Dream State: The Denver Danglers
There’s a weekly schedule that’s followed - Tuesdays at Big Arvada, Wednesdays at Denver Skatepark, Fridays at Mike P’s. The weekends? Those are another story. If you happen to find yourself at the aforementioned locations at the right time & know where to look, chances are you’ll witness your fair share of inverts, bonelesses, sweepers & overall fast, aggressive transition skating. Here, you’ll find the Denver Danglers.
On a bluebird Sunday in August, I was in Frisco, Colorado for work. There was a demo that day at Breckenridge Skatepark. I rolled up to Breck at 1 p.m. & found an empty stage with a lone security guard, some kids milling around and a large group of people hanging by the benches, Busch in-hand. As I was realizing that I had, in fact, missed the demo, I heard someone say my name, “Nicole?”
I turned and my friend Zach Cusano, whom I hadn’t seen in some time, was standing there. Excitedly, I greeted him and his friends and knew that I had brought my vintage Minolta with me for a reason. The session was in a lull - some of the guys were fishing, others nursing their beers & a few skating here & there. One of the guys was eyeing the end of the snake run & I scoped the area in anticipation of where I could find the best angle. As I settled in, some skaters returned from fishing holding their buckets containing the day’s haul & things kicked into high gear - within five minutes, at least six of them were attempting, and ultimately landing, insane tricks.
This was the day I garnered the invitation to attend the following week’s session at Mike P’s. We stood by the big bowl and as the guys asked how the photos came out I said something to the effect of ‘we’ll have to wait & see.’ They realized I was shooting film & in the same breath invited me to the private backyard session. The address would be DM’d to me.
Friday finally came & I hopped in my van after work, drove for an hour and a half to the tune of podcasts & arrived at the session at 6 p.m. I noticed a plethora of cars lining the suburban street with music pouring out of an open garage punctuated by screeching wheels & sounds of skateboards slapping the concrete. Admittedly nervous to enter this skate compound full of mere acquaintances & old pool heads, I loitered out front for a few, half-pretending I didn’t know which house to go into. Gathering my courage, I muttered ‘fuck it,’ and walked through the garage with my camera bag slung over my shoulder, skateboard in one hand & a White Claw in the other. Strings of twinkle lights strung above a tight pocket ahead greeted me. Upon turning right, the source of the noise revealed itself: a 3-pocket bowl fully lined with pool coping and at least 12 guys waiting on the deck drinking, you guessed it, Busch.
In my nervous state I mistakenly loaded a roll of Velvia 50 into my camera - not the best choice when shooting high-speed action during the sunset hour. But I made it work & began snapping photos. The energy this group emanates is so incredibly high - it’s the best party you’ve ever been to plus incredible skateboarding. After a chunk of time shooting, my intimidation waned as I realized these guys just want to have fun. I still recognized, though, that I was incredibly lucky to have been invited to this session.
“Being a dick ain’t gonna get you nowhere ”
“Being a dick ain’t gonna get you nowhere,” Cusano says. The 28-year old from New Jersey says he used to be more open to people of different levels skating with them, but now with the crew so large & their affinity for private backyard pools, the growth of the group has been halted. You can only bring so many to these sessions.
“I’m not trying to be biased,” Cusano says. “But at this point you gotta be like fuckin’ getting it for us to be like, ‘Hey, come to this spot,’” Cusano told me at Arvada at their weekly Tuesday session.
As of October, the Denver Danglers have roughly eight solid crew members and the expansion thus far has been completely organic. Cusano moved here from New Jersey four years ago & convinced his lifelong friend Chuck Pontone to make the jump shortly after. Two years after their arrival & as soon as he graduated high school, Mike “The Twister” Jones joined the Jersey transplants & subleased a room in their residence.
“So, then it was the three of us skating every day,” Cusano says. “And then we started to notice that kids in their early 20s, two or three a year, are moving out here and they show potential to rip.”
The bare bones crew would then invite these younger skaters to join their sessions, and those that stuck around through the “hardcore factor,” as Cusano calls it, are the members of the Denver Danglers today. Although, only two out of the group are actually from Denver, the alliteration stuck.
