Ode to Linsen Road

The bridge was a good place to start, around 10 pm. It was dry and noone else wanted to skate. Some dudes I kind of know were there, doing important things, and I warmed up. They left at lights out and lzyk let me know that she wanted to go get some food on her way home. She gets off work at midnight on the friday of new year's. TK and his crew arrived shortly after I got those instructions, so we skated pretty hard until I had to leave. I was sorry to leave them, but lzyk and I rode out to the old neighborhood on the orange line, and ate at a series of excellent and interesting street bars. On the way home, we bombed Linsen on foot, and I skated circles around here when I got bored enough, and ********* curbs and whatever, until the pimps got annoyed. Linsen never sleeps. It's like Japan's Tijuana, if Tijuana had a lot more prostitutes and a lot less other sketchy shit. Also you can gamble for sausages (beat the vendor at dice and you get five sausages for $100, lose and he keeps your $100. Who the fuck could eat five of those things??) I found an infinite set of curbs, microbanks with stone coping, metal ledges, two and three stairs, manny pads in front of whore houses, racks of slut panties for sale, other slut paraphenalia, pig heart soup vendors (there are thousands of other vendors, but I had that particular one) smashed up super cars scraping down the road with parts falling off, binlang, beer, curbs, tiny little flat bars and round rails for parking bicycles, scowling gangsters, flashing lights, more food, more beer, more curbs, more food, another beer, some curbs, another beer, some manuals, and then we were home. Linsen road is where the action is after midnight in Taipei.

nationalism is the enemy

I'm in the club, and I don't even live in japan. I got called 外人 by a strangers!

Destroy all nations.

art bed soak

Rain was threatening like foreign war planes but it never came. The new kid and I met up at the ximen plaza, but noone else showed, so we went to the wallride out by the airport. I translated a request to the security guard to borrow some planks of obvious trash wood, and he eventually ok'ed it, as long as we agreed to bring it back ot the trash pile. We stacked up some debris and put the wood on top and it was good. We even put the trash back in the trash pile. Skate ethically, you assholes.

We didn't put the debris back, because it was heavy and security didn't know we moved it there. We also got the granite benches, the ampitheatre, 圓山 bridge, and handful of street spots on the way. Then we got night market supper and went by the bridge for bridge, where I was suffering from the cold so severely that some homies gifted me some clothes. It's 12 degrees in taipei tonight.

on the way home, I went for a beer at the seven, and a lil sawty pointed at my skateboard and asked "****slide?"

Much love for taipei five oh

There isn't a good reason for this slump, but maybe I'm just getting old. I started the night at the bridge with zewei, a visiting american, and rmj. unexpected homies (CHB, K, etc etc; a long list of initials that means my friends)  were also there, which always makes for a sweeter night (they are rare street skaters, so running into them is always a happy event, evne if it's just under the bridge). I didn't accomplish anything, and ended up talking to my parents on the phone to wish them merry christmas, as I pumped bakc and forth between two banks. they didn't answer on christmas day, which is why i'm drinking and skating in taipei in my middle thirties. 

rmj and I cruised for a while in the area around the bridge. He got a long, long line on a section of tiles and marble ledges and curbs. I don't approve of filming skateboarding, but I wish I had been filming it. That was what it's all about. 

We went to the Stoop (formerely the new stoop) and beered up. A pair of cops were mad dogging us for a few minutes, and they crept up from down the way and asked if we know AD, a taiwanese pro. RMJ said no, but we've skated with him a few times. The cops were really impressed. They asked us lots of questions and eventually rode off into the night on their scooters. this is how policing work should be done. RMJ went home and I tried to keep going. There is a series of slappy marble curb/micro banks and I caught one wrong and now I have a bloody elbow to prove just how good of a night it was, even though I don't have much else to show for it. Taipei is the best city in the world.

This is why we can't have nice things

Christmas aboard is an exercise in loneliness, even if you are surrounded by loved ones and wouldn't choose to be back in the mothercountry if it came with a winner lottery ticket.

We rode out to the beach in yilan on bicycles. it was worse than africa, and I've chilled on an african city beach. There was less human shit, admittedly. But i mean less feces. In Taiwan, compared to africa, there was way, way way, more piles of shit (human garbage). I have never seen anything like it. Someone tried to argue that it was washing in from other countries, but this is like arguing that Taiwan's air pollution is blowing over from china - total bullshit. There was a lot of trash whose origin I couldn't identify, but there was not a single peice that I could I idenfity that wasnt sold in Taiwan: beer, weird herbal wine bottles, tapes, fishing trash, car batteries, plastic plastic plastic plastic; there is just no way to put into words the volume of shit that the people of yilan have managed to collect on their beach.

lzyk was so upset taht she was shaking. I have never seen her react in this way. The shame that taiwanese people must feel when they visit this beach might be compared to the shame that I feel, as an american, when I visit kabul or mosul or los angeles.

shaky legs

I technically had the day off work, even though I had things I should have been doing besides skating. It was sprinkly, so I went to the bridge. Shaky leg syndrome (SLS) was my excuse for not getting much done. I'm not sure about the etiology, but not sleeping til dawn might have played a part. Also, drinking way too much coffee. Or heavy metal poisoning. Maybe it's chromium in the water. I did make the coffee with tap water.

It was cool and breezy and uncrowded. Before I got started, a dude came up to me to ask about spots. He's from nearby Prague (I can't remember the anme of the town). He seemed alright, so maybe we'll do some street skating soon.

Sometimes the SLS wears off after I warm up but if anything, it got worse this time. I skated til the shakes made it nearly impossible. I guess I'll go back to bottled water.

lost

For some reason, no one else wantedto start at midnight,so I went east alone. There were a lot of new spots, mostly small stuff, which is just what I wanted. The best find was a long curb with bronze coping. There were many more, but I don't have the stamina to describe the minutae here, because I got lost (no phone or compass, refusal to ask for directions) for nearly three hours. I kept leaving 101 and suddenly seeing it ahead of me again. It was like blair witch project. I asked a pimp and a cop and a 7 11 clerk and another pimp and at one point, i had skated from 101 to neihu, and back, without realizing it. this was key, because i kept going and went south past 101 into xinyi and so on. I found a few spots, but i ll never find them again because i didnt' have my phone. you know you're in trouble when you get another beer at the same 7 that you were at two hours ago.

i finally gave and got a taxi back. it cost me nearly 3 US dollars, but it was worth it, because i was a fucking long way from home, and the driver talked to me about all the things i'm interested in. he was surprised when i told him about the scrambling interceptors i saw in the south today. I saw four flights, three each...

Colder than a polar bears toenails

I spent two weeks thinking about and producing a document that I presented this afternoon in my least favorite city in taiwan and I bombed it. Not just the presenting, the whole thought process. Lzyk was in the audience. It's hard to get more humiliated. I would have prefered if they had been dicks about it, then I could blame for them for having been dicks. Instead, they were nice, so now I have to live with having said stupid shit to smart nice people.

I went the place where you can recover from this kind of thing, under the bridge. It was so cold that I wore a hoody all day. Some of the homies (that's presumptuous, I don't even know who they were bceause of this) had their hoods pulled tight across their faces like eskimos. They were still skating the living fcuk out of what they had in front of them. a crew of actual homies were there, braving the cold. rmj and I got bored and we went to main statoin to see the new MRT that goes to the airport. it's modern like japan from 4 years ago. It's beside two weird squat buildings that were going to be skyscrapers but legend has it the investors pulled out due to um, things you can look up elsewhere if you're interested, but I'm not interested in getting reversable kneecaps, so I'll leave it at that.

We went up through 大稻埕 and ended up on a significantly long cruise. We passed up on a lot of spots, the biggest regret now being the ebony manny pad at the labour center. I'm going to have to go back there soon; I haven't skated it in more than a year, at least. The old hood is changing. It's brighter, and there are several new sections of marble sidewalk. The scooter commuters from 三重 are still doing the thing that made me move out of that neighborhood - riding 125s with after market exhaust.

At the end of hte night, the best trick I got was a completely new one, for which I was quite proud at for a skate night after a week of no sleep and only small naps. The new MRT has a good manny pad. The city is cold and windy and perfectly empty.

Skate-deficiency induced insomnia

When I don't skate for long periods, I can't sleep. I had the chance to sleep at around 10pm but I didn't take it because the last time I did that, I woke up at 1 am and was wired the rest of the night. By 1130 I was bouncing off the walls. I spent most of tonight writing, but gave up after an hour that produced 100 words. That's good because the word limit for the whole is 3500 and my shitty first section is a big chunk of that, but it's bad because I have to present to the team tomorrow afternoon and I have a shitty first section that I'll be presenting without sleep. Life goes on. Humiliation is temporary.

I went for a walk because I was too exhuasted to even cruise on the sidewalks. I immediately saw an anceint man kicking feebly at trash that was blowing in the wind. Later I saw a woman pushing a pair of toddlers (at 04:00) in some kind of toddler cart, singing "old macdonald" in mandarin. Actually, I saw them twice, once on the way out, and once on my way back. The children where shrieking with joy both times. Maybe they just got back from overseas. Jet lag is a bitch. 

