Session Report

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.

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