End -O- Summer Skate Report

I've been so busy with home renovations, reading for school, swimming, gallivanting around, and, of course, skateboarding, that I haven't had time to update the blog in a while, but I have the sore knees and sprained wrist to prove that the last few weeks have been full of radical-ish thrashing activity (well, it's all relative, isn't it?).

So, having just wrapped up a ten day trip from Hamilton to Prince Edward Island and back, I managed to hit a couple of skateboard parks. Our intensive driving, party attending and furniture delivering schedule didn't leave much time for skating on the way to the east coast, but on the trip back, just around dusk, we stopped at the town of Grand Falls New Brunswick for some dinner, and to check out the fabled Big Chute. Water levels were low at the chute, but it was still an impressive gorge.
And the photo we found in the lobby of the only restaurant with an open kitchen depicted a daredevil crossing the gorge on a highwire while a crew of lumberjacks looked on, themselves perched precariously but nonchalantly on the rocks above the falls. The photo was a strange testimony to an era before safety railings, lawsuits, and work-safety regulations would make such behaviour seem reckless and crazy (I mean the standing around on the rocks past which the water is sweeping by on its trip over the falls). But for lumberjacks who, as the song goes, go "burning down white water", traveling across the masses of floating logs which, according to the same song are where "the lumberjack learns to step lively" (I can't find this song on the internet, but it's a classic, and different from the famous Monty Python song), for these lumber industry workers of yesteryear, the dangers of water and rocks would probably be something they were comfortable enough with to not succumb to vertigo on the edge of the Grand Chute precipice.

At any rate, the pizza was delicious, and the parking lot we landed upon had a small skateboard park with three or four elements enclosed by a mesh fence. There were a few kids mulling about, one of whom offered to trade me his bike for my skateboard. It was hard to do any tricks after having sat in a car for six hours--my joints were stiff and my friend Matt the driver and I were both hungery, but I landed a couple of grinds on the metal box before heading off to dinner.


The second skate session happened when we got back to Montreal. I managed to locate the park I used to frequent when I lived there, down St. Laurent and past Jean Talon. Since I had last been there, which was at least five years ago, some new elements had been added, including a steel mini-ramp, a hump, quarter pipe, launch ramp, platform and slider bar. It was mostly a group of young kids hanging out, and I felt a little awkward, as usual, being ancient and all. But at the same time, my years of skate experience allowed me to completely dominate the park, as feeble as I have become in old age. I think I put on a good show, and I shared my Slushie with a couple kids, whom I couldn't entirely understand due to the language barrier.

The next session occured in Ottawa, at a nice park just a short hike from my parent's place. The problem with this park is its usually full of kids on bikes. Skating with bikers in a park is like swimming with sharks. They are fast and silent, so its hard to see or hear them coming, and most of the time the bikers themselves are plugged into their iPods, so they likely don't hear you coming either (despite the racket skateboards tend to make). The bikers at the Ottawa park were respectful, and waited their turn, but their presence prevented me from carving the canyon as I would have liked. I mostly limited myself to the flatground area, which had a platform identical to the one at the Montreal park (supplied by the same company, it would seem). Unlike Montreal, however, the Ottawa park was host to a tribe of young, amazing skaters, one of whom was doing crazy tricks on the platform. Unfortunately, my camera was entirely full of pictures from the trip at this point, so I have no photo evidence of these amazing feats of skill (backside smith grinds, backside tail to 360 shove out, etc).

To return to my original thesis for this post, radicalness is relative, and flawless performances of the same moves that led to my feelings of elevation at the Montreal park just made me feel antiquated next to the fast, dexterous kids ripping up the Ottawa park. But it's not a competition, right? I'm keeping the traditions alive just by showing up and refusing to let gravity and multiple wrist trauma keep me from rolling. I met a couple young guys from North Bay who had recently moved to Ottawa. Much like my hometown of Barrie was in the eighties, North Bay is bereft of skateboard facilities, so these two guys were not so proficient at navigating the transitions of the park. The three of us carved out a space in the transitions and tried to land some ariel tricks off the inclines, but to little effect. We then had a game of "SKATE" on the flat, and it was here that their North Bay skills came through. When you don't have ramps or parks to skate, you end up learning a lot of fancy flatground tricks, and we took turns trading my oldschool craziness for their newer heelflip and pressure flip variations. There was also a kid who arrived later who had the largest "Afro" hairdo I have ever seen. It was at least a meter across, like a giant, fuzzy halo around his head, and the kid himself was so lanky that it seemed as though a strong wind might lift him into the air like a balloon.