I went into seven to buy a beer. A man who looked like the chinese rip off of a Man In Black was there. He was all blacked out in a trenchcoat, dress shoes, sunglasses and so on, but he had a couple of tiny patches of facial hair that he seemed ot have never seen the need ot cut, which where finger long. He asked the clerk about which instant foods where good, like an alien might. From a distance, I kind of fantasized that he was a Chinese agent, but when I pulled my money out of my wallet, I dropped a $1ntd coin that rattled across the floor and he swooped down on and put it in his pocket without making eye contact. Maybe Chinese agents are really thrifty. 

It goes without saying that I wish I had been skating tonight. It's actually pretty cold. So cold that I regretted going for a walk in flip flops. It was deserted when I went outside, except for the old macdonald family and hte trasher kicker, but by five am, the city was awake; taxis blasting recklessly through intersetctions and scooters sounding like amplified chainsaws going by. 

I have this fantasy that before china attacks, theyll give us a six hour warning or whatever, for everyone to flee before they flatten taipei. It will be the best skating ever. so many off limits spots will open up because security won't be around. 

no skating

it's been almost a week. most likely will be more than a week. I wish it was because I had been more productive than I have been.

There are only two living bands on earth

dfa1979 and 血肉果汁機
.

There is much vodka involved in this judgement.


1st Amendment: Pregnant Whale Pain.
2nd Amendment: A band that I think is called  草東沒有派對

at home, raining

Still feeling the pebble slam. lzyk insisted on making drinks, first time in her life. her inexperience showed. she proudly, and soberly made something like fukushima water out of vodka and concentrated fake lemon juice. she tried it and wisely passed it to me (we had already been to all you can grill, all you hotpot, all you drink beer, for $500 each, so I was vulnerable). She made a new for herself while I recoiled from the horror, like oppenheimer's drinking buddy. The Destroyer of Worlds came up with a second concoction that I am going to call The Creeping Purple Horror, hoping that invokes Lovecraft for you. I drank both of them, but it took all night. I photographed the progress. 

I know that this is the refrain of the clinical alcoholic but I handle my shit. my shit the next morning was helping tchris move to a new house. I showed up 2 hour late, but I showed up. Although an alarming number of people are apparently reading this regularly (shout out to whoever the fucking legions of french and portuguese skaters are), I must be candid about the experience. 

Some Taiwananese people prefer to live in conditions that are as shocking the Matrix when they enter the "real world" and it's all dirty and cramped and old fucking car batteries are stored in the living room. So were absolutely literally every other kind of modern detritus you can think of, going back to the days of the cotton loom. Many, many calenders were on the walls, and a few paintings of taiwanese fruits, for which i would pay a months salary if i ever leave this place. there were some dirty dirty couches and a table in the middle, and the air smelled of auto grease and dust. They offered me tea, in mandarin, but only gave me water, which I'm assuming is some huge insult and loss of face on my part, since I accepted it, but I had a face peeling hangover thanks to lzyk's "Sour Regret" and I slammed this luke warm disappointment like it was 151,

At no point did I vomit. Not even going up the concrete stairs, none of which were the same. If all those stairs were animals, none of them were the same species. We hoisted heavy ass shit up four flours of endangered species for the better part of the day (actually, not really, it was just enough shit to get tchris's girlfriend to move into the place). 

I'm kind of jealous that tchris has  a 西洋鬼子 girlfriend, because they are paying 1/3 the price of my house, and it's 3x bigger. It's where DMX would have come from, had he been from trapei. lzyk would never set foot in there. 

I was gonna write some momre shit but on I'm still trying to finish lzyk's radioactive haulocaust drink from last night. pangalactic gargleblaster indeed. fuck this, i hoope I can skate tomorrow. 

bad night, good company

It was the kind of slam that makes me regret skateboarding at all. It was slow slam. I had just stepped on. I hit a pebble. I wasn't even going walking speed. I hadn't even pushed yet. Like sparring against someone good at martial arts, I am not destroyed, because the ground held back from what it could have done to me, but also, I am going to feel it tomorrow, because I handed mostly on my face and somewhat on my hands, and a little on my shoulder, and somehow scrapped my knee. My back is already stove up.

I wanted to skate like a local, so I rode the scooter (defnitely more terrifying than riding a litre bike in america) up to yuanshan and met rmj. before he got there, I met the aforementioned pebble. It knocked teh piss out of me. that is somethign very funny about that. A thing so small, etc
fuck


anyway rmj wasnt feeling it either, so we made the motions of skating for a bit and called it quits. the fun part was the slappy curb, which goes from zero to one stair over about 25 ft. It's super rough concrete, but we have waxed and grinded and waxed and grinded since before the days of seniorec. (dude, where are you? hope things are good). rmj did a couple of ** ****** *****s on this historic curb and we biked over to the ampitheater, which had been skated to hell since I went there last. good.

neither of us could manage to put a session together tonight. at least he didn't slap his face on the ground. my jaw hurts like a bar fight.

I rode back home and somehow he beat me to the stoop on a ubike. scooters are really the worst, least masculine way to navigate taipei. everyone needs to stop riding this motorcycles made for little girls.

Except, it was actaully really fun and now i have this fantasy of riding all the way to kenting and back, mostly at night. Don't try scooters or heroin.

Rmj and I posted up at a park nearby our houses. Every 60 seconds, a herd of scooters roared past, so loud we had to pause the conversation. but hilariously in between, someone trying to sleep got pissed that we were talking in the silent 30 seconds, and turned on their light in the window and slammed their window shut. then they proceeded to take a very aggressive shit, while sitting in the window and staring us down from two floors up.

rmj pointed out that if he had come outside and told us to fuckoff, we wouldn't have left, but this aggressive shitting strategy while staring at us, was much more successful. unable to bear his wrathful gaze, we bounced down to a zen garden to finish our post skate beer. sometimes taipei is too weird for its own good.

I heard war planes are circling overhead. I went to the roof to make some skateboards.

The sunset was like a bonfire in an icecave. 

Testament to my failure: Tiny bit of blue sky and white cirrus, low rushing clouds in the opposite direction. Steel grey blue of cloud vs invisible distant blue of sky sounds of birds and traffic. whispy grey night clouds to the east raining grey clouds in the mountains the king of buildings is hidden in the white blue grey rain clouds but only the tip. downwards, neon flashing blinking lights and people like large insects. construction cranes like giraffes. 

One moment of the evolution of the sky was so intense that I dashed downstairs to get my phone so I could take the notes, but when I got back upstairs, the sky was no longer even worth photographing and the atomic explosion in the sky I was hoping for either had happened while I was downstairs or didn't happen at all. When I got back up, I heard a crash on the street below, and listened the whooshing AC units on all the rooftops roaring like waterfalls. THere were no sirens, so I guess it turned out ok. Airliners swooped in slowly, their timing out of sync with the rest of the world, like those 90s music videos of someone singing in realtime while the rest of the world timelapses around them. 

The mountains went black and the clouds went pure white around them. The sky towards china had a red streak across it like a cut throat. The red light bled away the ebbing of day. 

Venus appeared like a welder's flash through the clouds. The city lights came on and it was like the transition of day to night in no man's sky. I wonder how many people missed the sunset. I missed the best part of it by going to get my phone. 

6pm and dark. Now it's time to head up to 圓山 for some skating.

flakers gonna flake

sorry mominey et al. i said i would go to南港 but then i bailed, because i am lacking in moral fibre. instead i finished the work that allows me to pretend I am an adult, chucked a beer in the freezer, studied mandarin while it chilled, and then drank its nasty ass while (there is no beer more vile than 9% taiwanese beer. it doenst help that the tall boy of 9% costs $1USD. This was a mistake that I will not repeat.) i went to the bridge, because it's what i do. Sukoto showed up, and a decently deep crew of other homi es. One group is some young uns I've ran into late night on the side walks. They are the future of skating in Taiwan. If  I had a company, I would sponsor them boys. 
It was a social night. InjuredJ was there, untable to skate because of his knee. I kept trying to find out how he did it, but he wouldnt tell me. instead, i drank beer and we discussed soty. This is how you know someone is true; he can't walk, but he managed to get to the bridge to watch the rest of us skate. 
Speck is a dude I met a long long time ago, and have seen many times since, but I'm not talented at remembering people, so it serves to tell how nice he is that he wasn't offended that only just now sort of recorgnized him. writiting about these experiences makes me realize how social the skating experience is. most of what made tonight good was the human element. i cruized around for a bit and got some more beer, but what the part that is going to flash before my eyes is the half understood japanese conversatino between speck and sukoto right before i cruised home. 

the manny pads i pushed from the temple were pilled up in the back. i pulled them out and skated them. it's an old man trick, but ******s are becoming the most fun of all for me.

An old and familiar bridge

Work, such as it was, ended about 19 00. I ate peanut noodles at the street restaurant outside of my front door. I went to the bridge to meet up with rmj, but i got there early. A congregation of about 100 EDM fans were wiggling in the back, at one point to a song whose only lyrics were "E, E, EDM, EDM, EDM." It had a somewhat repetitive beat.
Like a chess game, I countered by buying a couple of TBs from teh hilife, and playing fleshjuicer as loud as my phone could play, until it ran out of batteries. Around this time, one homie after another showed up, until the whole place was swarming with them. It was too crowded, but somethign about he cold weather made us skate better, and at leastthree of of us did some new things. I always repeat taht skateboarding isnt about the tricks. But sometimes, it just is. landing a new trick is a spiritual experience. rmj got one that i have never seen done on the box at the bridge, and if it hasnt been done there, then well, actually, it's probably been done a lot somewhere else too, but fuck those people, our spot is exceptional.
one of my favorite people in taiwan showed up, to grieve by skating under teh bridge. it's douchy to say I understand, because I don't, but when I am faced with death in the family while I'm in Taiwan, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to end up at the bridge too.
It's tempting to make a lazy list of people who were skating there, and tricks that were done, but that just isn't what skating is about. It's about the emotion of it all, it's an impressionistic activity. This night was an angry oil painting. Thanks, all of you.

