Damn, I'm tired. Tampa Am has been totally crazy: In the last 3 days, a crowd of nearly 300 skaters was narrowed down to the top 12 skating in today's Finals. Some massive nights and killer parties went down along the way, and the good people at SPoT even managed to squeeze in an Old Man Bowl Jam and Best Trick contest on top of everything else, finishing everything off with the biggest product toss I've ever seen. Seriously: Kids were coming out of there with so much shwag they could barely carry it all. I saw some kid's mom tear a dude to the floor – and win – in a fight for a deck,  and (I swear on everything that is holy) saw a guy with no arms grabbing shwag out of the air with glee. Tampa, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:


1. Ryan Decenzo won the whole shebang, by kind of a large margin, it turned out. Check out his winning run here.


2. Ben Hatchell is a hell of a kid. He started embarrassing me in the kidney bowl at Vans before he was even in double digits, and now that he's 17 he's pretty much ruling amateur vert competition. Wait a minute... Tampa Am vert isn't until March this year! Yep, you read it right: Ben Hatchell took 2nd in the Street Finals.


3. Shane O'neill took third. Awesome, awesome skater. Never heard of him before, but then again, that's why I came to Tampa: To get schooled on what's in store for skateboarding.


4. The Skatepark of Tampa is one hell of a place: Ryan Clements and Brian Schaeffer are rock stars for how they've made this all happen and held it together for 15 years, and Tampa Am really has become indispensable to the skateboarding industry for very good reason. It's also in a total dump of an area, and literally has a moat of shitwater around it. In the words of Toby Taylor (father of Florida skate siblings Adam, Dylan, and Leah Taylor, and professional pimp for Steaz Energy Drink), "Brian and Ryan have turned shitwater into wine with this thing." Too true. Props all around for it: I raise my glass.



BNQT favorite Chaz Ortiz ended up in 6th place, and our man Chris Mendes just barely missed the top 12 cut at unlucky #13 (they gave him an iPhone for his efforts, so don't feel too bad for him).


I'm too tired to do anything with the photos and video I took just now, and there's still one more party to get to tonight, so hold out for tomorrow while I get it together: My footage of the annual moat race through some heinous Tampa sewage is particularly worthy. These Tampa kids will do anything for some shwag, I'm telling you.


Full Finals results here.