skate & destroy

The whole family trooped downstate to my friend’s pow wow this past weekend. None of the kids are dancing for the next year—they are observing a mourning period in honor of their late Auntie Shi. We just went to visit and to support our friend Todd, who is the owner of Two Eagles Artwork (which you can link via this blog) and Ollie’s Skate Shop, and the organizer of the Tecumseh Pow Wow.
Turnout was a little low, you can never be too sure just how many people will show up at a pow wow. You can invite good drums, great head dancers, dance judges, etc . . . but if everyone decides to go somewhere else . . . not a lot you can do . . .
We visited with friends and family of course, but an added bonus—I met skateboard legend Bill Danforth, who apparently is an old friend of my friend, Todd. I didn’t even know that Todd skated until he mentioned something about his store when he was over at our house for my kid’s annual New Year’s poker party. FYI, my daughter, who was still ten at the time, walked away with about $40 by the end of the night—she cleaned Todd out twice.
Anyways, I started skating back in ’86, a year or so after I really got into Hardcore Punk. It was just something to do, quite a few of my friends were doing, too, so what the heck . . . the main reason though was Thrasher Magazine. The photography and artwork drew me to skateboarding and their album reviews and interviews with hardcore bands didn’t hurt either. I wanted to “shred” and “grind”-- even though I didn’t know what any of those things meant. It just sounded like it was something I should be doing.
I was enamored with the whole idea of skating, bought into the marketing 100%. I was never very good on a skateboard, but that wasn’t really the point—it was just something to do, a statement we were making about the mainstream. “Skate and Destroy,” as Thrasher used to say. It introduced me to a whole different way of looking at the world around me. And it introduced me to a lot of different people, from one end of the state to the other, and points in between.
One of my friends once said to me, “I don’t get the whole skateboard thing in the Midwest—I can understand Southern California, but how does it relate to your experience in Michigan?”
I told her that skateboarding for me transcended time and place—we shared something with people all over the world—Toronto, L.A., Tokyo, Paris, wherever—something that didn’t care about who your parents are and where you grew up. People who didn’t care about any of the usual stuff that seemed so unimportant to me, but were just passionate about something that touched them directly. Whether it was skating itself, or the culture, or the music--it felt so revolutionary and made me feel so alive.
I enjoyed skating—I could skate for hours—alone or with others, it didn’t really matter to me. I could skate from the campus to the lake and back, which was ten miles round-trip, and keep skating for a couple more hours after getting back onto campus. I skated to and from all my classes, skated to work, skated just to skate. In the winters, I’d skate in the parking ramps around campus, and I’d hit the sidewalks as long as there was no ice or snow on the concrete. Skating allowed me to forget everything else; I was in the moment, just skating, nothing else.
I met lots of people in the skate and the punk rock crowds. Opening me to new experiences, to new people was invigorating. There was some posturing, some posing going on my part and with others, but overall it was a good experience. There was a connection, something communal about both those scenes and we weren’t confined to our little boxes, little cubicles. We could relate to one another one a genuine level and could learn about ourselves in these new situations and circumstances.
I felt like I was looking at everything with new eyes, with a new appreciation. The empty wastelands of parking lots became a brand new playground. My friends and I searched high and low for new skate terrain—loading docks, painted curbs, parking ramps, whatever we could find. The D.I.Y. spirit of the punk rock movement was also energizing—average people, doing incredible things.
I only skated for five years—I quit about the time I met my wife. I never took to ramps and there weren’t any skate parks around here at the time, so never had the chance to check put pools, etc . . . to make a long story short; I graduated from college, had a family, eventually got a job, moved on with my life.
Work has been less than satisfying, however, and I recently started replacing many of my long missing and misplaced punk rock albums from “back in the day.” My two older kids and I have been trying to learn guitar chords--just because, no real reason, just one of those things I’ve always wanted to do. Todd talked me into getting a new skateboard a month or so ago—my son and I have been riding it a little bit, trying to get him comfortable with just being on the board.
Meeting Bill Danforth was a little strange—here was a guy that my friends and I idolized and I meet him twenty years later. The guy’s spent the last 20+ years doing what he loves—skateboarding. He’s older and grayer, doesn’t seem nearly has big or menacing in person as he did in those Thrasher photo layouts from the 80’s. He’s pretty cool, seemed really down-to-earth and all that, but meeting him awoke something in me.
The thought of riding in the skate park never really crossed my mind before, but it’s all I’ve been thinking about lately. The kids and I finally snuck over there, after closing time and had a look around. I haven’t felt so thrilled in years, I felt like a kid doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. But I’m no kid, but neither is Bill or Todd for that matter. Those guys found a way to do something they love and to make a living out of it.
That’s not what I’m really looking for—I just want to feel excited about something again. I want to feel alive and exhilarated. Checking out the skate park with my kids, in the dead of night, blasting Husker Du on the car stereo—that was the most fun I’ve had in forever. No, we didn’t carve, grind or shred the pool or any of the numerous obstacles there, but we all could imagine doing it. What’s to stop us? What’s holding me back?
The options are endless—I don’t have to be the greatest or good enough or any of that—I just have to do.
“Just Do It”
“Carpe Diem”
“Skate & Destroy”
Destroy my own ignorance, my own boundaries, my own fear of failure, fear of not being accepted. I’m just a guy, no better, no worse than all the rest, just here to live and to enjoy. At some point I lost sight of this simple fact, became a cog in the machine. Living just for a paycheck isn’t living at all and I’m so tired of being amongst the living dead. Twenty years ago, it seemed like my choices were unlimited, my horizons were endless . . . nothing's changed but my perspective, nothing's changed but my perceptions. Need to return to beginners mind.