Category: Verbs

There’s really nothing overt about skateboarding, other than its overt nature. Walking through a day’s worth of hours — anywhere in the universe, it seems — it’s easy as baked goods to take notice of skateboarding’s newest personality flaw: the obvious disposition of mainstream agreement. Even at quick glance, it appears our activity has seeped into the nooks and… Continue reading Timbre #22: You’re Welcome

I haven’t skated in over a week. It was last Saturday, and I’m feeling weird about the “time off,” almost guilty. Isn’t that stupid, stupid? A few days before that Saturday, I hit my knee, innocently enough, with a comical fall, rubbed it through my scuffed trousers (steady on, mate), and kept going. It got… Continue reading Timbre #21: 400 Blows

Here we are. Every reader of this essay, every friend of every reader of this essay, and every skater in the world is at an age where we’re no longer observing from the sidelines as our grandparents’ friends, our parents’ friends, or our older siblings’ friends pass away. We are here, watching as our friends… Continue reading Timbre #20: Even Now

Much commentary — hell, most of my own — drills its way into what’s wrong out there. I’d even venture to say that focus is pulled on wrongness largely because there’s a lot wrong and it’s easy to find targets: potholed roads, erroneous reasoning, elected officials, that smoke that comes out of every single Burger… Continue reading The Metre Reader #1: Soft Focus

I crack myself up. Like just now, I imagined myself in an XXL Hawaiian shirt, lugging one of those massive steel drums into the doctor’s office and trying to get him to prescribe me Rogaine because I’m interested in cultivating some dreadlocks. The look on his imaginary face was pretty amazing. Not quite Hawaiian shirty… Continue reading Timbre #19: Be There

My son, Miles, who we named after the great trumpet player, Miles Davis, told me about this story he saw on Reddit the other day. And it’s one I’ve never heard before. That’s my boy! A good friend of my jazz professor was a young (I think he said like 20), white jazz bass player… Continue reading As I Heard It: Playing Bass With Miles Davis

Things always happen. On that you can rely. Last weekend for example, I was petitioned to be one of five gentlemen judges for the Dew Tour skate contests in Chicago, Illinois — one streetstyle and one just regular street … but in a park. I’m a sucker for live, pro-level skateboard watching and, as you… Continue reading Visual Rep: Chicago Dew Tour Field Trip

In which things begin.