Skateboarding at an African Savannah Watering Hole

There is some happiness to be found skating on birdshit. Or at least, there is happiness to be found on a rainy night under a guano-covered bridge in north Taipei. It has a smooth surface, with a metal drain grate running across the middle, and four modular benches that can be rearranged and stacked as desired. I skated for a few hours, hoping the night would dry out, but it didn't. I landed a new trick. It was profoundly humid.
Like savannah animals that don't belong together but are forced into an uneasy truce at a watering hole because of drought, longboarding kooks showed up, moving with the grace and thoughtfulness of a herd of ostriches. Best trick went to the ostrich in the helmet, wrist guards, and elbow pads, who wiggled for a little bit to get some speed, then turned around in place on the board while it rolled at walking speed, then did a sort of modified no-comply nose grab, followed by more wiggling. The reaction of the herd was subdued, but when I ollied the grate, they started clucking and running around like excited giant chickens, because apparently, leaving the ground had never occurred to them.

Taiwan is fucked, and so is my grammar

I saw someone die tonight. I can't be sure, but I'm also pretty sure. After a week of failing students and making another (six year old) human being urinate on the floor today, like an Auschewitz guard, because I told him to piss before class and he flatly refused, so I declined his request 20 minutes later and he soiled himself and shamed his ancestors; which hopefully not, but probably will to three decades of shame; I went out on the stoop to drink a few terrible American (busch) beers, because my soul was too tired to skate. 

While I was there, and I can't remember exactly what I was doing at the time, I heard someone screaming, and I had the time to look up before they got obliterated by a taxi. The intersection is a little skewed, but essentially, the taxi turned left across traffic and creamed someone on a scooter. The scooter might have been speeding, but I seriously doubt it, since the scream went on for so long. Pedestrians gathered around, I called 119, but apparently, that isn't the right number for english speakers who want to report negligent homicide, and within 120 seconds, a half a dozen taxis that offloaded individuals who looked suspiciously like organized crime affiliated persons, were blocking people from videoing the body, and the taxi's plate. Their response time was better than a nuclear retaliation strike. I have to think that they were waiting around at various hotpoints in the city, and the call came out, and they jumped in some taxis within the first 30 seconds of having heard of the event. There is no other explanation for how quickly they arrived. It might be possible that this sort of thing happens somewhat frequently. Either that, or they are superbly well-drilled for any conceivalble scenario.

Eventually, the police arrived, and after that, an ambulance. 

Maybe there is another explanation for these events, and I am projecting my cultural norms on the things I saw. I  doubt it though.

An UFO for Dogs

I went to the river park and did some lines that I had been dreaming of for a while. Because I was alone, they will only get better, crisper, and cleaner in my memory. Eventually, RMJ met up with me by the yellow curbs. He brought some TB. We skated the spot and drank the beer, and after a while, we took a break on the benches, mostly for me to complain about life. At this point, a giant version of the little blue pickup trucks rolled up, accompanied by the baying of dozens of dogs. It had the independence flag on the front, and the guomindang flag as well. It also had a variety of christmas lights all around the outside. As we stared, the crewmen opened the back of the craft, and something like 30 dogs jumped out and started cavorting. This went on for 45 minutes. I tried to skate up and film the scene, but a giant wolfhound lept out from behind the bridge pillar and I had to stop and swing my skateboard at it to make it back off. Eventually, we left, but the dogs and the dogs' UFO stayed there. I have no explanation for this event.

Post Reactionary Minimalism

felt angry. was sick. went to Flight Path Circles. Such a good spot, in 3chong. it's a 25m diameter circle of white terror era cement ledges, with three breaks. lines are endless, at least until I run out of talent or stamina. usually the former. a family came running up, and the father made conversation. he skated ten years ago, and their cheerleading kept me skating past the point of exhaustion. at dark, I went to the great white rails, then to the bridge. skating in front of a crowd adds four hours of energy.

