今天是大晴天

It was blue sky day, with little evenly spaced spaced white puffy clouds. It was the clearest day since february. Verdant mountain ranges rippled all around the city, like Taipei is a rock chucked into a green slimy pond. On more than 99% of the days, the pollution is so severe that these ranges are invisible, even though they are only a few km away.
I went east to the river park, and it was as alone as I can feel in Taipei. Two skaters came up and watched me warm up. I said hello, and told them to come over, but they didn't respond, and eventually left when my back was turned. Some dudes came up and climbed deep inside in the indian fig trees. They are friendly trees, there in the government allotted floodplain, with tangled trunks and dense, welcome shade. These trees have huge beards of arial roots, hanging down from their limbs. I imagine that they are mirror images of themselves above ground as below. Their thick leaves rustle peacefully in the endless westward breeze, coming down the mountain sides, across the city, across the river, stirring up the dust in the river park. It was so pleasant that I didn't care that I wasn't skating well, or that my water was 35 degrees after the first hour.
As I went about my chores, and soon began to focus on the low, smooth topped but chunky cornered ledges, a dude with huge square glasses showed up with a K2 expedition style backpack. He unpacked a remote controlled acrobatic tiny helicopter, and buzzed it around for a few hours while I skated the ledges underneath. The squeal and squeak and rythym of a god deciding to move from one temple to another accompanied us throughout most of those hours. I couldn't tell which side of the river it was coming from, because the wind can carry it from Datong across the water, or the levee can echo it from sanchong from across the water and back.
After six hours of trying, I landed the three tricks I had narrowed down as possibilities, wihtin about five minutes. Shadows have begun to bleed across the spot, and sanchong people were standing in everyone of them, mostly eyeing me with hatred. I was at the abos0lute limit of fatigue. I packed up what was left of my giant block of wax (I put a nominal coat on the entire ledge, about 100m, just for the fuck of it) and lazily pushed back to Taipei bridge.
It was a tropical sunset. Low clouds reflected the sun on top like spun gold. They were pure white in the middle, like a brand new cotton undershirt. They had a blue-tinged purple color on the bottoms; it isn't a color that has a name, or that I have ever encountered elsewhere, except on the bottom of the clouds in Taipei, on the most beautiful day I have ever seen. It's a color like a bruise, but not as dark, and it evokes melancholy and intransigence and nihilism, as much as the golden top of the cloud evokes the reassuring benevolence of an almighty God that knows that and loves each of us.
Each cloud seemed like a bruised fruit. They were like dozens of epiphanies that fell from high above and had crushed their bottoms on the hard earth, and bounced back up as one to be carried away on the river of air that is 3 km above Taipei.
As I walked across the bridge in reverence of the golden light on Shingun Mistukoshi and the rest of the city, (but oddly, not 101, although the King of Buildings made its presence felt even from teh shadows) many other Taipeinese stopped their scooters in ridiculously irresponsible places to take photos. I took some too.
Then I hit up the yellow jacket rail, on the other side of the river, which reeked of hobo piss and then veered south to my old fami mart, in the hood. Kids were running around yelling and shouting; their grandfathers were drinking gaoliang and TB on the sidewalks, sitting on little plastic 3 legged stools.
Everyone smiles at bearded laowei skaters in Datong. I love the hood. I got some TB's and posted up on the oldest pedestrian bridge in Taiwan, now, used exclusively by cats who want to cross the street, and dogs, when the traffic is too intense to cross the street.
I drank beer there, in the long hanging hair of the indian fig trees, surrounded by the songs of cicadas and tree frogs. Playful little taiwanese bats flitted at eye level, above frantic but reassuring traffic underneath, all reminding me that I had skated all day, and that I'm in love with this place that has become my home.

returning to normality

RMJ invided the line group out to the river and a couple of us showed up. I got there early and skated a slappy curb until I was exhausted. Then the session started. It was a pretty normal, successful river park summer session. The funniest moment was the group of musicians playing two loud notes back and forth in fast succession, while sitting on our very heavily waxed bench. The least funny moment was the after party at the stoop, when during the course of a few TB's, groups of people kept coming up and asking us if we had seen a missing girl. Taiwan is such a safe place, until the most unbelievably sketchy shit happens.

Hot generic skateday

I went to the bridge to skate my ass off.  It worked. It wasn't too hot, maybe 37, and it was extremely crowded because contrary to popular myth, taiwanese students do get a summer vacation afterall; it only lasts one day, and they spent it at the bridge in huge skate classes, learning how to block everyone who was skating. Out of about four dozen people there, I was the only one who could ollie up a curb but couldn't ollie over a trashcan. Some people have pop. I don't. I'm assuming that I will never see another person from those skate classes again, because however much people here love doing things in unison, skating doesn't work that way. It's the opposite of skateboarding.