So, it was at the Ottawa park, on the second consecutive day of skating, that I fell a couple of times trying to do a simple railslide off of the platform. I landed, as I often do, on my wrists, which now hurt, along with my ankles, back, elbow and right knee. My left knee seems more or less ok, but I'm going to take it easy for a while to recuperate.

I missed the last day of the Beasley Park Skatebaord Jam, which got rained out three weeks ago and was postponed until yesterday. I would like to have attended, and all reports indicate it was an amazingly fun time, but I was still making my way back to Hamilton, and stopped in Toronto to have dinner and watch a bad movie with my girlfriend. Even if I had made it back in time to skate, I was so tired and sore yesterday that my performance in the Oldschool division would have been more embarrassing than usual, so things probably worked out for the best. But I haven't even made a post about the Skate Jam that I did attend, before it was rained out on the second day, two weeks ago. Photos and reportage to follow...

Beasley Park Reno!

Last Wednesday, the Hamilton Skateboard Assembly met with the Director of Parks and Cemeteries, who came to our meeting and gave us valuable advice about the procedures we would need to follow to further our vision for the skater-directed renovation of Beasley Skateboard Park. We were also informed that city workers would be dropping off two jersey barriers at the park the next morning, and that contractors would be coming on Friday to make the adjustments we requested a couple months ago (filling in some cracks, and cutting one of the rounded ledges to make it grindable). Everyone was very excited to finally see some changes after months of waiting, emails to the city and expectation. Part of the impetus to make this happen came from the upcoming 18th annual Beasley Park Skateboard Jam, which will be held mid August (14th & 15th) at Beasley Park and then Turner Park on the mountain. This is the longest running amateur skateboarding event in Canada, and has been organized each year by Derek "Oldschool" LaPierre, the HSA's "Secretary of Skate".

Since the jersey barriers were arriving on Thursday morning, I volunteered to meet the city crew and show them where to place them new elements. It is very difficult to move a three-ton concrete obstacle once it is in place, so this responsibility made me feel a little anxious. But the HSA President, Scott Macdonald, went to Beasley with me after the meeting and showed me whereabouts to place the barriers. The problem was, the place we marked out turned out to be too close to the metal railing on the east edge of the park for the barrier to fit. Also, Scott had thought we were receiving two regular sized jersey barriers, but what we actually asked for was one regular one and one tapered barrier.


For these reasons, Thursday morning I had to make some executive decisions that would effect the skating life of the park for at least the rest of the summer. One issue to consider was the flow of the park: not interrupting the lines of usage that are already established in the space. Another issue is that skateboarding is not a symmetrical activity. Skaters either skate "regular" or "goofy", depending on whether their left or right foot is forward respectively. I wanted to place the barriers so that they could be utilized by both types of skateboarders as equally as possible.

On Thursday morning, I arrived at the park just as the city crew was unloading the first of the barriers. They used a large orange tractor to lift the barriers off a long flatbed truck. The truck had two barriers on it, but only one of them was for the park. The second barrier would arrive an hour or two later, on a separate trip. Of the two large barriers they had on the truck, they gave us the crappier one. It had several holes drilled in one side, and the bottom of the other side was all corroded near the middle. It looked like an older piece of street furniture that had already seen some service in the streets of Hamilton. Why they couldn't have given us the other barrier, which appeared to have nary a blemish, is beyond me--perhaps they thought that we were just going to wreck them anyways, which is partially true.

I had to decide which side should face out, and I chose the one with the holes, reasoning that we could always patch them up later. I decided to set the barrier a little to the left of where Scott had indicated, at an angle so that the slope of the bowl (which used to be a wading pool) would lead up to the angled wall of the barrier. The barrier also had a strange piece of metal fastened to the top of it--something that could easily cut open a skater's hand if they were to accidentally press against it while skating. Why they didn't remove this is a mystery. We also had to knock a wasp's nest out of the metal joint at one end of the barrier, but somehow all these imperfections were fitting to the DIY spirit of this undertaking: we, the skaters of Beasley would take care of this decrepit old road barrier and turn it into something people could enjoy.