A New and Strange Bridge

I warmed up at the bridge. The night shift crew was there, along with 500 other people blocknig the way and sitting on the ledges because of some musical event. I went ot meet Sukoto at a new bridge in 永和 . When I got there, it turned out to be a crew we used to skate with ages ago, but their home bridge got destroyed by endless renovations of Taipei's parks. The old spot had some leaks, but it was 10 lanes of bridge, and even if there wasn't much to skate there, it was 300 m long and the lights stayed on all night.  THeir new spot is cozy. It's about the size of swollen basketball court. The surface is green and sticky. We skated four orange cones all evening, until the MRT closed, and I had to dash back. I miss seeing those guys, and I missed skating with Sukoto most of all. We played two enourmous games of skate, and the humid, cold breeze was constant for the whole session. I am totally exhuast, and thoroughly enjoyed by reward beer for *****ing over the highest thing I've *****ed since the late 1990s. Back to real life in about seven hours.

New Asphalt Season

It was already almost lights out, but I couldn't stand being cooped up on a dry night, so I decided to head to the bridge despite the flu. Many homies were there but the session really wasnt what i was looking for, so after a few hours of warm up, i felt ready to strike out on my own. dont laugh, at my age, i really cant do much without three hour sof warm up, but I get tired after 4 hours of skating. it kind of limits what i can acomplish.

i wandered back home and went east into the great unexplored wilderness of taipei. the night started out wet, which is why i went to the bridge for a gym session, but soon the streets dried and like a hobo hearing the whistle of a passing freight, i just couldnt stay around with all those bridge folk, no matter how much i love them.

I went to many strange and new 7-11's, and skated across many various tiles, some patterns familiar, some bizarre and creepy. At no point did I slam, so it wasn't a totally fulfilling night, but getting lost in Taipei made up for it. At one point, I was out near the arena, and grinded a ledge as I cruised by. this was a mistake, bceause the best I can figure, someone with a security television saw it, and after that, i was hounded by security. they were parked on the spots before i even arrived. fuck all yall well poisoners.

Instead of hitting the good spots, i surfed the sidwalks. if anything, it was better than the alternative.
I constantly found my path blocked by construction, and I constantly found the roads smooth like black glass. This is because it's New Asphalt Season. It's the glorious time of year when annual budgets are up and every single part of taiwanese society has to spend whatever money remains in their departments' budgets, no matter how stupid or how wasteful. blessedly, the roadworks department spends their remaining budget by repaving the same shit they repaved a year ago. there is so much left over money that the entire city is repaved and born anew liked a bitumen pheonix.

I skated to her eand to there. I bought beers from some of my favorite 7-11 clerks. I got almost too drunk to skate, but after years of practice, I'm pretty good at judging that very fine line, and I made it home unscathed, but this narrative is probably suffering for it.

I don't like to plug, but there is a song called "baking holiday." it's worth checking out.

Not skating with flu in my soul

Sukotosan came back, but we haven't skated yet because of life. I got moderately sick with asian flu, which is always worse than regular flu. It has a weird effect on me; I have alternating hypersomnia (this probably isnt a real word) and insomnia. So last night, even thought I had body ache like I was hit by a bus, I couldn't sleep til 08 00. Lzyk woke me up at 9, when she left, and i thought about what to do next. I didn't techincally have to do anyhting until noon, and three more hours of sleeping would proportionally increase my sleeping by several fold. However, my internet telephone is completely dead, and I odn't have an alarm clock. i do have a very adorable circular hedgehog kitchen timer that my sister sent lzyk. Ingeniously, I realized i could set it twice for 60 min and get ot work on time. the first time it went off, I woke up. there was some unexplained female screaming going on, but i soon passed about again and slept from about 11 to 12 32. I know it was 12 32 because this was 2 minutes after I should have left. the hedgehog alarm had betrayed me but since I live in asia, anything this cute can't be at fault, so i threw on my stratosphere skateboards shirt, since it was relatively clean and was laying on the ground by the sofa, and ran downstairs, ran to the mrt, ran through the station, and ran to work. working when sick is both miserable and completely irresonsible, since it gets everyone else sick too, but sometimes you have ot just do what it takes to fit in. after work, i went home and was greeted by the same screaming that was going on when i woke up. that is fucked. taiwan has a problem with kidnapping for scams and prostitution, so that came ot mind, but most of all, i wondering, how the fuck could someone scream at the top of their lungs for 8 hours straight? maybe they stopped and only restarted when I came home? it kept going and going, screaming and screaming, so i tried to talk to my security guard, but i think i said something like "I hear a woman constantly playing with her shoes", so they were nonplussed.
lzyk wanted to go on a date, so went to the best yakitori in taipei. then we walked back home across the city, which meant through linsen, which is the best place, late on firday nights. the local industry is selling vaginas, and for about 8x10 blocks, that seems ot be all they do. even the street vendors are selling thongs to the prostitutes. it's hard to not be a little judgemental when you see what 90% of the slut clothes are: school girl uniforms. I can understand that there is some fucked up subsect of dudes who are into whatebver they are into; internet bear witness, but goddam. chill on that underage thing, your perverts.
anyway, when i paid for yakitori, lzyk gave me some cash in case i didnt have enough. i did, but i put it in my wallet. she mentioned it, but for me, this sort of meant "we have left over money, so let's buy some beer and drink it on the way home.' so i did. so she mentioned it. so i offered it back, innocently enough. however, handing her wads of cash at 7 at 2 am on a friday night is apparently insulting, and she stomped off home, and i couldnt get her to hold my hand for almost all the way. i might have mentioned something like "if you dont want to get paid then it's not my problem', in front of lots of people. now that i think about it, it might be more insulting than i had intended.

skating with hate

I don't usually have a heart filled with hate but I did today, and that was before someone slashed our motorcycle's seat. I went to yuanshan alone and skated slappies til I wandered home.

Tiara Bong Desk

Calm sesssion at the bridge. It didn't rain, so I feel a little guilty that I spent it there, but it was quality time with friends, for a couple of hours. rmj and I stooped up and saw a crew skating north on the other side of the street, but I'm getting sick and my legs are all jiggly, so we just watched them disappear into the night. The plan was to go to the concrete park at zhongli tomorrow, but I'm guessing I won't make it.

the wave function collapses in the cross walk

this merits a whole new paragraph. I forgot it and remembered it and thought of it again while listening to *******.

You can only say you know a trick if you can do in the cross walk, cruising. That's the be all, end all. It doesn't matter how many times it's done under the bridge or in any skatepark, if you can't do it across the cross walk, this time, in front of the taxis, you don't know the trick. Purify skateboarding.

When can you say you can do a trick?

Two decades ago, I overheard someone ask a famous pro skater "what tricks can you do?" and he said "I don't know yet, for today." The reason it sounds like this ancient skater didn't speak english very is because I'm making up the story and I've lived here for too long. I never met any pros until I came to Tiawan. It rained tonight and I didn't leave the house until 2 am, and that was due to cabin fever. I went to the 24 hour sushi place, but I couldn't find it, adn then I went to the 24 hour night market, but I couldnt find that either, and all they have after 2 am is pork grease on rice (which i did sort of mean to be insulting when i typed it, but then also realized I want ot eat it) so instead I ate 7's microwave food (which used to be a miracle but now makes me hate myself for eating it) and walked around the streets for a few hours. The asphalt got patchy like that one super model's face, as it dried. By 2 am, it was dry enough to skate, but I flipflopped around between 7 and fami clerks, buying beer, chatting about what kind of annoying things are happening in their lives, and never, ever complaining myself.

I sat down in a park nearby the house, which isn't a stoop, but could be referred to as the cat stoop, because it's full of cats that spend their time fighting and fucking. Anyway, when I have insomnia, I walk around Taipei and think about skateboarding. I thought about this: the ability of doing a trick is a wave function. Even if you can do a trick most of the time, it doesn't mean you will do next try. There are two waves: one is the probability you will land a given trick next try, the other is variety of tricks you can land next try, which presumably has some sort of familywise error. Probably not though, I'm not actually sure what that means. Anyway, I made a check list, in case you need to know if you can ethically tell your friend that you know how to do a trick:

You landed it, but not clean                      No
You landed it once, clean                          No
You landed it today                                   Probably no, unless it was first try
You landed it three times today                Maybe, but only if you're feeling cocky
You can do it 10% of the time                  No
You can do it 50% of the time                  Depends how humiliated you can stand being on the next try
You can do it 90% of the time                   How cocky do you feel?
You can do it 99% of the time                If you fuck up the next try, you suck at it and you definitely                                                                          have no right to say you know this trick
You can do it 99.9% of the time               See above
You did it 1000 times in a row                 I'm not sure this have ever been done. Even if it had been, it                                                                   still doesn't count if you fuck up the next one. Has anyone e                                                                     ver done 1000 ******** in a row? It's hard to imagine.                                                                          that would mean doing one every 15 seconds for 250                                                                           minutes, without missing. I can't believe it's possible.

