool coping and maybe a box or stairs doesn’t mean it’s a good design.

Yet this thing sits in a backyard of a bank owned house made by people who had no thought of making it for skateboarding. Go figure.

Sorry I don’t have more photos of skating going on. I had to skate this one as much as I could.

With no warm up and no room for error Kyle rolls in first run. Who does that?

Grinding over the box is one thing. Grinding the hip of a pool is another. It looked liked Kyle was going to get two birds with one stone. Then it didn’t.

The Session was pretty much over. At least the skateboarding session was.

After Kyles stack at the black widow pool we headed to this store where they only had alcohol for sale. You could imagine everyone was really disappointed.

I know I know. Where the hell is the center of the earth? This story is longer then I expected. Stay tuned next week when we finally make it to the center of the earth. Have a good weekend. -Brooks

Words & photos by: Brooks Fritz

Have you ever been to the center of the Earth? If you have it’s an experience you will never forget. It was about a month ago I got a call from my friend Davey Rockit saying he was driving out to Arizona to meet up with Cobra Kyle, Sizar and Bakersfield Ben. Davey was driving out there solo since nobody around here really likes to leave their comfort bubble of San Diego and asked if I would like to join him for a super happy fun time skateboarding weekend adventure. I told him I could go but I had to be back by Monday morning before 5 AM for daddy day care duty. He was cool with it and the journey to the center of the earth was on…

Davey picked me up around 11 on Friday and we were out. Look at that driving stance. He does not mess around.

Road to nowhere.

Or everywhere.

Depends on how you look at it. Damn I should be a poet.

The mud butt mobile: After being on the road for a while we started to get hungry. Davey being the world biggest consumer of different foods spotted this guy on the side of the road. At the time It sounded really  good and boy it sure tasted good. But I would avoid these things at all costs. Davey and I had the worst shits after eating off of this diarrhea device on wheels. Seriously I shit 7 times before 10 Am the next day after eating this crap… Maybe it’s too much information for you but you know when you cant wipe anymore because it feels like you have road rash on your bunghole? Yeah it was like that.

Homeboy already knew what we were in for.

After the mud butt mobile we were back on the road and made it to Arizona by the late afternoon. Here’s the Cobra Commander. Being the nice guy he is he greeted us with a couple of frosty beverages and a some moon cabbage. Then it was time to go skate some backyard pits.

” Hey we should be on the roof of the car looking for pools just like in that movie Dogtown “

It’s always fun jumping fences into strangers backyards…

A lot better then mud butt and a lot better then your hometown excuse for a skatepark.

“You do it like this”

This is what it would look like If you were one of those nosey neighbor types peeking through the fence wondering whats all that noise going on. Here’s Cobra grinding the hip where you cant even drop in.

Angle number two.

Peek a boo! Now I see you!

After skating the amoeba for a while we were running out of day light. So we headed to another pool for a quick session.

Capsule is clean. This thing is wide open.

Bakersfield Ben’s ballistic backside box grind in front of the broski’s. All we needed was some brewski’s and then it would of been Ben’s ballistic backside box grind in front of broski’s with brewskis…

Sizar grab grinds some slab coping while I try to get all National Geographic.

I should of shot a sequence instead. Sizar drifted a good 8 ft on this no justice frontside air photo and the session was over.

Everyone was thirsty after skating the pools so we decided to hit up a couple of horrible bars and call it a night. Here’s Cobra commander hydrating the troops before nappy time.

Now you are probably wondering where the center of the earth part of this story is? Don’t worry it’s coming. Stay tuned for part two next week and have a good weekend. Maybe you will leave your comfort bubble. I did and it felt grrrrrrreat.  -Brooks