Danny Graham vs. Art MD: The Battle!!! What Battle???

Next time, Danny and I should battle for record sales or something like Kanye West and 50 Cent, because as Danny's girlfriend quoted after the tricking battle: it was a "waste of time."

Remember that historic match between the great chess world champion Boris Spassky and the inexperienced, underdog Bobby Fischer (pictured)? Well, that was the way the battle "Art MD vs. Danny Graham" was hyped. However, our battle just wasn't as cool; in fact, it was lame. Even though he was the experienced Spassky-type, he acted a lot like the spoiled Fischer. During the '72 World Chess Championship, Fischer made several unreasonable demands and swore not to compete in unless all of his random demands were taken care of. He said he would not battle unless he had a higher chair than Spassky, the audience stood much farther than usual, the lighting was brighter, the matches take place on certain days-- everything was on his terms. Danny and I had agreed before our battle on several terms. However, he pushed the battle ahead by 24 hours and informed me of the change less than two hours before the timing he was requesting. So, why did I battle if everything was on his terms or nothing? Because me on a bad day without any of my terms being met can still hold up against Danny on a good day with all of his terms.

One of the terms we had agreed on was that we would either battle in grass or on spring flooring. I wanted to battle on concrete, grass, and spring to show diverse flooring and give an all-around look at both trickers. In addition, I needed an abundance of area space and height. However, once I arrived to the battle, it was pretty much karate pad floor in a confided area. There were fans hanging from the ceiling everywhere in addition to columns in random areas. Also, we agreed to battle on Tuesday (today); however, he had one of his friends text me to inform that unless we battled at 9:30 yesterday, there would be no battle at all. I received the text at 8:00. With no proper preparation, I still went. A $%^*& move in my opinion, but that's okay. There were several other terms in which normal tricking battles consist of in which this one did not due to obvious reasons.
The battle? What battle? It was a series of tricks. No crowd: it was practically a tricking session. No one judged. We tricked for three minutes. I ran out of space on many of my combos because we had originally agreed on grass or gym floor and I trained for the battle accordingly. Unfortunately all of the circumstances changed within an hour and a half of the battle and the battle wasn't so. Either way, Danny's promised slaughter didn't occur and the inexperienced trickster from New York... almost ran into a wall a few times. But there was no battle and certainly no slaughter. In fact, Danny looked a little scared. The footage his squad recorded should be up soon.

Hitchhiking to the Tricking Battle in Miami

Saturday morning I set out from my aparment in Brooklyn to catch a 3:00 flight to Miami. There were a few airline complications at Westchester County Airport (a.k.a. I missed my flight). I always fly out of WCA in White Plains, which is about thirty-or-so miles outside the Big Apple, because it's less hectic, less crowded, and you can usually meet a beautiful girl from Westchester who drives a Benz and lives off daddy's money. 

Because WCA  is such a small airport, Airtran only had one flight departing for the rest of the day and it was bound for Orlando. Close enough to Miami, right? I changed my ticket and 2 1/2 hours later at 9:30 PM I found myself rideless, friendless, and broke in Orlando, home of Disney and Sea World. So, what do you do when you are in a city 230 miles from your destination and you don't have money or an actually plan to get where you're going? You trick.... And enjoy the hell out of the adventure.

I did a couple flips on the side of the road a mile from the airport and caught a ride on a local bus for zero-fair and was dropped off near the Florida Turnpike, a direct route to Miami. At about 11 PM I found myself bound south, walking down the turnpike with my thumb up, watching cars speed by. I called a couple friends every hour on the hour as a safety net to send out a search party in case I was molested by a junkie disguised as a palm tree or robbed at gun-point and shot by a senior-citizen hooker. It could happen. Have you seen Monster? But I live in Brooklyn so I'm automatically arrogant enough to think nothing can happen to me and what haven't I seen before, flicked off, and walked past in the subway? 

I made it about eight miles down the road when I was picked up by a cop. He offered to take me to a truck stop so that I could catch a ride with  trucker from there, seeing as I had no money.  He drove me back to within two blocks of where I started. Back to square one.

To make a long story short, I woke up a lot of truckers at 3 AM, made electronic device barter offers in exchange for a ride South, made a couple deals, went to sleep behind a gas station under a palm tree, smoked my first Marlboro (it was that kind of night), woke up at 11 AM, missed my rides, tried to make other deals to no immediate avail, waited around until 6 PM, caught a free ride on a local bus to a Greyhound Bus Terminal that was closed, caught another local bus going the other way to downtown Orlando's Greyhound, bartered off an old digital camera in exchange for a $47 ticket to Miami, met a guy who worked for ESPN Magazine, networked to get Streetflips involved with some upcoming magazine events and shoots, met a beautiful girl, got on the bus, texted the beautiful girl halfway through the trip, got to downtown Miami at 4AM, walked five miles to Miami Beach, watched the sunrise as I laid across the sand and the waves rushed up to against my feet, passed out, woke up, confirmed the tricks battle against Danny Graham tomorrow, and came to the Apple Store to blog about it.

