Skateboarding Foundation - World's Biggest Skateboard

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In late 2001 Ripley's Believe It or Not contacted us about doing a segment for the television show. Of course we were down to do this. A crew came down and met with us on a Saturday. There was a producer, a sound man and a camera man. I don't remeber their names. There may have been one more guy. Our crew was Josh Beagle, Damon Mills, Kevin Furtado, Marc Gariss and myself, Tod Swank. We met at FSHQ early in the morning and started shooting immediately. They had put together a storyline together about it being dreamed and constructed. Then going out and trying to master the wheelie. It was kinda hokey but we didn't really care. It was comedy. We were making fun of the producer but didn't realise the sound man could hear all the shit talking on the remote mikes. We shot most at this mellow hill nest to FSHQ. This one time we tried to slappy this big curb. It totally stuck and we all flew completely off the front into a big pile on the ground. There was another time we all fell off the back except Damon doing a wheelie and the board bounced and swatted Damon so hard he flew through the air uncontrollably. These and more didn't make the final cut. Wish we had access to that footage. We shot some stuff in the warehouse of me pretending to be welding, painting and putting a wheel on. All fake and even funnier because now you know. We then loaded it up on the WBS trailer and took it down to the beach for the big wheelie challange. They wanted to get thye reaction of general public spectators. They mounted some cameras above and below the deck for some cool shots. These surfer kids would go nuts as we went by (on cue from the director). We didn't get a good clean manual/wheelie without hitting the tail that day but they edited it so it looks clean. We used to do like 30' long cllean manuals/wheelies back in our Sorrento Valley days. The segment appeared on National TV Ripley's Believe It or Not, Season 3 - Episode 301 on 2/27/2002. Click on the image to the left to view the Quicktime clip of the show.

Thanks to Ripley's for a good time and the WBS riders for shredding.

ripleys cover

In 2006 for Xmas my Mom brought me this printed copy of the Ripley's book, Expect The Unexpected (Published in 2006). Lo and behold there is a mention of the WBS on page 83 under the Breaking Bounderies catagory. I never knew about it. So it was a great surprise. Unfortunately there are no photos included. I will have to fix that!

Click on the image on the right to see the detail.

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