I love skating mini ramps, but these kids made me never want to skate one again. They're that good! Tiny Trany Terrorists: Curren Caples, Louie Lopez and and some kid named Ethan were fucking killing it all event. Then there's the slightly older David Loy who, had one hell of a couple of days, winning Best Trick and the whole damn Am Jam.

This is always a fun event because it takes place in the chaos of the Volcom area, with Chickens dropping in on people, load punk/metal/rap, and simply a party raging around the ramp.

Here's what Ryan Clements from the Skate Park of Tampa, who helped put on the event, had to say:

Once again, Team Pain did a stellar job on making sure that the kiddies, who showed up from all over the States, had a properly designed ramp to rip. There were a couple of relatively unorganized demos that went on throughout the day on, but the main event was an ?open? Best Trick Contest at 4pm. ?Open? meant that any kid that was entered in the Am Contest could skate along with any pros that decided to show up. We had $2000 to give away and the catch was you had to use the bank-ramp style extension in the middle. All of the top placers below actually transferred from the tranny onto the bank extension:

Day One - Best Trick
Honorable Mention ? Mike Peterson ? one of my favorite all around dudes in the world?Peterson showed up to skate, but couldn?t get the fs noseblunt slide.

1st - $1000 ? David Loy ? fs nosegrind across the whole damn thing on the last try!
2nd - $500 ? David Bachinsky ? signature trick?frontside blunt kickflip.
3rd - $300 ? George Evans ? ollied onto the extension from the deck and then kickflip off and into the tranny.
4th - $200 ? Ben Raybourne ? if it was based on number of tricks, then Ben would have won hands down, but his 360 bs nosegrab air to pogo (board, but that?s what we used to call it) rock n? roll out.
5th - $200 ? Shawn Hale ? the landing was sketchy on his fs 5-0 to fakie all the way across, but had it been smooth I think Shawn would have won.

Day Two ? Am Mini-Ramp Jam
I bet you were expecting to read about what the pros did on the mini-ramp, too, right?
Well, we didn?t host a pro mini-ramp jam this time around. The am and the pro jams every Expo were getting a little bit stale, so we split them up and ran only the ams this September and the pros will be in January.

There were about 40 ams that we let enter through his process of high-tech registration application elimination. But at least 10 of the skaters that registered didn?t bother to even show up. Why register if you?re not going to show up? Quit wasting all of our time, okay? So we ran through the 30 or so contestants? two, 45-second qualifying runs rather quickly. Then we took the top 10 overall from the three heats into the Finals. Their final score was based like this: 15% of it consisted of your 45-second intro run and the other 85% was for the 20-minute jam.

The level of the skating for a lot of the ams is on its way to the next level. Similar to the pros, they are ollieing into and out of tailslides and 5-0?s and showing a lot more board control overall. Two skaters that didn?t make the cut that stuck out to me were Grant Taylor and Chris Coogan. I?m sure you?ve heard of Grant?and he?s getting more and more impressive in person, but you may not have heard about Coogan yet. So let me tell you, he?s friendly, stylish, and skates fast with difficult tricks thrown in. Enough ass kissing for me?here are the finalists:

1st - $2000 - David Loy ? not a bad weekend for David Loy. After taking home a G for Best Trick on Friday, he came back and skated the mini-ramp like it was his last session and won the whole damn deal on Saturday.
2nd - $1500 - Curren Caples ? if the scoring was based solely off of the jam, then Curren would have won because he got a 92.33 and David got a 89, but David?s run score was higher.
3rd - $1000 - Shawn Hale ? he has been to many of our Damn Ams and is a really nice kid. Shawn just needs to get a little more well known because he?s certainly got the drive to make it happen for himself.
4th - $800 - George Evans ? if you don?t know George, he?s from Jax and one of the nicest dudes you could ever meet. He?s also got a great kickflip and can nollie flip straight into tranny!
5th - $700 - Jereme Knibbs ? that?s our boy! He?s never even been to Expo before, but all Jereme has to do is skate like he does every time I see him at SPoT and he?s guaranteed a top 10 spot in any mini-ramp or bowl jam.
6th - $500 - Mike Barnes ? you may not recognize the name ?Mike Barnes,? but that?s because he goes by DARKNESS. This dude is one cool cat and has a bag of tricks that belong to a 35-year-old, along with the newer stuff, too.
7th - $400 - Louie Lopez ? he?s a little dude that skates like a grown-ass man with bs nollie bigspin disasters and lots of transfer variations onto the extension. Oh yeah?he can do cab kickflips on command, too.
8th - $300 - Blake Mercer ? out of Georgia, Blake came correct with a good qualifying run that included a huge melon to fakie transfer onto the bank extension. A crazy-looking, mid-air collision took him out of the jam though.
9th - $200 - Dalton Dern ? Dalton skates in many of our events and is very consistent. He?s got a 540 on vert, but grabs it early and can do it on mini-ramp, too. We?ll see his street skills at Damn Am Volcom.
10th - $100 - Alex Brunelle ? all the way from Colorado, Alex knows how to put together runs although he didn?t excel as much in the jam. However, he?s got a great backside boneless. Mike Peterson would be proud.

Here's some photos by ...MORINformed:


Curran Caples going huge.


David Loy smith on the extension.


Remy got the shot.


Ethan lights one up.


What it'd look like if you were going to drop in.

Stay tuned for some more photos.