The kids at summer skateboard camp love the trick called "Walking the Dog". It's pretty easy but looks impressive, and it's not something many people learn nowadays. I have made it my private mission to revive this trick, and promote it as much as possible as Steeltown's mobile skateboard park moves from neighbourhood to neighbourhood every couple of weeks.
Last week, we were on the western edge of town, with the ramps set up inside of the local arena. For two days, no kids showed up (the park's presence doesn't seem to be advertised in any newspapers). My co-worker and I spent the time skateboarding and making posters to put up around the area. The floor of the arena is incredibly smooth, a lovely surface on which to ride. One push gets you all the way across the arena. It feels like skating on glass.
On the second day, there was a torrential rainstorm. Alex and I stood in the loading bay doorway of the arena and watched the water pour down out of the heavens. Within minutes, the eaves had backed up and water started spilling off the roof in thick cascades. When we returned to the interior of the arena, the drops falling on the arena roof made a deafening clatter.
By the third day, word started to spread and a few kids showed up to use the ramps. We have helmets that we lend out to them. They tear around the course, going off the ramps and landing on platforms -- stuff I no longer want to try to do for fear of falling. I largely stick to the flatground tricks. The vast expanse of the arena gives one lots of room to get a good line of three or four tricks in before having to turn around. The ramps only take up half of the area, so the other half is a flatlander's paradise.
For at least a half hour every day, I practice skating backwards. I can now do little ollies and a couple other tricks. It's like learning to skate all over again. Rodney Mullen still blows my mind.
3 comments:
sounds lovely, just like gliding through a dream. I remember feeling like that roller skating in a rink when I was a kid. Corey Hart blasting and my heart soaring. Thanks for the memories.
That youtube vidoe is amazing! (Well, not really the video as much as what the guy in it is doing. ;-)
Seriously incredible balance going on there.
Found a link for you! (Ok, so it's a blog I read all the time that just happened to have a post on artsy skateboards & I thought of you. :-)
Ms. Muffin, I'm glad you had some plesant roller memories triggered by the post. I hope they were real memories and not simulated, after the fact, and implanted in your subconscious mind by the Xister while you were sleeping.
Jin, those are some pretty skateboards! I think the artist should give them out to skaters so they can mess up the graphics, then return them to the artist. The result would be some kind of Jackson Pollock-esque effect that might be quite interesting.
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