It’s been a hot summer thus far (yeah, no kidding, it’s Texas for God’s sake).
I have not been motivated to skate very much in the heat. I’d rather not go out and just feel miserable afterward. So I’ve been painting some D&D miniatures. I’m not great at it, but not horrible. One nice thing about being an adult, that’s a change from when I did it as a teenager, is that I an afford the box of paints that has pretty much every color. The paints are nicer now too.
I am playing in a D&D campaign. The monster — I like to just find weird monsters to use as aliens and alien monsters in my Traveller campaign. This is an image of the monster in process. The wizard is finished.
Before Covid messed everything up my friend Dale and I were working on a skate project called The Small Arts. It was to focus on banks, ditches, curbs, and flat. We’ll likely get back to it eventually. It’s been a hard 2 years. Anyway, I found this footage we shot while out skating.
A female skater of very little ability has complained publicly (on Instagram and Twitter, of course, because that’s how we do things these days) that she got 2nd Place in a contest that was won by a trans woman.
Because I clearly enjoy hurting my own psyche, I delved into this happening.
Here’s a few things.
She’s not very good. I mean, seriously, she’s just not a good skater at all. It is no crime AT ALL to be not a very good skater and still skate. In fact, it is just fine. However, this young woman really has no business winning any contest at all, regardless who she is competing against.
This is not a topic I particularly care about. I find the “save girls sports” people are usually jock parents. They never say “Save libraries and our kids freedom to read what they want”, because they aren’t really “readers.”
Having now said I don’t really care about this topic (I think it is overblown and really not a problem), why you may ask do I write about it here? Because I want these people out of skateboarding. Out. O-U-T.
For example…this knobhead. “legitimate competitive future”? See, this is what happens when sport-parents get involved in skateboarding, rather than simply getting their kid a board and turning them loose. Yes, I deleted his name, because I’m not a dick, even though this chud probably needs to be shamed.
The culture of skateboarding doesn’t look kindly on whiners. In skateboarding, you try things, you fall, you get hurt, you get back up and try it again, without crying about it. Girls, boys, men, and women, and people of whatever persuasion you rock, that is how it’s done.
As any skateboarder with an internet connection now knows, Tony Hawk broke his femur last week. Really nasty break. He was in Austin a few days later, on crutches, with hardware in his leg, for the first showing of the new documentary about his life in skating at South by Southwest.
It is really something to see Hawk talk about this injury. Clearly it was horrible, and he has the look of a man who already understood the effects of aging on his skating, and now understands it even more. But what is really moving is hearing him essentially say that (besides just wanting to walk normally again) he just wants to skate. That desire just to skate, regardless the so-called level of his skating. Obviously if Tony is skating at about 10% his peak, that is about 1000% for everyone else, but the point is the same. All of us just want to skate. It is very humanizing to see this legendary skater really not knowing what the future of his skating looks like, but just wanting to skate.
First session of the year, since the weather turned to crap in November 2021. The first session of the new year is always rough, as it take about 1 or maybe 2 sessions to get my feet back under me. Legs are always a little weaker after winter, and I’m just a bit rusty in general. Was good to be back on my board and I’m looking forward to a good year of skating.
Anyway, I was a little slow today, a little afraid of little rocks, and just generally getting the feel for my board again.
