Preparing for Travel is Gloriously Stressful

I wouldn't say I don't travel well, because I have fairly low standards for comfort. However, I'm not very good at dealing with anxiety, and so I get stressed on the night before a trip. However however, I exhibit strong avoidance behavior, so I constantly fret about small details of life that become huge problems because I avoid doing anything about them. The glorious part of pre-travel stress is that I can completely, totally ignore those problems now. I can happily focus on the stress of the moment.

I Hope Noone I know Reads This

Dear Mr. Grosso, I Don't Agree

Because I am a curmudgeon, I agree with you that skateboarding videos are terrible. I fully support your statement that skateboarding happens in real time. I don't like sports much, but I am watching some europeans play soccer, and it is full of replays of events that don't matter, and that is what almost all of skate videos are. Skateboarding is a participatory experience, and watching it in highlight form should be considered as shameful as watching pornography. This isn't to say I don't watch pornography, it's just that it's not something that I would discuss with anyone, at almost any level. There are exceptions, but for the most part, skatevideos are a masturbatory aid for the real activity.

Skateboarding itself is the same way. I don't care how other people do it. I am my own favorite skater, not because I'm good at it, but because I do it the best way I know how, to the best of my ability. If someone else doesn't like the way I do it, it has absolutely no consequence whatsoever. Eitherway, I sure as fuck wouldn't edit it with slow motion. We have a duty to make ourselves island universes. 

To return to Mr. Grosso, editing is the problem with skate videos. Skateboarding does not happen in slow motion. I blame Transworld, and Fully Flaired in particular. It is the least authentic skatevideo to the actual experience of skateboarding ever made. It's like airbrushing pornography to the point that it's creepily blank and robotic. Editors in skateboarding tend to jerk off all over themselves and slow down tricks in the middle of the trick. This is why we have such hideous tricks going around. Stop that shit. People should skate how they want, but no one would do tricks that only look good (ok, not good, but barely tolerable) in slow motion if the final product is shown in real time. Lurknyc does it right. Skateboarding happens in real time, preferably in person. Like sex.

The biggest problem of all is the internet telephone. Mediocre skating, and even terrible editing and production used to be fine, because footage wasn't available. The first videos I ever saw were worth watching hundreds of times, because I had never imagined anything like it. 

TB run. Should take 3 min or less. I love living in Taipei. 

6 minutes. That's what optimism gets me. They were out of TB, and Busch, so I got Cass, because it's on sale. Restockers are sloppy here in the hood. That shit wouldn't fly down in Xinyi. 

Dozens of people are outside, smoking, talking, letting their dogs shit and piss all over the sidewalk. A pair of police on scooters (yes, Taiwanese police wear bullet proof vests and ride on 125cc white scooters, with red and blue roller lights on the back) were doing some paperwork at fami. 

Anyway, skate videos used to be bullshit, because they weren't in person, and weren't in real time, but now they suck even more because there are so many of them. Each successive video erodes the value of those before it. That being said, a very select few new videos are actually very, very good. I won't list them here, for the similar reasons that I won't mention pornography that I consider actually very, very good. It's embarrassing. And it should be. I'm not saying don't watch it, I'm just saying participating is way more important than watching it.

The best skatefootage is completely unedited. What if golf was edited like skateboarding? Multiple day tournaments over several years, edited down into 35 min collaborations of fast/slow/fast highlight clips. Golf is already unwatchable, granted, but it would be so much more intensely lame. With the unlimited storage potential of ordinateurs, I hope that we can start to show skating in real time, although I certainly hope, never to show it live. It's what makes the berrics so shitty, it's been chopped into clips. And it's just a fucking game of skate. It's already not interesting. Emerica b-sides are the future. I can watch someone try a trick for ages and finally make it, and want to go skate so much more than fast/slow/fast editing of a putt makes me want to go golfing. Just because you have a hammer doesn't mean you have to hit things with it, editors.

Update on Cheap Korean Beers: y'all do it right. I will buy more cheap korean beers.
Update on the Update: cass is so sweet, it's like drinking a beer with waffle house syrup poured into it, but with any maple flavor, which shouldn't be there, and also with a lot of tin can flavour, which also shouldn't be there.