A Rushed Goodbye

One of the main crew left Taiwan yesterday, so I met up with him for one last quick session at the fountain. We got kicked out immediately, so we went out to the amphitheater. We both had plans, later, so it was a really short one. I have the 1st Grade plague again, so my legs were like jello before I even warmed up, but I was glad we got to skate one more time together. Thanks for the good times man

Later, lzyk and I went to a bar called Motown. We spent too much money, but came out relaxed, and then visited a yakitori on the way home. A medium sized party girl had passed out on the table behind us with her face in the table's trash bucket. She stayed that way the whole time we were there. I would pay money to have a picture of the circular imprint on her face this morning.

Archeological Expedition

RMJ and I had the day off, so we went up to an empty fountain at 圓山. The spot is a pair of connected waist high walls, one at 55 degrees and another at 75 degrees. Inside are the fountain's pipes, and taiwanese flying fish that make me feel patriotic for a country that I don't belong to. The we crossed the Geelung River and visited an ancient skate spot under the bridge. It was too chunky to skate at speed.

Spring Day Archetype

I went out to 南港 to skate the bowl with the expat crew. It was warm without being hot, clear blue sky, and windy without being too windy. These are all unusual conditions for Taipei. The group of guys who skate there are all the sort of company I prefer. The bowl was once great, they tell me, but now it's only good. I don't know, because I never skated bowls much. It seems good enough to me. It's right outside the MRT station, but up the hill, hidden behind the main skatepark, under a temple, on a steep hillside that is overgrown with tropical plants. Adjacent is a 20ft vert ramp. The bowl is where the good things happen. Park skating is lame anyway. Also, you can't hear the traffic chaos from up there at the bowl, just the sounds of skating and the breeze through the trees. You can't smell the 2 stroke scooter exhaust, or any of the less horrible smells of the city. The bowl is a tiny, convenient escape from my daily life.

Skating and Sushi

The flatground fairy visited me last night and I woke up suddenly able to do a few tricks that I couldn't do before. This made the rainy night under the bridge a lot more fun. It was so humid that it was hard to do tricks, everything felt sticky. We ended up drinking a large number of TB's and spending some time at a 24 hour sushi place. I fell once on a crack on the way out of the bridge, and again on a crack on the way home from the sushi place. The second was more embarrassing, because it was seven a.m. and in front of a bustop of citizens going about their Saturday morning activities. My knees are skinless.

新埔 Day Market

is the best market in Taipei. It's barely a lane wide, but they fit six people and three scooters under the plastic rain shields, for about half a km. It's like a bowling lane, covered with the giant green plastic that my grandmother used to wear on her visor caps. It's full of the most beautiful fish and chicken and pork and vegetables and fruit and shoes and clothes and brickabrack that I have ever seen. I walk through it everyday, up once and down once, on the days I work in 新埔. Today I bought a cheap sack of pineapple and a cheap sack of very, very buttery chicken. I immediately had gastrointestinal zika, but I suspect it was from the shitty starbucks mayonnaise that I had on a sandwich for breakfast during my class. I spent the rest of the day listening to the pouring rain and fucking around at home. I am unbelievably sore, two days later, from learning a new switch trick. Tomorrow night, I'm slated to skate and drink with teacherkris and RJ under the bridge, so I hope I wake up less sore.

A Small Price to Pay

I can barely walk today. Yesterday was one of those days that only happens a few times a year for me, when I can land every trick I know, and somehow have managed to learn something new without practicing it. I woke up and drank a left over coffee from 7, listened to one a new album from a band that I love, and skated a couple of MRT stops away to pay my phone and internet bill. I had that feeling, pushing through the traffic, when you know it's going to be good, and things are going to be possible that aren't normally possible. I assume pros have that feeling most days, but for me, it's only a few times a year. I did some flat ground tricks through 大同 traffic. The ultimate flatground arena is traffic. There are consequences there.
I had those new songs in my head and skated to the MRT. In between, I had a cheap 
breakfast/lunch at a spot I've only been to once, but the owner remembered me. The I went to the
skate Kaaba of Taipei and magically learned a switch trick that I've never landed in my life. I 
haven't learned a properly new trick in a long time, and this one counts. I have been thinking about 
the moment of landing that first one ever since. I bought many TB's of celebration from OK. In a 
way, it was a let down, to get it without puttingin so much effort, but the joy is undiminished. I 
also made the line, several times, that I spent so many hours trying to film with flimert, but not on
 film (I fold under pressure). Then, I skated home across the city that I love, and it started raining. 
I bought more TB as I ran out each time, and made it home to lzyk, who wasn't even that pissed. 

