Here at Banquet, we've been stoked on Chris Mendes ever since he took down a stop on the DC King of LA series and popped up again as a Free Flow Tour finalist. And what do you know... there he goes, knocking down the Best Trick contest at Volcom's Damn Am over the weekend with kickflip backside tailslide to big spin out off the A-frame rail.  Here's that BNQT clip again, in case you missed the introduction:



BNQT's also been stoked on Chaz Ortiz lately. He first popped up on our radar at King of the Groms last year, and we were all over his Free Flow Tour story. He finished 2nd in Friday's Damn Am qualifiers, 3rd in semi-finals, and 2nd in Finals. Memo to Zoo York: What does a flow team kid have to do to get a mention on the webage? Ortiz is reppin' hard, and has a different Zoo York t-shirt on every time I see him. Here's BNQT's Free Flow Tour video package on the kid:

 

Ortiz' 2nd place finish left the big Damn Am Finals win to Scott DeCenzo. We've been sleepin' on this one, and will get to work to learn more. Ryan DeCenzo took 3rd. Any relation? They're a couple of Canucks. We'll get right on it.  Full results at SpOT, but a few other BNQT Grom Watch names pop up in those results: Tulio's bro Luan De Oliveira won the Friday qualifiers. Riley Hawk (name sounds familiar...) took 16th in Friday qualifiers; David Loy took 16th in Saturday qualifiers. (Taylor Smith, another 2007 Free Flow Tour star, just missed the cut at number 17). Top 16 advanced: in Semi-Finals Loy took 14th and Hawk took 21st, right behind another familiar name... Shane Sheckler. You know, watching the Life of Ryan you'd hardly know Shane (middle bro, not to be confused with lady-killer kid Kane) had skills too. Then again, you'd hardly know Ryan skated either. Season 2?

Another name we've been tracking: Evan Smith won the locals-only am contest on the Dew Tour course last week in Orlando. At Damn Am he ended up in 9th. And in one of our absolute favorite recent trends, some ladies held their own at Damn Am without having a separate competition: Leticia Bufoni, Lacey Baker, and Lauren Perkins were all in the mix in qualifiers. 

One last Damn Am comment: Shuriken Shannon is still competing as an amateur? Really? Just a hunch: This will change by the time Thrasher's King of the Road 2007 DVD makes the rounds.