Taiwan's Rock Music: a review

I'm sitting by lzyk at home, and she has been playing nostalgic rock music for several hours. If you like Bon Jovi, you are going to LOVE taiwan's rock music.

Update: there is one band playing now that might pass for a dead kenndy's cover band.

date night

Lzyk and I met up after she got off work and went to an all-you-can-eat meat grill, a couple of blocks from home. You pay $600 each and it includes all you can drink beer. Normally, counting beers is something people who ride on scooters do, but I'm allowing it this time, since I drank one every 10 minutes and managed to nearly finish eating a table full of gore. We ordered so much meat that even on a two square meter table, we still had to stack up the plates just to make them fit. Also, it's twice as much satisfaction if you grill it yourself.

Then we stumbled to the underground pool hall, drank beers there until we could barely walk and then went home. The weather was perfect tonight, very breezy and not too hot, and I might have mentioned how good of skate night it would have been. Lzyk did not like this comment. Doesn't change the facts, sawty.

switch day

Because of things that aren't related to skating, the day started shittily.  It got better. Visibility was .07 km due to PM2.5. I know because I checked on google maps to see which buildings I can see from the balcony. I took a backpack of frozen water bottles up to 圓山 and made it through most of the afternoon, despite the heat. Fatigue set in before I got quite as far out on the bicycle path as I wanted, but I got a series of new switch tricks, so I was pleased with myself.
I'll say this for Taiwanese people, they really recognize effort, and worship anyone who is trying hard. I went for broke at the granite benches, and gathered a group of strangers who stopped to watch. Some were old, some were children, some where inbetween. They stared with that uniquely asian expression that I still can't read. It's totally blank, totally without emotion, but for westerners, it comes across as pure hate. I'm still not used to people staring at me like that. In america, someone would have definitely called the cops on me.
I slammed and they all made a sound. I got up, and one of them shouted "GO , GO," in English. I'm not good at skating, but I might be the first person they've ever seen skating. I like to think that when I landed it, it was the best trick at least one of them has ever seen. Nevermind that it was switch and hideously ugly. I gave out some high fives. By the time I made it, it felt like my skateboard had an extra pair of trucks attached to it. I couldn't walk without stubbing my toe and stumbling. I normally skate flatground tricks all the way home, but after I made that one, I pushed back with out even an ollie or manual. Fatigue is awesome the mental wellbeing.
If it's been a bad month, I suggest making a list of little tricks you've never done, and going out and doing them. This shit cheered me up. Checking off skate check lists is my antidepressant.

From the top of 圓山's bridge, it's a downhill run back home. Halfway back, I stocked up on TB at the 7. I cracked one open and crossed the street, and suddenly my pushing leg got a brutal cramp in the hip socket. Since I had already beered up,  I posted at the green stairs, which is a shitty skatespot for a beautiful evening, but a great one when it's raining and I don't feel like going far from home. I couldn't push anymore, or even walk, so I drank beers and watched the traffic and listened the cicadas when the lights turned red. It's wasn't hot anymore. I got buzzed. People stared at me. I wish my 15 year old self could have walked by and seen me. I don't know what I would have thought.

I stayed there for a while, and nothing seemed to change. It feels like that moment was permanent, and I can go back to it later; five minutes skate up the road and I'll be buzzed and tired and listening to Gucci and Migos and the traffic and the bugs and feeling like going to florida in a late 1980s childhood.

Short day at the bridge

It was hot. There were at least a hundred people there, about half of whom were some kind of beginner skate class that appeared to be teaching people how to stand still beside a skateboard. It was good to hang out with RMJ for a minute though. The cruise home was the best part.

