Category: skateboarding

I was sitting here listening to an interview with Geddy Lee, from the band Rush. I don’t have a link. My wife was playing it.

In the interview, he talks about the period after their last tour with the late Neil Peart. At the time Neil had not yet received his death sentence – a diagnosis of glioblastoma multiform – the kind of brain cancer that killed my dad. It’s a cancer that no one survives. But at the time Neil had retired from music. He was in his 60s, had spent his entire life touring hard. And the man never phoned it in. They said he didn’t want to perform as anything but his best self. So he was worn out and wanted to live his life with his new family.

For that tour Neil had created an amazing drum solo. Like everything he did, he put a massive amount of work into it. In this interview Geddy says that post-tour he was listening to the recordings and video and was just amazed by the solo. He emailed Neil and said something like “man, that solo is just fantastic.” Neil emailed him back a long letter, and said he was kind of disappointed that during the tour no one said anything about it.

The greatest rock drummer in the world – disappointed – that no one expressed appreciation of his work during the tour. Not even his beloved band mates. The thing is, Neil was just a guy. The greatest drummer of his generation, but a humble and quiet man who liked to write and read and ride his motorcycle. Just a guy. A guy without a massive ego, who still appreciated being appreciated.

This got me thinking about how nice it is to be appreciated. I think no gift you will ever give anyone is as valuable as an honest and deep expression of appreciation for them.

So, during my first trip to the Paderborn freestyle contest in Germany during 2015, people came up to me all weekend and told me how much they appreciated my old freestyle trick tips website. How they got their start by going to the site. This was from about 1999 – 2010. No YouTube yet. They were genuinely excited to meet me. This has happened a few times.

I’m just another old skateboarder from Texas. I’m not that good. All did was put up a website with video and sequential images teaching freestyle skateboarding tricks. I knew it was popular, but I had no idea. I honestly didn’t.

A few years later, during the premiere of the first NeverWas Skateboarding video (I had to miss the premier), a person who would become a friend, Ben, stood up and talked about my site and me, and how as a teenager with a lot of stress and problems going not he would go to my site to study and learn tricks and it made a big difference for him. When the guys told me about this the next week I just cried.

Again, I just put up trick tips. I’m just a guy who did something.

Finally, a few years ago a the World Freestyle Roundup contest in Vancouver, Canada (once again I wasn’t even there), I was given the Ambassador of Freestyle Award. My friend Terry Chui apparently said some very nice things about me and my site, and they sent the award to me.

All of these demonstrations of appreciation happened at times I really, really needed them. The adulation in Paderborn happened when 1)my beloved cat Pancho had just died, and 2)my mother was in the middle stages of dementia. I had a lot of stress. I wasn’t entirely happy. The comment at the video premier by Ben happened when I’d had to leave that group’s gathering weekend early, because my mom (in memory care) had fallen and cracked her skull open.

So my point is that if you appreciate someone, tell them. Don’t wait. Tell them. I’m sure Geddy wishes he’d shown appreciation for Neil’s drum solo when it was actually happening. Everyone needs to feel genuine appreciation. It is better than money, better than gifts, better than trophies.

So Terry, NeverWas guys, Monty, Ben, and anyone else who has just shown me that appreciation – thank you. In ever case it lifted me up more than you could know.

This afternoon I was walking out to my car and as usual I spent a couple of minutes fiddling with the various skateboards hanging on the wall out there. It’s just too hot to skate here in Texas right now, so the poor boards hang there forlorn, their special purpose not being enacted. This saddens me greatly.

One of the boards is my freestyle board.

For those not in-the-know, a freestyle board is a skateboard that is a bit smaller than a typical board, and it is designed for very technical flatground tricks. They tend to be significantly narrower. A standard board these days range from 8″ wide to about 9″. That’s typical. A freestyle board is about 7.3″ to 7.5″ wide. There are a few slightly wider, but you get the picture. The narrowness facilitates doing tricks in which the board flips, like kickflips. The relative shortness facilitates a number of other very technical tricks, but it all really boils down to smaller is easier to manipulate.