Update, much later: cass is making me feel sick. I have to work in a few hours. Iceland is my favorite nationalism team of all time. More people live in my neighborhood in Taipei than in their their entire country, which is, I'm guessing, bigger than Taiwan. I'm not going to share this until way later, when cass isn't make me feel like puking. If I were a real alcoholic, I wouldn't be about to throw up after a six pack.

A Voiced Opinion of KTV

People who are attracted to music feel the same way about karaoke as people who are attracted to women feel about drag queens.

Free Chiropractic Session

I slept a couple of hours and had to go to unpaid training at work, which is a Taiwanese tradition. It absolves them from any need to be efficient, since it's not costing them anything. I got out and was so tired I didn't think I could manage to skate, but I thought I'd go get sweaty after my Mandarin lesson, since it's right by the bridge. I'm glad I did. It stormed violently this afternoon and everything was still wet except there. It was mostly empty, just a handful of friends. A new American showed up, and SenioreC. I was really excited to see another old friend, for whom I don't have an idiotic name yet. I hadn't seen him in a while. We were all tired, and ended up skating until a little after lights out. I fell several times, small ones, but cracked my back nicely a few times for me.

Runner's Nipples: the Sunday Night Club

I wore a mesh wife beater to the bridge tonight, and it made my nipples painful. I heard this happens to marathon runners. I bet they don't drink TB while they do it.

RMJ found this blog. It's a seachange in approach to think that someone might read this. He mentioned Burroughs, which I will use to wrap up this post.

It was 27 degrees at the bridge. I drank a stack of beers last night, since Lzyk was gone, and since I wanted to, and I ate nothing but garbage shui bao. It shouldn't have been a good session, but it was.

I try to warm up with every flatground trick I know, but if I can't get one in about ten tries, I give up and move on, because I am a lazy slob without standards of perfection that make a good skater. Today, I got them all, and a couple of new ones. New tricks aren't that meaningful anymore, since I've learned a few, but it's always a nice feeling to land somehting for the first time.

Soon after, my first Taiwanese homie showed up, I'll call him ZW. He is one of the best people in this country, and it's a country full of good people. He rides a scooter for 45 min from well outside of Taipei to skate at the bridge on Sunday nights. ZW is, to put it charitably, the second largest man I have ever seen ride a skateboard. I am by no means skinny, but I'd have to wear a large backpack with two cases of TB in it to make a game of skate fair between the two of us. If I understand correctly, he first started skating about the same time as me, around when Jump Off a Building came out. I include that caveat because his English is only marginally better than my Mandarin, which he only speaks when he's in Taipei anyway. Everyone here knows him, and everyone is happy to see him.

Tonight, there were only a handful of us there. It was basically empty. This meant a lot more skating, and only time to catch your breath if you make the time yourself. As fatigue set in, it became more of a Taiwanese language lesson than a skatesession. Most importantly, I learned that the word I thought meant "pussy," actually means "pussy and asshole together." Pussy is another word entirely. Happy Birthday Mr. Burroughs.

Previous Session

RMJ, SenioreC and I met up at the bridge and had a nice, long, tropical heat warm up. Then we went out towards mainstation and on to Ximen. We skated the bullring, and the big plaza. It never cooled off. My favorite thing about the plaza, aside from the skating, is that the fami there is about 3m wide and 10 m long, so when you get refreshments, you have to scrape your sweat onto a line of Taiwanese hipsters waiting to check out with their milk teas and guave juice boxes that contain 2% juice. At that point, it's just sugar water and laboratory flavoring. Also, they have double boilers of tea eggs. I got a pair of them, wiped my sweat on the back of a ximen person, and had some TB's. SenioreC dipped out and RMJ and I wandered across the city back to our hood. We stopped at the Shangri La OK Mart in Datong for more beer. It is so quiet in Datong.

Notes on Main Station

The first place I ever stood, realizing American bombs had fallen there, was Geelung Harbour. RIP. Classic spot. The first place I actually ever stood where American bombs fell was at Main Station, but I didn't realize it until RMJ pointed it out, because he is better at history than me.

