A few months back Julian and I were standing in an abandoned warehouse amid more junk than you can possibly imagine (including thousands of adult diapers). Seriously, you couldn't see the floor of this place. As we strategized how best to go about clearing the shit out of the warehouse, we also bounced around ideas for cool content to help us launch our new site. Although there was talk of trips to Puerto Rico, Mexico and Nicaragua, we were under the impression that we were about 2 weeks out from launching our site (missed that deadline by a few months) so we came up with a plan to grab a few of our team guys and head up to Skudin Surf at American Dream with a fresh batch of epoxy boards featuring art by our guy Stephen Alther. 

pool boards

After agreeing this was probably the easiest strike mission with guaranteed waves on such a time crunch, we hit up our good friend and Posteur advocate, Paul Francisco, who works at the pool. Paul got us set up with an advanced public session (Session D) for that Monday. With the session booked, we reached out to our team riders Micha Cantor, Tristan Ridings and Stephen Alther (featured artist) who'd be accompanied by filmer Matt Mcqueeney, photog Brett Long and myself. Everyone was down so Julian got to work in the shaping room.

The boards for the pool were an assortment of Thirst Traps, Darts, Beefcakes and Booster Seats, all made with EPS/Epoxy tech and our staple flame airbrushes or art by Stephen Alther. 
slather collection

 On Monday afternoon, Tristan, Julian and I loaded up my truck to meet the rest of the boys at the pool for our 9pm session. As expected with any surf trip, regardless of salt or chlorinated water, there's bound to be at least one or two good hiccups, and for us it was leash strings. As we were unpacking the boards and slapping traction on, we realized we didn't have a single leash string... Fortunately we were at a Goliath of a mall so Julian takes off running through the place until he stumbled across a Zoomiez and cleaned them out of neon shoelaces. 

If you've been to Skudin Surf at American Dream before, you can probably relate to the strange feeling of walking through a mall  at 9:30 p.m. as its closing and passing Auntie Anne's and Footlocker with a quiver of boards under your arms but after weaving through the traffic of last minute shoppers, we were greeted by our friend Paul. 

 

 

The pool area was about 4598 degrees (celsius), but we quickly forgot about the humidity as soon as the first perfect A-frame rolled through. It took a bit to get used to, but before long everyone was finding their feet and the real challenge became making sure Matt, Brett and I didn't miss a clip as there was an obscene amount of waves caught. 

Tristan stuck about 25 air reverses, Micha was dialing in his shuv-its and straight airs and Stephen repeatedly dropped his wallet on the shallow concrete bottom. 

The first wave was called Playgrounds which featured left and right peaks in three separate locations, the second wave was a mini slab tube and the final wave was a wedge that broke off the wall offering a surprisingly sick section to hit.  

micha full rotation

 

Fast-forward two hours and 400 clips later and Paul gave everyone one wedge wave to throw everything they had at. Micha was the last to go and was trying a huge air reverse but couldn't quite stick it. After eating shit he immediately pops up looking at Paul and asks for one more- the kid doesn't give up easy. Paul agreed and on Micha's last attempt he stuck a massive full rotation, talk about a perfect way to end a session. 

stephen pizza

 

 Ten minutes later we're soaking wet getting rushed back out of the closed mall with a box of pizza and plenty of laughs as we recounted our time at the pool. Its around one in the morning now so we said our goodbyes, I got dropped at the airport for a 6 a.m. flight to San Diego and Tristan and Julian trekked back to northern Delaware, finally getting home around 3:30 that morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven't been to Skudin Surf at American Dream, we highly recommend you check it out. We're looking forward to getting back there very soon. 

pool party
Written by Laine Dupont

Leave a comment

More stories

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: DAN JONES

 We sat down with our very talented airbrush artist, Dan Jones, to learn more about his background, inspirations and what he's doing when he's not...