What we are working into (this is not a phrase we say in english) is a sort of quantum state of being able or not being able to do a trick. Before the event, you can both do it and not do it. When you try it, the wave function collapses.

Discussion section: when you get older, you are going to lose tricks. If you actually did 1000 ********s in a row, what is hte time delay after which point can you can no longer say you know how to do ********? Immediatley. Because the past and present and future are the same thing, we always could do, and can do, and did do a ********. But if we never could do a ********, then we always couldn't do it. WHich is the opposite of what I meant to say in all of this, which was, the only trick you can claim to be able to do is the one you land next.

be forwarned, etoh is involved

i spent most of the night drinking tb and talking to friends adn family on the roof. THe sky is very dark and also very orange, where the clouds are. Word to the wise: don't tell your mom that if america registers muslems that you are going to register as a muslim. At laest, if you are me, don't tell my mom that: 1 you will get a very unpleasant response 2 apparently lots of people already htought of this and you wont get any points for original thinking, and apparently it's some kind of talking point. There is a reason I don't live there.

It's not them, it's me

It's rainy season.

Saturday is always kook day at the bridge, so I usually don't go. I used to go the northern bridge instead, but since I live by the bridge bridge, I walked down there this afternoon in the wet. The first thing I noticed was the quartet of women picnicing on a blanket in front of the flatbar in the back. I was already annoyed because lzyk was at an MSF event all day, and for some reason, I really didn't like that. The reason I really didn't like the picnic was that it mean I couldn't do the first trick on the flatbar that I always have to do first now or else it be a bad session. I'm aware that this all sounds vaguely mentally ill.

I was also ready to be annoyed by anyone not skating the wooden pallets I brought. The preparation paid off. A drum class set up in the back, near the flatbar, and while I thought about snarky insults to say to them in english, the tide started to turn. My grinch heart realized that this sort of annoying shit is why skating at the bridge, even on Kook Day, is still good. It's a living, breathing spot, full of kids on wiggle boards and picnic parties and live music and dozens of people standing in front of obstacles and holding their skateboards.

Someone had moved my pallets to the trash pile, so I took them to the back and stacked them in a few variations. THen I made a bank out of them, against the little shitty box. Thiswas the winner. I was the only skating them for hours, which is my last lingering complaint. I am befuddled by people who go to a spot and skate the same terrain and the same tricks, day after day, week after week. This behavior is a lot more like basketball than it is like skateboarding.

However, two homies ended up skating it with me for a while. Then I got over my sulking. In the end, skating the pallets made them fall apart anyway.

manuals are hard

Proverbially, we should judge men by their friends. I think we can also judge women by how well they spot skateable debris.

I spend the day getting blasted out of the water at sciency meetings by people communicating with me in their second language. I was told, "don't worry, there is a learning curve." Yeeeesss. Everest has a learning curve as well, but it doesnt mean everyone makes it to the top alive. Much less back to the bottom. But the situation isn't hopeless, it's just totally humiliating. I was just saying that I hate that I'm not good at thinking just as much as I hate that I'm not good at skating to lzyk on our walk home (she was at the meeting and didn't seem to struggle with concepts, even though it was in her third language. My ego can't handle this sort of onslaught for long). We had thanks giving beers at a super beer bar in a super terrible town.

Anyway, we got off the bus back in Taipei near 行天宮 and walked home. Just as I was saying something witty and awesome, she pointed out five wooden pallets on the widewalk, and said "can you skateboarding on those?" Yes, yes, you can. We discussed how to bring them to the bridge. Ingeneously, she recommended taping them together wit hthe ducktape we have under the couch. She was impressed that I thought I could move them all they way from 行天宮 on top of my skateboard, since it's a few stations down the road.

I put her to bed and skated back up the sidewalk, through the hookers and empty black mercedes and white bmws that dominate the sidwalks in the prostitution zone. I half expected the pallets to already be gone when I got there, but they werent. I taped them up (goddam, lzyk is smart) and pushed them down the side walk for a long long while, stopping to beer up when appropriate.

arriving at the bridge felt like a triumph, like having run a marathon or having clogged a toilet. I have wanted to contribute something to this spot for three years, and finally, I did. It isn't much. It's just some manual pads, or if you're creative, something else, I guess. I thought I would have no energy left to skate, but I was so afraid that someone would steal the pallets and sell them for scrap before anyone actaully skated them that I staked them up and had a go. It started at about 2 am. it was fun. It kept going. I skated it like a race track, form one end ot hte other. in the back was a hobo sleeping on bench with a blue blancket, and in the front o nthe other end was a hobo with a white(ish) blanket. neither one of them responded the the musci I was making as my wheels thumped onto the pallets. I just couldnt stop, like a maniac. A cop came by eventually, but kept walking and didnt say anything. I kept going and going. my legs cramped up and I got more beer and tried some more manuals. finally, I ate it pretty hard. I did a few more, just to show myself that I wasn't giving up, but my feet hurt so bad that continueing wasn't really a long term option. I skated home, but didnt feel like sleeping, so i kept going north and found a brilliantly beautiful metal grate bank to marble ledge, both sides. I skated it until security decided it wasn't acceptable. The annoyingness of the sound of me hitting that metal bank was 10/10, I cant believe they let me skate it so long. Then I popped a hail mary **** **** in the cross walk and drunkely caught it, in front of a hoard of late night taxis and scooters. someone honked, maybe in anger at seeing me do that. I will never know, because I blasted back home and got two more tbs, but they're in the fridge, because I don't think I can stay awake long enough to drink them.

at least if someone steals those pallets, i have skated them every living shit out of them. I hope everybody else gets a try. Thanks lzyk. you are a good woman.

Homie's First Skateboard

more rain.

Tchris and I went to the bridge, and it was full of unusual skaters, because the rain has driven us all to the same couple of dry spots around the city. It was his first day skating, after bugging me for a few months about a used complete. I have him my first set of wheels from three years ago (minus one bearing) and my old indys (on the condition taht he either returns them when he quits, or donates them to another new skater if he keeps skating) and a deck donated by the 彰化 crew. This is how I got my own first skateboard, handmedown style, and it is one of the most sacrosanct traditions in all of skating. Buy a complete after you can ollie. Learn to ollie from your friends. Paying someone to teach you is the antithesis of skateboarding.
I didn't really skate much tonight, just sort of rolled around and drank a few tb's but tchris gave it maximum effort. Most of all, I like that some how he isn't afraid of skating pretty damn fast on my loose trucks, and bounced off the ground a few times. I filmed his first "line" because either he is going to look back one day on that as something emotionally engaging, or look back on it as that one night he tried skating. People I know showed up later, but I went home early because my legs were already jello from yesterday, and also I have to wake up on time in the morning because life isn't fair. One dude's foot was bleeding from the griptape because he ollied too much. Respect.

Tchris tried to follow me back to the MRT and caught a loose tile and ate shit. Welcome to the club.

City of endless curbs

It rained. I could exagerate, but it didn't rain hard, there was no flood, it wasn't raining cats and dogs, ni comme un vache qui pisse, but it was a constant steady rain all day. It's still raining. It sounds relaxing, actually. I went to work and went to the bridge. A foreign guest who I had apparently already met but couldn't remember was just leaving (sorry man, there's a reason why I'm not in politics) and a few other unnamed homies. It got more crowded as the day progressed, because there are only so many options for dry spots on a rainy day in taipei. I met a new kid who is just learning to ollie, and tried to explain about how your shoulders drive your feet but I just can't speak enough mandarin to get the point across. Or maybe I did. He skates hard, so I guess I'll find out next time I run into him. I skated hard too. I was too tired by dark, and the lights didn't come on for a while, so I going to give up the ghost and walk home while the rain was light. But I landed some piddly new flatground thing and got excited and then I got another, and another, pretty soon I was back in hard skating mode. It ended up only being about six hours, but when you don't need to wait for toher people and you have the motivation, six hours isn't bad.

at the end, i was trying goofy things on the rail of death, adn I came out in a powerslide that I thought was ok but suddenly I was on my ass and the tip of the rail kissed the back of my head on the way down. this rail has injured a number of people, and not broken toenails like mominey, but compound fractures and so on. It's hard to say why it's so dangerous. It's a 12 foot flat rail, and it's low. It's extraoridniarily slick on its feet, so if your balance is marginally off, then the whole rail shoots out from under you. I put some sticky pads on the bottom last night, but I think someone has already taken them off. Lately, the rail of death has been on its side for use with wally/railjams. It has an extra foot in the middle that sticks out too far. I'm glad I just got a little skull scrape from it.

I walked home in the rain. I noticed some curbs that I hadn't noticed before. Taipei's sidewalks are mostly under eaves, and each eave is the door to some kind of business. Most of them are 1 step and made out of marble or with a metal angle iron on them. The only thing keeping your from cruising curbs forever here is fatigue. And maybe going into 7 for a tb. Which I did.