The city crew had my cell number, so once the first barrier was in place, I went downtown to have some breakfast and to read the paper. A young woman who was working for the city as a park monitor was sitting on the swings with two little kids. She had taped paper snowflakes onto the trees and was going to pursue a snow-related theme for the day to conceptually combat the heat. I worked as a skateboard park monitor for the city a couple summers ago and it was a pretty good gig, but often we would only receive a handful of kids through the course of the day, so it could get a little boring.


I returned from breakfast just as the city crew was pulling into the park with the second of our barriers. Derek had called me from work and suggested placing the tapered barrier on the flat, "freestyle" area, which seemed a reasonable idea to me too. "I trust in your judgment" he said, but I still felt odd about making this decision all on my own. I had to decide which way the barrier's incline should face, and which angle to place it at so as to maximize the number of lines of approach it could accommodate. What really amazed me was the finesse with which the fellow from the city was able to maneuver the barrier into place using such a huge tractor as medium. By nudging, sliding and tapping the barrier, he managed to place it exactly where I had indicated. Even though I made a point on their first trip to ask whether the city guys could possibly pick a nice, clean and new tapered barrier for us on their return, the workers said they had no control over which ones the guys from the yard picked out for us. This is how things work in municipal power structures: wheels within wheels. But the tapered barrier we got was not so bad. It had one big crack across the low end, which does not look amendable by filler, but which might get worn down through use so as not to cause too many hangups.

I didn't have a chance to actually skate these new elements until Sunday night, and even then I had to sneak away just before sunset for a half hour or so. I missed the big inaugural sessions that no doubt raged on Friday and Saturday evening. The barriers hadn't been installed for more than a few hours on Thursday before a couple skaters, energized by the new prospects for fun, made a trip to Home Depot, bought some quick-dry cement, and built a transition into the large Jersey barrier. The position of this ramp allows one to hit the bowl and then blast into the Jersey barrier. When I arrived on Sunday, there was already a thick coat of wax and tell-tale grind marks on the two barriers. I had fun carving the new transition, and ollieing onto the tapered barrier, as well as onto the newly cut ledge. The Bease suddenly had become about 3000% more fun to skate! There was only one other fellow skating the park with me. We cautiously ignored each other for a while, but then we eventually got around to exchanging trick info. I showed him some old freestyle moves, dripping sweat like a soggy sponge, and he gave me advice on foot positioning for 360 flips, a staple modern trick that I have never been able to land. By placing my back foot on the very back edge of the tail, the board flips very efficiently, and I went from not being able to get a full 360 degree rotation, to flipping 180 degrees too far! The combination of my new board and old shoes also helped, and perhaps I'll be able to land this elusive trick by the end of the summer. What I found interesting is the "currency of exchange" that skating creates between two perfect strangers of different age, race and economic categories. Because of skateboarding were were capable of speaking a common language and creating a sort of temporary bond in the sometimes hostile heart of downtown, where strangers fear each other more often than not. I passed this fellow later on my way home and gave him the peace sign.

Summertime

A couple weeks ago, I went in search of the secret skate spot that my neighbour's kid had told me about.



Not too far from my house is what looks to be an abandoned school. The concrete playground/parking lot behind the school is covered in cracks and weeds, and from the fence I could see that some makeshift obstacles had been constructed on a raised portion of the yard.



But the prominent "NO TRESSPASSING" sign kept me from jumping the fence; now that I'm respectably employed, I'm even more wary than I used to be about certain things.









So I headed off to the other side of the property to see if I could get a better view of what are called in skateboard park lingo, the "elements". It appears as though people had made a slider rail out of an old ladder, but I couldn't see the ramp that my neighbour had mentioned. There was, however, some pretty neat street art decoration the building.

