Portland/Seattle Skate and Rawk

Portland/Seattle Skate and Rawk Trip August 2nd-5th was kill! Wigger and I flew up Thursday morn dropped off by our art pal Vanessa. We landed in PDX and the first thing we heard was a funny page over the airport speakers, 'P.W. Herman to the courtesy phone please, P.W. Herman' . After all that excitement we rented a big suburb type of wagon/van. Our first stop was some grub and bookstores that had some very interesting titles and illustrations indeed. Next stop was City Hall where they were having their 'Board Art' show and half pike demo. We saw Chet Childress, Stevie Reeves and many hot locals flying around throwing down some rip shred on the shred sled, Ted!
Originally Clay Wheels was to play a stage here, but Jonny was not gonna be able to fly out until later so I played acoustic styles. I started out by the ramp but it was way too noisy so I took it inside city hall and did the strolling/trolling minstrel/mariachi (as it comes naturally to me) in the art galleries. Met many cool Portland City employees who said I should try to get San Jose city hall to try something like this. YEAH RIGHT!! Portland is one of the most progressive cities in America when it comes to supporting skateboarding. They even share bike lanes on the street legally and the city is gonna have 17 skateparks eventually! Sheesh!!! More buddies showed up and were hyped on the upcoming Clay Wheels show on Saturday. Eventually we said later to the crowd of skaters who did not wanna quit skating and went to eat some Thai food with Robin, Ashley Rae and Noni. Eric met us there after grubbing with his 'rents. It was fucking hot in that place and the food did little to reverse that trend. Ended up getting a little saucy so the next move was to go to this tiny strip club in Hawthorne area. Ashley Rae hooked up some pitchers and we got a spot near the action. They rotated three
dancers in there that looked better and better after every beer, but it took me taking off my glasses and pitchers for them to look great! haha Jonny was flying in so Eric went and picked him up. We hung for a little while longer then split for Gresham to sleep for the night. The Thai food leftovers did not help me sleep well at all (cue up Roxy Music: 'Both Ends Burning'), but after morning waffles with Eric's parents and hearing his mom say, 'Corrosion of Conformity' it was on, and off to skate some new 'crete! First stop was Pier Park which has some really big shit to ride! The full pipe is like twenty feet with a doorway
and two bowls on either side one 9 1/2 and the other 11 1/2 feet deep. No half steppin' The bowl on the other side is about 6 feet with little pockets. Jonny and I always like to do doubles lines and play 'chase' in bowls like this, and this day would be no exception. There is also a killer reservoir bowl with trippy tranny to screw around in! It's a go!
After that we got a snack, burned a bowl and went up to Battleground park which was crowded as fuck, but also fun as fuck too! Snake runs, a flat walled Cradle, a Klamath styled Gummy Bear pool
and Wez Lundry, Ben Wixon, Zach Dropout and Kelly the kidder in the house. We smoked some more tweeds then went to Burgerville to stuff our hungry bellies with exotic Walla Walla onion rings and burgers.
We got to the Comet Tavern and met up with Marginal Way who were setting us up with a backline (drums,bass and guitar amps). We tried our best to the blow shit up, but then realized we needed to use the gear the next night too, so turned shit down to ten. (Just jokes!) Lotsa beers and tweeds were consumed and Gas Huffer's Delta Don Blackstone was looking like a sharp dressed man and dressed to the nines! (if you call a tucked in Clay Wheels t shirt and Houndstooth blazer the height of Seattle fashion! Is it it 'the ironic grunge' look or what??) Matt Wright showed up, full of knowledge and bro-ness. The show was ripping, not as big of a crowd as last time but who cares.We had a after party at Eric's cousin house, Andy. He has the kill record collection and we spent a hour listening to rad singles by The Ruts-'Babylon's Burning', 'Jah War'. Also the raddest Canadian punk album ever, DOA's 'Hardcore '81'. The next morning was ruff-styles.
We tried to eat at the 5 Point, but those glory days are over. So we ended up at the Crocodile Cafe and stuffed our guts with brekky. Next up was a visit to Milton skatepark, we had a rad little ripride with Marginal Way then scooted boots to Burnside where Mark 'Red' Scott was deejayin up some punk rock and DEVO. He was also ripshredding the big wall and flowing around the park like no one else. Whether he knows it or not,he is one of my heroes. A true artist that puts everything he has on the line everytime for the benefit of all of us skate rats! Thanks Red!

and thank you Ben Wixon/city of Portland/Mountain Dew for flying us up!!

