"Taipei is the safest city in the world, until the sketchiest shit happens" - Mike
Some hours before (all day), I had been trying to get a group together. The weather was perfect, 15 degrees, sunny, and windy. I picked 台北小巨蛋 as a meet up spot, because I didn't expect anyone to show up, and I hadn't explored that area. The arena proper has some curb to waist-high marble ledges out front, but it was early and crowded, so we went around back to a peculiar circular metal rail bent into a bench. On the way, I got a shitty film of two Americans bombing the marble hill, chased by a furious man on his cell phone. We took off towards the bench to find it was under construction and blocked off by a 12 foot metal wall.
Hours later, we found out one of the intended expedition members was on the other side of the building trying to find us, but we didn't hear his calls over the clack-clack of the tiles as we tear-assed through the panicked pedestrians on the sidewalk. Eventually, he gave up and went home. Sorry man, I owe you a beer.
As he was looking for us, we skated a wally spot on the busiest sidewalk ever. It made me nervous, because of the volume of the pedestrian and bicycle traffic cutting across in front of us, but even more so, because of the eight lanes of Taiwanese chaos into which a board might shoot. Thankfully, filmerM landed his trick, after a heroic number of tries, and we moved on.
On the way to the R Plaza, we stopped by a park that was the turning point of the night. What had been a stressful and shitty time so far morphed into a satisfying and pleasant one. The spot is in a little park, with a natural amphitheater. It has some marble ledges that exit into a dry tile fountain, but tonight, it had about an inch of water in it, owing from the 101 days of rain. It has an 8 kinked marble hubba, about 30 yards long. It's three stairs to flat, three stairs to flat, three stairs to flat, and then another 3 stairs to flat. No one made it to the bottom (which, judging from the wax and marks on the marble, might or might not have been done before), but seeing them try to skate a spot that I've never had the ability to try was what we needed to turn the night around. Brake, as he is known in Taiwan, has the quietly confident stature of someone much older. But then, if I had been skating Taipei with people twice my age and been better than them, I probably would have been more confident too.
R Plaza is right around the corner. Whenever I roll up to the spot, it feels like I've never seen it before, sort of like when you wake up beside someone you love and just can't believe how beautiful she is. It's always a surprise. This time was no different. A pair of locals were there when we showed up, but they weren't skating. Several police were pacing around the periphery. As always, I thought we would get thrown out immediately. R Plaza is too good to be true: granite surface, with glassy marble 15 ft long benches, a 3 stair, a 5 stair, a 6 stair drop, a manual pad, and the fountain with the long granite bench that Brake skated in a novel way.
It's hard to write about all this without mentioning specific tricks that were or weren't landed, but one theme I'm trying to stay true to is that skating isn't actually about that part. The point is, it's an exciting feeling to bring a new person to a spot that I've been going to for a while, and see them analyze it in a completely different way.
The cops were milling the whole time. filmerM mentioned that it was like they couldn't see us in the pit (the spot has 3 stairs on two sides, a 6 stair on one, and a fountain on the other; it's a smallish granite pit of happiness). They were constantly on their radios, staring us down. At first, because we were skating in the courtyard of an upscale hotel, we just pushed around and did some flatground. Tentatively, filmerM tried a few little things on the glass marble benches. Neither of them could believe that we weren't getting kicked out. I don't know who it was who first really started going for it, but once we crossed that threshold, it was on (I desperately wanted to think of a better phrase to describe that moment, but I give up). We skated until we were exhausted (at least I was), with the cops pacing the whole time. In retrospect, I think maybe they had been mobilized due to the killings earlier in the day, and weren't really interested in foreigners vandalizing marble ledges.
Eventually, we wandered back towards the bridge, and found a parking bar (round, thick metal bars at bumper level, painted yellow and black and used as parking stoppers for cars) that had been bent into a pole jam spot. It was also right beside a security hut for the creative park. There is no way the guard didn't hear us, but someone was welding a sculpture behind us, so I suppose the guard thought out click-clacking and clanging were part of the art installation. On the way out, we skated past the guard, and filmerM and Brake went into the MRT. I skated home, enjoying a few TBs on the way.
Happy Birthday, Mike
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