Successful Failures: Ewing Caelenayala
Images by Andrew Peters, Film/Clips By Ruben Delisle, Slappy/Roll On Grind by Ewing Caelenayala
If you do find something that hasn’t been skated before, the game has only just begun.
There’s hundreds of skateboarders out in the streets any day of the week in LA and it is a hub for all of the very best skaters in the world. You might get a trick at the spot, but then there is a good chance someone else is going to go and find the spot and try to do something to one up the original trick. Hopefully you find a spot where there is only really one trick possible, that seems to be a big part of the game these days in LA.
Nothing is sacred though. You can’t bet on any kind of honor to be upheld, it’s dog eat dog out there. On this particular sunny day in Pasadena, Ewing Caelenayala had called out a spot that had never been skated and probably the only trick you could get away with was a straight roll-on grind. We got to the spot and Ewing had to put in some work, rub bricking and waxing it to get it to go. A tenant had left and we thought we had a golden window to get the clip and move on. Of course our luck changed and the resident of the address had come home to find Ewing flying down his stairwell, we thought that was it and it would be time to get outta there. Much to our surprise, he wasn’t there to move us on, in fact he wanted to see Ewing make the grind. The stars were truly aligning.
After a few more tries Ewing was rolling away with the glory of finding and skating an unskated spot in LA, quite the feat. We high fived and checked the clip, hoping to save it for a part or project. After all our successes with this mission, it only took a week or so to have it all stripped away by the internet. Although the spot had probably sat at this house for the better part of the last 100 years, it only took a week before another skateboarder spotted the ledge and must have realized some work had been done to make it skate-able. It’s a ruthless world out there for skateboarders and sure enough, the next guy had gone and done the same trick and posted it straight to instagram, making the clip that Ewing worked for redundant.
We figured, why not make the most of our efforts and put it out here for all of your viewing pleasures… After all this might be the last time I shoot a 4x5 skate photo on Velvia 50 pushed to 100.. just like the old days (if you know, you know). More Successful Failure’s to come.
