2023 Stoked Calendar - February-April
In this post we lay out our event schedule through April. If anything, this list may get some additional adds, so make sure to hop on the Stoked Community on Discord to keep up.
This is a big list! These events are what we consider our core offering to keep the community moving, and giving as many different riders as we can the chance to celebrate their progression. Many of these events are annual, so riders get to see how far they have come from last year, and where they can go for the next year.
It may go without saying, but we are going to say it anyways. We love putting on these events! From the monthly LDP pushes and Stoke Clinics to the little contests we get to spread out in between. The more support we get, the bigger we can make these. We are going to do the events anyway, but how cool and big we can make them is only limited by the support from the community.
With out further ado, let's get to the list!
February
February 5th
First Sunday Push
This Sunday is looking to be a sunny 50, so come soak up some rays, and get your kick on. Talk on the pushing chat is that we may have some newer riders coming in for the challenge. Even though the more experienced riders are going to be pulling 50 miles, anyone can come out and kick what you can. Heck you don't even necessarily need to be on the Indian Creek Trail. Actually, you don't even need to be in Kansas City. Anyone in the community can log into our Burning Spider Stoked Community Discord server, then hop over to Push Chat and anyone can talk and cheer each other on as we skate what you can. I love this feature of our pushes and hope to be able to talk with people also pushing, even if we can't skate together.
February 12th
Stoke Clinic February
Another of our staple monthly events, the Stoke Clinic. All skill levels, all ages can get something from this. If you are more advanced, then you can challenge yourself on the quarter mile downhill route, or work on free ride at the slide hill. In to LDP, or want to know what pushing 5 miles even feels like, 10 miles, 15 miles? 10am to 12pm is the time to push. 12pm-5pm we bring out all the boards we can fit in our car and bring those out for people to ride.
March
March looks a lot like February, hopefully warmer. Although historically, this part of the year is just as unpredictable as its preceding months. Some years we get lucky.
March 5th
First Sunday Push
It would be really rad for this monthly kick off to catch on. The Push Chat Voicebox channel on Discord makes a great tool to keep your motivation up. Even if people can't skate with each other, we could still talk with each other as we skate. A monthly renewal of dedication for the kick and the push. The best way to get better is to get your hind end to your closest trail, hop in the voice chat, and lets see how many miles we can get.
March 12
Stoke Clinic March
March's Clinic brings warmer temperatures, new riders, and usually some fresh models of decks can be seen rolling around. Those that have hibernated through the cold may even come out to this clinic to kick the rust of the winter out. For someone just getting started, this clinic has a huge potential for starting with newer riders.
April
April for Kansas City is the real kick off of the year. There is an event every single weekend of the month except for the very last one. This is the month we host our Community Kick Off events, and the season after this is just non-stop until after October. The Community Kick Off Outlaws that take place have evolved over the years, they probably won't stop changing from year to year. Historically this is the month we have hosted the legendary King of Kessler event. We really want to do this event again, but as we are bound by financial constraints and several other factors we just have to make the best of what we can do.
This has caused us to evolve. In a lot of ways I like it better, because we can get a large part of the city skated, and experienced over that weekend then we could if we could do King of Kessler. The Community Kick Off is 3 Days of events. Each segment will have its winners. Each participant will have a scorecard across the weekend's events. Points will be given to participants to reflect how they did, as well as if they participated in a given event. 1st Place=9 points, 2nd Place = 7 Points, 3rd Place = 5 points, 4th Place = 3 points, and 5th Place and under is awarded 1 point. You do not need to podium to get the 1 point. You can not get the 1 point unless you participate in that event. So if you only sign up for one event through the weekend, maybe you are the best in that given even for the day, so you get 9 points. If someone else does all the events, then there is a good change they will gather more points than the one win gave. We total up everyone's scores through the weekend, and after the last segment we award over all winners. Kansas City has a lot of different styles of skating that is possible, and I want to show off all of it. That is the game, now let's get into the dates and details.
April 2nd
First Sunday Push
At this point I am sure you dudes get it. Let's fill up our local trails with skateboards and high fives. Hop on Push Chat voice box channel on the Burning Spider Stoke Community Server, and let's keep each other going and flowing into an epic 2023.
April 9th
Stoke Clinic April
This is the last clinic before the Community Kick Off, so you are sure to see locals putting the final pizazz before the following weekend's festivities. Stoke Clinic April follows the same pattern as all the other Stoke Clinics.
10am-12pm Long Distance Push practice, or our introduction to LDP. Kick a lap (5 Miles) or kick some more. Get those legs warmed up for a full day of Clinic.
12pm-5pm general instruction. This is were we bring all of the generously donated and collected decks to the bottom of the hill, and let people try them out. We show people how to foot break, work on carves, get some pumps, and those that feel froggy can start laddering themselves up the hill as you get used to going faster, and applying all of those techniques we worked on.