My Last Trip to Nangang

Since I woke up early again and didn't have a great time peeling children's gore off the asphalt in Sanchong, I decided to go out to as far as the MRT can take me in the other direction, and skate in the skatepark. This was a mistake. It has a roof, so it's shaded, and although it's new,  it was build with 90's era masonite, and it's in a tropical climate, so it's slick as dogshit. Even kickturns on a bank can fling out from under you. In part, it's because of the pollution. The black grime that collects everywhere in Taiwan coats the masonite like carbon based KY jelly.
My hatred for Taiwanese parents reached a fever pitch when approximately 100 of them brought their children there (presumably some of them didn't make it, due to scooter crashes) and put their fucking bags and fat asses all over the hubbas. I shouted for them to move, but they just stared at me. I slallomed through them a few times, thinking of doing an andy roy and elbowing one particular fucker in the middle of his back. I don't know why he bore the brunt of my hate, but I hope he crashed his scooter on the way home. Even if he did, the park wouldn't be any less crowded, because soon there was one neon helmetted hellspawn for every square meter, standing on a skateboard, sitting on a skateboard, holding a skateboard, pushing a skateboard out of in front of them with their hands, etc. At the time, I prayed for an earthquake, for rain, for tidal waves, for the ground to give way. My hate was incandescent. Now though, I blame the park. Parks are anti-skating.

I skated the pool for a minute, but by 11:00, the surface was so hot that my feet were getting burned, so I left. This was a good decision. I went back to the safe cocoon of the bridge, where it was shaded, had a slight breeze, was totally empty, and where I met a new aussie in town. I ended up going home happy, but typing about the scum at Nangang is making me a little pissy again.

Taiwan's Golden Hour for Skating

City skaters everywhere are probably familiar with the idea that the city has a golden hour, or maybe two, for skating. In Taipei in the summer, this is 04:30 to 06:30. The human terrain is minimal at that time, but by 06:45, most spots are blocked by commuters. Also, it's the least hot part of the day that isn't dark. I never skate during that time, because I hate skating within six hours of waking up, and I don't have the stamina to skate all night and still be landing tricks by then. However, jet lag has been waking me up at 04:00, and I don't mean sloppy groggy awake, I mean aderal awake. So I headed east at first light. I was going to go to the flight path circles, a curved ledge plaza by the river, but when I got to the bridge, a construction crew had blocked the stairs, so I had to go back to the MRT and think about what to do next.
 I flipped a coin and went two stations west to 菜寮. It's a huge plaza with a mirror smooth granite surface. It has a big monument in the middle, where a hobo was alternately sleeping and urinating. The monument is ringed by 3 stairs of marble, which as partly waxed, and although convex, grind for a long way. Something about the trucks' geometry makes them glue onto the side of the curb. Cailiao's main attraction is the very long and very smooth marble ledges lining the entire plaza. Raised flower beds are inbetween the ledges, and the spot has a surprisingly clear view of the sky for Taipei.
The view of the cloudless sky was not an advantage for me though. Within an hour, I had finished an entire jug of water and a coffee, and my clothes were completely soaked. Everytime I sat down, a puddle formed around me, complementing the stale pools of hobo piss steadily drying all around the monument. It got crowded and plenty of people were giving me the look, but they ignored the bums with their dicks out. I guess part of it was that their dicks didn't make a righteous roar like a jet engine, but my trucks did everytime I grinded the marble.
By 8 am, I could feel the sunburn starting. I had to chase the shadow of the monument, to try and keep my water cool. I have a bleeder on my left ankle that never heels, and I caught it with the razortail on a flip trick that I don't even know how to do. This pissed me off, and the heat was pissing me off even more. I kept getting the feeling that I was at the beach on a 105 degree day. Skating angry worked for a while, but the run rose without remorse and soon all the shade was gone. I rode the MRT down a couple of stops to find an old night spot that I think of as the Great White Rails.
They're actually flatbars, and didn't occur to me that there isn't any shade there either, but it's really far from anywhere, so I tried to skate it. On about the tenth try (it's a pair of 30 m flatbars in a swampy park kind of place), I tried to bail by kicking the board out, but my truck caught on a pillar and ricocheed back into my leg. I decided to call it a day.

I tried to skate all the way back, but on Taipei Bridge, I gave up, owing to the tiles and the heat. This bridge has pretty intense scooter traffic. Because people here are not responsible, they weave in and our of each other at 70  mph, and on one weave, one of them misjudged and scrapped the curb a few hundred meters in front of me. They were still laying in the road when I walked up there. Even though hundreds and hundreds of scooters had gone by, no one had stopped. It was a mother and 8-ish year old boy. I couldn't tell his age because he was pretty mangled. I stood in their lane and waved  my hands in the air to try and keep another irresponsible fucker from plowing into them, since the oncoming scooters were unsighted by the traffic in front of them. In the 15 minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive, thousands and thousands of other Taiwanese people rode past a mother and child laying in the street, and only two people stopped to help. I have never been so disgusted by Taiwanese people's immorality. Anyway, the ambulance arrived and blocked the traffic, so I wasn't needed anymore and I went home. Fuck you, Sanchong people.