Invaded by fruitballers

It was a damp, if not wet sidewalk evening. I went to the bridge to meet up with some homies but one of them got hurt and had laready left, and another soon got hurt and could only sit on the side and drink the beer i brought him. this is how to judge a soceity; by how it treats its weakest memebers. a couple of other regulars came and so did sfj. it felt a bit post apocalypse, skating there with such a small group, but maybe there is another explanation. for starters, two colonies of dancers have infected the spot, one on each end. at the entrance are a small group, who dance there most nights, and play good music. also, they are curteous and basically add to the atmosphere by virtue of playing music that doesnt suck. in the back is the other group. they block the entire spot, although they are next to an empty basketball court, and play the vilest of culturally appropriated western pop. at least when my culture appropriates something, we choose the good stuff. mominey and i joked about skating into the crowd of 50 gyrators with a leading elbow and knocking them down like bowling pins, but in the end, they were only blocking a manny pad and a rail, and the rest of the bridge was competely empty, so we filmed them jiggling aroudn this way and that and went about our skating. i got what i came for, but he split his big toe open like grape by smashing his skateboard down on it.

the timing was a bit funny, because i was just introducing him to sfj as a chill guy and we turned around becaue he was smashing his board and screaming curses. however, toenail removal merits a little nondirectional violence. 

In the running for the greatest bar on earth

I'm trying to write this with teh same approach that I imagine early black flag took to recording music. If that means that poseurs instantly stop reading and never look at it again, so much the better. it also is a convenient excuse for a lack of talent. even if i had the talent, I couldn't hope to describe how good this bar is. I won't even try right now, even though sleeping might mean that any attempt at description will lose the amgic. If you want to see what you're missing, it's right here: https://www.google.com.tw/maps/@24.0740652,120.5453559,3a,75y,227.01h,83.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s98fjURVnYKaqoiyfUpxp4g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

It has to be the best bar in asia. maybe in the world. only yellow bar in africa can compare, thanks peace corps.

毒氣 市

We went south for the weekend. As we got off the train, the passengers alighting on the platform let out a continuous series of dismayed gasps and cute sounds of distress. The instant I got out of the train, it was immediately clear why: the pollution was so bad that within seconds, my eyes were burning. You know it's bad when Taiwanese people are show their surprise, after all, Taiwan's air pollution levels usually hover around the unhealthy to very unhealthy levels, and even when the routine dips into extremely unhealthy levels occur, no one seems to notice. They noticed this time. Visibility is about 1000 m, and cars are driving around with fog lights on. My favorite indicator of poison air in Taipei is when you can see a triangle of lit up pollution under every street light. On a bad night, it can extend a third of the way to the ground. Tonight, it went all the way to the ground. People were standing around on the platform taking photos of the pollution. Within a half an hour of arriving, I am coughing up lung oysters like a three pack a day smoker. This must have been what LA was like before the population decided that they want to have clean air.

highway to the danger zone

藍天天. I refused to work, because one day, I will die, and when I do, I'm pretty sure I won't want to have spent one more day working. Instead, I woke up and drank some coffee and explored the internet and had some oatmeal and peanut butter (both expensive luxuries here) and eventually got on the MRT and went west. I grabbed too many warm up beers, and this slowed down the start of my sessoin. however, every day that i end up at 三重 on the river ends in euphoria. I got off at the old old hood and crossed the bridge into the promised
land. First, you bomb the bike ramp down onto the park itself, (it's beyond running speed at 1/4 of the ramp,
no human being could possibly be brave enough to bomb the whole thing. right?) then it's a five minute 
skate north to a spot directly under the flight path of hte airport (they come over at maybe 500 ft). 
the ledges are giant circles, and the lines are endless. However, there are no lights, so by dusk, I was 
forced to return to the hood. This is ok, better than ok, because I love 大稻埕 all my heart. I have no idea why the font is changing, other than that I just typed it in mandarin. I didnt get much done at the flight path circles, but the cruise home was one of the best 90 mintes of my life. taipei is an aboslute maelstrom of people, there is no way to overstate the chaos. I havent trieddmt  but i am struggling to describe teh skate home in the same way that people struggle to describe dmttrips. In order to sruvive, you have to develop a sort of prescience bordering on the supernatural, cracks and lose tiles and scooters nad bicycles and people and walls and curbs and garbage and chaos are at maximum intensity at rush hour. weaving in and out and over and under and through is maybe the most difficult thing that i can do on a skate board. Every second feels like a minute passing, hundreds of crucial decisions have to made every minute. It is skating on instinct alone, and I was giddy with adrenaline in the way that i image motorcycle racers are: you acheive a sort of transcendental unity with the space around you so that you feel invicible, and without that confidence, it would be entirely impossible to do at all. Your 4velocity has intertwined with the environs until the split second you get creamed by a taxi and spend the last 100 breathes of your life in agonizing pain. I had to work to remind myself of my vulnerability as I careerend through the maelstrom of people, simulteneously believing and not beliveing that I would die. This sounds so overly dramatic that I had to pause and erase it, but then I wrote it again. Only hauling ass on a motorcycle feels like skating through taipei at rush hour, with intent. 
I found a bank to curb that is very hard to skate. The cracks between the tiles are 1/4 inch, and most of the tiles are loose. The "curb" is two stairs high, and it's slate. some beautiful brilliant construction worker decided that instead of building a proper stair, they would just slap wet cement on it and make a 45 degree slope up to the slate.  It's in the middle of a nightlife sort of area that was just starting to kick off, so I had to wait between tries for the armies of prostitues and japanese businessmen to walk by. I got a trick in short time there, wobbling sketchily out of it through the whores, some of them ducking away and shrieking. Sorry, whores, I really don't mind you being there. I'm glad someone saw me land it. 
Maybe before this, or maybe after, I'm not really sure, I clackalacked through some shitty areas and at one moment, looked up to see a young dude sitting in the sidewalk, drinking gaoliang, and he gave me a thumbs up with both arms extended. 
In the multiverse, I died a lot of times tonight. In the particular version of it where I am writing this and you are reading it, everytihng turned out fine. In fact, better than fine. The skate from the old hood to the new one is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. 

tab ask redo

Having finished work, I went by the bridge, but I missed miminey who pussied out after only six hours. rmj showed up, and so did a headache, so I expected the worst. it was a difficult start for the new deck. it's really square adn mellow, which is good for me. the headache went away after a 2.5l bottle of water, but in the interim, i glued the sole flap of my almost totally ruined shoes, so the sesssion became a strictly switch one. it kind of sucked, as a sessoin, even after the head ache faded, but rmj and i went for a cruise and hit some first try marble and metal curbs and ledges, and i ***** into the street in between two taxis waiting to rush into traffic, which was stupid but aslo awesome. we hit up several parks in the cool breezy night, and discussed things that are good and things that are bad and I skated back with him to his hood and then went back towards my own. I had one more tb on the roof where it is windy and gratefully free of poison air. I have off all day tomorrow, and i cant decide wher ei m going to skate. solo street day skating is a rarity for me. I think it's going to have to be a new area.

Dear Daniel,

Sorry but I'm technologically illiterate and I can't reply to your question. I tried several times. Anyway, another sorry, but I can't help with other folks' schedules. However, Taipei is a very small city, geographically speaking, and I suggest you go out street skating. Even if you don't run into any heros, good things are bound to happen. If you don't want to try it on your own, come by the bridge tomorrow night, we are going on a conquistador mission through the streets. You are welcome to join.

be road task

The wind whipped out the particulate matter and I went skating, but only for a minute because I soon snapped my deck. It was on the fastest and tallest ******** I've ever tried, and I landed it, so the skateboard went out in style. A father and his boy were skating together there, which made me happy, and while his father was trying bs ****** on the box, the boy threw stones at passing cars, which made me even happier. I set up the new deck on my roof in gale force winds. I'm letting it stew tonight while I handle other pressing matters. For example:

I met lzyk at yakitori and I didn't say anything that started a fight. I got ahold of my grandfather on the phone on our walk back, so lzyk went to sleep and I grabbed a few more beers for the talk. Apparently, america is a crazy place right now. He should know, he is 90.

I ghosted by the bridge and many new folks were skating in the dark. This also made me happy. I wandered back and had a beer on a bench, hobo style (admittedly, most of my beers are hobo style) and watched the traffic. I'm not sure what to make of the past.

White angel of death cloud

For some reason, this particular pollution looks white. I went up to the roof and I can't make out the mitsukoshi building through the poison air, even on the 16th floor. It's only two stations away. Even the normally twinkling hillside by yuanshan park is almost completely lost in the cloud of death. It's a big change from yilan, where we spent the weekend, in blindingly bright sunshine and air that doesn't reek of spent hydrocarbons. For the first time, I'm getting fed up with Taipei. Fortunately, rain is scheduled for tomorrow, so maybe I won't have the taste of burning trash in my mouth when I go outside.

