Tiffany, neon, and the popcorn smell of Hot Dog on a stick -- the mall was pretty much heaven on earth. Even though our town/city wasn't that big, the mall had an inexplicably large umber of high-end boutiques and department stores that drew public appearances by some well known actors and pop even -- Tiffany. The reason was simply that there was a booming shadow economy of people who only paid in cash -- mountains of cash. That's what happens when you live in a place that's the biggest transshipment point for cocaine into America. More on this in the next post -- THE DEA NEXT DOOR. The point is that the mall was the singular oasis of civilization in my life at the time, and I only got to go five times before we moved away.
Sis and I were always at war. The only time we formed a united front was when it came to the mall. Mom got a headache at the mere mention of "mall."
Mom: It sure is hot today. You kids want to go swimming at the pool?
Me: You'll take us to the pool? I mean it's so far away.
Mom: It's only twenty minutes away. Besides, it's a 110 degrees outside and your Dad still hasn't fixed the air conditioning.
(At this point Sis and I would lock eyes, and try to act casual. Like Laura Holt and Remington Steels casing a joint -- casual. We loved that show. I still love that show)
Sis: I don't know, I could really use some school supplies.
Mom: OK, we can get some on the way.
Me: Couldn't we just go someplace with air conditioning.
Sis: I know, why not the mall? I can get my supplies at the stationary store.
Mom: Gee, I don't know. It's a long drive and my head is starting to hurt.
The one time Mom took me to the mall was to buy an itchy wool suit at JC Penny's for my Aunt's wedding. I nearly passed out from heat exhaustion, but Mom insisted it be wool. I sweat so much trying the first one on that we had to buy it. Mom felt so bad took afterwards she bought me a new set of Swiss bearings at the mall's skate shop afterwards.
The four other times I went to the mall with friends we spent literally hours in the skate shop drooling over the new Vision decks, latest Indy trucks and Slime Ball wheels. Arguments ranged from the merits of seven ply decks to how high Natus Kapas could really ollie. All my friends were solid skaters. All could kick flip ollie, grind twice there body length on a rail, and, most importantly, pull method airs of a launch ramp. I, on the other hand, could ollie, and, well -- talk. Talk gear, talk skaters, talk vert, and -- talk some more. Basically I peaked early in my skating career when by some miracle I was the first one in our group to ollie over a Coke can without crushing it. Luckily, everyone had been watching me at the time. I skated by on the fanfare of this feat six months before everyone progressed beyond me and started to question why they hung out with such a bad skater.
Things got so bad going into summer break that I concocted the most elaborate lie to stay in the skate clique: I swore that that summer I was gong to learn to skate half-pipe on a family trip to Wisconsin. At the time, it seemed like a great lie because no one we knew had a half-pipe. The plan was that I'd get home, pretend that I'd become some great half-pipe skater, and simply reason away my deficiencies as a street skater as a divine trade-off for undeniable (and unverifiable) knack for half-pipe. Of course when I got to Wisconsin, the place we visited was all country highway. They didn't sidewalks, let alone half-pipes. The only available asphalt was in the bowling alley parking lot. I didn't skate a single day all summer.
Nevertheless, the plan worked wonders. I kept to the script, and my skater brothers took me at my word. Then it all came apart one Friday afternoon in November. Luis, a kid in my sister's grade with a bad teen mustache, had just finished building a half-pipe in his back yard. Given the bitter rivalry between skaters of different grades, they had all decided to put me up as the ringer to represent our crew on the ramp.
I'll spare you the gory details, but basically I dropped in on the ramp -- half believing my own lies -- and nearly cracked my head open from the fall. I was so mortified when it happened that I just lay there on the ramp without saying a word. The searing stares of my peers pierced my ice cold embarrassment. My humiliation was so complete that it couldn't even muster a warm blush. I suddenly realized that shame was a cold lonely frigid thing. No one said a single word. Instead, Luis silently escorted me out of the backyard. The only thing Luis said was that he'd appreciate it if I didn't tell my parents I'd hurt myself on his ramp. Because if his Mom fund out, she'd make him tear it down. I agreed with a few nods. I welcomed the warm stream of blood dripping down my forehead on the walk home. It was the first sign that I wasn't going to freeze to death from disgrace.
The next week at school was tough. I tried to lie my way out of my lie, complaining about my board, the ramp conditions and the rotten pear I'd eaten for breakfast beforehand. Actually I had eaten a rotten pear, so at least that part was true. But true or not, no one was buying anymore of my bullshit. The next few weekends I thought and thought and thought about how I could redeem myself, but nothing came to me. My depression got bad enough that Mom started asking why I wasn't skating anymore. After brushing her off with inadequate answers, she found out from my sister what happened. I had always been a moody kid, but Mom and Dad started to worry after I spent two weekends alone in doors watching reruns of GOOD TIMES and a martial arts movie marathon on KTLA. Always the ingenious American parents, Mom and Dad resorted to the only weapon left to them in the battle against adolescent malaise: they each bought me a present. In one of those inexplicable synchronicities, they each bought a present not knowing the other had done so.
On weekend three of exile from planet skate, I woke up Saturday morning to a PXL 2000 and a copy of the Bones Brigade's THE SEARCH FOR ANIMAL CHIN. The skate video was Mom's idea to get me inspired to go outside. The video camera was Dad's idea to ... well Dad sticks with what works. After resolving my pirate problem years earlier with his Super 8mm camera, he decided to revisit the solution with a more idiot proof video camera. How a camera was supposed to help me he didn't know, but hey -- it worked last time my friends ditched me. To be honest, I wasn't that psyched about the PXL 2000, but ANIMAL CHIN was pretty damned sweet.
