Bicknell Hill, Baby

[Mike Gorman]

OK, the Z-Cult slalom session at Bicknell Hill was GOIN OFF last night. Anybody who's seen the Dogtown movie might remember that hill the Zephyr crew used to practice on, down the street from the old Jeff Ho shop. It's right on the beach south of the Santa Monica pier. Jesse Martinez called a session and we had about 30 or so people running cones and partying, with the Venice/Z-Cult/Bulldog/DT crew in full effect. These guys are completely insane and can't confine themselves to pure cone-running, so the session included downhill drag racing, high jumps over the gate onto a really step fast hill, beer hand offs, a slalom course with a kicker jump, hill bombing while sitting down going backwards, tandem hill bombing,(two people on a board), and 50+ Ray Flores bombing the hill in a handstand on a vintage z-flex jay adams with bennetts and powerflex 5s. That wasn't hard enough, so then Ray did it again going backwards.

This hill is wickedly steep, with perfect smooth tight grained sparkly asphalt. Bienveneda style, JG. They gate the top at 8 pm, so after that, it's on. We set up dual straight semi tight courses, and then Floyd Reid shows up. Floyd takes the leftover cones and sets the suicide tight 5 foot gates. Floyd is so sick he's running this like it's nothing, but to people looking on, it looks like a video being fast forwarded. Think Bobby Piercy down a mineshaft with a jet pack on. At this point we get the hilarious classic Euro-American cone distance struggle, with the locals plowing the cones and resetting them wider, and Floyd going back and setting them tighter.

This whole setup was almost too good to be true. Super steep fast hill with awesome pavement, right on the beach, gated, lit up with streetlights, plenty of parking, and the Santa Monica Police cruised by us four times and never bothered us, tho everyone was openly partying. If your evil minds are anything like mine, outlaw steep tight dual racing sessions this summer at night, I'm way ahead of ya.

[David Hegstrom]

Wuddup MG-

Sounds like FUN to me...how fast is the hill?