Comparative safety

The first time I went back to America, I had tasers pointed at me within five minutes of landing and didn't really see any reason to ever go back. This time, I maintained a constant barrage of complaints about how terrible America is to live in compared to Taiwan, but I started to notice some of America's appeal. Of course, I didn't mention this to anyone.

One of my favorite stories to shock Taiwanese people with is that in the year before I came here, I had guns pointed at me twice and had my motorcycle stolen twice. We had a man masturbating in the window at Lzyk (I told her it's considered a complement in America, but she didn't think it was funny), and more shootings, rapes and murders than I can even remember. Those events rarely make the news in my old community, and when it does, it's usually a spectacular one, in some way. I worked in triage of an emergency room for two years, and I can assure you that 99% of our shootings were never reported in the news.

That kind of crime doesn't exist in Taiwan. Well, we did have a gangland execution in a parking lot a few months back, and Taiwan does get about 250 GSW deaths a year, but I once had 40 victims come into triage at once, back in the US. It just doesn't compare.

I once saw Taiwanese national news coverage of a man stealing a scooter from a sidewalk in Tainan.

Taiwan makes up for its relative lack of crime with its massive negligence. People who are probably civil, if not perfectly nice outside of their cars, lose control of their emotions behind the wheel. I have had so many maniac bus drivers that I had already decided to stop riding on them completely, before the recent crash that burned a busload of tourists alive.  Airplanes routinely crash here. Hundreds of people have died in crashes in the short time that I've been here, despite the tiny number of people flying compared to North America.

Air pollution deaths are a secret here. I haven't been able to verify it, but the rumour is that air pollution research can't be published in mandarin by law, only in foreign languages.

It's a law enforcement problem, and not, as the latest initiative on the heels of the bus fire would suggest, a maintenance problem. It's an operator problem. America has an outrageous violent crime, the sort of thing only seen elsewhere in the third world. Taiwan has a similar safety situation, only not with crime, but with pollution and transportation. Having recently been in both countries, I have to say that America seems a lot more appealing than it did before my trip.

First Day Back: Review of Neihu Extreme Sports Bmx and Skateboarding Extra Park *Now with mini-ramp

I woke up unusually early due to jetlag and went to skate the miniramp in Neihu. To my knowledge, it's the only one in Taiwan. Getting there means riding the green line all the way east, and about a 20 minute skate from the station. There is a bus, but I usually skate it as a warm up. I got a coffee and two jugs of water from the seven and headed across the Rainbow Bridge. I didn't even think about the train bombing until I had already left the station, so I guess I won't have to deal with that fear when I have to go back to work.

Unless you've skated somewhere that is truly hot, it is a difficult thing to imagine, and an even more difficult thing to do. It doesn't translate well into video, which I find appealing. No one shoots a video part entirely in 40+ degree weather and 100% humidity. The reason is that skating in those conditions is crushing. Within a few minutes of pushing down the bike path, I was pouring sweat. The air was choking with acrid exhaust. Alarmingly, I could make out the mountains (only a few km away, but when the pollution is at it's worst, you can't see them at all), so I knew it could be even worse. But that was hard to believe. I spent the day coughing and spitting out grey sludge that tasted like ash and streamed out of my face relentlessly.

The park at Neihu is a park, so it's boring, but it does have a miniramp. It does not have any shade. It was like skating in a sauna under a heat lamp with three idling scooters and a bucket of burning ghost money inside. What little of my clothes weren't already soaked through with sweat were soon dripping onto my griptape. Every landed trick sprayed sweat all over my skateboard and the ground, which dried instantly. I could only do one line between breaks, retreating to the shade about 20 m away. There was no retreat from the PM2.5. I felt like I had whooping cough.

Falling on the sun fried ramp was like throwing a raw steak in a frying pan on the stove. It was so painfully hot that  I was surprised it didn't sizzle. I lept up like my back was on fire, because it nearly was. I had only been on my back a split second, but the back of my shirt was completely dry. Nevermind, by the end of the next run, it was soaking wet again. My shoes are wearing out, and I'm not sure if it makes much difference, but my feet were getting burned from the heat of the ramp. I had to wait in the six inches of shade by the side of the ramp, then run up onto it and drop in immediately, to try to minimize the burning. After a run, my wheels were so hot that I couldn't touch them, like after powersliding down a long hill.

After a couple of hours, I hadn't skated much, but I had downed almost all the water, and then a Taiwan miracle happened. It clouded up. First, the shadows disappeared. Then the temperature dropped ever so slightly, and I could skate a little bit longer than before without hiding back in the shade. I could stand for a moment on the top of the ramp before dropping in.