Before I could complete my mission, however, a skateboarding friend of mine accosted me from his car, from the far side of the street. I've known M. for a while. He's a wicked painter and artist, and an excellent skateboarder. M.T. was in the car with him (there's no real reason to conceal people's names, but I try to anyways for the sake of privacy). These guys were on their way to a new skate spot and asked if I wanted to come. I was actually kind of depressed due to relationship-related issues which I can't even remember very well now, so I was happy to embark on a trip to a new skate spot with a couple of friends whom I hadn't seen for quite a while.


We drove to Dundas, to a beautiful municiapl park. The park has a bandshell with a decent sized ledge that drops off onto a sea of the smoothest grade of concrete. Beside the bandshell is another, lower ledge that is good for grinding, and has a slight curve to it. This was an ideal spot, and I had had no idea that it even existed. Another skater, S., was already there. It was early evening, and still light but cool as well; the perfect hour for skateboarding. I'm a little out of shape--actually, I'm just old--so the smooth, flat expanse was great for the flatground, freestyle tricks I like to do. You could manual forever at that place! The other three guys had more juice in them, and were doing awesome tricks on the ledges. M.T did some ollie to nose manuals on the bandshell platform, and S. did some wicked boardslide/hurricane grind combos on the curved ledge.
M. landed some perfect frontside halfcab flips. S. had brought a large, impressive-looking camera, and M. was filming some of S.'s lines. S. has been skating for a while, and has a lot of tricks at his disposal--he always has some impressive and quirky variation to throw into the mix.
I tried grinding the lower ledge a few times, but wasn't feeling too confident. I partially blame this on my deck, which was old and comfortable, but was quite ground down on the tail.

After skating for a good while, we decided to head back to town. S. took off in his '84 Porsche Carrera, while the rest of us packed into M,'s more utilitarian vehicle. He had a painting of a pair of Adidas sneakers in his back seat. It was well executed, and M.T. was buying it from him. We all went to the Vietnamese restaurant and hung out for a bit, and then M. dropped me off at home. I was going to meet back up with these guys at a local skater bar later that night, but I got tired and just did some reading before going to bed.

Street Art

One thing I love about Hamilton is the proliferation of amazing street art. It seems that everywhere one goes, there is interesting art cropping up in the most unexpected of places. I try to photography these finds, but for every photo I take, there are likely two more that go unrecorded for one reason or other.





A couple Thursdays ago, the night of the greatly anticipated English/CSCT grad student prom, I was downtown on my way to get a haircut. Except, I never made it so far as the barber as I ran into a street artist in one of the unused storefronts.

I consider skateboarding to be a mobile form of streetart performance, and so I have a keen interest and sense of camaraderie with other street-oriented creative types who appropriate public space for unconventional uses. Take, for instance, the Streets are For People movement out of Toronto, or the interventions into the urban everyday undertaken by Improv Everywhere.



This fellow was an artist who I had seen on the street at various Art Crawls.
He often, in fact, sets up shop in the alcove directly beneath what was my former living space, and I bought one his collages last winter.

But that afternoon, he had a spread of artworks and unusual books that he had collected, including several stacks of old comic books. One piece of art he showed me involved a binder with plastic sleeves filled with discarded stuff he had found beneath a bridge in the downtown core. He had assembled these items, which included a used syringe, and wrote a kind of narrative that went along with them. He also had several books that he had embellished with collages. These individual pages, he explained, would be cut out later, framed and made available individually for sale. But one book of such collages also had a section in the back hollowed out, like one of those makeshift "book safes". This hollow was just big enough for a cassette tape, which was missing, but which the artist explained actually had him explaining the various collages assembled in the book.

I talked to this fellow for a while, and he seemed happy to have some company on the street. After a while, a couple other guys came by. We were all flipping through the books and things. Caught up in the excitement I felt over this fellow's entire enterprise, I ended up spending my haircut money (in fact, most of my prom-night drinking money too), on comic books, buttons and a piece of street art that I gave to my date for the evening.

My idea was, instead of buying a corsage, we could wear vintage buttons.

I also rearranged a few of the elements to produce an embellishment of my own to the whole display.