I must have watched ANIMAL CHIN twelve times that weekend and again every night that week. Tony, Lance, Steve, Mike and Tommy were gods, and the ramps they skated were their Mount Olympus. I can't say I remember the story all that well, but it had to do with some quest around the world to find the elusive Animal Chin -- a guy reputed to have invented skate boarding in ancient China. I lived and breathed every sequence of the movie. On my walk home from school, I took the route through the irrigation ditches. I'd run up and down the concrete banks miming to perfection the moves that the Bones Brigade executed down a concrete canal in Hawaii. I got so proficient at it, that I convinced myself that doing it on an actual skateboard was a pure formality like how a great fighter pilot doesn't really need more than a Chinese kite to prove his mettle. Unfortunately for Mom and Dad, this meant that I spent even more time inside than ever before to make sure I knew the movie by heart.
Over breakfast the next Saturday morning, Dad anxiously inquired when I planned to get outside and start skating again. Mom and Dad were starting to worry because I was beginning to look pretty damned pale. Thats when I laid out my plan to learn how to do everything in the movie by kind of visual osmosis. I didn't use these terms, but you get the general idea. If I watched it enough times, at some point I'd just spontaneously know how to do it. Dad gently suggested that while my plan might work, at some point I'd have to go out and actually try the moves to see if my plan was working. When I grudgingly agreed, he offered to come along and videotape me on the PXL 2000. That way I could review the tapes to help learn from any mistakes I might make.
Me: Mistakes? No way. I've seen ANIMAL CHIN like a thousand times already.
Mom: More like twenty times.
Me: OK ... Twenty five.
Mom: Twenty two tops.
Dad:Whatever. All I'm saying is that I'll be there -- just in case you make a mistake and want to learn from it.
Me: Impossible.
Impossible? In my infinite wisdom, I decided to start with something easy like -- the irrigation ditches I'd been "skating" home after school.
CUT TO: Ten minutes later. Both knees are skinned and I've only managed to successfully drop-in once for a ten second ride before crashing into my father's feet.
Dad was beside himself with what mom was going to do when he brought me home bleeding like this. Desperate for him to understand what I was going for, I posed for some half handstands at the top of the banks with my board that he half-heartedly shot with the camera. Mom was surprisingly copacetic about my condition, grateful that I'd at least gotten some sun.
That night I reviewed the footage and two amazing things happened.
1) I didn't look all that bad. Sure I didn't look anything like a member of the Bones Brigade, but I was shocked at how good I looked during my one successful drop-in. The ride lasted a mere ten seconds what with: drop-in, successful frontside turn, even more successful backside turn and then I crashed at Dad's feet.
2) Due to the gutterboxed image of the camera, my poses on the banks after the successful drop in almost looked like real time maneuvers.
After reviewing the tapes three more times, there on the parquet floor of our living room I discovered the first principal of cinema -- montage. The next day I conned my dad into going out with me again to the ditches. After a half hour of blood, sweat, tears, two successful drop-ins, four great poses and some successive shitty pixilated images I'd managed to concoct twenty-three seconds of photographic proof that I could skate vert.
The next week I somehow convinced my skate friends to come over and watch it. Thanks to montage and movie magic, I was invited back into the group. No sooner had I celebrated the reverie than the group decided the best way to celebrate the reunion was to skate the ditches. The walk to the ditch felt like an eternity as I felt the arctic breeze of another humiliation coming when they discovered I'd bamboozled them again.
Perched at the lip of the embankment, they wanted me to go first and show them how it's done. Before I dropped in, I made sure they ll knew how much I'd missed hanging out with them, and, more to the point, how sorry I was for lying to them. I didn't say which lie, just that I was sorry for lying. They all forgave me in the rush to get on with skating the ditch. So I took a deep breath, and dropped in. Mercifully, I made it down and up twice before skidding out in a slimy puddle. My cohorts ran to help me, and before I could explain the depths of my lies -- this is what happened.
Skater Boy #1: Dude that was a wicked wipe out!
Skater Boy #2: Gnarly! Damn you're already bleeding through your jeans.
Me: Yeah, well -- sorry. Guess I'll see you guys later.
(My last skinned knee hadn't healed yet, so the injury looked worse than it was. I silently skulked away. I'd been found out again, only this time my affiliation with the group was over for good.)
Skater Boy #1: Dude, where are you going?
Me: Well, I obviously can't skate this thing.
Skater Boy #2: What are you talking about -- that puddle hit you out of nowhere.
Skater Boy #3: Could of happen to anyone, Dude. Not me, but anyone else.
(They all nodded in agreement, and me soon after.)
Me: Cool, yeah, of course. Maybe I'll just sit out and watch this round.
Skater Boy #1: Hell's yeah dude.
Skater Boy#3: Hell's no! Dude you should get your camera and take some movies of us.
Me: Hell's yeah, I could do that. For sure...
For about a month, I was the designated videographer of the group. It was great to have an excuse to just watch, hang and be cool for doing nothing more than making other people look cool. I wish I could say that I stayed in touch with these guys, but as soon as Dad went back to work, I went back to playing soccer. So film, like skateboarding, went the way of the dodo until I got the option to make a video instead of writing a paper on Marxism in the 8th grade. But before we get to that, there's so much more you need to know. So tomorrow -- I'll tell you about THE DEA NEXT DOOR.
(NOTE: Dude was even more prevalent then, than it is now. If you don't believe me, just have a look at THE SEARCH FOR ANIMAL CHIN.)
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