Monday 20 February 2012
Thousands of cool people tried to keep it that way on a sweltering Cape Town summer's day at the 2012 edition of the Ultimate X over the weekend, says Spike.
An enduring moment. A skateboarder frozen in mid-ollie above a photographer crouching over his gear. The startled lensman head is turned up, the wheels of a skateboard centimetres from his face. Luckily, he didn't get up. There were no polite 'excuse mes', or 'sorry' from the skater.
"Bru. You're in my way. Ka-pink kra-sponk."
Vignettes. Snapshots. Moments frozen in time.
A wake boarder caught in cartwheel, the spray spurt from his wipe scythes across the phalanx of spectators who line the edge of a floating pontoon. They in turn, lurch back in reflexive fright, like a row of condemned milli-seconds from death by firing squad.
The GoPro-wielding freestyle Moto Cross dude (they were shooting the entire event in 3-D) silhouettes against the deep blue sky. His glove is stuck to his helmet as he doffs the crowd. His legs are straight out. Is any part of his body touching anything? Nooit. Bike and rider frozen in the zenith of a giant trajectory.
What about that BMX er dude who hits the deck with a suspension busting crack, knees out, ass off the seat-end, after landing a ridiculous flip ramp switch slide thinga ma jig ollie crowd hooting flyby manouvre?
Skaters with names like Dlamini, Wes and Travis slam, grind and flip off ramps and rails like they don't care about broken bones, torn muscles and wounded pride.
With the BMX and skate crew, and to some extent the wakers, wipe after cruel wipe seem like relentless arrows from stoic hunters that will eventually kill the beast. But, they stand up again, groggily, grimacing, looking around with eyes that say "look at me, I am young and invincible I will sigh heroically and carry on".
For most, the day ends before the hunt can be complete. For the hazy survivors, it will be a bruising night of painkiller dreams.
Aweh.
It was all in the moment at the Ultimate X presented by Absa Life Xtreme over the weekend at the V & A Waterfront. At 100 bucks a ticket, it had better be good, you might have thought. And whoosh, the cool fans fell straight into the white heat blast of high octane thrills and bone-jarring spills.
And that's all I got until we get the press release.
Sick bru.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Comments
RSS feed for comments to this post