For most of my skateboarding life I have been known as “the freestyle guy.” Freestyle is a very small niche within skateboarding. In my early days in skateboarding, the late 1970s, good skateboarders were expected to be good all-around. That meant they could do freestyle, skate bowls, do slalom, etc. So that’s what I did. I became pretty good at freestyle because finding a flat parking lot in which to practice was a lot easier than finding a bowl. I could practice freestyle every day. Back then there was no such discipline as “street skating.” There was only skateboarding.

I had the good luck of living in a neighborhood with alleys running behind our houses. Most of the driveways were sloped up. So we could skate the alleys as if they were snake runs or ditches. I became good at skating large flat banks because of this. In fact, while people still seem to thing of me as a freestyler, banks and ditches are my preferred terrain, and really always have been, but I do love skating flat ground and doing tricks.

When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020 I was forced to stop my regular heavy freestyle practice sessions. For the previous 6 years I’d been practicing a lot and going to contests in Germany when I could. It was a lot of fun, and those trips are some of my best memories of my life in skateboarding. But with the pandemic in full swing and simultaneously a wife battling breast cancer (and thus immunocompromised) I simply couldn’t afford the risk of breaking my ankle or whatever and ending up in an emergency room full of Covid patients.

So, I stopped flipping the board. I totally stopped. No kickflips. No rail flips. No 360 shove-its. Not caspers.

Instead, I began thinking much more about the simplest elements in skateboarding. Simple but not necessarily easy. Flowing. Turning. Different kinds of kickturns and pivots. Spins. Wheelies. Footwork. Creatively linking those elements into smooth flowing carving turns. Sliding into different positions.

This has become my preferred way of skating now. On flat or on banks. I have no interest in flipping the board or getting airborne in any way. Zero. Zilch.

Today when I was looking at my freestyle board I realized the depth of this change in my preferences. I’ve known for a long time that I’m having more fun with my current way of skating and didn’t have much desire to go back to my old ways, but today I realized very abruptly that I have NO desire to go back. And that feels – not weird at all.

One might think “Bob’s getting older and his afraid or weak, or afraid AND weak.” Not true. Today I spent 4 hours at a very strenuous aikido seminar. At 62 I have excellent agility. I can move with grace. I can do huge breakfalls without injury. If I wanted to do kickflips and whatnot I could.

I just don’t want to. At all. If I never did another “technical” freestyle trick again I wouldn’t miss it at all. I just don’t enjoy doing them anymore.

Here’s something I filmed last year. I’m riding a fairly big board. It is representative of the kind of thing I enjoy doing now. Rolling, flowing, spinning, turning. On flat or on banks. There are endless combinations of the basic elements of skateboarding. Putting them together in sequences with flow in and out is a challenge. It feels good. That’s the thing. This kind of thing is connected to the Earth. It’s about movement, not board manipulation. This is what I like now.

This post will be kind of a rambling stream of consciousness thing…beware…

I’ve been having some interesting conversations with my niece this week. We’ve been talking about the notion of “self”, Zen, masculinity/femininity and the continuum of such ideas, and how to live one’s life. Yes, it is nice to have a niece like this, with whom you can solve the riddles of human existence.

This morning, for some reason, I was thinking of my parent’s old friends Dalton and Elsie, from Monroe, Louisiana. They were good friend when we lived there, though that wasn’t a long time. We moved to Texas when I was 5. But for many years we would visit them when we went over there. They has 3 or 4 daughters, the youngest was my age. A good family. Good people. Anyway, I did a quick search and found that Dalton and Elsie are both dead. Not a surprise. They were old. Dalton lived to be 94.

I suppose I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality the last few weeks. Don’t worry – nothing profound coming up. It all seems like yesterday and a million years ago. Looking up our old friends reinforced that feeling. When I think about all this it’s impossible not to reflect on my own life and how I’ve lived it. I’ve had a great career as a public librarian. I love it. I believe in it. I believe in public service and intellectual freedom. I’ve helped promote and continue those ideals. Furthermore, I think a proper life on Earth centers around lifting others up. Cooperation over competition. Kindness and generosity. I think anyone who thinks otherwise should be taken out and maimed (kidding…kind of).

