|
At a
typical professional skating event, five judges score athletes
on the height and difficulty of air tricks and the technical
proficiency of grind tricks on a scale of 1 to 100.
As of
Aug. 19, www.awezome.com/
xlinks.html offered links to 134 extreme-games sites.
|
|
B3: Bikes, Boards
& Blades features aggressive in-line skating, bicycle
stunt and skateboarding competitions.
Tualatin Hills
Park and Recreation District Recreation Complex, 15707 SW
Walker Road, Beaverton, 645-6433. 11:30 am-6:30 pm Friday,
11 am-7 pm Saturday, 11 am-6:30 pm Sunday, Aug. 27-29. Free.
B.J. Campbell attacked the wooden ramp. Hurtling himself up
its slope, he pulled the tight mass of his 135 pounds into
a slight crouch. Then, at the lip of the five-foot crest,
he uncoiled in a kinetic fit. Rising several feet above the
ramp, he flipped, holding his in-line skates with his right
hand, stabbing the air with his left in a rock-'n'-roll salute.
An 11-year-old in a baseball cap and khaki cargo pants
couldn't believe what he was seeing. Teetering on the urethane
wheels of his skates, he watched as Campbell flew overhead
like a wild bird being thrown toward heaven. The kid's enchantment
was shared by a handful of pre-adolescents who had gathered
on a cement ledge adjacent to the ramp at the Tualatin Hills
Park and Recreation District's skate park.
Campbell twirled 540 degrees, straightened himself while
clearing the ramp's deck, landed cleanly on the downward
slant of the launch box and scooted across the pavement.
He completed the trick by dodging a groundskeeping go-cart
puttering around the complex's immaculate soccer and baseball
fields.
The youths on the ledge buzzed: "A 540!" "Is that guy pro?"
"Did you see that?" "Who is that guy?"
"That's B.J. Campbell," said Garrick Ashenfelter, a 13-year-old
in a scuffed, silver blading helmet. "He's really nice."
"That guy's awesome," said the kid in the baseball cap.
For one afternoon Brendan Joseph Campbell was everything
those kids wanted him to be: an awesome, professional in-line
skater. Under the hot eye of an August sun, Campbell seemed
the very picture of a new kind of hero. With clipped brown
hair, a silver hoop in his left ear and a light thatch of
whiskers adorning his chin, he could have been the fourth
Beastie Boy. He wore the freshest gear: Navy shorts dangled
past his knees; a T-shirt with the words "Groove Productions"
etched below an image of California's flag flapped against
his sturdy torso. Campbell's skates and shorts were made
by K2, a clothing and equipment manufacturer that had once
sponsored Campbell in his pursuit of the in-line Holy Grail--first
place at ESPN's annual X Games. Most importantly, B.J. Campbell
could do tricks--like the one-and-a-half rotations of his
540--most skaters at the park will only dream about.
And yet, at 20 years of age, Campbell says his career is
over: "I wake up every morning at my girlfriend's wondering
what I'm going to do."
A graduate of Beaverton's Sunset High School, Campbell
is now considering attending classes at Portland Community
College and is scanning the classifieds for work. Having
spent his life dedicated to balance--roller skating as a
young boy, skateboarding and surfing during the three years
he lived with his mother, Maria Nelson, in Hawaii--Campbell
has seen his sport, aggressive in-line skating, turned upside
down. He wonders where he fits in.
According to the National Sporting Goods Association, more
kids are now buying in-line skates than playing Little League
baseball. Since 1995 ESPN has built the X Games into the
Super Bowl of extreme athletics and a financial windfall,
wooing such sponsors as Nike, Adidas, Taco Bell, Mountain
Dew, the Marines, Snickers, Visa, Sony and Heineken. You
can buy X Games books, a home video, a soundtrack, a video
game, magazines and a whole line of skateboards, stunt bikes
and roller blades.
"I've seen a lot of smaller companies who used to sponsor
skaters just dumped to the side," says Shane Saviers, Campbell's
best friend since their days as schoolmates at Sunset and
a top 15 in-line skater as ranked by the Aggressive Skaters
Association. "When Levi's and the Gap came in, the others
were dumped. All the kids are seeing that on TV, and they're
going to buy it."
