Ann Arbor Skatepark Benefit Art Show

So the comic book shop I hit up regularly - Vault of Midnight - has been very hands-on with getting a skate park in Ann Arbor for the kiddies and adult skaters. There are skate parks in Michigan, but they're out of town, and downtown Ann Arbor hasn't really been very skater friendly. So people had to drive an hour or so to legally skate, or skate the streets at their own risk.

So after a bunch of petitions, and lobbying with the City Counsel, the Skate park was approved and it's money time.  Today there was a huge art benefit to help raise money for the skate park and it was at my favorite comic book venue; The Vault.




Event started at 7PM,  but I couldn't dip out of work early until 8. Either way a friend and I show up, not really knowing what to expect but wanting to support the shop and the skate park.

Get in, check out the normal stuff and I can hear the auctioneer over the stereo.  Besides the fact that you don't normally hear an auctioneer being pumped through the speakers of any business, there's usually an awesome selection of random music flooding the place.  We head down stairs and the place is packed.

Now the down stairs area is usually used for board games and older comic book stock, but today it was packed with people and 50 skate decks hanging on the wall for the auction. Because I didn't get there until about an hour and half after the event started I missed a lot of the fun, but I did catch the intense bid war at the end.

One of the bidders and a member of the Skate Park board, Doug Song, posted a lot of awesome pictures on his Flickr page.  Make sure you check them out to really see some of the things artist's submitted for the event.  I really liked the "Silver Surfer" deck as well as the Marvel characters deck.  There's also a picture of the Tony Hawk deck that was signed by 24 pro skaters and was auctioned off in a silent auction before I got there.

The night ended with Doug and the owner of the Vault, Curtis, going into an all out bid war on this board.

Detail: 47 Uploaded by dugsong

Now you can't really see it from the image, but this was laser etched. Curtis described it as a "stencil, on top of a stencil but instead using paint, they used a laser." Curtis and Doug went at it until Doug threw out a bid of "2."  Yes, that's a 2k bid on that awesome deck.  At one point I thought Doug was going to have a heart attack - and that was just at $1500 - and Liz (Curtis' wife) turned a deeper shade of red every time Curtis bid another $100.  Curtis played a good game waiting for the last second to snipe the bid, trying to pysch Doug out of the lead.  Bid went to $1800 and Doug made the jump to $2000.  Crowd went wild, Curtis bowed out and shook Doug's hand.  Game over.

Here I was expecting it to be this boring ordeal, that I'd leave shortly after saying hi to everybody. Instead the damn Mayor of Ann Arbor was there, and the last two decks went for a combined $2,800!  Still kind of shocked, but it was a lot of fun and a lot of money was raised for the A2 Skatepark.

I asked if they were going to do something like this again and they're really hoping so.  Next time I'm going to be prepared and see if I can win a deck.  I saw a few in there that I would have gladly bid up to $250 so I could hang them on the wall behind my desk.  My picture of frogs is starting to get boring.  But in it's defense it has been there for quite a while.  (Sorry no picture, I think sister has the camera with her.)

So I'm home, had a lot of fun, and Arwocky may have TB.  Yeah, that's tuberculosis. If you're thinking, "who the hell is Arwocky?" That's O.K, it's an inside joke!

One last thing before I finish, got a cell phone, Ren made me get Twitter, and I now "tweet." Follow my random boringness as I use my G1 for anything BUT making phone calls.