A dangle, for those who don’t know, is a one-footed trick where one’s leg ends up dangling off the board. “Any kind of foot plant, any kid of one-footed air, and any kind of invert that’s one-footed,” Cusano says. “So, the Danglers essentially started from all of us doing a lot of foot plants. But at this point, everyone does way more than foot plants.”
Pontone, sporting his Full Metal Jacket Halloween costume from last year - a camouflage turtleneck & matching helmet wrap with “Born to Kill” scrawled on the front in red sharpie, says they can’t claim all of the credit for the name: “We just put it together.” Specifically, Dangler member Stefan Wilson is credited with pushing the words together. They got the inspiration from the episode of Love Letters to Skateboarding “where he’s like, ‘When you do a sweeper, you know, you fuckin’ put the board over the coping and you dangle it,’” Pontone says.
Being part of a group like this that skates almost every day at such a high caliber is the reward in and of itself. Jones says the best part about the group is everyone bettering each other at skating - they fiend off of the high energy levels & stoke each other up.
“And the second best part is we drink beers & smoke weed together,” says Jones. “Every day.”
Jones, 21, says he wouldn’t have moved out here if it weren’t for Cusano & Pontone. His skating also wouldn’t be anywhere close to the same level had he stayed in his hometown of Long Branch, New Jersey.
“I was just trying to link up with those dudes because they skate how I want to skate & they’re fucking rad,” Jones says. “I was lucky enough to meet Zach back in Jersey - he’s got a backyard ’80’s style mini-vert ramp that I was lucky enough to go skate & meet him.”
Jesse Clayton, 24, who hails from outside of Philadelphia & joined the crew last year, says that Cusano is like the captain & Pontone is the first mate. The two older members, according to Jones, really help build up the confidence of the younger skaters. “They let you know that it’s all in your head,” Jones says. “It just takes practice & being committed. Ballsy. That’s all it takes, really. Anyone can do it.”
Cusano sees benefits to the group as well: “To skate at the level we skate at, you need the hype levels, you need the energy from everyone. So, we roll together as a crew to keep that progression rolling every session.” He also notices a difference between his skating and the younger guys in that he is keeping his tools sharp & holding onto his skills, whereas the more green skaters like Jones, Clayton, Wilson & Adam Mercado are in the beginnings of their respective primes & they progress exponentially every day.
The access the Danglers have doesn’t hurt either. “We’ve got an indoor bowl that’s heated. It’s 10 feet deep, 6 foot shallow & we can skate there 24/7, private access,” Cusano says. Combined with their other private bowl connections, these guys can skate places most people don’t even know exist. Colorado’s mild winters are also a plus because even if it snows, the rest of the week is likely to be a balmy 50 degrees & sunny, so, they always show up shovel in-hand to clear out the spots.
You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘travel where you live.’ It’s a notion that implies approaching every day with the same zeal as one would in a foreign place. And these guys do just that, only dubbed with different terminology - what they call the Rocky Mountain Vacation, or the Dream State.
“We go to work and then we get off and we’ve got every recreational activity the Rocky Mountains has to offer at our disposal,” Cusano says. “And one of those happens to be skateboarding.”
Jones says the Dream State has “everything. You get legal weed, fuckin’ shit to skate everywhere & they’ve got it all from the private stuff to the best stuff in the country. They’ve got everything.”
Although they don’t have access to the ocean, the mountains suffice - they’ll hangout at ‘Gangster Beach’ when they’re not skating, go hiking, hunting, or camping & hit all the hidden gem skateparks in the high country. The Western landscape contains far more potential activities than their East coast homes have to offer. All the guys agree, though, that travel is vital to this type of skating. Jones says the diverse scene in Colorado prepares them well for traveling because they’ll notice continuities & feel more comfortable in a foreign place.
Cusano says he personally goes on at least 10 skate trips a year on top of the Dangler’s typical travel within the state. During the week, the group stays within 30 minutes of Denver but they’ll often to go Albuquerque for long weekends and fly to out of state contests at places like FDR in Philadelphia.
“If you want to get everything to skate under your wheels, you gotta travel the country,” Cusano says.
From spending time with these lifelong skaters, I can tell you this: skateboarding is fun & it’s going to stay that way. In the words of The Twister, “Dangle that shit!”