Never Order Nachos in Taiwan

Lzyk and I went with her friends to an upscale bar. They had a respectable drinks selection, albeit at western prices. They also had a variety of appetizer/tapas style dishes. I was extremely happy to have the chance to order nachos. It's not that I ever ate nachos much, but I haven't had any in two years. And what are the chances that in a country where food is revered, at an expensive lounge bar, they would find a way to ruin the all-time simplest stoner food on the planet?
As it turns out, the chances were pretty good. It was a pile of sadness. On the plate were two little handfuls of cold, stale, naked chips, with three canned slices of jalapenos and two canned pieces of black olives. It was like the sort of thing you could make from the leftovers you found under the bleachers several hours after a minor league baseball game in Peoria. Only without any cheese. The price of this exotic let-down? $300NTD.

Back to a Welcome Routine

I went to the bridge for a low key session. It was pretty empty for a Friday night, but all the essentials were there. The skate home was better than the original session; RJ and I went up 中山路 and skated a surprisingly difficult but short bank to ledge that we had been eyeing for a while, and then a much better session at a low, kinked marble rail. Both spots had cops. The second spot was adjacent to a huge DUI checkpoint, and although the cops were bored and milling around, no one stopped us from skating until we were so tired that we went home. We had some TB's on the stoop and talked about the unbelievable amount of bug bites we both have from the trip to the south. My arms have over 50 bites each. The second best thing about my personality is that I never complain.

Spreading the Love and the Disease

Although I was still under the weather, I couldn't stand it, so I went out to the infamously closed new skatepark. It's completed, but our government hasn't had the time to do a health and safety check, so it's officially closed. There were about a dozen people skating it today. It's the first park I've skated in 20 years.

To my delight, Brake and Britfilmer were there. They are both leaving Taiwan soon. If I don't see them again here in the next few days, I don't know how long it will be. 

After a few runs, I felt like collapsing, but after the MRT ride, I felt like skating again. Since my transfer stop is at the bridge anyway, I went by for a minute. After a minute, I was so tired I couldn't really skate anymore. I went home to do chores. I got angry, and went up to 圓山 to skate some flatground, in order to avoid a temper tantrum. In the future, I will remember that razortail and trying new tricks is not the most effective way to avoid tantrums. At least half of my left shin is shaved. Like all skate injuries, I'm proud of what it represents. 

The Influenza Type B Skatetour of the Real Taiwan

Having recovered to the point where I felt like I could push down the street, we set out for for the south. I thought I could save some money by riding the bus. As it was Tomb Sweeping weekend, I bought bus tickets two weeks ahead of time, since by then, all of the train tickets were sold out anyway. The bus was scheduled to leave Main Station at 10:45. I live ten minutes away, so no problem right? To put it succinctly, I was the last person to step onto the bus before it left, wearing a flu mask, sweating, and breathing hard. I was not a popular passenger.

Most people you talk to separate Taipei from "The Real Taiwan," which begins somewhere between Taichung and Kaoshiung, and definitely ends before the monstrous wasteland that is the tourist strip of Kenting. In my opinion, Taichung isn't quite a part of it, but it is a huge step in the right direction. The city is a little less of a scooter city than Taipei, and a lot less of a pedestrian city. Taichung has more construction cranes than anywhere else I've ever been. More high-rises are going up in Taichung at this moment than all of the combined construction in my entire life back in my home town. Any skater who knows about Asia knows what that means: stone. 