No Skating

It would have been a perfect night for skating, but PM2.5 is sixteen times the safe limit, so I decided to stay in. The air is choking with scooter exhaust and factory pollution. You can see a fuzzy haze in between the street lights. In about 48 hours, people will start dying from cardiovascular disease. Scooters kill more people than just their riders.

second half (taiwanese people know how to receive gifts, pt II)

I went back out to deliver presents and I'm happy I did. tk made me feel like I gave him the best gift of all time, even though it's not. we skated together and chatted under the almost empty bridge, and called it quits about 2330. I had second wind went west, through the old old hood ,and the old hood, and then eventually back down. I "skated" two dozen spots (fatigue and tb kept me from doing much: at the police jaws bank I could only roll up and then back down. nevermind, the consequences were still pretty big there). flashes of memory from the cruise are the sudden realization from the tiles and cracks taht I'm back hwere I learned how to ***** up curbs and skating past a security in the window who looked up in a flash wit hteh sort of terror that a imagine a gazelle has when it's about to be consumed by a lion and a very very old woman dragging a huge sack of trash behind her with a huge conical hat on, to whom I offered some cash but she refused and then got angry when i insisted and i tried to say "i want to help you" in mandarin but she launched into a stream of invectives taht i'm pretty sure ancient old women shouldn't say to me. I honestly dont know how to help her.
I went by the old old hood's manny pad ( a perfectly smooth granite couryard with an even smoother 3m black onyx circle pad) and hit as many steps with metal angles and tiny banks and two stairs and curbs and a few 3 stairs and loose tiles that I avoided at the last second from 24 month old memory, and more natural kickers tahn you can shake a douche at. I went by the viking helmet roof spot, but i didnt climb up there. If any spot can described as gnarly without sounding like I'm from california, then it's this one. I'm not from california, so i actually prefer to calling a terrifuckingfying spot. I wandered back home without real incidence. Some taxis tried to kill me, but that is normal in taipei after midnight and I was too fast for them. I hit up some of the old 7s and famis and so on, because i wanted to talk to the 3rd shift clerks, but they had all changed.
tk told me there's a skateparty in kaoshiung this weekend. i'm going to miss it bc it's lzyk's birthday. but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't mention that ot her.

Great Bad Oinks

woke up late (having tried to stay up with lzyk for moral support, and failing) and went ot work. I brought my skateboard in anticipation of wanting to skate afterwards. I did, and I did. I skated too many days in a row but I still got a couple of milestones in. I also hung my backtruck up on start of a rail and although I didn't slam, I still managed to shock my neck a little bit. Tourists came and took photos in front of the graffiti and blocked the spot for a while. It was almost empty, except for a handful of the hardcore, braving the sub20 degree temperatures. I don't know them but tk came up when he got off work, so i have to deliver him a gift, and find out where the rest of the night takes me. probably to a quiet city park to get outside some beers and enjoy the temperatures.

stoking bad era

Seabass returned from 2 months injury and we skated with his compatriot under the bridge. Exhaustion is taking its toll, but at least I'm not lzyk. She didn't sleep for 48 hours because work. At least I got to spend some time at the bridge with homies, even if there wasn't much skating in it. We had mosburger in the park and saw a ill omen: a dog with a sort of extra scrotum hanging down, like a softball in a pink flesh sack. It was clearly excrutiatingly painful for the dog. It was an all together strange day.

A night of two sessions

The weather is ideal. That is why western crews are in town. It was 26 today, but down in the teens at night. It's sunday, so that means the city is simmering down after 10pm. I went to a new bar by the bridge for aperatifs, with service that sucked, so lzyk got very angry at them, which worked out to my benefit, since all I had to do was talk shit about them the rest of the evening and she was stotally on my side for the first time in months. before that,we went ot hte art show by the bridge and I collected some arts. the western duck restaurant by the bridge was immaculate, in the religious sense. this was one of the all time best meals i have ever had in my life.
i went back home ot pick up tc's skateboard, and (holy fuck i just realized that before that i went to JIMI's and got some new bearings put on. bearings looks like a misspelling, but who knows. anyway, sawty replaced some old bearings with some new ones, since i wasnt man enough to do it at home, and then i tried to put the old bearings in tc's gifted complete, but i wasnt man enough for that either, so now he will have ot learn to skate on 15 bearings. at least he can use my old bindipendant trucks). (also, i realize that calling you sawty is insulting ,and i m sorry, but i m really bad at names and i just cant remember and also i dont even use real names here so extra sorry. sawty you are. ))
the first session was in bantown and it was great. zw was there and a bevy of homies. one of whom was about my age and quit for 10 years and started back about 3 months ago. he is already better than me, but at our age, that's not really the point.
zw had a bang up sessoin. he landed ******(a flat ground trick taht is rarely seen in these parts) not once, but many times. I noticed the ground is a little more crackled than before. the city needs to come fix this marble for us.
afterwards, we discussed some things, and one of them was that the cure for children who wet the bed in taiwan is to be fed a live cockroach. apparently, this changes the qi and you no longer wet the bed. makes sense.
i left around the last time of hte last train. i had to stand there for a while, looking at my weird relfection in the glass, asking myself if i am happy with what i m doing with my life, and i said yes. maybe talking to myself out loud, maybe not. i cant remember, but people were staring at me.
i fogot to get off at the right station for trasnfer, so i went to the bridge station instead. since i was there, i got a couple of tbs and went ot roll around. 12 people were there, including 小t, who greeted me like we have been skating together for 20 years. this is where it gets a little bit emotional for me, because it turned out the dudes there were all my age (old) and somewhat potbellied and he had been skating with them for 20 years. They started skating here when i did, aeons ago, and now they have families and things to do, but they meet up once ever couple of months to do what we do. a couple of them asked me to remember this night, with the sort of desperation that we have when we know that maybe we wont make it to the next session, like soldiers going to war, only the war is the rest of our lives.
the whole second session was in the dark. they worked to teach (or maybe relearn) the tricks as a team. most of them have children. they filmed me acting out, which i begged them not to put online unless it makes me famous that getting fired from work won't matter. I am so lucky that i went by the bridge after lights out. i wish that i knew how to find the people i skated with in 1996. from their behavior, these dudes know how special it is that they still skate together, even if only a few times a year.
scatter my ashes under the bridge.

Eat As Bog Drink

I have found a problem with english, and it is that there isnt much middle ground available between "the coolest guy i know" and "a cool guy I know". One sounds hyperbolic and the other dismissive. Somewhere in between is this guy I know. I only know him from skating, and then not even that much. I like to think that he would agree with the statement, "bury my heart under the bridge," because so far, both of his parties that I've been to have happened under the bridge, and I didn't know aobut either one before hand. One was his batchelor party and the other was his birthday.
This one had had about 150 people. I had already spent 4 or 5 hours skating a curb up in the yuanshan area (I crossed off about a dozen things from my wish list, but I'm only mentioning it to set the tone for how how happy I was later), so I wasn't really into skating much by the time I cruised by the bridge. It wasn't that late though ,so I wanted to have a tb and contemplate what the homies were so intent on accomplishing that htey were still there an hour after lights out.
From across the street I saw that there were many people there chatting like parakeets, and somehow I knew it was mostly in english, even at a huge distance. there is a cadence to the language that is unmistakable. maybe there isnt, but i heard people speaking my mother tongue and made a 'taiwa tf' face, and a youth in fasionable dress saw me do it and shouted "it's ******'s birthday!" indeed it was.
as we say in hog mountain, you can judge a man by his friends. his friends were playing a sort of petanque game with an empty beer can and their shoes, that they called chuck. i joined in and soon was smoking and drinking with more laowai than I have met in the same place in 3 years. normally, i like being the odd one out, but this party soothed an intense yearning to hang out with new foreigners that I didn't realize I had until it was happening. homies kept skating the box as the party went on. I was touched that the chuck players made an inebriated annoucement ot hte non chuck playing crowd that if htey wanted to join in, they had to avoid the skating area, since people were still skating. godbless you, good folk.
a curly haired girl who I hope to meet in the next life talked to me for a bit. i stood around awkwardly without shoes on for a while.
i went home eventually and a tiny centipede with the stinging stride crossed the tiles in front of me and i ate a 7 burrito and drank a tb. it paused inbetween the cracks of the tiles and suddenly was gone. god speed.

Bad Steak Groin

I reached out to the group on line msg and begged someone to skate tonight so that I could keep working in the afternoon, instead of giving up on working and going to skate at 3pm. That someone was JA. We agreed to meet at the ramp and I got my grown up things finished. However, by the time I got there, it had started drizzling. A longhaired kid was there in a texas baseball jersey, so I asked if he was from texas and he said no. end of conversation. he left. I tried to see how many tricks I could land off the ramp to flat, since I was so afraid of its pig shit slickness that I only dropped in once. The drizzle never really increased, but eventually the little puddles became a sheen. I gave up and went back. 1.5 hours transit for 20 min of wet skating. ja went ot the bridge, and so did i and so did rmj and tc and nukh a host of others. there was no moment when everyone arrived, but after a couple of hours, the spot was full. the dancers were pooping and locking in the back, but right when I was going to complain about them, ja said he liked that they were there, playing music and not being inside staring at a screen, so i didnt complain about them. but i wanted to. they always block the last section of the spot. farbeit for me to kick someone out though. rmj and i went to the 3stair park for a beer and discussion, then i went up on the roof for beer and reading. It was a bland session for me, not that that matters. I had had a goal for neihu, but didnt want ot try it on the second drop in. In all, things went well. There are no complaints.

I went outside for another tb and looked down a drain at just the perfect angle so that I could see the neon yellow stinking fluid inside. My secutrity guard stared me down when I came back in, but maybe because of my hideous innes jacket (fuck it, i always loved them and it was cheap) and nightmarket flower shorts and tanzania shoes. I know this adds nothing, but I can't sleep.

homesick baseball match

Baseball, and sports in general for the matter, is really not something I've cared about since I found out about skating, but this year's world cup is between the white sox and the redskins, and about the only sports story I'm a sucker for is teams who are really old and haven't won in generations. So I planned to wake up at 8 am and watch the final game of the series, which would not only have been my first baseball game to watch since I came to Taiwan, but also my first baseball game to watch in maybe 20 years.

