ISSUE 125
CainE cripps Bryan Wherry ian twa joey williams
words
ty james
photos
Brian Caissie
F
or the players who live in Vancouver, it’s not easy to leave the house during a winter afternoon thinking you’re going to get buck. For us it was kind of a blessing in disguise that started with our landlord coming through with some wack news towards the end of 2012. He basically told us that our beloved crib, 1611 East, would be getting demolished in order to put up some New Age townhouse garbage. Clearly we weren’t stoked, and given the state of affairs, we starting trashing the crib thinking we all needed to find a new place in two months. With the news arriving in the winter, we decided the best idea would be to skate inside the house until the rain stopped.
CainE cripps kickFlip backside tailslide
Bryan Wherry Noseslide
With the initial gut-wrenching feeling that we were all gonna be homeless in a matter of months, we went in hard. Joey Williams got juiced and started smashing the wall with Ian Twa, who described their handiwork as the “new skate rack #RIP1611” on Instagram. After more wall smashing and some indoor soccer games, Twa told us the quarterpipe we gave to a neighbourhood kid was back in the driveway. I guess the kid broke himself off and his dad wasn’t hyped, so they returned it. While Joey and Twa brought it inside, Bryan Wherry, LJ Brownlee and myself started skating and filming. Wherry claimed a noseslide on the waisthigh built-in cabinet and got it first T. That got us all hyped, and after the quarter was set up we brought in Robbie Pellack’s old plastic bench from the yard and set it up in front of the fireplace. Despite the bad news about the crib, we had an indoor spot to skate during the rainy season and everyone was down as fuck. LJ copped the first house line; two laps, super G. After that night the skating got a bit more serious. I’d be getting home from work and could hear the shralping going down from a block away. It hyped me up to be honest—the feeling of getting kicked out was taken over by the feeling of skateboarding. The weeks went by and we skated inside almost every day. We would pretty much only “shut the park down” for maintenance or for dinner, but someone would be skating flat almost all the time. Eventually the word spread and homies started coming over to skate. Cameo Wilson was a regular, same with Jordan Bucholz, and there was the odd appearance by Mike Vince. 29
ian twa backside noseblunt
30
joey williams frontside wallride
After about three weeks of heavy house shralping, Brian Caissie hit us up and asked if we wanted to shoot some photos in the crib. Everyone was down right away and business was handled; I even got a few G clips of Caissie thrashing the QP. It got pretty rowdy, and I remember one morning while waiting outside for my ride to work, our neighbour who we call “The Snitch” asked: “Are you guys skateboarding in your house?” I replied calmly, “Yeah, the house is dust,” which I don’t think she really understood too well because she got in her car and drove away looking at me like I was super fried. I got home from work one day and Joey was on the couch doing Joey. He started talking my ear off about a big wave surfing, so we put a plan together to move all the couches and slide the QP so Joey could do a big wallride in the living-room. I shot Caissie a text and asked him to roll over, and within a half-hour Joey started ripping frontside wallers and eventually put the sickest one down, no issue. It was probably one of my favourite moments during the crib-skating era.
#1611East
By February our landlord returned, this time with super-good news about the house. He told us the permits for the townhouse development were going to take a while and offered us the house for another year. So we figured we should clean up a bit and maybe fix the “skate rack” wall. But when it rains in Vancouver and you’re walking down 22nd Ave., don’t be alarmed if you hear skating inside of a house. It’s just 1611 East.