Your humble narrator Ben Price and Tim Kelly, Boston Street Battle blood brothers.

If Razors’ toe-brakes were even halfway functional, this article would be a lot better. But they aren’t, so I accidentally head-butted the hell out of Tim Kelly, and you’re getting writing that’s slightly… concussed. Blame Geoff Acers. It was kind of fitting though — blood was sort of the thing to wear at the 2009 Boston Street Battle. But I’m ahead of myself. I’ll back up.

Jeff Dalnas was there to skate and support.

Eric Dalnas was there supporting, too.

Jeff’s also a BSB blood brother.

Gabe Holm scheduled the 2009 Boston Street Battle for Saturday, November 14th. On Saturday, Nov. 7th, the weather forecast indicated that was a good day for a street battle. By Wednesday, Nov. 11th, the bastard websites were predicting rain. When I woke up Saturday, Nov. 14th, the sky was dropping buckets of water all over everything. Maybe God was toying with definitions of “wicked pissah.” Beside the point. Gabe had to postpone the contest a day, dudes went to Rye Airfield (New England’s largest indoor park) for fun, I think Drew Amato went home with an empty memory card, and I only left the house once to canoe to K-Mart for Hot Pockets and a $24 grind rail.

Looked like a tough comp if you ask us.

The crew moves in the Create Originals grind box.

Smokes waxin’ that shit up.

Hakeem Jimoh, getting people in place.

So Sunday, Nov. 15th, the contest happened. It started at something like 10 am at Hyde Park Skate Park. Hyde Park has a nice bowl, but bowls aren’t so great the day after God breaks his Noah-promise. And 10 am is a nice time of day, but maybe not so nice for starting a contest. But people trickled in, I guess. Dudes warmed up by skating what I understand was an OG-funded, Create Originals-built box, this thigh-height magical thing that transformed spots all day. At 12:30 people packed up the box and headed to the first spot.

That’s the look.

John O’Donnel pouring on the saucy.

Marc Clune getting strapped in.

Then he did some tricks like this Front Torque.

The spot was at a school in Dorchester, a friendly lock-your-doors, bar-your-windows, keep-your-eyes-low suburb of Boston. I got to the spot early with the Dalnas brothers and the similarly-white Johnny O; as we were putting our skates on a cop car pulled up and gave us the old “do you know where you are? Get out of here while you still have all your toes.” But the cop’s partner objected, they had a little man-love squabble, and they told us to just lock everything in the car and be safe. Jeff took that a little too far when he locked the keys in the car too, but whatever. Ten minutes later, 20 cars and probably 100 skaters converged on the place.

Wojda taking a break from getting broke off.

Putting his time in as a judge. That’s legit.

That “OG” looks right at home on Brandon Ford.

Dave Mariano flying the new official colors of NE.

There are probably photos and edits that can describe the skating better than I can. Wall of text, blah blah blah, it started slow and then got kind of monstrous. Blake O’Brien is a beast. Online I’d thought he looked kind of boring and hadn’t bothered watching edits. That was dumb. I liked how one of the first times he hit the flat-to-down rail in the contest he tried some kind of switch up, came off early and looked off balance way too close to the stairs, then just glanced down and fakie 360d the set all stylishly. Later on, folks were 180ing the thing as a trick of its own. The pavement at the spot was kind of unpleasant; it started off wet and ended filthy. Actually, it was kind of like Boston — it works great as long as you’re respectful of it, but if you started taking it for granted… ka-[p]ow.

“I’m calling you out, sucka!” says Jim Lamarche. (We think — but probably not.)

JL with that Rocket Makio.

Top Acid from the bowl / Blake O’Brien

Different spot with some scrapes.

Anyway, Blake O’Brien was a maniac and deserved to win at the spot. He was on the Rob G. IMYTA tip — back royale to gap over a missing link in the rail to balance more rail, then gap from the top of the rail over the stair set. He nearly smashed his head once, but fortunately has enough back muscles that his head doesn’t reach pavement. Other people were similarly shredding hard. Keegan Smith got second place by doing a lot of tricks, including a really good-looking wallride to drop over a rail. Jeff Dalnas was making crazy-hard lines look sleepy (hard trick on the box, alley-oop topacid on the rail, 540 kg on the downrail). Brian Bruno seemed to have some good ideas that weren’t working with him enough. Everything was getting covered in mud and muck and things started getting vicious. Jim Lamarche took some really hard falls; Jeff Dalnas’ arm looked like he’d stuck it through a window and wiggled it around a bit; a redheaded guy had to do some sort of impromptu flying forward leap over the stairs that made everybody think he had probably pumpkined his dome on the middle of the landing. He didn’t though. Nobody did. Just blood and blading. Blood, blading and battling. We packed up and went to the next spot.

Hakeem and Gabe bringing in the goods.

Matt Hellier sharing his BSB spirit.

Maybe this is why Matt was so happy. New framesssssss! (Said the soccer announcer.)

Goalllllll! (Same announcer.)

Blue rails has been a perennial BSB location. Partly because it has a lot to skate and partly because, like the Dorchester school, its neighborhood also has far worse problems than a pack of masterbladers dressed like a bowl of jelly beans. It has good rails, which Mark Curte back torque to true fished, Brian Bruno true fished, Jeff Dalnas hurricane topsouled, and probably a lot of other people did good stuff that I couldn’t see through my viewfinder. The spot also has a gap that lands in a big caulky crack, and this year, instead of just gapping into the crack, the OG box was positioned so people could disaster into grinds before trying to survive the crack. It was definitely good for grinds, but the spot always turns into sort of the middle of a Rocky movie — flesh just getting pounded over and over. More blood; looked like some ankles should’ve snapped. But Mark Curte and Kyle Couture did some phat 360 souls and Jeff Dalnas 5 truezoued it. I guess blading triumphed.

Taylor Green, presumably riding on new frames.

Keegan Smith with a large Wallride. (Camera guy got the clip, in case you were curious.)

“Here fishy fishy.” No hooks stuck in Jimmy Gill.

We think this is Gabe Holm, but have no confirmation on that at the time of posting this. (He’s not answering his email, okay guys?)

The last spot was a covered drop kink with a wallride and some short downrails. It’s a famous old spot. Blake O’Brien had been limping so hard at the second spot I thought he was done for the day, but he put his skates back on, took out his man-hammer, and beat the spot into submission. Keegan royaled the rail first, then Blake did it a little gooder — royaled down-to-flat before 630ing all pretty over everything left in his way. Keegan did a lot of other good lines, Jeff I think topsouled it… I was kind of distracted by trying to leapfrog over some weird giant pillars. I know deceptionroller was getting down, as were Tom Ferrante and Taylor Green. But Blake finished the contest off with cymbals and fireworks: topsoul on the 10 to 12-foot drop kink, transfer to the left about 10 feet to frontegnugen on the short downrail. Very manly, very winnerly.

It was a great contest. No one died. BSB’09. Thanks to the supporters… Tim, sorry about your face. — Ben Price

2009 BSB Results:

Spot 1:

1st: Blake O’Brien

2nd: Keegan Smith

3rd: Jeff Dalnas

Spot 2:

1st: Marc Clune

2nd: Kyle Couture

3rd: Jeff Dalnas

Spot 3:

1st: Blake O’Brien

2nd: Keegan Smith

3rd: Kyle Couture

Future blader? Why not.

Awesomely-crafted event report © 2009 Ben Price

Absentmindedly written captions © 2009 JE

Photos © 2009 Brian Lewis