Celebrating is fine, but even at the best party in the world, tedium takes over and we find ourselves leaning against the wall talking to our shoelaces again, like, “Let’s do shots, because, well, shots are almost as awesome as we are!”
Ray Barbee slaps a quick hip rock to commemorate where the flats meet the hills. Photo: Arto Saari
Most festivities and fanfare are actually more obvious than they are the best, and if you really press the general public (gross, dude) about what they like to commemorate, it’s stuff like the bloody murder of a super villain or the latest win of a perpetual winner. But you’ll be hard put (gross, dude) to get anyone to admit they’re actually partying for death or the sure-footed obviousness of the already obvious.
Still, here we are, telling each other how impressed we are with ourselves—in effect giving each other another jack-off high-five and basking the afterglow. “Mmmm. I don’t even know why I’m doing this … but still … I’m having a me party.”
Colin Provost goes Monty in Donald. Aw, yeah. Photo: Matt Price
This guy knows what I’m talking about. Right?
Aw, yeah.
But what choice do we have? I mean, honestly, skateboarding’s worst is light years better than everything else. Look at what other people celebrate: best actors, best country music video, best iPad app, best sushi in a non-sushi restaurant (which, apparently, is at Elway’s Downtown in Denver—go, Broncos.). Shit, skateboarding is better before 9:00 a.m. than most of that stuff is all day.
Rick Fabro knows what I’m talking abut. Garvanza evening egg. Photo: Anthony Acosta
And even though the nature of skaters and skateboarding is to remain invisible and under the radar, we sometimes wander, squinting and confused, into the bright lights. Beyond skateboarders, of course, we’re all just human machines, acting on survival instincts and feelings like we’ve been programmed to do. But after a few decades of just standing here and quietly minding our own business, it gets hard (gross, dude) to listen to all these horn-blowers claiming to be worthy of celebrating because they’ve pretended with emotion, faked the banjo, sold a million units, or served fish under the hallmark of an ex-QB.
So we may as well jump into this inebriated state deliberately and celebrate our own bestness, if only for the fact that it’s a reaction to the rest of the world’s worstness. Plus if we don’t do it, who will? (Or rather, who will fuck it up on our behalf?)
Kicky to banky. This is kinda how Evan Smith gets things done. Photo: Brain Gaberman
And this is kinda how we get things done—at night, in the shadows, and behind the secret secrets. And because we’re not banner-waving and kiss-throwing tickertape paraders, it’s just another awkward and uncomfortable moment of an awkward and uncomfortable lifetime.
Yeah, we’re the best at that, too.
Listen to Evan Smith’s We Made 60 Playlist.