Clay Wheels will be rocking the spot on March 3rd for the Santa Cruz Vets Day Skateboard video premiere featuring: Keith Meek, Jason Jesse, Tom Knox and Eric Dressen! (Where's Salba??!) The show is gonna be rocking, the movie should be clean and cranking and the Blank Club will be dark. Set your time machines ahead to March 3rd 2007 destination: CLAY WHEELS coordinates: Blank Club dinero:5ive dollars id's:fake Visalia punkabilly band:CACTI WIDDERS

Had a great time last night at the Roadhouse playing the N Men X mas party! Randy Katen took care of us, the sound was kill, the show was bright and sweaty-Jonny killing it on the BLueshawk, Eric was nailing it on his Fibes clear drum kit, and I was hitting 'Count Bassy' as hard as I could. Keith Meek, Dave Freil, Scotty Foss, Fish, Bryce Kanights, JJ Rogers, Snaggle, Tuttle, Windsor, Roger Folsom, Sam Cunningham, John Cardiel, Joey Tershay, Rachael Brown, Stacey, Stacy, Jen, Yunker, etc. were all there raging, had several people ask about my superhound Pep Armstrong as well!! Jonny played bass for the Odd Numbers on Friday, drums for Texas Thieves,guitar for Clay Wheels...what's on for today Manak??? Keyboards for prog supergroup YES??? hahah (he could probably do it!) Thanks Greg Hall, Texas Thieves, Rusty for letting me cruise his bass amp,Foz,Bouldt, Rachael and Dave, and the leader of the N men-Randy Katen,etc.

clay wheels have been deucin' it up lately. the northwest shows were all pretty rad. medford rocked hard, played three encores! portland was outta hand with the slamming pit all age steez moze. and seattle was killer rockin out hard for our new friends and old pals alike. last nights show in san jose with Monkey and the Phenomenauts,Clay Wheels with special guest Steve Alba was super amazing. salba learned about five of our songs and played the surf stuff and the rocking stuff with style and energy. he got everyone hyped!! when salba was done,we started playing our set when jonny's twin took a dump during 'heartpounder'. so he used the amp salba was using (thank you, Monkey) and kept the rock hot! super rad sweaty show! but before clay wheels or salba came on the stage, we let 'contribution' play a few songs as they were denied playing at the caravan,because of an underage situation. the blank club was cool about them playing so they rocked 3 songs in a southern california/clash/101ers style. everyone was stoked on them, and we were stoked to help them out! after we played our set, we went over to the caravan to see hightower's 2nd set of the night. it was amazing, lots of thunderous sounds with tight and dynamic metal punk happening. raw dog skate energy is where it's at! it was really cool. the caravan crowd was digging the scene! today, i skated all day with hightower in the south bay, taking them to a ditch, pools and a park, after skating nelson's crazy indoor mini! shane ,jake and dave are super cool and even let pep armstrong roll with us all day! pep is now laying by my feet, fully spent!! next week, clay wheels and hightower play two back to back shows together: friday unity skate shop livermore saturday vert ramp warehouse party in san francisco w/johnny and the dudes, shed, dirty and the donuts come enjoy some real rock excitement!! RS2

trying to remember all the gigs we played in s.f.,oakland without looking over our meticulous and copius amounts of notes: s.f.-milk bar(hightower,dollyrots),tempest(fruit of the vine premiere),bottom of the hill(mudhoney, hightower,the faction,monkeywrench,tobaccoland premiere),artsf (sad boy sinister),covered wagon(strychnine),justice league(mcrad, twenty to life premiere),pat duffy's ramp(johnny and the dudes),bar on mission (northwest premiere,cacti widders),kimo's(pimps and ho's-where they wanted us to get dolled up in dresses and we told them to get fucked, so they docked us $10.00 offa what they owed us!!! hahaha kooks!)... oakland- phenomanauts warehouse(attempted a reggae jam with jamalski), ray yeh's millenium bash, gig with zen guerilla @ pinner dive bar??? san jose- red light district (the muffs), cactus(los olvidados, rockin rob memorial),usual(flogging molly,black label video premiere,the odd numbers,the faction),fuel (fruit of the vine premiere),plant 51(agent orange,ghetto fabulous premiere),caravan(the cliftons),blank(tim brauch memorial after party),cielito lindo(soda,4 banger), backyard on 2nd street (the shitkickers), epic warehouse party on a monday night (fingerbangerz), washington street daytime party (nowhere fast), sofa fair (X),lido (zen guerilla) etc. santa cruz-catalyst (mcrad) sacto/tahoe-daddy o's (agent orange), strawberry lodge (skatanic rednecks) seattle-experience music project (the adolescents, agent orange,the briefs) Sound and Fury(peanut butter wolf),sit and spin (gas huffer) portland-satyricon(the odd numbers) vancouver- something pub(the odd numbers,meow)

greg hall set us up again!! putting some new songs and some of his photos up here for all to enjoi thanks for everything!! check out www.wheelbyte.com for hot skate photo and video action!!

this is a little blurb i got offa some dudes blogness monster-- "CLAY WHEELS rocked a kill show at ARTSF, there were no mike stands so they hung the mikes from the rafters. midway into the set a couple of 'cutester deluxe's' showed up and were the boogie down dancefloor queens, it was radicalized for sure, couldn't watch them too much or i would lose my place on my bass and play like i was in outer space or a some other place. hahaha i won't forget that soon!! Anna and Way Chill showed up too(my eyes were bugging! too much, or maybe even three much!) and were canvas for graffitii by K2. sickness! SF loves the Wheels!" i was at the show too, Morgan Hill's Sad Boy Sinister also played a kill old school set. there were lots of cool artists showing off their stuff. a couple of knuckleheads had to get thrown out, some decent local hip hop acts too. check out www.artsf.org thanks to:K2, Annabella,Waychill and Anna, Hilary, Robbin and Ray Yeh, Adam and friend, Morgue O, and all our new friends!!