I went to collect my date, and she seemed happy enough withe buttons, and the strange street art artefact I had procured (a pill bottle with graphic insert and a ceramic carrot inside). Why do these random assemblages make me happy? Well, we had a nice dinner of sushi, then got dressed up for the prom. At the prom itself, however, my date my date got a little mad at me for not paying enough attention to her. I guess I got distracted talking to people, and didn't realize that she wasn't having a good time. But what is a prom without a bit of drama? I walked my date to the bus, then returned to the prom and danced for a while with my classmates. This person and I are old friends, way beyond the point of dating or having romantic interest in each other, and yet something about prom night created strange expectations and reactions. However, she forgave me for ignoring her and we are still good friends.

Getting Old

Now that I'm a property owner, my perspective has shifted. A young guy who lives across the street likes to skateboard in front of my house on the sidewalk and road, and this can prove distracting when I'm trying to work, but would rather be doing something perhaps more fun, like skateboarding in front of the house.

I've been in a bit of a mood lately, contemplating mid-life, my new situation as a home owner, grad student, and the sunburn I got on the top of my head from an unnoticed (until now) bald spot. When I came home the other day, Drew (let us call him), my skateboarding neighbour, was applying candle wax to the curb on the corner of the lot upon which my house sits. Because we're on a slight hill, this curb is the best one for skating at our particular intersection, but the problem is, the wax build-up on the curb makes it quite slippery, and I have become worried that, were someone to fall on account of loosing their footing, I would be liable.

So I approached Drew and asked him not to put wax on the curb. He and I have skated together before, and, earlier this spring, I helped him soundproof a wooden box that he has built for skateboarding. He likes to place the box on the same curb in front of my house, which is the most opportune place for such an obstacle. It has a metal bar attached to one side for grinding, but it was a hollow box and made a lot of noise until I helped him fill it with insulation. Drew is a respectful fellow and listened to my concerns about pedestrians slipping, but I still felt like the old man shutting down his fun. Perhaps I was being overly cautious with my concerns, or maybe I was giving vent to a repressed desire to skate the curb myself.

But I asked what had happened to his grinder-box, and he said it had gotten rusty from all the rain we've been having lately. Nevertheless, he hauled it up the hill from his backyard and installed it on the curb. It had indeed gotten rusty, but the application of a thick layer of candle wax brought it back to life, and soon he was grinding away. I decided that I had read enough Judith Butler for one night. I put on my skate shoes, brushed my teeth (I always brush my teeth before skateboarding, as a kind of good luck charm), and did some skateboarding with Drew.

The newly-waxed box was very slippery, and I took a bit of a fall the first time I tried it. Drew said, "That was such a slow-motion fall!". Because of my time-slowing powers, I didn't hurt myself at all. It actually felt really good to skate again after so long of a hiatus. The muggy air was causing a lot of sweat, even though it was cloudy and not so hot. After busting a few of my signature moves (360 shove-its, no-comply to shifty, airwalks and "slap maxwell" grinds that nobody seems to do any more) I started to feel less like an old grouchy man and more like my normal self.

Before he went in for the night, Drew told me about a new secret skate spot, through a hole in a fence, behind a factory not so far from where I live. I'm going to have to check that one out sometime in the near future.

Toronto

I went skateboarding around Toronto on Saturday. My cell phone broke, so I couldn't take any photos. I also couldn't access the number of my friend whom I was supposed to meet for dinner. Instead of relaxing at a cafe, as I had planned, I spent the afternoon anxiously trying to remember where his house was. I had only been there once before, on New Years, and could remember the general neighbourhood and the look of the front yard, but despite skating up and down several streets, I couldn't find the house. It was difficult skateboarding and scrutinizing houses at the same time, as the roads were rough and full of holes and cracks. I stopped at a garage sale, and some women offered me free clothing. I then skated to another friend's house who gave me the number of the friend I was meeting. This whole process took a lot of effort, and I was wearing my thin-soled shoes that, though designed as skate shoes, are mostly useless for actual skateboarding. By the end of the day, my feet were killing me, and I think I bruised the ball of the foot that I push with.