Visitors to Taiwan are lazy, and tend to use a lot of footage from around mainstation, because it's so easy to find. That being said, it has the makings of a perfect skate spot. The most important factor is that it has a mostly smooth surface. When you fall, it's like falling on ice, you just slide on your ass and buy new jeans after a few days.

Next, it has weird micro-scale architechure. We don't really care much about the difference between Doric columns and regular ones, but if  the designer opts to ruin the skate spot by minute errors or spiteful hatred of skaters, we sure as shit notice architechure. (I'm honestly not spelling it wrong on purpose, but I have to wait another 65 minutes until Croatia beats Ronaldo and I'm too nervous to spell it properly).

Mainstation's post-bombing architect envisioned a skateboarding wonderland. Also, bums in Taiwan appreciate skatespots so much that they sleep on them, hoping to absorb their magic. The area around mainstation is littered with magic spots and bums trying to absorb the magic. The most obvious is maybe inside the atrium, which means "200 m wide room with 200 m tall ceiling, perfectly smooth stone floor, and hundreds of ground dwelling teenagers chattering into their internet phones in semi-circles". Just outside are series of pink ass marble banks with pink ass marble flats on top. Around back are two big round ouija board manny pads and the same distance away is a white tile bank to wall to chest high ledge with a filthy sign saying 'no skating' in several languages, and many, many wheel marks on the tiles from it having been skated until it surrendered.

The bums also try to absorb the energy of hte benches, which have weird loopy thick metal tubes on one side of them. They are really possessive of their benches, and don't appretiate when you land tricks anywhere near them, especially between 2 am and 6 am. This is because the transfer of metaphysical energy is highest just before morning, and they are afraid that in a single trick, you are going to steal the energy that they have methodically been sapping out of the spot all night.

The site has been under construction for at least 27 months. This means lots of wall ride barriers. In Taipei, they are painted in thick black and yellow diagonal stripes. They are at a 50 degree angle for 1/3, and then vertical the rest.

There are marble kickers to ledge, and yellow tiles and piss bushes and many more items and memories I can't hope to put up here. Mainstation is a skateboarding hotbed.

Why You Shouldn't Trip Balls on Buses in Taiwan

Actually, I guess that title is misleading. I don't know that anything bad actually happened. But Taiwanese buses suck.

Lzyk has a conference this week in the third most dangerous city in the U.S. She flew out tonight. It felt like sending her to a warzone. I should mention that she at least gets her pockets picked every time she travels, but usually they only get phones, cash and her passport. To make it a more anxious bus ride to the airport, the Taiwanese style of management is to throw your subordinates under the bus if anything goes wrong, and things have been going wrong. So I'll be happy to see her back in one piece.

We boarded the bus at mainstation and I always have a sinking feeling in my stomach when I go through that area on a bus and it's not raining. In the immortal words of RMJ, it is a true hotbed of skate spots. The main plaza is probably the best, but away from that, it's a square km of very crowded skatepark.  Being a gentleman, I didn't complain to Lzyk that I wasn't skating. Also, I didn't complain that we lost our tandem seats on the bus because the bus driver was screaming "ㄊㄚ  ㄇㄧ  ㄋㄠ  
ㄨㄢ! ㄊㄚ ㄇㄧ  ㄋㄠ   ㄨㄢ!  ㄊㄚ   ㄇㄧ  ㄋㄠ   ㄨㄢ!" at me, and thinking he was screaming something in Mandarin that I couldn't make out, I went to get Lzyk to translate, but it turns out he was just trying to make sure which terminal I wanted to go to. Consequently, we lost our seats and I had to sit next to a German long hair. 

He seemed a little vacant at first, and then much more so after a couple of more minutes. I gave the laowai nod, that is the secret handshake of the expatriate in Taiwan, but he didn't acknowledge it. That's fine, I have no problem with tourists. Taiwan should be at the top of everyone's list; after all, the only other civilized countries in the world are Japan and Korea. 