We got off the bus and pushed down the road. It was a beautiful day, so even though we had planned to take a taxi to our first stop, we kept going one block further, again and again, just to see the city. We came to an intensely crowded park, and heard the crack of someone underflipping on a skateboard. No other sound in the world is like that noise. However, it was so crowded that it took a minute to spot them in the seething maelstrom of people. The spot was beautiful: perfectly smooth ground, a slight downhill, with several 100 ft long granite ledges, and the ubiquitous double stacked orange cones. Sadly, the entire thing had recently been semi-skate stopped. I say semi, because nothing is ever permanent, and also they had really shown their inexperience in skatestopping. There were D-shaped metal bars over entire length of the ledges, but spaced far enough apart that each section was still skateable. Someone had gone to the extra length of removing one of them from the ends of two ledges. 

Later, we went to the Yellow Brick Road, one of the most famous spots in Taiwan. It's a large park, surrounded by brick transition, with granite coping on top. It was the only real skating I did on the trip, owing to the flu. I was so determined to skate it after day dreaming about the trip for a month that I didn't care if it meant being wrecked for the rest of the trip. It was worth it.
What wasn't worth it was the skate back home. Totally lost, in a city that completely shuts down after midnight, we finally wandered into a police station, where I was able to charge the phones, and observe a man on a drug not unlike what the media seems to think bathsalts does to people. 

The next day, we ended up in Tainan. Somewhere in between, we had crossed the border into the Real Taiwan. Tainan is much harder to skate than Taichung, especially when you have the flu. We checked into one of the sketchier hotels into which I've ever checked. To our delight, the advertised double bed was a single, and it had a rather rapey shower bubble that stuck out about three from the peeling light blue floral wallpaper. As inarguably horrible as this all sounds, the piece de resistance was a Lovecraft-brand window that opened into an interior court yard so tight that we couldn't see the ground or sky, and so eerily dark and somehow yellow tinted that I could only assume it was a portal into another dimension, even worse than the room we found ourselves in. We named it the NFRH, which is an acronym for words that can't be repeated, even on the internet.
Understandably, we went out for some skating around town. They made me turn in our key when we left. This detail would be of utmost importance in about 8 hours.
It was a hot, lovely day, so I could hardly push down the street owing to influenza. The entire town had erupted into some kind of all encompassing Taiwanese religious celebration. For the uninitiated, this involves lots of powerful fireworks. Pedestrians were plugging their ears and ducking. I used to live by a temple in 大同, and thought that I had become immune to fireworks. To my consternation, this was not
so. Under a steady rain of burning debris and deafening blasts that would make a Marine Corps
mortar NCO wince, we ran up the street to escape, and immediately found that the entire city
was engulfed in fireworks. Like a music video, big red jeeps with stripper poles and strippers on 
top appeared out of no where, and started blasting Taiwan techno (think off-brand kpop). 
Then the heavies showed up, the gods themselves, dancing the techno and deep (independent)
drum blasts from the somewhat more traditional drums. I'm told that in the old days (1990s), 
the strippers would have been naked. Times have changed.
We ducked into an alley, and were met with yet another parade coming towards us. One of the
gods, a 9 ft tall mahogany one with a fearsome face, stared me down for the five minutes or so
that it took to greet the other gods in the temple by dancing furiously, then came straight over to 
me and gave me a high five. It was the first time I have received a high five from a god.
After all this chaos, we made it out to a deserted beach. We made a camp fire, listened to some 
Tribe Called Quest in memory of the departed, and had some TB's. Then we went home. This 
took some time, as we were basically skating across the city for the second time that night. 
When we got back to the NFRH, it was some time after midnight. This was unfortunate, because 
the front doors of the hotel were closed for the night. Like fish on a hook, we tried to charge our 
phones, call the staff, bang on the doors, yell, smash the skateboards around for a bit, but nothing
got us inside. So for the first time in Taiwan, after many near misses, I actually slept outside on 
the street like a hobo. At first light, we woke up and went back to the hotel to take a nap on the bed
until check out. 
The last day was in Gaoshiung. Too exhausted to skate, we pushed around and looked at spots
and met another insane person at our airbnb. Balking at the 6+ hour bus ride, we decided to take 
bullet train back home. I came back with two phone numbers, the symbol for marriage, and NFRH 
in sharpie on the bottom of my skateboard.