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Crossfire Xmas Jam 2007

8th December 2007

Words: Moose
Photos: Ben Norton and John Wildsmith

Santa wouldn’t have known what to make of this year’s Crossfire Xmas Jam, had he turned up of course. Hundreds of people queued for hours in the cold and wet outside Bay Sixty 6 to make sure they could get inside to witness yet another skate riot. If you’ve never been to an Xmas Jam, you’re missing out big time. No rules, no real time limits, a shitload of prizes and proddy, and as much fun as you can possibly squeeze into a day.

This year’s Jam was graced with the presence of the Osiris international team of John Rattray, Garret Hill, Corey Duffel and Diego Bucchieri, who stoked the kids out by signing body parts, posters, tshirts, Mum’s car keys and anything else that was handed to them.

The cream of British skateboarding turned up to have a laugh, cruise about and possibly earn some cash-dollar by knocking out bangers across the park. Riders who were spotted, and possibly captured by Crossfire’s lenses, included Neil Smith, Danny Brady, Louie Cooper, Joel and Seth Curtis, Joey Pressey, Kris Vile, Vaughan Baker, Lee Blackwell, Aaron Sweeney, Kev McKeon, Carl Wilson, Josh Roullion, Boots, Marc Churchill, Pete King, Ollie Tyreman, Greg Nowick, Tom Knox, Chris Ault, and fuckloads more.

With Zac Slack at the helm and manning the megaphone, shouts of “Mind the media scum” were just about heeded to as the Jam got underway and skaters threw themselves across anything they could in a monumental scrum of skateboarding. The handrail got absolutely dominated this year with tricks like you wouldn’t believe getting scraped across it’s steely structure. Kickflip frontboards, frontside bluntslides, backside tailslides, frontside shove-it boardslides, feeble 180s, crooks. Seriously, the list goes on and the footage speaks for itself. Blueprint’s Danny Brady brought the smoothness to the hip ledges with some buttery nosebluntslides and frontside 5-0’s to fakie as well. In fact, I’m not going to bother telling you much more about what went down as if you watch the video, you will know. And if you were there on the day, you definitely know.

I will, however, tell you about the two-man destruction team that come in the form of Death protégé Carl “Potter” Wilson and Vans flow rider Aaron Sweeney who did not stop shredding all day, and even when the lights got turned off you knew they could have carried on ripping for hours more. The vert wall saw them throw down massive crailgrabs, nolliecab melons and noseblunts on the inside wall. Oh yes, it got destroyed by these two and it didn’t end with the vert wall either.

The miniramp jam saw everyone shralp the coping to pieces, with Marc Churchill throwing down frontside feebles to smith, Pete King getting his lip-action on noseblunt disasters and all sorts of technical trickery, and Potter and Sweeney hucking up massive frontside airs and stalefishes. Sweeney even got his head in a spin on a beaut of a backside 540, whilst Kris Vile rolled up, took one look and put down an alley-oop bigspin fakie 5-0 like he was just chilling in front of the telly with a cuppa. Piss take. Potter also swallowed up the whole ramp with a backtail shove, and his eyes must have been bigger than his stomach as he bit off more than he could chew and rolled away somewhere about three streets away.

Proddy toss time, and the scramble for free shit managed to leave one kid with concussion and another with a bleeding eye. Whilst we’d usually be down for a bit of scrapping, this was too far and obviously some people forgot that they were decent human beings and resorted to caveman instincts of ‘kick the shit of of them’. Definitely not cool, we were all there to have a good time and now those two kids are leaving with scars they didn’t want. Remember, we’re all skaters, we’re all equals, and we’re all friends. There’s no need to hurt anyone just to get a free tshirt.

Aside from that, the Jam went off like a cat with a rocket shoved up it’s arse. The after party messiness can be see over in Night Raids, which was a laugh until we got the boot for apparently being ‘too rowdy’. To be fair love, we could have been much worse, but we weren’t and we were all enjoying ourselves right up until the last.

A massive thanks to everyone that turned up and got their skate-on, it was a top day and by far the best attended one to date. You know what that means though don’t you? We have to beat that next year and make it even better, so anyone not there this time, sort it out and get your arses there in 2008. Shout outs to all who turned up to support, Paul and all at Bay Sixty 6 Skatepark, Alan Christensen, Martyn Thomas, Crossfire staff, John Wildsmith, Ben Norton, Greg Atkins, Mel, Aiden, Matt and Simon at Jett 26, Don Brider and our friends and sponsors at Osiris, Sidewalk Mag, Document Mag, Venture, Creme, Blueprint, Heroin, Landscape, The Harmony, Karma, Death, Kill City, Creature, Casual, Plan B, DGK, A Third Foot and Spitfire.

Check the footage from the Xmas Jam below, or for the full-fat version, right click and save it to your desktop – it’s at the top right of this page…