Coming to America: America is a dandy place. Just ask any American.

Land of the free and so forth. But you don't have to be a skateboarder getting kicked out of an empty parking lot to see that freedom is a relative term. The truth is, as an outsider, a foreigner looking in, it's sometimes hard to understand why there are so many darn rules in a place that seemingly prides itself on the apparently self-evident right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Show me another part of the world where you can get a jaywalking ticket on a green light just because the orange hand is flashing and I'll show you a country that doesn't make much of a production about being a 'free society.' Still, there is something to be said for 24-hour grocery stores, drive-through (or drive-thru rather) convenience stores, and Super Big Gulps. This is an account of a group of foreigners and their two-week journey from mini-mall hell to Crackton.

I joined the group in San Diego the day after the industry orgy known as the ASR. The crew consisted of JB Gillet, JJ Rousseau, Lucas Puig, Vincent Bressol, Cale Nuske, Jan Kliewer, team manager Brett Margaritis, and his friend Corbin. The posse came complete with those rolling bags that have become all the rage and stacks of boards. Somehow the whole mess fit into a huge white Ford Econovan, which I dubbed the Tupac-mobile since the musical selection was limited to tracks from France's patron saint of gangsta rap, Tupac Shakur.

Though I managed to miss the skateboard party, the streets were still festive (read: filled with drunk people) since there was one of those fake Mardi Gras deals going on. In America it seems that the exposing of one's bosoms is a social taboo--it is not to be encouraged at public beaches, for example.

NOW, I'M NOT REALLY GIVNE TO conspiracy theories, but I'm forced to wonder if this night not be a financial rather than a moral concern. You see, if American males can see topless women at the beach, then they might be less inclined to shell out the $19.95 for "College Girls Gone Wild" and they might not visit their local strip club. There's a reason there're no Hooter's restaurants in the south of France. Men won't buy the cow if they get the nipples for free. And so there are all these little street festivals. The guys selling the beads make money, the bars selling the booze make money, and the people filming all the young ladies flashing their titties edit videos together and they make money too. It's sweet, glorious capitalism.

We all went out for dinner at one of those great places that serves fried cheese sticks. We discussed tip etiquette and how it varies from culture to culture. Brett and JB shared stories of waiters chasing them down for leaving inadequate gratuity. After supper (or dinner if you prefer) we returned back to the hotel. The hotel was right beside one of the venues for Street Scene (the fake Mardi Gras.) It just so happened that the parking lot had a perfect view of the stage where Ja Rule was playing, but the attendants weren't about to tolerate a bunch of freeloading gawkers using their place of business as an opera box. Everyone was whisked away, much to the disappointment of the French, who's appetite for all things hip-hop is incalculable, Not to be deterred, some of the guys found the way up to the roof, which provided more or less the same view and not to mention a great angle for a laser-pointer attack. Cale managed to laser-pointer Mr Rule's chest for almost 30 seconds. The caper was broadcast on the jum -botron-sized screen on stage; it really was quite a coup.

I opted for the less exciting yet equally fulfilling option of watching Entertainment Tonight and paid advertisements for a product called Redi-Strip. Three easy payments! The rest smoked weed covertly in their rooms. I gather that they'd tried smoking weed overtly the night before and had been ejected out of a hotel. C'est la vie.

The next day we drove around and got kicked out of some spots. The heat wasn't conducive to shredding so we headed north. We stopped in at Burnett's, and I dropped off photos while the crew bombed the hill, played S-K-A-T-E and kicked the soccer ball, or football, if you will, around. We then botched some incredibly simple directions to what might have been a really good Mexican restaurant. Instead we ate at a really, really bad Mexican restaurant. Then we drove north as we debated the pros and cons of Hollywood vs. Huntington. We settled on Hollywood and checked into the Hollywood Celebrity Hotel, which was unfortunately void of celebrities.

Our stay in Hollywood was for the most part quite unproductive. The days were filled with food stops, calling card stops, and a whole lotta' head-office visitation. My favourite of which was Prime, the woodshop that produces boards for Wet Willy and Flameboy among others. There we met three delightful older gentlemen, all brothers, who run the operation. The showroom was filled with long-since out-of-date breakfast nooks and '50s diner-style furniture. As we were leaving the trio wished us good luck with our "performances." We followed that up with a stop at Dwindie, only to discover that they don't house any skateboards there at all, but as a consolation prize we did catch a glimpse of the notorious Steve Rocco out front with a putter working on his short game. During the next couple of days we also managed to work in a visit to the Girl family warehouse and seemingly endless number of skateshop product swap sessions, all with due lollygagging.

NONE OF THIS IS MEANT TO IMPLY that this crew doesn't skate. In fact, Lucas starts bouncin' off the walls when he's deprived of ledges (or "curbs" as he calls them) for more than a couple of hours (which might have something to do with e heroic amount of Coca-Cola that he ingests on a constant and ongoing basis--his addiction is rivaled only by Cale's, who has been known to suck back multiple Super Big Gulps over the space of an afternoon.) There was definitely some skating, and some good skating at that, but it wasn't skating that was well suited to being photographed for the purpose of an article. The Venice sand-gaps may have been worthy of a cover in the early '90s, but you gotta get downright ridiculous to shoot anything there in 2002. And TF's like Girl's are strictly catalogue fair, not to mention off-limits. This left me without a whole lot to do for nearly a week. I coped by zoning out and listening to my iPod, that is until my headphones were found broken on one of the seats in the van, leaving me w ithout a barrier against the everpresent "gasgsta rap." Not that my headphones provided much in the way of protection at the best of times. Even with the volume turned up all the way, the Elliot Smith and Nick Drake songs I was listening to managed to do little more than scramle Tupac a bit. I guess you just can't keep a good man down.