Neihu's park is almost directly under the flight path for the airport, and during the day, jets come over every couple of minutes. They stopped. I noticed, and looked east. The sky had swallowed the mountains, and lightening was flashing. Within a few moments, the wind had picked up, mercifully cool, and thunder was echoing off the short mountains across the river. Big fat rain drops started to fall on the ramp, and I dropped in one last time. Then I skated back on the road and sidewalk, looking over my shoulder at the approaching wall of rain. I thought it would catch me, and I would have to jump in a cab, but it didn't happen until I was almost at the station. I went by a few new spots, and hastily marked them on my phone for later.

I went to the bridge, to drop off a deck I brought back from America for a friend. He couldn't get there for a while, and it was completely full of scooters and small children and wiggle boarders and basketball players walking through the middle of everything, sitting on the benches and rails, so I skated the flat bar in the back. People I suspect were thieves sat on the bench next to my bag and the deck, and everytime I looked, they were about 6 inches closer to it. Since I was soaked to the asscrack with sweat, I decided I would make a good barrier between them and my stuff, so I sat down and let my sweaty shirt press on that fat slut's arm. If she wasn't trying to creep up and steal my stuff, then I guess she was entirely justified in jumping up and making the Taiwanese 'EE-YAAAA' sound of disgust. Better safe than sorry.

An Important Downside of Living in Taiwan

Obviously, this won't apply to everyone, but foremost in my mind right now, on the short list of things that totally suck about living as an expatriate in Taiwan, is that when I choose to visit family in America, I have to spend something like 30 hours of travel time. As a tightwad, the expense relative to Taiwanese income is eye-watering, think two months salary for national average income. But worse, much worse, is the 30 hours. There are few miseries as unique as 30 hours in steerage on an airplane, with a couple of hours spent in traffic at each end, and two mad scrambles to make connections in between. This trip was peppered with turbulence on the transcontinental leg, and incredibly boring strangers jabbering at each other in English on the intercontinental leg. I'm not criticizing them for being boring. I am boring too, and by the stricktest of definitions, I could also be catagorized as yuppie scum. At least I have to decency not to spew word-diarrhea all over the next two nearest rows of other passengers. I hope I haven't permanently lost my ability to ignore conversations going on around me.

Theft: The Circle of Life

Many years ago, far beyond the statute of limitations, I borrowed a large metal rectangle from a construction site. It was the sort of large metal rectangle used to smooth cement, I think. I was never sure. Anyway, it had really perfect edges on it for locking in, and I made a very fun, but very heavy box out of it. I was very proud of it. My friends and I learned most of our ledge tricks on it.
In the intervening years, it was left neglected at my parents' house, like the mildewy teddy bear in that children's story. The wooden legs and supports rotted off, and finally all that was left was the metal rectangle again, alone, unskated, sitting under a tree, for thousands of sunny days. I had been looking forward to skating on this trip back to America, maybe by piling up some cinder blocks or something underneath. Unfortunately, someone stole it out of my parents back yard. The only thing that would make it ok is if it was stolen by skaters, who, like me, saw it and realized its potential.

Halfmast Flags Under Clear Blue Skies

I got my first skateboard a few weeks before I moved to Taipei. I started learning to skate again at a place called Rhodes Jordan Park in Lawrenceville. The other time I came to America, I had a list of things I wanted to skate there, but it rained the whole trip. I'm still not over the jet lag on this trip, so I after many beers at the growler store last night, whose owner had on an alien workshop shirt because his four year old skates, I woke up hung over at midnight. And again at 2 am, and again at four and then for the last time around six. I decided today would be the Rhodes Jordan day.

America is a weird place to be right now.

Lawrenceville has hills. Not exactly San Fransisco, but I'm not used to bombing real hills. American traffic is at once lighter but more dangerous. I didn't trust the drivers to give me any room at all, and the roadsides are littered with gravel, twigs, and garbage. In fact, America is a filthy place, garbage is everywhere. Taiwanese people probably throw more garbage on the ground, but people get paid to clean it up, so you don't see nearly as much of it. 

Because the morning rush hour roads were virtual unskateable, I had to bomb the narrow sidewalks instead, which are also littered with rubbish and pebbles, but have the added bonus of large cracks between the segments of sidewalk. 

