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.

Reading Week

It's reading week, but eyestrain is making me take it easy. Drops of water are crawling down the window of the coffee shop, cutting little lines through the gray skin of condensation that obscures the parked cars and roadway outside. I think there is something else I'm supposed to be doing right now, but I can't quite remember what it is. I just drank an Americano and ate a tasty chocolate chip cookie. Ok, this wasn't the healthiest snack for a Healthy Snack Monster, but it was tasty!

I had some thoughts last night, but forget what they were. Let me recount, instead a skateboard excursion I made about two weeks ago now, when the air was cold but the pavement of downtown Hamilton was dry and clear. I had just put together my new Mark Gonzalez oldschool deck and went to Beasley to test it out. It's a pretty nice ride: wide but not unwieldy. At the park, I was carving around, enjoying the feel of being rolling again after being landlocked for so long. There was nobody else there at first, it being the dead of winter and all. Then a young guy showed up. I forgot his name, but he was riding the most dilapidated skateboard you ever saw. I mean, the deck itself was suffering from massive delamination, and the layers of plywood that had split apart at the nose clacked against each other as he skated. It looked as though the entire nose of his board was about to break off at any moment.

And yet, this kid was thrashing the "Widow Maker" quarter pipe with reckless abandon, landing tricks on his rickety old deck that would have sent your average skater plummeting calamitously to the ground. I could only watch in awe, and try to avoid wrecking myself in the process. Something about watching another skater land treacherous tricks inspires one to try things that one perhaps shouldn't rightly attempt. Part of it is the desire to show off, but part of it is just the inspiration of seeing someone else do something truly radical.

So I was having fun just riding around and doing little shove-its and such. I was still getting the hang of the new plank. After skating for a while, I started to get warm, so I took off my outer jacket. I was wearing my wrist guards to avoid re-spraining my wrists, and I was nonchalantly cruising into a carve around the bowl when my wheel caught on a tiny piece of glass. Perhaps it is something about the cold temperatures making one's wheels harder and thus more sensitive, but I was expecting to be thrown off my board at just that point: the pavement was relatively smooth-looking and the obstruction that proved my undoing was actually tiny. Because I wasn't really expecting to be dislodged, instead of falling on my wrist guards, I did the unusual thing of falling shoulder-first. It was my right elbow that actually made first contact with the ground, and my shoulder second, but the impact hurt quite a bit. I got "road rash" on my elbow which has only just healed and bruised my elbow bone, too boot.

But not to whine: a good fall from the skateboard is often just the thing to make one feel alive again. It at least gives you a renewed respect for the whole gravity-ground nexus. The kid I was skating with was still ripping up the park fearlessly on his crappy old deck. When the sun started to go down, casting Beasley park in the dull grey shadows of a deep winter, inner city evening, we decided to call it quits. I offered to give the fellow my old deck, which I had just removed to set up my new Gonz. He was enthusiastic about this offer--my old deck was actually in much better shape then his, with only a bit of wear on the tail and no major chips or splits. So we skated back to my place and retrieved the deck. JP, the contractor was there with his power tools, so I offered to set up the new/used skateboard then and there for the fellow, but he said he would do it when he got home. It actually takes some time to get used to a new deck, so his decision to wait was probably a wise one.

Benneto Centre Curb

The North End of Hamilton has a reputation to uphold for being rough, but it has one of the best public swimming pools and rec. centres in the city. Tonight, on my way in to swim, there was a group of kids sitting around in the lobby. I had my skateboard with me, and one of the kids said, "You skate? You look like you're eighty!". I said, "I'm not that old yet, but I hope I am still skating when I'm eighty!".

On my way out, after doing a few laps of the pool, the same kids were waiting around outside the front doors. In front of the rec. centre, there is a well-waxed, nicely rounded curb at the edge of the parking lot nearest the front doors. I took off my coat and shoulder bag, and started doing a few grinds. As soon as I did one little trip, the kids on the stairs started screaming "Oooooooooh!" in a kind of mock adulation. But I kept skating and they came over and started talking to me.

A couple of the kids borrowed my board...one guy had baggy jeans, the hip-hop ball cap and a white kerchief tied to one of the belt loops of his pants. He tried some kickflips and heelflips, and asked if I could do certain tricks. I demonstrated some of my oldschool board maniupuations; I may not be able to do the tre-flips and the heel flips, but I can string together a line of moves from 1989 that would do Ray Barbee proud.

So I skated with the kids and lent out my board. I wiped out one time, landing on my back to avoid further spraining my wrist, and the kid with the kerchief asked "'sall good?". Some older guys came over--a guy named Mike who is the youth pastor at the Baptist church on Hughson. It turns out the kids were all there for a basketball game that Mike hosts on Mondays. I don't know if I really impressed them all that much with my feeble old moves, but Mike thanked me for lending out my board (and not getting pissed off about the eighty year old man comment).

