Joey Brezinski wins Manny Mania Pro

With the most technical manual moves of the day, Brezinski and Kroetkov were a cut above the stacked list of heavy-hitting pros. Asked how close he felt the contest was between him and Kroetkov, Brezinski was humbled. "I honestly didn't know. I thought I got second," he said. "In the semis I landed all my tricks and then going into the finals I was so tired. But man, I'm hyped right now."

The balancing acts witnessed by the crowd at the Coleman Oval skatepark beneath the Manhattan Bridge were outstanding. Kroetkov pulled outlandish moves including hardflip manuals and a crowd-pleasing nollie late flip nose manual to nollie flip out. Not to be outdone, Brezinski utilized the whole course of Lego-like obstacles to pull tricks that included a banked manual to bluntslide to fakie manual out, a frontside bluntslide transfer on a flatbar into fakie manual fakie flip out.

The weather was a looming factor all weekend long. In 2010, the Red Bull Manny Mania event was rained out and cancelled at the last moment and the rain threatened to put a damper on things once again in 2011. Not to be defeated, Red Bull had a massive tent built over the entire street course in case of inclement weather and moved the event times up both days in order to avoid stormy forecasts. As it was, the sun held its place in the sky and the clouds kept at bay for Brezinski's big win. "I practiced last year when it got rained out," said Brezinski. "This year we actually got to skate. I'm just happy we actually got to have a contest."