When I got down to the park, I found a spot that I had forgotten about. It's a very mellow bank to curb, and while it still had some marks from when I used to skate it two and half years ago, no one had waxed it since then. Fortunately, I had a candle. I did all the silly little tricks I used to want to do there. I don't want to spoil the rest of the trip, but it was the most fun spot of the whole thing. It's one of those rough rough american asphalt parking lots, with lots of sticks and trash and rubble in it, and the bank is too mellow and the curb is too small, but it's backside, and started grinding quickly, and sometimes you hit a spot on the trip where you know there isn't going to be a better moment than that. I left it sooner than I should have, but I had an agenda.

There were some stairs, up the hill, that I couldn't skate the last time I was in America, because it was raining. They had canyon sized cracks in front of them, and on landing, but I achieved my goals. Then I went exploring and found a parking lot on a long gradient (maybe 150m) that maintains your speed all the way down, but requires smoothly landed tricks in order to not lose speed. I am a big fan of these hills. I skated it for a while. As a bonus, it had a manual pad at the point where I kept running out of easy tricks and started fucking up.

Then I bombed a hill, and went up up up another to the highest point besides home, which is a public pool which used to be a place to take sluts after dark and later became a place to learn how to skate yellow curbs. The ground is so rough compared to Taiwan. The asphalt must be very old. I never realized how hard it is to skate in America. Anyway, I skated the curb where I learned my first curb tricks and it got hot. By 10 am, it was actually annoyingly hot. I say this as someone who lives in the tropics. Georgia is a hard place to skate in the day. Or the night. There are no street lights, like in Taiwan, and the American police don't seem very interested in providing security to the people there, unlike Taiwan. I miss Taiwan's police. Anyway, the cops ran me off from a public park in a giant empty parking from a yellow curb at 10 am on a weekday. Fuck it, it was hot anyway.  

Growler Store

Lawrenceville has a growler store. the proprietor had on an alien workshop shirt. samples are 3 oz for $1usd. I wrote "taiwan is independent" on the counter. i am not at all looking forward to going home. life here is too easy, if you have the money

Gwinnett County is Overrun With Korean Food and That's a Beautiful Thing

Gwinnett County has better korean food than Taiwan. Not just a little better. There is more of it, and it's cheaper, and it's more delicious. We had a three person meal and soju for $1500. I didn't encounter any protesters.

Nostaligia (becoming old is lame)

The best car I ever had or will ever have was a 1988 GMC diesel suburban. It was red. It had bench seats. I installed a compact disc player. I drove it to school for three years, 90 min each way. I could take out the back seat and fit in several rails and a box. I could drive those things, and my friends,  down to Atlanta and skate all night. We could eat at Waffle House at 5 am on the way home. 

During my last year of school, I realized that no one there would realize I was missing until lunch. It was a quirk of my schedule, at a small school. I could leave before sunrise, drive the Big Red Beast Machine to the skate spot, and skate for 4 or 5 hours, and then go to school. It was a glorious spring. 

About six songs into AC/DC's Back in Black, I could arrive at a spot in a tiny ancient town called Suwanee. It was a basketball court, with a very short flat rail, and a very tall and steep slanted rail (on flat). It had wooden benches, long and thick, from normal bench hight, to pretty high bench hight. It had a pavilion with a four stair, where I had one of my most memorable slams. I met the man (he was already fully bearded by 1996, and looked like a Rob Zombie clone) who put the rails in. He was psyched that we were skating his spot.

One day, I got there in the late spring, before the sun was really blazing, and the cool morning air made it skateable. I parked the truck, and started trying a trick on the lowest wooden bench. I never made it, but I tried it all morning. I came very close. An orange short bus of prisoners pulled up, and htey weed whacked the grass around the basketball court, and after a while, they noticed that I had been skating like a maniac the whole time. I had run out of water and they gave me some gatorade from their big prisoner gatorade barrel, the kind that they pour over coaches when they win the sports game. One of the prisoners was a skater. They all told me what they had done and what prison life was like. I decided to go on to school. I came back many times, but I never landed the trick. Also, I went to prison later, for the same kind of bullshit that most of them had been in for. 

Since I am back in the place I was born in, I went there. It has been about seventeen years. I got out of the truck (not the BRBM, it has long since been donated to charity against my will) and was surprised to find a quartet of skaters there. This spot has absolutely nothing going for it. It didn't back then, and now, the surface is like molasses coated gravel. I was pleased to meet the kids who are skating my old spot. I knew it sucked. They know it sucks. It has a certain vibe though. Something that draws us, across the generations. I met more atheletic people at the various skateparks around, but those dudes were the realest skaters I've met so far in America. I think lay lines brought us together, spiritual crystal energy mixed with cyclic total rotation numbers of our wheels, divided by the number of days we have skated. Or something. Either way, I'm happy they were friendly to me, and I hope they have good lives. Mine has been.

