EXPN.com has an article yesterday regarding the Ryan Sheckler golf tournament  - a tournament to raise money for 5 charities including Ryan’s own Sheckler Foundation.

Great idea, celebrity golf tournaments are almost always entertaining and seem to draw a good crowd… prime sponsorship opportunity to raise money for the charities.

One thing didn’t sit right with me, read the following line and tell me if you see it:

"Ryan Sheckler Hosts First-Time Golf Tournament; Brody Jenner, Mia Hamm, Kevin Federline, Bode Miller Among Those Attending"

Kevin Federline? Seriously? This is supposed to be a "celebrity" tournament not the "5 minutes of fame" hack fest. How do you go about adding a name like Federline to a golf tournament raising money for children’s charities.

Anyways… good luck to all of the "true" celebrities playing… it should be off the hook-yo!

This coming weekend marks the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Open of surfing and the 10th year of the Soul Bowl.

The site, Go211.com is anticipating over 400,000 visitors to the event over all and should be a good "fun in the sun" turnout.

From the site:
Today’s top action sports super stars in skateboarding and freestyle BMX will showcase their skills in the 68’ (long) by 46’ (wide) one-of-a kind "Soul Bowl." Celebrating it’s 10th anniversary, the Soul Bowl will host veterans that include skateboarders Sandro Dias, Omar Hassan, Tony Magnusson, Dave Duncan, Cara-Beth Burnside, and Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins as well as BMX riders Chad Kagy, Van Homan, Kevin Robinson, Koji Kraft, and the “Condor” – Mat Hoffman.

Skateboarder List

We are going to try and cover the event at some point this weekend, but if anyone gets a chance to take some killer photos, please send them to us… we will be giving away t-shirts to the best submitted photos!

We recently received a comment regarding Safety equipment in Costa Mesa’s park…

Moved comment to its own post here.

Save the date, August 9th is the Skateboard for a Cure event to help raise money for the TJ Martell Foundation.

The event will allow thousands of kids to skate with pros, celebrities and others through the streets of Los Angeles finishing at Fairfax High School where there will be autograph signing, food, games and more.

Donations of $20 or more will receive a free event t-shirt.

The TJ Martell Foundation is a devoted to Leukemia, Cancer and AIDS research.

I know this is not an OC event, but it is close enough and is for a good enough cause to mention. If you can make this event, go.

You can get more information at www.skateboardforacure.com.

We got to spend some time at the cup this weekend (though not as much as I would have hoped) and overall it was a pretty exciting event. I did feel like there was a little too much "NBA" influence. The other downside was the typical fair crowd. Once you get past all that the events were pretty exciting.

Eric and I took turns showing up where we could, but I was lucky enough to catch some action for the Pro Street finals (we even got admitted down to the grass surface for some photos.) The media could have had a little better access to some better shots, but all in all I think we got some nice shots and look forward to getting them all up. For temporary, I have put some on Flickr to get started: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28605642@N06/

I also had a chance to get pretty close to some of the guys like PLG, Shaun White, Bucky and a few others on the vert during warm ups on Friday. Those photos are in there as well.

Well done event over all and the course was sick!

Results for the event:

Just a reminder to those of you who haven’t been paying attention…

The Maloof Money Cup, marked as the "World’s Greatest Skateboarding Competition" starts on Friday the 11th and runs through Sunday the 13th.

We will be out there checking out the competition and snapping shots of the talent, so keep your eyes out for us!

Click Here for a Schedule of Events

Westminster resident, pro skater Brian Patch plead not guilty to to charges that he had sex with a 15-year-old girl who had run away from home.

Supposedly the girl ran away from home, called Patch who told her he wouldn’t be home that night and showed up at 2am to find her at his door where he proceeded to let her stay.

I have issue with these circumstances, and I am not making the judgement on guilt or not. The jury in that case is responsible for finding whether or not he did it, not me.

My issue is in the surrounding circumstances:

1. Supposedly this girl had skated with Patch at local spots for 3 years, starting her at 12 years old. - Cool, make friends with the locals and spend time skating at the parks with them… Don’t exchange phone numbers with underage girls!
2. When the girl showed up, CALL HER PARENTS! If there are criminal circumstances surrounding her running away (molestation, abuse, etc…), CALL THE POLICE! There is no excuse for a 15 year old girl to spend the night at a single, 36 year olds house. Simply unacceptable.
3. Lastly, directed at the parents… and please bear in mind I am a parent of a young daughter so I do understand certain situations… what went wrong? Why is your 15 year old daughter running away to a single 36 year old mans house, then claiming pregnancy? Can you say emotional issues from some under-rooted problems at home?

If Brian is innocent, there are things here that could have avoided all of this. If he truly did nothing and this is a ruse from the girl then I will feel bad for him… but at the same time, at 36 years old, he should know better. Celebrity status (no matter how small) should be no excuse for stupidity of this caliber.

Keywords: skateboarding, brian patch, westminster,  minor, parents