Atlas Open Skateboard Contest

I was supposed to drive down to New-York City for the weekend, I ended up going to Mascouche!

The Atlas Open skateboard contest is a classic of the Quebec skateboard scene that has been around for some 8 years or so. It takes place in a town an hour north of Montreal called Mascouche. The last time I attended it was just before the first Under Attack Tour across Canada, so that brings us back to the summer of 2004.

The get together was a chance to meet back with dozens of friends, people from the industry and skateboarders from different generations ranging from legends Steve Cantin, Etienne Tanguay and Nick Cote to the internationally renowned J-S Lapierre (16), Josh Clarke and Antoine Asselin (19) as well as new comers Will Christofaro (16), Luc Baslanti (17), Alexis Lacroix, Pat Tremblay and many other kids whose names I still ignore.

My biggest surprise was to see J-S Lapierre skate a park for the first time. Even thought I know the kid has won the Es Game of skate in Montreal two years in a row (which is insane) and have shot street skating with him a year ago, I had no idea of how much of an evolved bag of tricks and pop he's got. Actually, I do have seen him at the Am Getting Paid contest last year, so I guess it's just a matter of his style and pop improving tremendously over the last year. This is very possible as the guy is only 16.

Besides J-S, Antoine was killing everything as usual, with backside 180 flips to fakie nosegrinds on the curb like it was nothing and nose blunt slides on the steep, Park Prefontaine-inspired bank. Luc Baslanti skated an improvised hubba on the side of the main module and managed to frontside bluntslide, frontside noseblunt and backside 180 fakie nosegrind the hell out of it. This would have deserved some money, but at the end of the day the hands-down winner was Josh Clark. There is an ambiguity in terms of what deserved the money on the main module, if it was one of Luc's improvisations on the hubba, Will Christofaro's big spin heel backside boardslide on the rail, J-S Lapierre's big flip front board or Josh's textbook backside nosebluntslide on the hubba. The thing is, Josh also full cab frontboarded the rail and did the two gnarliest tricks down the trailer into the bank (backside flip and fakie flip), so he kind of deserved the MVP title and cheque.

Following is a still frame of colorful Jean-Sebastien Lapierre in mid salad grind. I think he was attempting a fronside feeble but just locked into a salad and pulled it.