Mix all ingredients well before baking....

-A night in Hollywood,
-A few hundred skaters
-Industry types,
-Lots of alcohol,
-Free Hordeurves,
-Music blasting,
-Cameras rolling
-etc., etc.

Sounds like the right mix for quite a party right??? Well right you would be and thats the way it went down on the last Wednesday night in May at the TWS awards.

For me, it was a day well planned and I must say one of the smoothest trips of my life. Leaving Nor Cal at 4:30 a.m. we jammed down to Hollywood and checked into our hotel at 12:30. Next mission, Find the theater which we found out just happened to be a few short blocks down on Hollywood Boulevard. We picked up our tickets, checked out the theater and went in search of food.

Hollywood can be a scary place. Every time Ive been there, its just been in passing through and Im always glad Im in my car with the doors locked. Here you have the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor all in one place. It reminds me of 5th and Mission in San Francisco where you have to step over bodies to enter the Chronicle building. We were warned by the hotel staff to be very careful when walking from the public parking lot two blocks away to the hotel late at night. Why couldnt we park in the hotels garage? There were only about 30 parking spaces and 105 rooms. Nice. So we paid the valet extra to save a place for us and amazingly he did. So no worries there.

How to dress for these events always seems to be a toss up. Youre either over dressed or under dressed, but never dressed quite right. So it was this night also with people wearing the full range of attire from jeans and t shirts to formal dresses. I fell into the jeans and t shirt group.

After waiting in line for quite a while with everyone else, we were slowly let into the theater. After a quick search we were allowed to enter. I was super impressed by what a killer job Jardine Hammond and the Transworld staff did on making the event a winner. The theater itself was really cool but hard to describe. Picture an older Hollywood theater renovated and dressed up for an evening. Dim and multi-colored lighting, a mezzanine area with seating, a balcony, an outdoor area up some steep steps where everyone was hanging out enjoying the warm evening, and the food and drinks all made for a great atmosphere.

After scoring our clear view to the stage seats we set out to take photos and mingle. It sure is nice to know so many people so that you can go from one group of friends to the next to the next. At the appointed time we went back to our seats and waited, and waited, and waited. I think they made the mistake of offering drinks BEFORE the show. By the appointed time, everyone was feeling a little too good to want to come inside and sit down. That is if they could find a place to sit as it was truly standing room only. But the event finally got underway and went super smooth.

Don Bostick who runs World Cup Skateboarding was on hand to host/present awards. Being from Nor Cal also, I know they had a long trip down as well. I was very happy to see that the girls and guys were called up together to receive their awards. It was just nice to see girls being included and accepted. I think Cara Beths acceptance speech said it all, Girls love skateboarding too.

So the awards were passed out and recieved with some pretty funny acceptance speeches. I liked how a film clip of each rider was shown when they were receiving their award. A Legends award went to Steve Caballero after a heartfelt speech (written by Stacey Peralta) was read by Lance Mountain.Basically a mini movie of Steves life skating was shown when he was on stage to get his award. Steve Van Doren had a special pair of Gold Vans made just for him and also gave him a stylin electric guitar. It also turned out to be Dave Duncan's birthday so he was given a surfboard in appreciation for all his hard work at all the World Cup contests.

The DJ kept the music hoppin throughout the awards part of the show and as soon as it was over Transworld premiered their new skate video Subtleties which I hear was killer. Unfortunately we left at the beginning of it due to the intense cigarette smoke so I guess Ill have to watch it sometime in the near future.

So all in all, a great night shared with some great people in what turned out to be a great city after all. Hollywierd, who would have known?