I woke up at noon and checked to see if it's still on; it is, in extra innings and there's a rain delay.

I think I only care because the cold weather reminds me of home. I even went to the grocery store to gear to make a ham sandwich. I don't miss home from 2016 though. I miss my home from when I used to watch baseball.

Abrogated Skin

It's now officially cold. It might even be under 70 degrees f, but I usually exagerate things, so let's say 72 and breezy. It's grey and overcast, so it actually looks like winter. I woke up and skated to work, worked for the morning, and went to the bridge because of drizzle. Afternoon sessions are always odd at the bridge. In the light of day, it looks like skating in a parrallel universe. Everything is recognizable, but it's also noticably different. For starters, the box appears shorter, which is a good thing. The graffiti looks dumpier (most of it is pretty shite, but not all). I was the only one there when I showed up, but some homies arrived in due time. I don't know any of their names, just faces. Writing about this session is not unlike writing about giong to the gym. I got a little sweaty, we skated, they filmed some shit, I went by the alley on the way home. This part is worth elaborating on. Meet up spots need facilities, and although the city removed the portapotties (my first squat toilet experience was in one of them) we still have toilets across the street (or in the corner) and a hilife across the street. For food, there is a 200 m alley with restaurants and stalls on both sides. All of it is good. The best is a cheese chicken stall, but it's famous and always has a 30 min wait. I usually stop by the dingy side alley with no signs just to check if they're sold out, and they almost always are. Today they weren't. I only had to wait 20 min.

Fear and Loathing in Taipei

I had exchanged contact with a young homie a while back, whose style I liked (but most of all who I liked because he was just friendly to me). He invited me to go skate with his crew in the street and I was very excited. Later, there was some halloween cultural miscommunication, which consisted of me arriving dressed in my best impression of hunter thompson that I could manage, and everyone else looking normal. I you want to get some intense looks on the MRT, try wearing short shorts (pink) and a tucked in nightmarket shirt (blue paisley). Having a shaved bald head and a skateboard probably didnt hurt, but I hid it behind a green adn white hat from a company here that sells powdered milk. milk face, get it?

mominey arrived, a little worse for the wear, and we set off to skate some ferocious street spots. I skint my knee at the first one, which is a series of cascading marble stairs with big gaps inbetween each little tile. I pride myself on skating poorly lit spots no one else will touch, but these kids beat me at my own game. One of them slammed much worse than me off the stairs, it was a real face slapper. Then we cruised up and across the river to other yuanshan spot and played some skate and skated some skating. rmj arrived and those most beautiful brilliant kids had to go home and do things like get ready for school, but mominey and rmj and I went on to jiantan, which used to be a top notch skating hotbed, but in recently has been ruined by the westerners coming through and acting like assholes and now I cant even skate the manny pads. fuck every team that ever came to taiwan and poisoned our wells. 

other than meeting new people who actually skate in the streets, the highlight of hte night was cruising the streets at the point of exhaustion with rmj, as he managed 10 tricks to every one i tried, and was probably batting at .750. we had a stoop beer and i went home. i bought three more, and the f1 race is starting soon in 45 minutes, but i m so tired i think i might not make it that long.

here's something probably noone ever said

• “The third president, Thomas Jefferson, had a vision of America. He believed that this whole new country, this giant unformed continent offered a chance to start again. The premise was very simple. That human beings acting in a sense of enlightened self interest are smart enough to do the right thing and know the truth. America could have been a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race. Instead, we just moved in here and destroyed the place from coast to coast like killer snails. Everybody wants power over a country that’s had it’s day. I think we’re finished.”

in a way, it's reassuring that if this is a real quote, it's an old one. also, in a way, it's not reassuring , for the same reasons.

this is going to be my last night of the year skating in shorts. It helps that mominey thinks they were from the gay pride parade, but also it was actually cold tonight. I hope the weather doesn't change until march. 

This would have been an excellent night to spend in the streets

It rained all day and I was lazy. I stayed up to watch f1 and God's football team, but I probably would have been awake anyway. During a lull in the television sporting schedule, I went for a beer walk (I still haven't had one in the house. A minor victory for responsible drinking, then). The night was surprisingly crisp and windy, like typhoonish weather. Of course, I still had on stubbies and thongs, but it's downright cold for taiwan. I saw a woman pushing a small child in a stroller, which is unusual in most societies at 2 am, but not here. Another thing rmj pointed out last time was that the taiwanese are probably taking random photos of us on the MRT and sidewalk much in the same way that we might take photos of people doing "asian things" in the west, like squatting in a circle and smoking cigarettes in business suits, themselves taking photos of the front of a mcdonald's or of a sandwhich on a tray inside, or of them holding small children over a grate in order to urinate or deficate. Ok, not all asian nationalities indulge in all of these passtimes, but those were the first three that came to mind that I might document in my motherland. I can't imagine why they would want to take a photo of me. Never seen a double chin before?

I didn't read all of this, but you should

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2002/06/14/0000140319

Skateboarding saves the day

quite literally, i mean it was a bad day, and then zw invited me to skate at bplaza and I went, even though it's pretty far from home. I pulled up at the same time as some guys I kind of recognized but also kind of wasn't sure if I recognized, and realized my day had been bad. It was a sort of snap depression and it kept me from being able to skate without feeling like my ankles had lead weights on them. maybe it's because the city is still blanketed in poison so thick that you can taste it as soon as you step outside.
when zw showed up, i gradually cheered up. it didnt hurt that a dozen other dudes did too, which is about the maximum capacity for this spot (single long long long marble ledge. the abosolute slickest in the world). my skating sucked but i got to talk to zw and new friends (he has known some of them for more than 10 years now, and he was an og back when they started skating) and I learned some new taiwanese. youngbuck got mad trying to ********* and was so furious that even though he landed it, he didn't seem to enjoy it anymore. Eventually, I called it quits after the second time of gluing my magically evaporating circas back into something like enough shoe to skate in. they've come undone in a week. maybe because they're vintage adrian lopez promodels, bought in a nightmarket for 600ntd. at any rate, the rubber visibly erodes with ever ollie. great control, must buy a new pair every 100 tricks.
I rode the mrt under the river and got off at the first station, which is a hood with a reputation for danger and lowlifes. This is of course nonsense, because it's taiwan, but I did notice that it's a beer desert, since there are no 7's for miles. there isn't even much graffitti. I guessed my directions when i left the statoin, but it was early, so even if i got lost i wasn't going to be concerned. i skated for about an hour, without sight of 101 or mitsukoshi, and not even a single hilife, much less a 7. to foreshorten the story, i skated for at least 30 min in mostly the wrong direction, which meant 30 min back, because i'm too cheap for taxis. i eventually wandered by the bridge, which felt lonely and empty and silent, and then back by my house and up to the roof for a beer, and then here, on the couch, getting bitched at because my skate clothes stink and i tried to wash them at night.

Subgame Nash Equilibrium

Laziness tried to prevent me from skating, but failed. A small crew was there, smashing monsterous tricks from the pyramid to flat and skating the box at breakneck speed. rmj and mominey came up, and we skated til lights out. The heat and the pm2.5 were unbearable. It was hanging in the air around the street lights. Well, it was hanging in the air everywhere, but visible around the street lights. Absolute filth. As we got ready to leave, me suffering from knee pain with every ollie and the homies trying to wring that last little bit out, a fight broke out across the street. This is a very unusual event in Taiwan. A visibly besotted man and a taxi driver were doing some shouting, which turned into a little pushing, and eventually became a benny hill style sprint around the block and through traffic. We tried to imagine what possible dialogue could have led to this scenario, but I can't imagine what someone could say to me that would make me chase them. The cops pulled up on scooters and I pointed them towards the hullabaloo.

We went for a street beer cruise and stopped by my roof stoop, where the air was noticably cooler and cleaner. We cruised around some more in the streets and rmj had to head home, but I stayed up with  mominey, discussing all matter of things. At rplaza, we both hit the same crack at the same moment. It probably looked pretty funny on the security footage. No skate night is complete without a little blood. I got home at 04:30.

One of Taipei's resident fine art producers left a few paintings at the bridge, one of which is now happily on my wall at home.

I lied

When I die, I'm going to haunt the streets of Taipei. Even without skating, wandering around is at once relaxing and exciting. It's best done without a phone. Observations are sharper, but the lack of notes make details a little hard to remember. I wandered down to the bridge and thestache was there with another dude. I watched them skate in the dark for about an hour. I love the effort they were giving it. They went out into the streets and I meandered back towards home. I saw a trio of skaters on the other side of hte road (by then it was about 2 am). I watched them skate in the little park there for a while, and then they sat down with me to talk. It makes my heart glad to know that even after I have to stop this lifestyle, they will carry on. Also, one of them asked me if I write a blog, and I said no. Apparently, I'm not as anonymous as I want to be.