Not everyone who looks like they're translated at least one Phish song into German is friendly, but this guy seemed a little unfriendly. He was looking out the window like he was about to pass out, and I zoned out little too. I was thinking about footplacement on a trick that has been frustrating me, staring at the huge steel beam underbelly of the  roadway above us, and suddenly he turned and shouted, "IS THIS THE BUS TO THE AIRPORT?" He still seemed groggy though, like he was more concerned that maybe he wasn't going to say it loud enough, and I might not hear. I told him yes, and tried to remember more than just German curse words, but failed. His eyes were dilated like the part of a woman's anatomy that babies come out of, and frankly, those eyes had the sort of look in them suggesting that he believed babies actually where about to come out of his eyes. 

I turned around to make eye contact with Lzyk, who was sitting behind me, and although I could see her hair visibly greying from the stress of her job, she giggled for a minute. I turned around, and thought about skating some more.

"I HAVEN'T BEEN THERE IN 12 YEARS," said the German long hair. He looked like the grandson of the singer from Steppenwolf. He had his phone out, and I thought was talking to someone it, but instead, he was scrolling through facebook. "ANOTHER ONE IS NOT ENOUGH BUT TWO MORE IS TOO MUCH." He noticed that I had turned to look at him, and he asked, "IS THIS THE BUS TO THE AIRPORT?" I nodded. He stared out the window at the sea of shitty tin roofs that are the approach to the airport in Taoyuan. His pupils were so big that I could see them in the window's reflection. No babies were coming out, yet.

He made some other non sequitors, asked me a few more times if THIS IS THE BUS TO THE AIRPORT, each successive time getting more and more passengers to turn around in their seats and look at him (in Taiwan, we don't speak above a whisper on the bus). The last I saw of him, he was trying to check in to the Hello Kitty Eva Airlines section, which is a giant neon pink mock-fuselage with the checkin computers and lots and lots of Hello Kitty paraphenalia. He looked confused, staring at his own reflection in the window, with his backpack at his side. I waved, to see if he needed help, and he waved back. He didn't move though. I hope he gets to where he's going.

I'm more concerned about Lzyk though. She is going to a bad place. I forgot to tell her "don't take no shit from nobody sawty" but I think she already knows not to.

all of humanity's cumulative coin flips

heads or tails? if it's tied, let's bet it all on the next one.

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,

and you're hampered by not having any,

the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,

is simply by spinning a penny.

No -- not so that chance shall decide the affair

while you're passively standing there moping;

but the moment the penny is up in the air,

you suddenly know what you're hoping.

So, so hot tonight

Lzyk didn't get off work until after midnight, so I skated out to the drop off spot to meet her. It's only two stations away, but the MRT was closed by the time she got there. It was so hot, like skating in a skatepark with lots of tiles, some of them loose, built inside a giant oven with millions of internal combustion engines and no air circulation. Then we walked back and I drank TB and watched soccer. I don't care if soccer isn't cool in Europe or Brasil anymore. I have to skate a real session tomorrow. The withdrawal is starting.

Solo in the Hood

Full moon, breezy night in Sanchong. Tropical skating means find ways to cope with heat, and one way is to freeze a 2 L bottle of water and put it in my backpack, drinking it as it melts. I headed west across Taipei bridge, well aware that the wrong fall over the wrong crack or loose tile would mean a Palomares style broken arrow event. Don't skate with ice on your back, it's like skating with a nuclear weapon in your suitcase. 

The city was already sleepy by 23:30. The chirps and songs of insects in the river park were alien and aggressively relaxing. Normally, they are either drowned out over the roar of scooters, or simple can't exist, because northwestern Taiwan is a 5000 sq mile parking lot, and nothing lives or grows here besides people and cockroaches. In other words, ideal skating terrain. Beset by weeklong depression, I wanted to go hear some crickets. Sanchong it was.

A car was blocking the exit of the yellow jacket rail by the bridge. I started across the bridge, and a Taike man rode by on a bicycle, turning to stare at me over his shoulder in amazement. It's my kind of neighborhood. I like being the minority. 

The air was clear tonight. Mountainside lights were twinkling. 

I had to avoid the little land crabs as best I could. They were scuttling all over the spot. Only one car was going by every 30 seconds. It's remarkable when the traffic dies down, because you can hear each individual car or scooter as it goes by, instead of a cacophony. Sometimes, I heard the splash of fish jumping in the river. A longboarding kook skated by on the bike path. 