Everyone struggles to figure out who they are and what they should be doing. We all come to different conclusions. I think it’s critical that we all be free to be who we really are and to explore and figure that out. The roadmaps to happiness we are given by society are not for everyone.

Which all why, a few years ago, after I accidentally recorded this beautiful skateboarding clip I used it to make this very short video and used “If 6 was 9” by Jimi Hendrix.

Because when I was 11 years old I became a skateboarder and beneath all the layers I am happy to be a dirty old skateboarder.

I’m the one that’s gonna have to die
When it’s time for me to die
So, let me live my life the way I want to

Fair warning. I’m about to go on about Tony Alva again…

Every few weeks I do a YouTube search for new Tony Alva footage. From what I can see, Tony doesn’t go out “to film.” He goes out and skates, and maybe someone shoots some video, and maybe some of it is pretty good, and maybe it ends up on YouTube. Such is the case with this video below.

After watching this video several times today I texted it to some friends with some comments about how relaxed this skating is.

When I see rippers today on nearly any terrain they look frantic to me. Maybe it’s because they are going really fast, but I think it’s more than that. Not sure what, but I’ll figure it out. The propagation of skateboarding video, first on VHS tapes and now streaming to your pocket idiot-device has to some extent homogenized skating. I think it’s hard to argue against that, so I’m calling it a fact. I see it in freestyle skateboarding too. Where once skaters only had access to see the skating of their friends, or maybe the best person in town, or a group of local pros, now everyone has immediate access to everything. I think to some extent this permeates not just skateboarding but probably everything. Culture, pop culture, subculture, is now global. How sub can a global subculture be? Not very.

So now I see clips of rippers skating parks as fast at they can, every trick seems rushed and on the edge of disaster. Now the edge of disaster is often celebrated in skateboarding and rightfully so. Still, seeing someone blast around like a lunatic simply doesn’t connect with me.

Yes, this is likely a function of my age, but not entirely. I’d have said the same thing if I was 23 right now. Correction; 23, but with the same formative skate experiences.

At the start of this video, Alva does a little axle stall on a small wall, then does a casual 540 spin on the opposing bank. Relaxed. Styish. Smooth.

I heard him in a recent interview that what he thinks about now when skating isn’t so much learning new stuff but refining what he already knows. It shows. That line looks so satisfying. I can guess that when he does that line, he isn’t like “Wow, look what I just did!” but rather “Damn, that felt good!”.

Same with every line in that bowl.

My friend The Lone Sentry says Alva has Groove.

Earlier this year I was at an Aikido seminar taught by an 85 year old 7th Dan, Harvey. Harvey’s knees are kinda worn out. He’s a bit broken down, but he’s still teaching, and still learning. He told us the thing he loves about Aikido is that no matter how old you get there are still thing to learn, things where understanding can be deepened. I think skateboarding is the same way.

To my readers who aren’t skateboarders – sorry – this may be a boring post. I usually try to insert some “witty” remarks, personal (narcissistic) reflections, or other things to entertain or inform. I will give it a shot. Also, you can click the images to make them bigger.

So, last month I put this new setup together:

Black Label 9″ standard pops (14.5″ wheelbase), Ace 55 trucks, 54mm v1 103a Bones STF wheels. 1 thin riser under each truck, and Lil Jawns rails.

This is the board I’m riding in the recent Skateboarding in Fort Worth post (if you are not a skateboarder, you may find this post entertaining anyway. Maybe.)

Those new to this blog are likely unaware of my constant search for “the perfect board”. This is a mental disorder that many skateboarders share. We agonize over tiny details in our setup, when the truth is that more practice is the real solution to nearly every skating problem. Sure, there are some very real differences that can be felt in your board when you change tiny things. No doubt.

This all reminds me of my father and my uncle’s constant purchases of new golf clubs. I know that modern golf clubs are vastly superior to the old stuff. Materials science has advanced a lot.  But when you factor that out, and compare my obsession, what’s at work to a great extent is simple consumerism. It is fun to buy new stuff. And there’s nothing wrong with trying new configurations. It can get a bit expensive, but as a handsomely paid public librarian I have so much disposable income I just don’t know what to do with it, so why not buy skateboard stuff?