On the surface, Southern California seems to be the land of milk and honey in the skateboard world. It's famous for predictable weather and an abundance of skatespots. We've all seen video footage of people applying bondo to cracks, and everyone knows that there are security guards everywhere. But I don't think that most people realize just how grave the situation has become. For more than half the year, skateboarding is pretty much a weekend affair. Hardly anyone tries to shoot a photo between Sunday night and Saturday afternoon. Any photographer or filmer can tell you that capturing a trick on a weekday is beating the odds. 'We didn't do much in the way of odds beating. A generator would've helped, having an extensive spot list might have come in handy too, but neither Vern (the filmer) nor myself were from the area JJ had spent some time growing up in California, but most of the terrific spots of his youth had since been blown out with the state-wide migration to LA. So we muddied through as best we could and kept our fingers crossed that things would pick up on the weekend.

To their credit, the crew came through with flying colours. The majority of the photos you're looking at were shot on two consecutive Saturdays, which is to say Saturdays from two consecutive weeks, not a week with two back-to-back Saturdays.

After the hotly anticipated weekend had passed it was high time we headed north, So we piled into the Tupac-mobile and drove up to San Francisco. JB knew the lay of the land pretty well and steered us to a hotel on O'Farrell. The hotel was right in the heart of an area called 'The Tenderloin.' I'm not sure where the name comes from but the locals were hardly tender. Rather the opposite, much like LL Cool J they were hard as hell...well, the ones that weren't unconscious that is.

MOST EVERYONE YOU PASSED on the street was hopelessly addicted to 'crack cocaine.' While we were checking into the hotel a lady in the lobby was telling us that she'd been mugged twice in the previous week and strongly advised that we not turn left once we exited through the front doors. But the draw of reasonably-priced Indian food turned out to be stronger than the concern for my own safety. I mean, you don't get Naan bread and lentil dahl just anywhere.

I'm slowly learning that the trick to surviving in a group dynamic is to go with the flow, as they say. This is especially true when it comes to dealing with Europeans (Australians seem to have it about right if you ask me. They have a laid-back European outlook but without the tardiness) Where I once waited impatiently in the lobby with all my gear ready-to-go, I now take a skeptical approach to itineraries. This allows me to do things like check out the McSweeney's pirate store while everyone else is shopping for "chilling shoes." The French love chilling shoes--"shilling shoes" they call them-actually I think everyone on the trip was a sneaker-file. That explains the massive rolling bags that everyone had. If you're going to travel all the way to the US of A, you might as well load up on rare Nikes and Shell-toes. Hey wait, don't y'all get free shoes? Shit, there's not a contract around that can keep a style-conscious skater away from a pair of white Air Force Ones.

Where in LA the battle had been to get everyone to a spot, in SF the battle was to get them away from a spot. Pier 7 was as addictive to the French as crack was to the Tenderlocs. Lucas suffered most from the severe withdrawal symptoms. He whined and pouted whenever we tried to bring him elsewhere. "Great, we go to 15-stair." We made two trips to San Jose, which is only a short drive south of the city. But Tiltmode country didn't really agree with the group, so we returned to the hallowed ground of the Pier where JB and Lucas worked on lines and I caught up on my reading. Once again I found myself waiting for the weekend with my fingers crossed.

As it turned out, a half weekend would have to do since everyone flew out on Sunday. We were lucky to have decent weather. Who booked these tickets? Don't they know you can only skate on weekends here? That's just how the Europeans do things. They don't sweat the production details so much. And maybe that's as it should be. No one was stressing about trick quotas or how many minutes of footage they'd accumulated. More than anything everyone just wanted to skate some spots where we wouldn't get the boot. I might have suggested Lyon. But in the end things worked themselves out. I got the photos I needed; the guys got to skate some new stuff, and everyone came home with some "shilling shoes." C'est magnifique, n'est-ce pas?

WHO ARE THESE GUYS, ANYWAY?

While most of these guys are nearly legends in their respective
homelands, all but JB are more or less unknown in America. So, here's
the Austro-European sponsor round-up to help sort things out:

RIDER                 CLICHE   LINK    NATIONALITY    ACCESSORIES
                              (SHOES)

Cale Nuske              X        X     Australian    Snoop Dogg CD
Lucas Puig              X                French       sweat pants
Jan Kliewer             X                German     white polo shirt
Jean-Jacque Rousseau    X                French          blunt
Vincent Bressol         X                French      shilling shoes
Jean-Baptiste Gillet             X       French         mustache

RELATED ARTICLE: AMERICA-WHAT A COUNTRY!

THINGS YOU SEE IN AMERICA THAT YOU DON'T SEE IN EUROPE:

* Gold plaques set into the sidewalk celebrating Tony Danza's contribution to popular culture

* Spray-on cheese

* User pay health-care, despite polls that show the public is overwhelmingly in favor of a Canadian-style system

* Security guards looking for bribes

* 16-year-old kids driving GMC Yukons on the way to school

THING EUROPEANS MIGHT MISS WHILE VISITING AMERICA:

* Dogs in restaurants

* Carbonated everything, maybe even milk

* Crusty white bread

* 10-year-old kids smoking

* Cheek kisses

THING EUROPEANS MIGHT NOT MISS WHILE VISITING AMERICA:

* Dudes in Speedos smoking cigarettes in the middle of downtown