I am picking up the skateboard again. If I can remember correctly I believe I was really, really good. I slashed verts, pools and had a phat street ramp back in the day. I skated Hosoi decks, Indy trucks and always, always Bones wheels. I couldn’t wait for the two summer vacations my family would take to Myrtle Beach so that I could thrash the streets, boardwalks, alleyways and hotel halls of Ocean Boulevard. Then I grew out of the board thing as I got older. There was wrestling, boarding school, public high school and so on and so forth. After four months of living in crowded Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles, I blew that joint to relocate to sunny Venice Beach, California. With that move, I picked up a street board. Apparently, vert boards had kind of trickled away, so I just went with the latest fad and bought one. Then I began skating the alleyways, boardwalks and piers of Venice. I had grown scared in my older age to do many of the risky tricks I had done years before, (not to mention, I was more limber then and had no insurance now.) I kept the tricks to a simple ollie or jump off of a curb in route to the local bar, convienent store or favorite newsstand. Skating had become a simple means of transportation in my small neighborhood.
One night at a party at my house, the board was nabbed and yeah, I was pissed, but did not lobby to save and buy a new one, so skating went away again.
PRESENT DAY
Did I tell you I was burned out? So--- I’m 33. I can’t play tennis. Can’t play basketball. Football is not a sport you can just do with yourself for a couple hours on a Saturday. There was Boxing, Biking, Mountain Climbing and well, Skateboarding. I was too old to fight. Bikes are too expensive these days and like a gym membership, mountain climbing would not be something I could do consistently and frequently enough to make it worth it. Another argument on this is that I may in fact be too old to ’start’ a new hobby completely. I knew I wasn’t going to completely stop what I was doing with the film thing. I just needed something else to do along side of it. Starting a new hobby at my age means I would have to devote all my time for the learning process. (That may take years in my particular case.) With all that said, it left skateboarding. So I pitched it to Mandi and began researching back into the world of the street sport. I caught up with who was who, what was what and realized those guys were pushing the boundaries of gravity a thousand times more now than they ever did. Mandi said I would be an idiot to do it. I knew I had to ease it in to her lightly. My plan was to buy one piece of the board a week until I had it all. I knew then Mandi couldn’t really be mad at me. I would technically only be spending about 30 to 40 dollars a week. Two days before I purchased the first piece of the skateboard puzzle, Mandi calls me and she’s bought me a complete from the local skate shop for my birthday. I was taken a back. She met me at the house and handed it to me... A street board, Element Muska... All black. There was only one stipulation in the purchase... Nothing crazy... No half pipes or street ramps until after we got married. I agreed. I figured it would take me that long to get my legs back. I hopped on it. Quite small from my normal ’Hosoi’ sized deck I was used to. After five minutes I started coasting along. I wouldn’t say it was like riding a bicycle but I had not forgotten entirely. After a couple of turns, I said ’fuck it’ and popped an ollie-- LANDED FLAT ON MY BACK. That was strike one. I had a lot of catching up to do. I couldn’t wait.
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