I stacked up the empty beer cans until I couldn't ollie over them anymore and then it was time to go home. I went past where the overhanging plants on the sooty levee walls had traced perfect half-circles on the hydrocarbon blackened cement; they swing in the wing and scrape their radius on the levees. 

I've learned to zigzag on the tiles, to reduce the impact of each crack. It slows you down less than trying to go in a straight line. I love Datong. You know it's the hood when 7 hasn't bothered to restock the shelves at 3 am. That shit wouldn't fly in Xinyi. 

Review of Motor Racing for the Weekend

This is not a good weekend for my vicarious car racing experience. After 23 hours and 55 minutes, I switched off the feed for Lemans, content that Toyota had won after thirty years of trying. The car broke, and Volkswagen won. I love Germans, but I can't stand their motor racing teams.

Which brings me to Baku, where another German manufacturer is easily winning. At least the new circuit is fantastic. The race has been pretty boring, but the combination of walls, high speeds, buildings, and overhanging trees makes it a spectacular place for a Grand Prix. Also, there are some obvious skatespots around the fountains, and I'm definitely checking out whatever Baku skating footage I can find on youtube, when the race is over.

As for Taipei skating, there has been none on my part since last Tuesday, as we've had violent tropical thunderstorms almost every afternoon, and I ate something at the night market that upset my gut worm a few days ago, so I'm afraid to ollie up a curb, in case I shit my pants.

Kpop follow up

Hundreds and hundreds of songs later (youtube "korean top 100 2015-2008", for those who are interested, but I dont recommend it), I can't tell which part of the year I'm in. I mean, shouldn't the top 100 of year get progressively better as you count down? There isn't a discernible difference between the 79th to 69th songs and the 10th to the 1st place songs. For any year. I'm going to give up. The mystery song will never be rediscovered, which is too bad, because it was so many millions of times better than all the rest of Kpop that finding it would be like finding a Beatles song that was a million times better than every Beatles song you have ever heard. No, nevermind, I like the Rolling Stones better. But I like Black Sabbath most of all.

Not Everything About My Life is Glamorous

I am wading through hundreds of korean songs, trying to find that one that was popular in my first summer in Taiwan. There is beer and Euro 2016 involved. I can recognized Korean, but I can't speak enough to repeat the chorus. This puts me in a dilemma, because while Kpop is hideous, this one song is one of the catchiest songs in human history. I have gone for years assuming I would eventually run into it again, and I have, only no one present could ever tell me what it was. This is like hearing a song before the internet. I'm starting to doubt that it's a Korean song, but listening to 30 second samples of Korean top 100 from 2015 backwards is making me really worried about the sanity of my Korean friends, and my Taiwanese friends who allegedly like their music (it's not possible to like this. It's like the worst of 1980's pop, in a language that somehow makes it even sappier). I am proud that the dance crews who dance at the bridge late at night and partly get in my way while skating refuse to listen to this and instead play golden age hiphop.

There is only one other song that I still can't find: it was a bonus track on Doggystyle, at the end of it, and I didn't realize it was a bonus track until many years after my exgirlfriend had thrown my CD case and sundry other items of lesser emotional value and I was on a road trip with a friend and the album came on and that song wasn't there at the end, and to my astonishment, he wasn't aware that it should be.

My life is missing two songs.

Yakitori and Taiwanese Methods of Blackmail

There is no greater joy in life than a crowded yakitori bar.

Students were writing curse words in Mandarin on slips of paper today, and they fuckd up, and I caught them. I confiscated the papers, with the threat of showing it to their parents if they ever piss me off.

Like Putting My Feet in a Woodchipper

It rained hard all day, and I didn't have anything to do, so I listened to the rain on the tin roof of our balcony and watched youtube videos until it was time for mandarin class. After class, it was dark and still wet, and since it happens to be right by the bridge, I thought I would go skate and drink a couple of TB's. Things started to go wrong when I slightly twisted one ankle, and then the other, on flat ground warm up tricks. Annoyed, I tried to kick a small pebble out of the way and instead, stubbing the ever living shit out of my toe on my ollie foot. About this time, tendons in my switch foot started throbbing from my knee to my ankle, because I skated home too fast last night, and I am too old for that. I got the usual ankle and shinners from skating, then I tried to ollie something that I knew I wouldn't make, caught my back truck on it, and racked myself. Fortunately, Taiwan has a lot of cheap beer at every convenience store, and there is always a convenience store nearby. Lzyk met me for late supper at the night market, and criticized me for smelling like TB. I tried to explain why I had to drink so many, but there is just no pleasing a woman who has already decided that you had too many beers.