So, dear unknown reader who is not a skateboarder, regarding the “tiny” details I’ve been referring to… yes, I am correct when I say that more practice is usually the important thing is skateboarding, but we really can tell the differences in those tiny adjustments. They do matter. The difference in feel of a 54mm diameter wheel and a 56mm diameter wheel is significant. A 14.75″ wheelbase feels different in many ways from a 14.5″ wheelbase.

I’ve come to understand that my own consumerist tendencies in skateboard gear purchases come from not always accepting myself — my own skating – as it is. I see a skater I like and think “I’d like to skate like them. What are they riding?”.  Or perhaps I’m remember how I skated when I was 23-years old.  What magic setup will somehow repair the springs I used to have in my knees?

Morehei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, said “Masakatsu agatsu” – True victory is victory over one’s self. He was referring to martial arts, but as I continue in my 19-year practice of aikido I find this to be true in every area of my life. In the case of skateboarding and skateboard gear, I think that “victory over one’s self” translates to “knowing one’ s self honestly.”

I don’t need a giant board so I can skate like Alva. I like Tony Alva’s skating, but it’s not my skating. It’s his. I love my friend Tony Gale’s skating, but that is HIS skateboarding. Not mine. I love and admire my friend Dale’s skating. His skating is similar to mine, but it’s his. I’d know his skating if I only watched his shadow.

There’s nothing wrong with my skating. It’s mine. My board needs only to be right for my skating. If it works for that it’s good enough.

One might think “Bob is just getting old and he can’t skate like he used to.” This would be partially correct. Age is a real thing. I am not injecting the blood of fit 21-year old athletes into my system, so I am stuck at present with a relatively fit (but a little too fat) 61-year old body. It’s not going to get any better. BUT — I have left most flip tricks and bombastic shit behind not entirely because of age, but because that stuff isn’t of interest to me anymore.

Truth is, I have 3 boards right now that are “right” for me, depending on the situation.

• The board I mentioned above, for ditches, parks, and all-around stuff
• 8.5″ wide Super-8 pops, Indy 159s, 54mm Bones STF. 1 thin riser. This is a good board for parking-lot style for me.
• 8.25″ wide Super-8 pops, Indy 149s, 54mm Bones STF. 1 thin riser. Smaller board for freestyle and quicker footwork and spins.

Yes, I still have a “real” freestyle board, but I’m no longer interested in competing, so I never use it.

Right now, I would say that 90% of the time when I go skate I will simply grab the 9″ Black Label and go. Truth is I can ride the 8.5″ in the same situations and the narrow trucks are better for spinning, which is a major part of my skating.

Changing wheels out for different terrains is a reasonable idea, but really, this quiver of three boards will pretty much cover all the bases for me these days. I don’t need to worry about whether or not I’m going to do some kickflips or shoveits or rail flips. I’m just not interested in that stuff anymore. It’s not the direction I’m going.

I’ll close with this. As I was writing this, my friend Chris was publishing a similar post on his blog, The Twilight Sessions. Read it.

Fort Worth is what you might call the “sister city” of Dallas. While we call this area the DFW Metroplex, Dallas and Fort Worth are of very different astmospheres. FW isn’t quite as big. Both have great arts and culture, but FW leans into the cowboy thing a bit more. FW is a bit more chill.

This past Sunday my friend Dale and I met our friend Carter over there to skate this ditch (see video). Carter had a camera set up and caught a few nice clips of us. I am the guy in long pants with the wool flat cap.

The week before this we were at a really nice skatepark in Dallas. I have 1000x more fun in this ditch. I love skating real, natural terrain.

Same clips in slo-mo.

Tomorrow I’m going out to Fort Worth, Texas, to skate a very cool ditch I’ve skated once before, last summer.

It’s an hour away.

There are numerous skateparks much closer. I will have more fun in this drainage ditch, not intended at all for skateboarding, than I ever have at any skatepark.

