On Thursday afternoon, I went to Staples Center with the brother to watch the XGames. Johnny designed their media guide this year so he had some free passes to use. Gotta love free stuff.

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The XGames weren’t exactly the way I remembered it to be. A few years ago, I went to XGames in SF. I took BART over to the city and walked right in. It was more like a festival by the water just next to PacBell Park. There was shwag and No Doubt was playing on stage. This time, it was indoors in the Staples Center with not very many spectators and really limited viewing areas. It felt more like a TV production with camera guys everywhere and commercial breaks. I took about 250 shots and ended up uploading only a handful. I suppose that’s how you learn. Sports photography is tough when you’re stuck in the stands with poles and TV cameras in your way. The Flying Tomato, Bob Burnquist, Andy Macdonald, and a bunch others were competing and it was cool to watch them skate. At the end we even saw the legendary Tony Hawk in the media booth doing the play-by-play. It was weird since he was sitting only 10 feet away from us and it took at least 15 minutes for us to notice that he was there. Here are the photos I uploaded.