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Skate Blog Archive - January 2005



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1.29.05
Another grueling week at work so I knew I had to skate to let out some pent up aggression. I headed over to the Autumn Bowl, which is really the only place to skate this time of year, and march through the dirty 3-foot piles of NYC black snow for a session. Sam had called me and said he would be there, and so did Kevin.

I showed up and there were these guys from Connecticut that have a key and make the hour long drive to the bowl to skate just about every Saturday. I remember seeing them one time before. I told them that they are very committed to skating if they make the hour long drive, but then I thought, "I take 3 trains to get here and have to walk a few blocks on either end and sometimes it takes me more than an hour"!! I guess I am committed as well...

The CT guys (Eric, Gene, and Bill) are really nice old school skaters and they really are getting the hang of the bowl since the last time I skated with them. They were grinding the bejeezus out of the coping with these very nice slash type grinds. I was trying to hit some coping myself but I feared I was going to tear my stitches open if I tried anything too radical. I guess that is an un-go-for-it attitude but I have a busy week ahead of me and I can't afford to be out of work. I also start teaching next week and I surely can't miss that.

Kevin showed up eventually and totally shredded, but he said he was out of practice because he hadn't skated in a few weeks. He also ripped up the new mini ramp. It was ice cold at the bowl but it beats not skating. I try to fill my mind with thoughts of days at the Tribeca Bowl when I almost passed out of heat exhaustion. Ahhh, the dichotomy of life...

I felt like I was just getting back to where I left off but I am proceeding cautiously until I am healed up. I seem to get hurt often, so with that in mind, I have no real time frame on the goal for my frontside air...

Eric - beauty Frontside Grind...

Gene doing an Invert - whoa!

Bill slashing a Backside Double Truck Grind - scrrrrriiiitch!!!!!


1.23.05
Man, what a week. The skate gods have frowned upon me once again. I had plans to skate at the Autumn Bowl early on Saturday to beat the blizzard, but wouldn't you know it - foiled again. I was drilling a wall plate for the new studio installs I am doing at work and the plate spun around and sliced my hand wide open.

I hate getting injured at work, not only does it hurt but it reminds me that I am still working class and that my dreams of being a big time rock star, composer, or writer will probably never happen. It's not that I hate my job, as a matter of fact, I love it. I work with some really amazing people and still get to be involved with music. It's just that I feel if I would have studied harder, finished college, and focused my musical efforts, I could have been who I wanted to be. There is a saying that it is never too late, but as I stare at 7 stiches in my hand, the once distant tolling of the bell seems to be louder and closer...

Skating is a great thing for me mentally because there is no real final goal. I just do it to have a few laughs and relive some of the memories I had when I flipped through pages Skateboarder Magazine - back when I was 12 and dreams still remained in my mind as possibilities and not missed opportunities...

Opening...

Closure...


01.16.05
I received the Gnarly Dude 2 CD my old eponymous band has a track on. It looks great! Carl Arnfield and Tim Walker put it together and they both deserve great praise for putting this CD out. They do it for the pure joy of it and sell all of their merchandise at cost!!!! They run a cool UK skateboard site called Middle Age Shred and it is awesomely cool and hilarious. It is a riot to hear the slang that British guys use. You must check out all of the pages on their site! Go buy the CD too, it has tons of smoking bands on it.
There are A LOT of amazing unsigned bands in the world...

Buy this record now!


01.14.05
I had a really rough week at work installing new recording studios so I decided to take Friday off and go for an early morning skate. My old bass player from Joe Popp was also going to be in town in the afternoon so I just thought I would relax for a change. I am a pretty compulsive person so when I start a project I work like a dog to finish it. It doesn't matter if it is personal or for work I just want to get the task done. I probably need to seek therapy for this but until then I can just take the words hard worker as a complement.

Rain fell again but it was about 55 degrees, so once inside the confines of the Autumn Bowl I was set for a good morning of skating. I arrived at about 10 a.m. and once again, as I find on many early morning skates, I was all alone. The bowl is housed in the very old warehouse and has a very rustic as well as eerie presence. I think about the lives of the men that once worked inside of these walls, perhaps machinists or wood workers and wonder what became of these men. I always recall the text of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and know that no matter hard I work the immigrants of years past worked so much harder. Sure my job can be stressful and I get tired often but guys back when often worked themselves literally to death...

The bowl has a sweet sound system for cranking CDs and you can even patch your iPod right into it but when I skate alone I usually leave the music off. I enjoy the solitude of just being alone and the sound of my wheels serves as the soundtrack for me to collect my thoughts.

I really feel like I am improving finally with my carving. I don't feel so uncomfortable on a skateboard anymore and each week I skate - even if it is only once a week - I get slightly better. I am building on the sense memory of each prior session. I also always "skate in my head" while I try to go to sleep at night because I read a study where they took 2 groups of people: one group thought about basketball for an hour a day and the another group that practiced basketball for an hour a day. As it turns out both groups progressed at the same rate! I don't know though, I have logged a lot of head skate hours - you'd think I'd be skating like Lance Mountain...

Solo apocalyptic skate - the horror...


01.08.05
The internet really shrinks the world down to a puny rock. I have been posting this site for about 8 months and I have had a lot great feedback and have met a lot of people. Every now and then I meet up with some out of towners that share my enthusiasm for skating.

I have been really busy lately but this cool skater named Charlie rolled into NYC for a convention he and his friend Andy were setting up. We decided to hit the Autumn Bowl early because I had stuff to do and we headed over at about 9:30 a.m. It was a really great session. Both guys were totally cool and stoked out of their heads about the Autumn Bowl. Charlie said it was the best place he had ever skated.

Both Charlie and Andy said they returned to skating a few years ago. They wanted to get in shape but the idea of a gym horrified them. I felt the same way when I started again. I wanted to exercise my lethargic carcass but I couldn't bring myself to run on a treadmill like a hamster. So I started skating.

I guess the strangest thing is how many older guys there are that started skating again. It is kind of like a secret cult. I think many of us saw DogTown and Z Boys and after witnessing that kind of incredible footage a seed gets planted. Then one day you are surfing around the internet, the next day your deck trying to kickturn like you did when you were 12.

I guess that's what any of us are trying to do, recapture a small piece of our lost youth we know is never going to come back. In Citizen Cane it was a sled, and for guys like me, Charlie and Andy it's a piece of wood with 4 wheels nailed to it called a skateboard...

Charlie - Who says a 42-year-old guy can't do a Frontside Air?

Andy doing a beauty Fronside Grind...