Just another day. 

TEXT MSG BLOG

Blogging from my cell as i wrestle with alligators and hitchhike from orlando to mia 4 the battle against d graham. More details tomorrow.

We All Trick

If I walk into the middle of Times Square, stop traffic, and boastfully proclaim, "I'm into tricking! I trick!" my random and incoherent proclamation could have several varying connotations among the myriad of easily fancied tourists, jaded New Yorkers, and the cab driver who's probably cursing me out. I could be perceived as a trick, or person that pays for sex. But don't we all one way or the other?
"Tricking" can additionally mean the act of "turning tricks" or rather having mail-order sex with a paying customer. And whether you're sleeping with someone for a couple free meals at the Olive Garden or just having fun sex, aren't we all paying customers in some aspect of our lives? Keep following me. I'm going somewhere.
Then, there's the more commonly understood term which Webster defines as deceiving "by cunning or artiface." There is also the definition as "dressing or adorning fancifully or ornately."
And then, there is the sport of tricking in which the athletes who do it refer to themselves as "tricksters" or "trickers." My opinion on that matter shifts daily. Like the prostitute's or even the trick's opinion of whether he/she wants to talk dirty in bed and desires to be called "Wonder Woman!" or "slut!" Depends on the mood I guess.
All in all, we all have deceived someone, we all have gotten dressed up "ornately" for that special occasion, we all have had sex with paying customers, we all pay for sex one way or another, but we don't all flip off of walls, do 1080s, raiz-corks, or simple 540s for that matter.
So "I trick" is merely stating the obvious unless of course you are referring to the sport.
What I hope we can all take from this is that I had nothing better to blog about as I split for Miami on this overcast Saturday afternoon to go trick.

GUY GETS HIT BY CAR VIDEO

I'm giving a little extra this Friday with my second blog of the day. Here at Streetflips, we flip over cars...but this guy takes things to a whole new level by willingly getting hit by one. I looked at it a few times and feel it may be fake-- maybe it happened much slower and then they sped up the footage while editing. But, boy, does he bounce of the car pretty high! If they are tricking us, they are fellow tricksters of an unknown sect and helping in efforts to bring our sport to new levels in extremely unconventional ways.
Anyway, the kid got hit by a car and you deserve to laugh at him. Happy Friday.


Kid Gets Hit By Car - Watch more free videos

By the way, here we are flipping OVER cars.



GUYS FLIPPING OVER CARS

THE STREETFLIPS GIRLS

You may recognize the girl to my left from America's Next Top Model. This is part of SF's ongoing effort to promote tricking as an extreme sport by adding the hot girl factor. Of course, the extreme and danger factor were already in the bag, but without hot girls promoting, it's just not on the money. To see what I'm talking about, check out Grind TV's mamitos.
This is also a shameless effort to give you a reason to read this blog.
Recently, I spammed my 1,500 Myspace friends to bring them to this blog, so I must have sexy content on top to make them say errr.... cool. If you're coming from Myspace, be sure to bookmark this page or subscribe on the right menu as I update this with hot content daily.

Below you will find our exclusive photos from the first Streetflips Girls photoshoot. Enjoy. This may or may not be suitable for minors... depending on whether you live in New York or not.

BMW, Monotracer: Sexy sponsors for tricking.

Shameless plug for BMW and Peraves Monotracer: future sponsors of the next generation of tricking. Unfortunately, the two companies aren't privy to this, but with modern advances in online social networks, search engine optimization, and companies like StumbleUpon, who knows, maybe BMW and/or Monotracer will find this blog and say, "Hey, let's sponsor those guys doing all the flips and stuff and give 'em some of our cabin-bikes."

Commercial idea: So, I'm doing the regular flip-over-cars-thing and then a guy pulls up with a cabin-bike. I tell him I'll flip over it. I run up, drive off, and you see the picture above. I do in fact flip, but just with my finger. The end.

Part of tricking, at least Tricking 2.0, is always keeping it sexy. This vehicle (the Peraves Monotracer "Cabin bike" powered by a BMW engine) is sexy. When's the last time you checked out the back of a machine like that?