Review of Duncan Creek Skatepark Review

It's a park. It was depressing. Kids who have never ridden a skateboard outside of a skatepark were alternating between skateboards and bicycles and scooters. This is what multiculturalism has gotten us.

Dressing up as a skateboarder and going to the skatepark is about as authentic as dressing up as batman and going trick or treating.

nope

I am not optimistic, but I hope that this is the low point for our generation.

Incoming typhoon

In my time time in Taiwan, I have only experienced two typhoons. The first was a huge anticlimax. I was working at a horrible place that all English teachers in Taiwan are familiar with, it rhymes with MESS. We got out of class about 10:00 PM and the usual bustle of the neighborhood was completely missing. The sky was flashing with lightening, and wind was verbally abusive, but not actually threatening, like a drunk hobo from across the street. The air felt electric though, and the hair on my arms was standing up, like when a tornado is coming. It was a huge letdown. For meteorological reasons beyond my ken, absolutely nothing happened. At least class at MESS was cancelled the next day.

My second typhoon actually counted. It had everything; work cancellation (but I liked my job this time around), flooding (the river park was ruined as a skatespot for almost a year because of the mud and damage to the ledges and rails), wind (Taipei's buildings have some 30 story high advert posters, that began to whip and crack like the sails of very tall ships. As the winds approached 90 mph sustained, it began to sound like cannon fire, echoing up the canyons between the buildings), and lots of partying. RMJ came over to our appartment and we drank lots of TB and listened to the cannonfire. He actually tried to walk home, which wasn't wise, in restrospect. He gave up after a few blocks, and hailed one of the only taxis brave enough to be out at 3 am during a typhoon. They dodged large flying debris all the way to his house. Sheets of metal, chunks of trees, and whole scooters where tumbling down the road.

My third typhoon is this one. I won't be there for it. I'm thinking of having a typhoon party anyway, even though I'm other side of the world. If I can find TB, I'll buy a case, and watch the wind throw things around on this http://tms.bote.taipei.gov.tw/main.jsp?lang=en
It's my front doorstep.

Live from America, It's the Bay Creek Skatepark Review

It's a skatepark. No one has been murdered there. In the last six months.

It wasn't as boring as I expected though, but it was just as weird and difficult to skate as I thought it would be. First of all, the surface is just too perfect. There are no tiles, cracks, pebbles, scooters, cars, buses, trucks, pedestrians or bicycles, even thought I got there around 10:00. I met an eagle scout, whose grandfather kept yelling at him to buckle up his helmet. Ever the rebel, he would slyly unbuckle it on the other side of the park, and then the yelling would start again. After about 45 minutes, he shouted, "Jesus Christ - " and was cut off by his authorities and whisked into the minivan and I never saw him again.

Soon after, a trio of skaters showed up. We got along. One has a friend in the Zhongxiao Xinsheng area. Insert cliche about inserting cliches about a small world.
Another one works at something called a food truck, which, if I understand correctly, sounds like a bizarre and unsanitary food delivery system, where meals are actually prepared and distributed outside of a restaurant, maybe even in the street. I was pretty confused by this idea, because where do the customers sit to eat? He said they bring little metal folding tables, and plastic chairs for them. The cultural differences between Taiwan and America are endless. Before he could explain further, an apocalyptic Georgia thunderstorm came, and we jumped in the cars and took off.

Bedtime story

Many years ago, aeons in skating terms, there was an abandoned school on top of the tallest hill in Gwinnett. It had a four stair with hand rails, and the handrails had thick caps on the end. It was only skateable if you crushed some coke cans on the lip of the cap, so the board could slam over it. Legend was, they had never been grinded, on account of the caps. The landing was into the road. Next to it was a very chunky ancient cement ledge, that someone had optimistically waxed, and next to that was a 7 stair to nowhere in particular, with a short run up, also landing into the road. I also forgot about the bank: there was a bank so shitty that it was really not mentioning, especially to Taipeinese skaters. It had a huge crack that you had to pop over at its base, and a wavy surface so rough that it was like skating on gravel that someone had poured some Bondo onto and sprinkled with sand. It took about ten tries to even find your balance on it, and then, if you fell, it was like falling onto a cheese grater covered in sandpaper, with the added bonus that your board would shoot immediately into traffic. 