If this is the afterlife, then I'm OK with that.

I texted Lzyk and she said she would be late coming home, because she is a wage slave. Nevermind that she is saving the world from influenza, you ungrateful bastards.
I showed up at the bridge, just before lights out. There were a lot of people there and I was shown much love. According to some dude named Mazlov, this sense of community is important. I didn't skate particularly hard, and most people cleared out after the lights went out, with our usually elaborate hand-slapping and goodbye saying ritual, which is a lot like our parrot-like hello-saying and hand slapping, only in reverse. After lights out, Mr Bulgaria (who looks like a body builder but apparently isn't) and the new aussie, for whom I had an awesome name a minute ago but have now forgot, kept skating and drinking and eventually (scandalous for all yall taipei skaters) left the bridge and went across the street to a superb bank. Then, the australian whose new nickname I will surely remember soon, bought us all beers, and we told each other stories about insane women and UFO abductions.  The winning stories were 1) waking up to an alien next to you 2) waking up to an empty bed where a taiwanese woman had slept, with a huge knife still under the pillow.
The last beers were spent talking to Mr. Bulgaria as we skated towards our neighborhood, about the coming world war and post antibiotic era. It was hot tonight, 27 degrees most of time, but at the end of the conversation, a chill wind blew through Taipei, and the leaves in all the trees in the boulevard were hissing. We went by 7 and I bought a three cheese sandwhich, which is the best food in Taiwan, and then it started spitting rain, so I skated the last little bit home in the rain, with a backpack full of TB.

Holy shit boys, I just remembered the aussie's name: Tiger Snake. Because he fucking got bit by one.

Nights like this make me never want to die.

text messages to myself from the HSR ride home

Train window. Scudding clouds and every color green you can imagine. High rises, then rice paddy, then farm land. Punctuated by moments of 180 mph blackness in tunnels. A slight hiss, louder in the tunnels. Little blue water melon trucks on shiny wet black asphalt. Pure white egrets, 100m high aquaducts for cars. Partially understood conversations, in a hushed tone. Temples, little handgrenades of color. Rushing flooding riverplains. Tin roofs, like asian Mexico. 200 mph now, into the storm. Crammed into the vestibule between carriages, with suitcases, skateboards, police and food carts. No seats available. Near vertical green jungle cliffs, 20 m from the window. Rice green vs 2 story ramshackle shed houses as far as the eye can see, then instantly black again for a tunnel. Pressure change. Slope change. Tiny little steep hills outside the window again.

I'm learning to squat when I'm waiting.

I still drink coffee instead of tea. I still want a little blue watermelon truck of my own, and I still don't miss home. I still think Taiwan must have been beautiful, long long ago, but years of rapey progress has made it hideous.

Inexplicable 40 story highrises in the middle of rice paddies. 200 miles of highrises, from Taipei to Taichung. This must be the only place in the world where rice farmers get their mail on the 38th floor.

Exit tunnel, then hard rain. Visibility 1 km. The clouds are closer than the horizon. Aquaculture lakes next to factory runoff next to rice paddy next to apartment block then plastic factory spewing poison. All in a blink, then new scenery.

Drum of rain drops sounds the same as 150 mph slower.

Nests of construction cranes. Blue tarp cacoons around the larval buildings. 1/10th of a second glimpse of a lit baseball stadium, then black tunnel.

A tiny junkyard, a sad, walled river.

More crane nests, bigger aquaculture ponds, with cappuccino foam on top. I already refuse to eat freshwater fish in Taiwan, now I can't stand the thought that I ever did. I am going to get cancer. Everyone here is going to get cancer.

Perceptible deceleration. Tiny green valleys of rainforest between tunnels. I wonder when the last time was that someone walked there.