When the kids left, I had the curb all to myself and threw down some long, fast frontside grinds before heading home. The air was chill and I was breathing heavily due to the cold, but the almost full moon was beaming down from behind a thin screen of billowy clouds as I walked through the empty north end streets, back to my appartment where a stack of essays on the dangers of Disney were waiting for me.

Cop Shop Jam and Beasley Session

I arrived, yesterday, at Turner around 3 pm. The Copshop Skatejam was over, but the park was still packed with kids, mostly younger, with mothers and fathers hanging around on the grass. There was a cluster of slightly older kids sitting on the ledge, and two officers surveying the park from atop the volcano. The police VW bug was parked beside a pavilion under which some people were seated behind laptops. This was the "Harvey's" people: professional photographers who took photos of the kids, then offered them free prints, with a promotional cover that had their own, and the Hamilton Police logo emblazoned on it.



The punk youth whom I first met at Beasley, and who skated with me in the shade in the dumpster alley beside Turner at the Flatspot jam (see below) showed me the photo he had received. He was very pleased. I asked if Oldschool or the other HSA guys had shown up, and he said they hadn't. The youth was enthusiastic about the Cop Jam saying "they are giving skateboarding a whole new respectability". It was odd to hear this praise from the mouth of one of the most visibly rebellious and "hardcore" of the skaters who frequent Turner. It seems as though the Cop Jam had given him a sense of legitimacy and acceptance. He had done a great paint job on his grip tape...also kind of oldschool, and not such a common thing amongst modern skaters.




I skated around a bit. The crowds quickly thinned out, but it was still slightly busy. I had a head cold, so I wasn't landing tricks consistently. Also, the tail of my board has ground down to the point where it is difficult to navigate certain tricks. I landed a nice blunt to pivot/variel out on the curb, and a very crisp fakiegrind to fakie shove-it out on the ledge. Mostly, I just hot-dogged around.


I caught the bus home using the transfer I had received on the way up, as I lost my student card on Thursday due to a series of highjinks. I was overheated and sweating on the bus ride downtown, but hadn't had time to buy a carton of OJ as I had planned. The sun was streaming through the windows of the new, accordion style bus (Hamilton seems to have added a number of them to its routes over the summer). I got off near the bus station and went to Tim Hortons' where I bought a medium Ice Cap to celebrate the day. My mom called and I talked to her for a while.

It was such a nice afternoon that I didn't want to go home, so I passed by the Bease, where Mort, Sean, Jill and some kids were sitting on the ledge. We chatted a bit. Jill had been to the cop jam and said that it was weird, with strange trick categories, like most 360s and high-jumps. It was the first time I had talked with Jill, who comes across as a cool tom-boy type and reaffirms Beal's thesis that girl skaters are only accepted if they can prove themselves as cool and skilled as the guys. There was also a conversation that involved distinguishing herself from another girl skater whom she used to hang out with and who became a lesbian.



There were all kinds of kids on bikes clogging up the park, and quite a few cars parked there as well. It is as if, for lack of skaters, the park had been appropriated for other uses. Then D. showed up (I was actually on my way to his house, but was saved the journey). He had new fat green wheels on his board (which has a "team asshole" "finger" sticker set into the grip tape). He also had a new pair of gardening gloves. He proceeded to tare up the park, but was thwarted by the kids on bikes, whom he chastised and told to "go try to bike in a tennis court and see how long you last". He was polite but forceful, and the biker kids soon dispersed (these were not BMXers, but little kids, mostly of immigrants, on bikes.

In fact, there was an exchange, before Drew arrived, between Mort, Jill and three BMXers who were looking for directions to Copp's Colliseum (where bikers like to ride on the roof). Jenny said "sorry guys, you can't get there from here" in a tough guy, "locals only" kind of voice. Mort was friendlier, and Jill came around too. They talked about the lack of spots for BMXing, and Jenny encouraged them to orginize themselves and petition the city (not that she has ever come to an HSA meeting!). It was an establishing of hierarchies or dominance that was interesting to watch, with Jill feeling a greater need to demonstrate her power position in relation to the bikers than Matt.

After Drew skated for a while, Gary and Pluto arrived in their van. They had two wedge ramps that Gary had made in the back, and brought them out. Mort unlocked the plastic bench and they placed this in the middle of the two ramps to create a barrier over which they could launch. The bench has been at Bease for about two years. It is locked to the streetlamp with a strong cable and three padlocks. This, Pluto explained is so that nobody can snip them off (there isn't enough room, with the three locks, to get a pair of cutters in). Pluto said "if they want it that bad, they would have to saw through the cable by hand".