The school and the four stair and the rails are gone, but the rest is still there. Concerned citizens still stop to tell me to get out of the road, wear a helmet, get a car, and to ask for directions to the probation office down the street. It's like the old days, but I'm skating it alone. That's OK though. I've been dreaming about this spot from the other side of the world.

Missed Opportunity

I am watching the weather reports helplessly. A typhoon is bearing down Taiwan, and I'm stuck here on the other side of the world. Other people are going to be eating goose, eating hotpot, eating night market food, drinking beer, skating under the bridge, and not going to work, while the wind and rain smash things around the streets. I am so jealous. I can't believe that we get a typhoon as soon as I leave the country. The Central Weather Bureau maintains of my favorite websites, which maps wind radii probabilities for storms. This one appears to be a direct hit. I am watching squirrels and chipmunks digging in the yard of the window. I feel so far from home.

In other news, I went back to Stratosphere at Little 5 Points for the first time since about 2001, and got some souvenirs for the crew back home. I dropped Lzyk off at the airport for her tour of Las Vegas and California after we hit up the Vortex, of which she approved, and Junkman's Daughter, of which she also approved and insisted we spend some cash. Happily, the bums and beggars and hobos were still scattered all around, even though a few yuppie bars have come into the area. The soul of Little 5 is alive and well, and aggressively soliciting change.

Then, I drove back to Lawrenceville all alone. It should have taken an hour or so, but it took three and half. I don't miss traffic. Sitting in traffic is as strange a behavior now as collecting toilet paper appeared to be when I moved to Taiwan. I don't know how people can live like that.

I'm only faking, when I get it right

The green is so soft in the suburban sunmet evening  lithgNing bugs. Burd baths, gr8lls, fireworks and berr. Mosquitos.  Americans.  Cicadas. Charcoal. Brats. Beer, sweat. Shorts, flipflops thongs and mosquito bites. Donald trump, piuson ivy, humidity. Fathers, sons, brithers sisters cohsins finaces sparklers water hoses irises. Nir ana, eisenhower, mcarthy, james brown, skateboarding. Fire arms deaths,  preppers, highway deaths, dri erless cars and the cdc. The ocean's trident submarines. I saw it in the end. I saw it in the sky. I thought it was the end. I thought if was the 4th of july. Dusk, softly softly. Unhusked corn on the fire. Unfiltered beer in the growler.goffam, i am proud of my country's beer. It's nearly as good as our drones. Back porches. Fireworks. Laughyer andDyeeehaws. Yeehae. Trees and shrubs. Soft syret lights. Battery is dying. Texting myself. Sheds. Gates. Pucket fences. Crickets. Softer and softer and sofrtr lights and sounds. Mor and more pops of firecrackers, some withhisses, the expensive kind. Others like .22s, the not expensice kind. Maybe they are .22s. Chain link gences. Hand cuffs. Scams. Healthcare. Polive officers. Asbestos. Cinders. Evening. Chirps. So many fureworks, sounds like kabul. Pop pop PoP shreeeeeeeeeew pop hiss pop pop boom hiss tonlle shreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep hiss boom pop
Pot bellies. Smoke. Lottery tickets. Crossed fingers. Optimism. Impatience. Religion. Love. Hidden farts from women. Farts hidden from wonen. Hamburgers and hotdogs. Briwn spicy mustard. Stupid flags. Nationlism. Cancer and evil. Fuses, warheads. Cousins, swimming pools. Chlorine. Gas. The price of things. Rebellion as a tradition. The mystic of failure, the mystic of the rebound
Ants at the picnic. Post truth politics. Aging. Living grandparents. The war, the war. Benefits. Returement. Childrens futures. Drugs. Beer. Happiness. Ambition. Filthy people. Balckened, rotten people. Lottery winners. Miney dor nothing. Battery running out. Typingburgemtly. Not aure how much moreEi cam get in. Eingig church bells. Not aure how丫long they will go. Not aure what time it is. Direworka still going. Liggntk.g bugs rtill there. I craskngly feantic thping the war of the worlds, orsen weellls. Soelling . Autocorrect. Radiotdhwad. Hangovers. Heat. Himiduhty seasy. Fantic typing. Digiltial dage nithing wi ever7fbe the same. Fishing. Chdhiod memories. Nlue skies. Blue skies. Taipei. Home i kiss taopei iimiss taiwan firwworka and i.iss theEpeplle and i miss the country. Taiwan is alrwady independant.

Headlines

National Team Skateboard Representative Begins Hometown Diplomatic Tour; Taiwanese Military Fires Missle in Celebration