Longest tunnel. I amuse myself by seeing how much of the safety signs I can read: fire extinguisher, mind the gap, exit tunnel and into banciao. Huge mountains in the distance. No rain, surprisingly clean air. As clear as we get in Taipei.

Rooftops only. Nothing green in sight. Cement, brick, rust, asphalt. Chimes warn of the next station. sterile english computer announcements, choppy mandarin ones, choppy taiwanese ones. Into the last tunnel. It's all tunnel from here to the house. But I'm not going there, I'm going to the bridge.

Epilogue: met a lot of friends for a horrendously hot bridge session, and a new Italian guy. One the way home, RMJ and I ran into four americans skating a rock. I gave one of them some wax, since it was his birthday. I have a migraine. I'm going to work tomorrow.

Dragonboat Festival in Changhua

Lzyk and I went to Changhua to stay with the family over the long weekend. It's been raining the whole time, so no skateboarding, but we ate a lot of food. Taichung's nightmarket seems like the size of the entire city of Taipei. In actuality, it is probably about 1 km squared. We ate at least a dozen Good Taiwanese Things. The artery of the market is what Americans would consider either an exceptionally busy four lane road, or a moderately busy interstate. At midnight, it was teeming with scooters, cars, and a people, but by 2 am, only the Taichung low-rider's club was left. Their car decorations were pretty authentic to 1994 redneck truck culture, except for the cheerful hello kitty and assorted bubble faced cartoon stickers on the windows. It was a pleasant 45 minute drive back through the rabbit warren of small streets and canyons of five to ten story apartment blocks that make up the deep countryside here. The population density of Taiwan's countryside might not be as dense as Manhattan, but then again, it might be. Every apartment is dreary communist grey cement, with prison bars in the windows. Although crime virtually doesn't exist here, I'm told it's to prevent break-in's. I didn't argue that if someone is determined enough to climb up five stories, flimsy hollow aluminum bars probably isn't going to slow them down much. But then again, maybe the vigilance of the bars is why there's so little crime here. It's also why so many people die from smoke inhalation during house fires. They were kind of beautiful, reflecting the flashing red, blue, green, yellow patterns of the bin-lang stalls.

Tied for the Best Trick of My Life

Until I started skating again, it was easy to say what the best trick I had ever landed was; the kind of event when you are momentarily better than you were were before or since. About 20 years later, I did something about about as good. As much as I believe that skating isn't about the tricks, well, I suppose sometimes, it is about the tricks. It doesn't hurt that a lot of people I respect saw this one. Two decades ago, three people saw it. I can replay every detail of the three tries before I landed it, and every minutae of the time I landed it. I can remember what I ate and drank that night, and I can remember throwing McDonald's french fries out of the window at oncoming windshields afterwards. I often wonder where those dudes are now. I hope that in 2036,  I can remember this session with the same sort of detail. I can't honestly ask for another one like it, because a third best trick of my life would be too much to ask. I am not a positive person, or good at skating, but I can't wait for the future to happen.

Fuck, I am definitely too excited to sleep.

Good news/ What Makes a Homie?

I went to the bridge, and met up with RMJ and another homie, with the sickest powerslides I have ever seen. He spent some time in San Fransisco, so I reckon it has something to do with it. 

I hadn't seen the powerslider in a while, but I consider him a homie, which begs the questions, how does one define a homie? I propose here that slams define that status. Witness a true slam, not just a fall, not a buttslide across smooth ground, but the kind of biannual event that marks true suffering; this shared experience is what defines a homie. My powersliding homie is a perfect example: we always skated a lot under the bridge, but he saw me take a full body slam a few months back. Video replays don't count. Ultimately, there are other bonds that skateboarding creates, but the vicarious slam, the kind that is so hard that no one laughs when it happens, is my opinion the most profound  bonding that we share. Think back: how many specific slams can you remember of each of your homies? Anyone over a four slam history is basically a blood brother. 

