St. Petersburg, Florida - May 20-21, 2000
Looking down at the list of competitors for the street competition, I saw one of the most heavily stacked decks I've seen yet for a competition. The European's were there with Thierry Lallemand and Sven Boekhurst. The Australian faction consisted of Matt Salerno and Sam Fogarty. Marco de Santi was among the Brazilians that showed up and then there were the Americans, who brought some of their biggest hitters, like Kevin Gillan, Jon Julio and Aaron Feinberg to name a few.

The prelims were like most others during the circuit, skaters using consistency to try and make it to the finals where they pull out the big tricks and put it all together for one run. The prelims gave us one big surprise. Aaron Feinberg didn't qualify for finals! A rare look into the human side of Aaron shows that even he can have an off day. To me this made the finals even more interesting. Remove someone who can be so dominant and anyone can come out on top.

The street finals happened early Sunday afternoon in front of a big St. Petersburg crowd. First up was Sam Fogarty who had trouble landing a huge bio-720, but ended up in 5th place thanks to a solid first run. Mike Budnick, who threw big 360's over the launch box and landed a kindgrind down the scary launch box planter captured 4th place overall. Jeremy Pennacchini made it to the finals again with his fakie backflip and solid skating, but ended up in 7th overall. He ran out of time but still pulled an extremely difficult 270 to negative sweatstance down the entire start box rail. Shawn Robertson also made his usual appearance in the street finals, despite having an injured knee, which stopped him in 9th place.

Justin Ayan from Tampa, FL was the hometown favorite of the St. Petersburg crowd, and in one of his few appearances on the Pro Tour he skated arguably the best line of the competition and ended up in 8th. Next up was Randy Marino out of Dallas TX, who skated like a kid in a candy store, flying around the course hitting tricks like a top soul to liu-kang out on the big vert wall and multiple 540's over the launch box. Randy ended up in 6th after all was said and done.

Frankie Morales made his first appearance of his rookie year on the Pro Tour and skated extremely well and had the most creative line of all the skaters. Tricks like a huge 360 from the top of the vert wall to the down slope of the start box and his trademark 900 over the launch box ended him up in third place, continuing the tradition of great first performances by rookies. Matt Salerno ended up in 2nd place skating at his usual mach 3 and using a line that allowed him to hit every ramp and grind on the course.

The man of the day without question was Sven Boekhurst. He qualified for finals in first place and never looked back. Sven skated an amazing first run, filled with technicality. Sven hit four true spin grinds in a row, followed by a 360 to royale down the entire start box rail. He capped off his run with an alley-oop fishbrain down the launch box planter.

The women also came out with strong performances in the street finals. Fabiola da Silva skated to another first place finish, followed by Kelly Matthews in second, 13 year old rookie Fallon Heffernan in third, Anneke Winter from Germany in fourth, Sayaka Yabe who came all the way from Japan in fifth, and Michelle Scott who took a bad fall which broke her wrist in sixth. St. Petersburg was a great stop and continues to show that the level of competition keeps increasing, leaving us to wonder what the rest of the season has in store.