Hippy is a Nationality

One of the best people I've ever met is leaving, which is too bad for me, but good for him, since he's going to make some money, and also since he'll be coming back to Taiwan eventually. A quartet of us gathered at the bullring in 西門 as a sort of pre-going away party skatesession. The spot is, in miminey's words, minimalist. It's a white tiled pit that used to have angle iron around it's boundaries, but that got ripped off by someone, so the only thing left to skate is a mid-calf height stage with a rough but grindable round and chunky curb down the length of it. It gets interesting when 30 people are there, because the line to skate reaches almost all around the spot. Being in 西門, it's got very heavy pedestrian traffic, and there are always dozens of people stopping to watch. This was the first time I've ever skated there alone. It was also my first long pants sessions since last winter, but I jumped the gun and suffered from the heat all night. 

We rolled over to the plaza and there were a couple of younger guys there, and a group of ten people with three skateboards, learning how to ollie. I got into a ******* and it zipped out and I fell awkwardly on my thumb, which still hurts. We talked until the MRT closed. 

A taxi pulled out in front of a scooter and I went to get a beer and see if they needed help scraping the rider off the asphalt. Within 3 minutes, a fleet of gangstertaxis had arrived to quardon off the scene and prevent anyone from taking photos of the perpetrator, but they were too late - the police had already arrived. 

rmj and I wandered back to our neighborhood. I'm happy we're still living like this. It's hard to imagine a better existence. 

Weekend in 彰化

We went to visit the family for the weekend. I found a radiostation that exclusively plays Taiwanese nu-metal. Limp biscuit sounds much the same, no matter the language. I wonder if all the taiwanese versions wear red hats. 

In Taiwan, people often do absurdly nice things for me. I tend to feel guilty about these gifts and favours, because I don't know how to repay them properly, and usually can't afford to do so anyway. I don't want to be resentful of these things, but sometimes it imposes a certain pressure on me that is unpleasant. Sometimes I don't want to be made to feel like the star of the show. It can be hard to be loved. 

We went to a crab restaurant where the crabs were the size of half deflated orange basketballs. A western charity was having an event there, something like a circle with a k in it, and they were least friendly people I have ever met in this country. I wanted to key their rows of blacked out mercedeses as we left. Who knows, maybe it's also a gangsters' money laundering operation in my homeland as well. 

Another charity club, for lions, is perhaps an even better example. The father of one of the german skaters, now returned, was a very active member in Germany, and arranged for his son to come to Taiwan on an exchange with the taipei chapter. He was kept as a sort of dangerous exotic pet by the host family, who locked him in his room every night at 8pm. Naturally, he just started staying out all night and skating. At their charity, they post a print out of who gave what amounts of money each month. They offered him cash to write them a positive review for their newsletter. What else can you expect from wage slave masters who make their fortunes from human trafficking of factory workers?

The next day was a blue sky day, maybe because a single factory was recently closed due to an array of pollution violations, which is a breathtaking development for Taiwan, no pun intended. Apparently, pm2.5 fell by 40% following its closure. 

I skated the grey curbs for hours. A very dark old man sat down and watched the entire session, alternatively telling himself jokes and laughing outloudly at them, and then suddenly snapping threats at himself like a dangerously unpredictable mafia boss in a film, about to order the execution of a subordinate who betrayed him. I suppose his behavior was no stranger than my solo session slappying the curbs. At any rate, the river of families didn't seem to treat either of us as especially more eccentric than the other. 

Just down the hill is a volley and basket ball court where some geniuses set up a collapsable diy spot. Noone came until after dark though, so I only had the  energy to skate wit hthem for about 90 minutes. Also, they lube their rails with the fastest slickest wax I have ever skated, and I was afraid of death by zipping. I took one of hteir old decks home to give to teacherc, with whom I work, who says he wants to try skateboarding. The 3 km hill back to the house gets more fun every time I skate it. 

Clashing Cultural Expectations

In America, it's considered rude to live there and no make an effort to learn and speak English, as it suggests a refusal to integrate into society. In Taiwan, it's considered rude for me to speak to Mandarin, apparently because "people have spent their lives studying English and want to practice it." While this is initially a very convenient situation in which to find myself, it's also one of the major reasons; apart from laziness, stupidity and lack of moral fiber, that I don't speak much Mandarin.

magic

The best weather on earth is the edge of a distant typhoon as it passes 2000 miles to the south. To begin, it's windy, and less hot. It rains some, but it's very isolated drops, with the effect of bugs hitting your windshield or flak hitting your bomber, although, one of those seems more severe in retrospect, having reviewed my notes on the night. Under the bridge, the wind (breeze can't capture what it does) makes the hundreds and hundreds of used up skateshoes spin on their axes as they hang from the rafters.
trash loops around in eddies like american beauty. Taiwan has way more plastic garbage, so there is a lot more beauty. you can find god on any corner.
After the bridge session, i went for a cruise through the new neighborhood; not a random walk, but a purposeful zigzag through the alleys, some old, some new.
I found a 50ft sloped pink marble curb, a block from the house. I took a pic to send to the line group, and security came out to say "you no photo, you no photo" in english. It must be a really exclusive curb. Maybe can tell I just don't have the balance to ******* the whole thing.
The wind got noticably stronger. It was so strong that it could stop me cold, rolling down a hill, or push me across flat ground for as far as I wanted to go. I ran some redlights. It might have been my record for distance traveled without putting a foot down. Typhoons are awesome. I went on an don. May the wind ever be at your back, yes, I get it now.
Typing this on my phone, the security came back out again, just to have a cig and stare me down. He is going to freak out when I confirm his worst fears and bomb the little ramp and try to **********slide his pink virgin curb.

It didn't work. The curb was sticky and he went inside before I tried it.

Later: the wind is gone. Lil wayne in the park. I pissed against and indian laurel fig with a tangled trunk, like a cat looking furtively around trying to give birth.

I tried to recreate my favorite skate photo of all time, and it kind of worked, but also didn't work.

It was from a 90s transword and it was a photo of someone pushign along a white line, like on the edge of an american road, and the caption was "straight lines don't exist in nature." I have no idea who took it, or who wrote the caption, but it was on my wall throughout highschool.

Suddenly, I was thunderstruck by an alley with little tiny colored flags waving across the top of it. The typhoon puffed through them like a sadistic lover. I flimed it for a while, and freaked out some passing sluts, who, realizing I was filming them ( I wasn't), yelped and high tailed it to the next crosswalk. They are probably writing about how they were nearly assaulted by a Tronald Dump look alike. Dear women of Taiwan, I am honestly not trying to sexually assault you.

The last note on my phone reads :

same glove twice, but I found it again half a mile away.

I'm not sure what that means.

tapdancing is superior to whatever it is that they usually do under the bridge

I couldn't manage to roust up any troops for a street session, so I went to the bridge. It was just as well, because it started raining. A tapdancer and a live drummer set up at the entrance, and played for a couple of hours. I don't have strong feelings about tapdancing, but this was so much cooler than 35 zombies blocking the skate spot by dancing in sync to beyonce or whatever that garbage is they usually play (occaisional outkast songs notwithstanding).

America has scooter kids. Taiwan has fake Bboyz. Rmj came by and we had rooftop beers.

bum of the month

foul mood. pouring rain. walked to the bridge, no umbrella. fuckit.

This was a mistake, in retrospect. It was really raining hard, and the elevated expressway that I planned to walk under was unwalkable, because it was planted with bushes. Consequently, it took thirty minutes for the griptape to dry enough to skate. I said what were probably very unfriendly hellos to the homies trying to skate the 3 m wide dry line under the bridge, and threw down right before the lights went out. I was so sore from the elbow slam the night before that I wasn't expecting anything more than an exercise/ sweat-out-the-toxins session. Considering that, it was a good session.

It stopped raining, but the humidity stayed. The stragglers left, and hipsters, drawn by the mostly crappy graffiti, sat down on the box, literally as  I approached it. I asked them to leave, and they did, after a little grumbling. I was glad when an unknown brother in arms ollied into a trick at full speed, inches away from them during the instant they were standing up. That finished convincing them, and I never saw them again. The box has light metal coping on it, and when your trucks hit it, it makes a sound like a gunshot. Some of the more cowardly hispsters jumped. Also, this unknown soldier landed his trick, in the dark, hauling ass, with only me and hipsters as witnesses. Sometimes, you share a moment that doesn't merit discussion, but is very satisfying for everyone involved. Thanks, unknown soldier.

I couldn't force myself to leave, so I skated the banks like they were a miniramp until my calves were aching and my heart was pounding. I noticed a sawty on a ubike come up, which isn't unusual, they like to check for leftover food and water and whatever detritus the skaters leave behind, like human seagulls. But seeing one on a bright yellow ubike is unusual, because you have to pay to use those. I think he must have stolen it, and his following behavior is why: he checked a can of tb and let out a rebel yell. He stood with his feet splayed wide apart, and raised that hot nasty can to the sky, and chugged the rest of it in one go, then smashed the empty can on the ground like dime bag darrell in 1986. Then he squatted down and started eating the juice and left over rice out of someone's mostly finished dinner, with his fingers. I got my beer money for the night out of my bag and asked him if he needs some money. He launched into a fullbody furious muscle clenching response, eyes wild and darting, and spoke so quickly that I could only understand a few words, but the gist was that yes, he likes money. I gave him some and he let out a warwhoop and jumped on his ubike, making motorcycle noises, and sped off into the wet dark wonderland. I hope he doesn't die because of me. I have more sympathy for taiwanese methheads than american ones.