Tom Penny "Hard Times but Good Times"
Tom Penny. TP. The elusive, nomadic, soft spoken, humble one. If you don't know about Tom Penny, then like FLIP skateboards says, SORRY, REALLY SORRY! You just had to be there. Tony Hawk was once quoted saying: "If Tom Penny ever started skating Vert full time, we all might as well retire".
I met Tom in May 2011. In a crazy coincidence (or was it?) Vincent Alvarez was suppose to have come out with me to Barcelona to film for the video but got hurt the week before and couldn't come. I had no one to film with until Justin & Jesse came out a couple weeks later. It was like it was all meant to be. I gave Tom the temporary number I had and less than a week later he called me to go skate. The first day we went out to skate & film, Tom said he just wanted to do this 360 shuv drop in on this red brick bank. He said if he landed it we were all gonna go have Sangria on this dope Yacht type boat parked in the bay. Before we even got to the spot I showed him this quick wallride type spot. He liked it and we got the 360 flip fakie and the line with the wallie and the nollie flip. We headed to the drop in bank spot. Couple of tries and he did the 360 shuv in! We went and had the Sangria. Tom was super hyped! We got done with Sangria on the boat and we walk a couple steps and theres this banked ledge. Tom says hold up I got something. Does the Backside tail and the Backside Tailslide revert. We walk across the street and theres a similar obstacle but you can do tricks into the bank. Tom switch frontside flips into it like nothing! Tom was super happy. The day was ending and we headed to MACBA to rest and chill with friends. After being there for about 20 minutes Tom comes to me and says he got a line. I never saw a spot, let alone MACBA, where everyone sits down to let a skater skate. Specially MACBA! theres usually at least 100 people there on a good day. But once Tom started trying his line, everyone sat down. The place was quiet. The line is the Switch crooks, switch flip, & switch pop shuv down the set thats in this part. After he landed that it was a wrap! Tom couldn't believe the day had turned out the way it did and we called it after that for dinner and some Damm Lemons!