I asked Drew about the Copshop Jam, and he said that they seemed to have it under wraps, so he didn't feel the need to attend. He didn't seem resentful, just happy to let them "do their thing".



After a while, Sean moved on of the ramps against the side of the Widow Maker (quarter pipe), using it to try a variety of wall ride moves. I was tired of skating by this time, and started photographing Sean. He wanted to catch some wallrides on his Iphone, so he asked Mort, who obliged him. Then he stared to do some wallies, and I offerd to do the filming. The relation between filmer and rider is an interesting one; it's like being one of the "they boys". But I'm still something of an outsider. Sean did several tries, and I captured a few of them. Then he set the ramp up the tall way, and we tried some wall rides. I actually managed to ride it, but couldn't land it because the space was kind of tight. Derek said, "that's pretty good". I then tried a fronside "no comply" off the side of the ramp, after which Sean said "that gives me an idea" and one-upped me with a backside no-comply of the side, which he actually landed. I left not long after that. It was getting onto seven, and dusk was descending on the second last day of summer.

Birthday Downpour

After working on my skate-theory opus for a couple hours, I decided to take the board out for a romp. I ploughed through downtown, causing a ruckus along the sidewalk. Tonight, there was what might best be described as a pack of Hispanic kids on mountain bikes barreling along the sidewalk in front of my apartment. They were singing some kind of song, and riding at breakneck speed. As I stepped backwards onto the sidewalk while opening the front door to the apartments I was almost hit by the last two of them. Later tonight, while taking out the recycling, two girls on bikes almost did a similar number on me. Each time that I thought about yelling, "get off the sidewalk!" my conscience stopped me short: I cause the same amount of pedestrian terror each time I weave through downtown traffic on my board. And sometimes I even take a slight mischievous pleasure in it.

At any rate, yesterday, I found my way to the big pay-parking lot on Wilson and John. After five pm the downtown lots empty out of cars, producing a paved field of open playground. I did a no-comply over the painted yellow curbs, and tried, unsuccessfully to do some slappies. The yellow painted island that housed the "arms" of the automated gate provided a perfect centerpiece on which to do some manuals. Mostly, I sped around surfing the 'crete, doing nose and tail manuals and little shove its, revelling in all the empty space. The clouds sat on the horizong like a floatilla of spacecraft, and an orange, almost full moon was coming up over the eastern horizon. It sat, perched atop a distant condo, an I realized that I had forgotten my phone/camera, and so had no way of registering a visual image of the event.

What was making my tour extra-special, was my "new" shoes. They weren't really new because I have been breaking them in slowly since last summer. They are an oldschool looking pair of white Adidas leather lowtops, like my Mark Gonzalez pair, but without the ghosties decorating them. They pinch my toes a little, but provide greater protection than my old Vans, which are mondo comfortable, held together with shoe goo, and have very little resistance or support left in the rubber of the souls. The tighter toes of my Adidas allowed for faster shove-it capability, and I caught a perfect railflip-to-caspar while waiting for the bus (though nobody saw this little bit of magic but me).

I like skating Gore park, waiting for the bus. The fellow who sold me a bottle of water at the convenience store was singing a Hindu prayer. He explained to me how it kept his strength up, because he was a student and working on the side and needed all his energy. The old guy, Doug?, at the pool said a similar thing about swimming. A few downtowners tried to get some change off me, but I wasn't going to give up my last seventy-five cents. It took about half an hour for the bus to finally arrive, and when it did, it had a slashed tire, and we had to wait a little longer for a replacement.

When I finally made it to the park, it was about ten. The skater from Trinidad? was there, and told me it was his birthday. I wished him happy birthday and started skating. There were a couple oldschoolers in the bowl. They weren't the friendliest guys, but I had seen them before. The one guy used to skate Beasley, but was a bit of an outsider. Kind of agressive, always hovering around the periphery. I call him the coyote. The other oldschooler had a vintage board with Bullet 66 wheels, yellowed with age but in mint condition. I dropped into the bowl a couple of times, and on my last run I actually felt like I got the sense of flow on a few lines, carving around the corners and getting a feel for how it's done. It was a nice feeling.

I was skating pretty well last night, not getting to caught up about anything. It started pissing rain at ten thirty, so I ran to the bus shelter with a couple of the kids and waited for the slow Sunday service to bring us back downtown. The kid whose birthday it was was turing 17, making me twenty years older than him. I could be these kid's dad, and yet I'm still cruising around the park like a wierdo. But who cares, its fun!