For the most part this is how my life in skateboarding has been. Skating places not intended for skateboarding. Reimagining the physical landscape – the built environment – in the way that skateboarders do. It’s been said more articulately by others many times.

Last weekend my friend Dale and I went to the 71st birthday skate session of my friend Jeff. It was at the new skatepark at Bachman Lake, in Dallas. It’s a super nice park. Really good. But still, for me, not even 10% as fun as a ditch.

Now, Bachman Lake is in a pretty shitty area of Dallas. The skatepark is at the west end of the lake, on the north side. The south side of the lake is Love Field Airport. Bachman Lake is where the legendary Blue/Clown vert ramp was during the 1980s. Dallas pros like Jeff Phillips, Dan Wilkes, Craig Johnson, and many others practiced there weekly, alongside everyone else.

Anyway, the west end of the lake, where the skatepark is, well, it’s a shitty area. Light industrial on streets like Denton Drive that head north along side the light rail line. Warehouses, shitty bars and clubs, low-rent apartments.

So when we left, I was like “fuck it, let’s go up Webbs Chappel Rd.”. Down that far south Webbs Chappel is sketchy and shitty. Dale needed some water so we stopped at a gas station/convenience store. Now, the store wasn’t horrible looking. But it is in a horrible area. But it was the middle of the day, not 3am. So we stopped and went in and got some water. As we left the store and were getting in the car we heard some loud unintelligible babbling from over by the light rail tracks. There was a security guard (armed) who’d been running off someone of unknown problems but clearly — troubled. We got in the car. I picked the exit furthest from the insane person, who was already heading for us to ask for money. Dale indicated that the person was female. Ugh. Anyway, we split.

Encounter averted.

Note to self. Don’t go that way again.

So we continued north, heading toward LBJ freeway and escape from shittyville.

As we drove, as skateboarders tend to do, we were still scanning for good skate spots. Dale spotted what we think was a good bank spot, but we’ll not be returning to Mordor to skate it.

I went to one of my old spots to skate yesterday. The little ditch I’ve been skating since I was 14.

​As I started to skate, the dog behind the fence on the south side of the ditch started going apeshit. It was annoying. I figured if it annoyed me that much, and the dog was that annoyed, then the neighbors of the dog owner would probably be annoyed as well.

I feel bad for dogs that just live in the backyard. When we lived in Lockhart, Texas, that was common. Dogs are emotional creatures and I think just sticking one in the backyard is abuse. At any rate, I don’t like being the cause of an innocent dog’s distress, even if it’s a dog that would love to kill and eat me.

I took a couple of runs and then left.

It left me feeling kind of uninspired, so I just went home and made plans to go skate a really good ditch in Fort Worth on Sunday (2 days from now) with my friends Dale and Carter. Feeling very inspired for that!

This is my friend Lew, in an old video. I really like Lew’s skate style. His knees are always doing the nice style thing.

A video cap of me skating a ditch a while back. I thought it was kinda cool. So here it is.

This is me a couple of years ago. I’m not this fat now. This was before I went back to Aikido, after at least two years of pandemic life. I wonder what damage that period of time actually did to me. Being out of shape like that for a couple of years plus all the stress of the pandemic and cancer in the family must have some lasting effect.

Anyway, this simple trick is one of my favorite things to do. Sometimes I’ll do a 180 shove-it out. It’s simple but you can flow into and out of it nicely. This is the kind of thing I like to do now.

Some people would not even call this a “trick.”  I would say they are wrong.

The World Freestyle Skateboarding Championships were in Germany over the weekend. A lot of my friends from all over were there. Do I have anything left that is worth sharing? I need to think about this.

I made this video from yesterday’s clips. I told Chadwick, from Super 8 Skateboards, that next time I rode one of his boards I’d shoot some footage, knowing that 60 year old slightly overweight freestylers are highly influential on the social medias. Seriously, everyone looks to see what we’re doing and models their behavior after us, but they can’t keep up at all. Pitiful.

Anyway, here is the clip. I generally hate “portrait orientation” videos, but again, as this was for potential social media use in case he was insane enough to use it, I had my friends shoot it this way.