April 14th 4pm-9pm
Community Kick Off Swap Meet
At one point in time in our history we did this every 3rd Friday of the month. Now we get everyone to save their gear up so we can have one big buy/sell/trade meet up and get together. If people come from out of town for the rest of the Weekends' festivities, then they should bring their old gear as well. This is a pretty free for all type of event. We really talk this up in the shop as we get closer to the day of to all of our budget shoppers. You can pick up some great quality used gear, cheaper than it was new, and you get to listen to everyone talk about why they didn't like something or what they went to next. This gives a great opportunity to learn, share, and get a great deal.
10PM
Community Kick Off Downtown Games
After we close up at the shop, we head over to downtown Kansas City's Peanut, have some wings, drink some drinks, and spend the rest of the evening cruising around downtown. We plan on having little challenges set up at different features along our cruise to warm everyone up for the rest of the weekends fun. This is meant to be really chilled type of session/cruise even if we will be including this in the point total for the weekend. So there will be a podium, and this should be about as serious as the rest of the weekend gets.
April 15th- 10am
Community Kick Off Derby Outlaw
10am Registration starts.
11am Heats start.
This is the Downhill go fast segment of the weekend. This will take place on a hill the locals call Derby. It is a 40+ MPH all grip run. Decently smooth pavement. Fun dips and a heady sweeping right, to a lefty finish over the bridge should make for a good time. We will have an intermediate start a little lower on the hill. Open start at the traditional top. There will be a clean up effort on the hill before the event so if you want to do a solid for the greater community this would be a opportunity to show folks we aren't a completely useless part of society. This is a heavy dump area, so we have the change to do some real good on a classic hill we don't get hassled to skate.
Then we break for lunch, before the final segment of the day.
4pm
Community Kick Off Swope Park Slide Jam
Sign up for this will be done at Derby. This way we will have things ready to go as close to 4:30 as can get.
If there is any spot that has not been skated to death, this hill would be the one. It's steep. It has a beautiful left hand sweeping curve before dropping out to finish at the parking lot. It's one way, heading down the hill, so it's as safe a hill to do this on as we can get, other than Kessler. We will be doing the usual Uncle Funky's Style Session format to determine the winners, so make sure to bring your crew. I am so stoked to put this on at this hill. It's a change up from the usually skated spots, while still being a Kansas City style free ride hill. It's a good thing we have a lot of perfect hills, because even if this get's blown, we have several secret back ups that should keep the vibe a flowing. Once the time is up (you know after a 69 minute block of fun) we will do podium and that will be done until the following day.
April 16th - 10am
Community Kick Off Push Race Volker
This one is for our local Broadway Bombers. 5 lap push race. Live traffic. This will go around the Volker neighborhood the shop is located in. There is a High Traffic part as the route goes down 39TH STREET and then hooks to Roanoke as it heads into the rest of the neighborhood. This comes out to a little over 5 miles, so it isn't super long. This has your standard KC flavor of ups and downs, so it should be a race where a bunch of different urban travel skills will come into play. Long enough, and technical enough to need some strategy, short enough to need to sprint. The start and finish line are in front of the shop.
2pm
Community Kick Off Dancing on the Snake
The final segment of our Community Kick Off series is a dance/freestyle session at the Snake Path. If you aren't familiar with the Snake Path it is a 13 turn, smooth as silk, concrete sidewalk. This ADA compliant slice of heaven is slow enough to cross step down, fast enough to still perform slides, while still being accessible enough so that anyone can have fun. The potential of this spot for developing the Kansas City style of Dance is as of this post unrealized. Only the faintest hints of full utilization of occurred, and we skate this spot a lot!!
4pm
Community Kick off Podium
All the points from the entire spectrum of events from all corners of the city will be totaled and an over all winner will be revealed. We will do this in front of the shop so we want to really show off the winners to the city.
You Stoked Yet?
April 23rd - 12pm
Green Skate KC 2023
We have been hosting this event since 2014. Each year around Earth Day (April 22nd this year) we don our green shirts. Meet at the shop with our favorite skateboard, and we take a cruise. 2022's Green skate was a return to epicness. We had a large amount of people skating to KAW point and around downtown. If you aren't familiar with the Green Skate event, this is an event where communities all over the world come together to fill the streets. This is to raise awareness of using skateboards and longboards as a green viable form of transportation. Especially important in young communities this event can really make an impact. Some of our cities don't even realize the amount of people that utilize our streets to skate, so seeing a huge line of people in green kicking away does a great job of showing this off.
We will start at the shop, skate to KAW point via the maze of streets, intersections, and trails. After KAW we hop over to the Peanut for a bite to eat. Last year we did this really late so a lot of people left from Downtown. This year we are making a day of it, so after downtown we will roam our way to the Plaza and then back to the shop. This isn't a race, it is a cruise. Having your carves, foot brake skills, and being able to kick is really all one needs to enjoy.
That is the first few months of the year lined up and ready to Shralp. Our big thing was to have a variety of skate styles, rider styles, and ideas that represent pieces of our overall skate community. Imagine what we could pull off with a bigger budget? Really though, not too shabby an offering for an independent shop with community dreams. Big beliefs need big tests, growth is impossible if you aren't challenging the accepted outputs.
If you aren't in KC, we hope to skate with you, we love to have fun.
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