But I did make it to my friend's house, late, and after running into a girl from my old philosophy class who didn't seem surprised that I couldn't find a copy of Marx's Capital anywhere in Hamilton. It's that kind of attitude that makes people hate Toronto, but maybe I'm just too sensitive. My friend made a very good dinner of braised lamb shank, rice and salad. His girlfriend is vegetarian and had soybeans on rice with salad. I think I enjoyed the soybeans more than the lamb, but I have a hard time not eating meat when it is there in front of me. As it turns out, my friend had the exact same cell phone as the one I have that had just broke. I plugged my old phone into his charger, but the phone still wouldn't come back to life. He has a blackberry for work and only used the cell phone as an alarm clock (which drove his girlfriend crazy). So he actually gave me the phone, which I brought home but haven't yet set up. However, it seems that the alarms on cell phones work even when there is no "chip" in them, because this morning at 8 am, and then again at 8:10, 8:20 and 8:30, the alarm on my friend's phone went off.

Recent Skate Activity

The new Gonz deck is still holding up. One thing about riding on a larger, heavier deck for a while (the kind of deck that, amazingly, everyone rode back in the 80's) is that, when you switch back to a slimmer, lighter, modern deck, it feels much more responsive and easy to manipulate. It's like running or playing B-ball with those strap-on weights; when you take them off, you feel extra light and "fit".

So, Matt Z and I went to Beasley Park and then to Turner Park on the mountain last week for a tour. It was nice having someone to skate with, especially at Turner, where the proliferation of younger kids, and local hot-shots out to prove something, can make an older skater feel even more like a dinosaur than usual. Matt and I skated around for a while, and then a window opened up where we had the empty swimming pool all to ourselves for a good fifteen minutes (usually, there is a whole "snake session" going on, with kids competing with each other to get a run in). I really like carving the bowl, even though I'm not all that good at it. It uses a whole different set of muscles than street skating and is, actually, the type of non-ramp skating that preceded the flatground streetstyle that I learned as a kid.

I also went out last Friday night to meet my friend Oldschool at the Beaze. He's pushing forty, and can skate Beasley park like nobody else, doing big layback grinds to revert on the quarter pipe, and all kinds of old bonelesses and fast-plants, as well as his signature nose-wheelie that he can almost sustain to the very edge of the path through the soccer field. There were just three or four of us at the park that night, and I had a good session: didn't fall that much, got a few good lines in, and had a good talk with Oldschool about computers and video games.

The next night, I decided to tempt fate and go out a second time. I reasoned that the only way to get back into shape was to apply myself a little. This time, there was the regular Beaze Crew cutting up the park. Given that it was a long weekend, I was unhappy to find that the city has not yet come through with the Jersey Barrier and curb that we ordered about a month ago, when Oldschool and I met with the parks & rec. people. They had sent a crew to fill in the dangerous gaps and cracks that had developed in the concrete over the winter--this is in their own best interests as the city would be liable if some kid broke a bone due to the perilous chasms that had been littered throughout the park. But, given that the city manages to deliver Jersey barriers and curbs on a regular basis (and in far greater quantities) to roadwork cites, why is it so difficult to get them to drop off a couple of these utilitarian fixtures at the Beaze? Just one or two curbs would provide so much enjoyment to dozens of skaters, but the city doesn't prioritize fulfilling this promise.

At any rate, at least the concrete was "smoothish" again. It was such a hot day that everyone was staying in the shade. The guys were doing tricks over the "nipple", because it was out of the sun. I tried to land a few tricks, but bailed alot instead. A combination of the heat and the sugar-filled slushy I had consumed made it difficult to focus. Mike, an older skater whom I hadn't seen for a while, was there. He spent about an hour trying to land complicated tricks out of the bowl. He never seemed to land anything, but one time I saw him almost land a trick--the board making a delicate flip in the air and just about catching back up with his feet--and I could see the poetry in his head that he was struggling to actualize.

So, this second time out wasn't the best session, but it was good to see everyone, and to sit in the shade sipping my slushy while the guys exchanged crude jokes. Paco found a way to wear a Food Basics shopping bag as if it were a "wife beater" t-shirt, and I made a joke about being inspired for a whole new summer wardrobe. He then ripped the thin plastic off his chest in an Incredible Hulk impersonation that was quite funny. It's sad that, since the new park on the mountain opened, Beasley Park does not enjoy the raging sessions that it once did. But it's also kind of nice that the same core group of downtown skaters still utilize the area and, have, if anything, less crowds to contend with.