The X Games have spawned ESPN's X Trials and B3 events,
preliminary competitions where adrenaline junkies go airborne
on stunt bikes, skateboards or blades in hopes of racking
up enough points to be invited to the X Games proper. This
level of synergism is not surprising when one realizes the
master of merchandising, the Walt Disney Co., now owns 80
percent of ESPN.
The sports cable channel has essentially made a brand name
of activities once performed in blissful, solipsistic abandon
off the white curbs of California suburbs. The gospel is
spread by a sugar rush called Xperience, an alt-band-pumping
marketing tour that made stops in 10 cities this year, finishing
in the X Games' host city, San Francisco. This summer's
X Games, held at the end of June through the beginning of
July, brought out 129 athletes from 29 different countries
to perform in front of 270,000 fans.
In October, extremists--those riding everything from downhill
street luges to skateboards--will officially cross over
into the mainstream when NBC broadcasts the Gravity Games.
Clearly, kids like the 11-year-old in Beaverton couldn't
be blamed for believing in skating-culture cool. Nor can
they be faulted for thinking that with enough practice and
chutzpah, with enough devotion to the bruiseful No Fear
dogma, they could be like Aaron Feinberg, an 18-year-old
Portlander who recently moved to Southern California and
earns close to $100,000 annually skating.
"It's kind of like a monarchy," Campbell says flatly of
commercial skating. "Some guys get paid way more than others.
What can you do? If you skate like Aaron [Feinberg] you
deserve to get paid."
A couple of years ago it was conceivable that Campbell
might skate--and get paid--like Feinberg. In 1997, sponsored
by Heavy Wheels and Rise Above Clothing, he won an X Games
qualifying event hosted by the Aggressive Skaters Association.
Known as a technically strong if not flashy skater, Campbell
nailed both his 60-second runs. He completed the required
five air tricks and five grinds--a frictional move done
by sliding across the metal bar that joins a half-pipe ramp
with its deck--with enough time to pull off his signature
540s.
The following year everything changed. A month before his
only appearance in the X Games, Campbell tore a ligament
in his left knee when he collided with another skater during
a practice session.
"I competed on a wobbly knee, but I was honored to skate
at the X Games," Campbell says. He finished 22nd out of
25 skaters.
That same year, both Heavy Wheels and Rise Above went out
of business, forcing him to work a retail job at Skate House
on Southwest Canyon Lane, not far from his mother's house.
Campbell began to think he no longer wanted to be Aaron
Feinberg.
"He's crazy," Campbell says of Feinberg, ranked No. 1 by
the ASA last year. "He doesn't stop. He's relentless in
his pursuit to be the best at skating. I'm a little older,
a little heavier, and I'm like, 'Ow, that hurts.' He just
doesn't care."
With Feinberg competing in Europe until this year's B3
games in Beaverton, his mother, Cynthia Feinberg, assessed
the pressures her son continually faces.
"A good thing about this sport is, it's open for everyone
to come in," she says. "The bad part is, one minute you're
in, and then you're not. Hopefully, he can stay in it a
few more years."
Since turning pro at 16 and leaving Lincoln High to settle
for a GED, Feinberg has hustled to keep a high ranking,
traveling from Zurich to Kentucky in search of first-place
purses ranging from $5,000 at the B3s to $13,000 at the
X Games. He must also maintain a high enough profile to
kindle the interest of his sponsors: Levi's, wheel-makers
Senate, and Salomon, a French company that plans to release
an Aaron Feinberg line of skates in 2000.
The vast majority of extreme athletes and in-line skaters--including
Campbell--will never see even one-quarter of the money Feinberg
and a dozen or so others have made off the adrenaline-sports
boom.
Campbell says if things don't go very well over the next
few days, this may be his last competition.
"Most of the kids are washed up at 20 now," Campbell said
last week, taking a break after showing off some moves for
the kids in Beaverton. "We're not like those 16- and 17-year-olds
with rubber limbs."
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published August 25,
1999
|
