I managed to get some skating in over the last week. After winter I always put my foot on the freestyle board and wonder if I can “still even do this.” The first session doesn’t feel that good. I have to understand and accept that. The trick is just to get back on the board and roll, and get used to it. From November to usually March the weather and holiday decorations at my freestyle spot ( they put up Santa’s Village) conspire to keep me off the freestyle board and just skating a little street and ditch. So by the time I get back on the freestyle board it feels a bit weird at first.
After 3 session last week I finally started feeling good on the board again. Rusty, but feeling solid again. Here’s a little clip of something I do on my street board too. I call it “slide to spin shove-it”. Backside 180 slide into a fakie 360 with a 180 shove-it at the end. I like to do them rolling fairly fast. It’s a high percentage trick for me. I usually make it. Not too complex. You just have to let it flow.
Today is Tuesday. The weather is back to rainy crap, but at least I got a few session in. I’m excited for the rest of the year in skating.
A couple that didn’t get used in the new video from NeverWas skateboarding. Started thinking. Instead of Fakie 360s, how about a Fakie 270 and then do something else. So this is me fiddling around with that idea. The other is a manual.
My whole video part is here: https://youtu.be/Bw87-qT4yzc?t=2325. I recommend headphones, because I never noticed how good the bass part is on this song.
I went out to shoot some video clips for the upcoming NeverWas #2 video the other night. Didn’t get anything I thought was good enough to submit, but this screen capture image, manipulated to deal with the setting sun in the background, was kind of cool. Looks kind of like a Polaroid.
I posted this on the AlwaysWill messageboard, an oldschool forum I and some buddies set up as an alternative to Facebook and other social media. A couple of the guys enjoyed it. I guess it spoke to them. I tend to write this stuff publicly but it’s really more self-reflection. Helps me sort things out. The background — I’m working to film some stuff for the NeverWas-2 skate video, the upcoming sequel to Can You Spare Some Cutter Me Brother. So this mission has taken me back to all my old skate spots, which of course is where I skate all the time anyway, but looking through the lens of this project I realized how appropriate I think it is to go back to the old spots. It’s important to have places in your life worth caring about. Places are a big deal. Find the shittiest place you can find, and somewhere there’s a person for whom that place is sacred. The house I grew up in is 3 streets from this school. Anyway, all but one of our old neighbors have moved out of the neighborhood. Sometimes I wonder when I skate there if anyone drives by — someone who’s lived there for 45 years – sees me skating – and thinks “There’s that guy again.”
Well, yesterday the Richardson Community Band took over my freestyle spot for a Memorial Day Weekend concert of patriotic music. Of course, being a non-patriot, I didn’t go. Instead I went to my little ditch that I’ve been skating for the last 40 years and filmed a few tricks for the next NeverWas video. Then I went over to the school parking lot in my old neighborhood where I learned to skate and film a few more tricks and lines on a street board.
Going there is peaceful. It brings up some emotions. I remember being in that parking lot 40 years ago. I was the youngest of a little crew in the neighborhood. In the summer we’d skate there all-freaking-evening until the sun went down and then some. There was nothing there but flat, curbs around the edges, and a wheelchair ramp. We made do. We’d spin 360s on the little tiny ramp. Do freestyle tricks. Roll around.
A couple of years ago they tore up the little ramp and replaced it with a sideways facing one that is covered in those shitty textured concrete tiles they put all over the place these days for “safety”. I was bummed. The concrete there is starting to get kind of crusty in a few spots, just like I am. We are damned near the same age. I know it’s probably just a matter of time until they rip that concrete up one summer and redo it. That will be weird for me. There’s this one spot where there’s a circle of smoother concrete. That’s where I practiced 360s. It’s still there! It’s so strange to me to think that all this concrete is the same stuff I have ridden on thousands of times.
Yeah, my wife has been out of town for over a week, I’m a solitary person, and maybe I need some company. Maybe I’m delving too deep into this weird peaceful melancholy.
Anyway, it was fun to skate there. I’ll go back later today and film a little more, I think. Toni’s flight gets in about 10:45pm tonight. That gives me time to skate, come home and shower, then go out and get her.
I still need to get some better stuff for that video, but it is coming together.