In other good news, my fami mart homie is back. He is an old pot bellied southern taiwanese dude who works nightshift at fami (which, by the way, is at the top of the conveience store list; it goes, fami, 7, independant, ok, and maybe something I'm forgetting). This particular fami is always my last stop on the way home, so he usually seems me after a handful of beers, but is immaculately polite, taking my money with both hands, and giving me my receipt with both. He is hopelessly incompetent, and somehow manages to maintain a line of half a dozen people, late into the night. He disappeared for a few weeks, and I assumed that he had been fired: this kind of shit is totally normal in America, but in Taiwan, well, this is the only person I know who fucks up so badly at work. Because he is so friendly and old and gracious to me, I was really worried about him. He was back tonight. I am relieved. There is no reason that someone his age would be working in a Taipei fami on the nightshift without a goddam good reason. 

Back in the Saddle

I didn't expect much from tonight. I filled my backpack up with as much water as I can carry, and headed out to the river park. I pissed off all the romantic couples at the wharf, and found to my delight a newly birthed 100m painted curb with perfect new asphalt. A homie met up with me at the benches, but when we got there, two hobos had parked on the benches, and couldn't be roused by even the loudest powerslides and fliptricks. Must have been some strong glue. We hungout for a while, mostly complaining about the heat. I ended up knocking back some TB's on the stoop, and reading about tigersnakes. Not having expected much from the night, I wasn't disappointed.

Strange Fruit

Fruit is always available here. There about two dozen kinds of fruit that I hadn't encountered before moving to Taiwan. On a whim, I went to the nightmarket by my work and bought a box of nigiri for $200ntd, and as much fruit as I could carry for $120ntd. Fortunately, I encountered a coworker on the MRT and offloaded as many mangoes as he was willing to take (he seemed pleased with my gift at first, but as I insisted on him taking more and more, he started to get suspicious). I met up with another coworker at the 7, and we shamelessly gorged ourselves in the eating attic on watermelon, mango, lychee, pineapple, raw fish, wax apples and TB.

I don't care about neurology. I'm going skating this weekend.

However, because of the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival (4 day weekend), I am required to work this Saturday, to make up for the lost labour. Taiwan doesn't understand holidays. At least the fruit is cheap.

Chinese Housing Scams, Nerve Damage, and The Best of 90's Rock

This is what happens when I'm sober and can't skate for days on end:

Lzyk showed me an advert for an apartment that I immediately fell in love with. It's up in the hills to the north of Taipei city, but still about 20 minutes walk from the MRT, high but reasonable price, three rooms, western kitchen, and, I'm tempted to capitalize the rest of the sentence: in the forest. There were some odd details, like the terrible chinese in the add, and the owner in the UK, but if I mention those now, the outcome will be too obvious. Also, I might mention that when I googled the address, it appeared to be "7th floor of 12" in the middle of a national forest, where no such building appears to exist.

Lzyk's greatest fear is that the forest in the area was controlled by the land pirates during the white terror, and enemies of the party were executed on the hillsides. Consequently, "there are lots of ghost stories in that area." Once I heard her say this, my blood ran cold, because I knew there was not going to be anyway to convince her to move there, no matter how much ass this apartment kicks. But I tried. I even managed to convince her to walk up there tonight, to see if if she could brave the walk from the MRT. We didn't make it to the alleged address, because like in my old country, they don't have housing in National Parks, so the listed address didn't exist, but also, because as soon as we came to a place that required us to walk through a less-perfectly-lit area, she turned on her heels, braying that she was going home. At this point, I didn't think there was much chance of convincing her that home might be up on the hill in the forest in the dark, so I followed her. When we got home,  searched "taiwan apartment scam" and found some entertaining reading.

 After a few hospital visists, it appears that I have some minor nerve damage from my slam last week and can expect the numbness and burning sensations to continue in my arms indefinitely. Also, it feels like someone sucker kicked me in both armpits when I was passed out on the ground. If it's not going to get better, then I'm going to start skating again. I have two more hospital visits this week. If it goes poorly, I'll be skating this weekend. Skate til paralysis, right? ... right?

As for 90s rock, I refuse to mention products, tricks, or people on here, but I can confidently inform aspiring Taiwanese hipsters that razorblade suitcase among the best albums of all time, and anyone arguing otherwise is obviously a guomindang agent, or foreigner.