experiment

my coworker runs, and i was jealous that someone was enjoying something that i wasnt, so i tagged along. apparently, this crew runs every wednesday and havent missed a wednesday for longer than i've been alive.

i got lost immediately, following what i thought were flower trails. dirty fucking hippies putting flowers all around the city. turns out, this was a misunderstanding. i ended up in the mountains with another lost soul, and we trecked through the undergrowth wiht her headlamp. all i could think about were snakes. lzyk is doing some work on snake bites in taiwan. running through undergrowth after dark is not ideal for avoiding snakebites. we survived. she outran me, after we descended the mountain.

they partied at a baichenwan place after, but i walked home. i photographed and logged a few good skatespots. it wasnt a total waste.

wringing out the pips

i didnt have anything left, but sukkotto learned *****s and i wanted to go see him get some at the bridge. but I promised I wouldn't skate the impressionist board at the bridge, so i changed it out for the other postmodern one. turns out, that one is way better shape. too bad i was so tired. I hate steep tails. this one is the perfect shape. 

it was pouring rain so i wasnt surprised that thirty people were skating there. we mostly talked, sukotto and i, because we were tired, but the other guys formed a megacrew, like when multiple pods of dolphins join up together, and they went out into the city as the patchy concrete dried. 

i think i can safely say i didnt leave anything on the table today.

Fading holiday

Skate alone

Theee stair mini park. *********, ****, *****  ** *** ***,

High school flat ground, some bleachers

Under bridge in rain, yellow jacket two stair wide ledge, kinked

Flat ground and bombing stair curbs to a new permanently dry stone curb that's 50 yards long

Fans feeble. Old man chewing binlang came out to explain to me about the bridge. He was really excited bc he though l don't know about it. He described the box bench and rails perfectly, so I asked him for more and more details. He was extremely pleased with himself for helping me. 

Linsen mini bank to granite ledge. Old woman pushing a cart cursed me out . Crowd of people watched me try ** **** ** ******** for 30 min, I lost faith in my self before they lost faith in me.

Sun came out. Got a Kirin on zongshan at the ATM minihubba, hit a ******** crusing by and was met with some fish faces. Too bad the city is filling back up with people, these curb stairs are so nice but the traffic is ferocious and a river of people are walking by on the sidewalk. I think the holiday dam has burst.

Zhongshan dream line: whore bank, street and traffic, metal stairs, kickers, three stair, mini Jubba, regent plaza. About a one km line

Xingtian temple, two close calls with panicked pedestrians with noses stuck in cellphones. Fuck em. This spot got a lot of skating since the last time I was here. Hidden gem but I won't be mad if it blows up. Too good to stay secret forever. 

Fading light. Stinking overcrowded city. Deserved buzz on the way home. Dying battery. People taking selfies everywhere. 

Favorite board ever. Not gonna take it under the bridge ever. May the shadow of the bridge never cross its theshold. 

Clouded up again, hot slut on the elevator, on the roof stoop, rain all around. Lucky day

dragonboat festival

We went home to eat baazan and watch autoracing. These activities went well. I also squeaked in a solo trip to the round curbs by the house, and quickly had a handful of kids learning how to push on my board while I rested. I learned **********s but only on at curb height. I went for a walk up the mountain and found a series of old style houses that I would love to live in. They're only five minutes scooter ride from the city, but up there, you can only hear birds and the wind in the leaves. Because it's a few hundred meters up, the air is much cleaner. Taiwan is really beautiful if you can get away from the places people actually live. Now it's noon on the last day of hte holiday and Taipei is completely empty. Should be a good afternoon.

perks of teaching

on a couple of days a week, I get paid to have coffee with my friends. yes, this means I'm sleezy and untrustworthy. last year, a couple of them were successful and went off to northern america to find fortune and meaning in baltimore. they're back in town visiting and i met up with in twatutia, which has the trendiest bars in Taipei, and they bought my drinks. afterwards, my current student and i walked back across town to linbeiru and ate a smorgasborg of pig parts on the sidewalk. also, i quit my dayjob today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w43uSMJntgw

Shortest Session Ever

I didn't have much time. I have to meet up with some former students at a bar in Twatutia, but I really wanted to land a ********* today. I went across the street with the monet board. It's a small slate grey park, with three stone steps all around the outside and dangly air root trees all around it. It's just big enough to get one good push in and grind the stairs. It started sprinkling as soon as I got there, but the trees kept the water off the ground for enough tries to land exactly one **********.

tea twee

I suffered through work and went ot the plaza afterwards. sukotto was already there but had homies up with to meet in another area, so he dipped on out shortly. rmj showed up and busted about a dozen new tricks. it's energizing to skate with someone who is in that part of the learning curve. I hope to catch up one day.
it took me three beers to believe i could even skate at all, and somehow, i made it six hours. my new deck has uncircumcised grip tape, because i didnt have a blade. turns out, you just fuck up enough flip tricks, the grip tape comes off on its own accord. the plaza wasnt special, except that it is a mecca of skating, and a rat tried to eat some leftovers someone left there. it was a big rat.
anyway, we went in search of some spot that we didnt find, but the effort took us to a new section of the city. not new for rmj, because he knows the city like a fundamentalist knows the old testament, but it was unexplored for me. we cruised the sidewalks, curbs, kickers and assorted weird spots, for hours. we found (rediscovered) a section of metal flatbars on the backs of bus benches. also, we found the slappy curb of all slappy curbs; a black marble curb taht is barely high enough to grind at all. i love micro spots.
eventually, i got home. the 90 year old homie was on his stoop, drinking tb. i have to work in a couple of hours, so i didnt have to hang out. i just yelled 'good night' and he gave me a wrinkly knuckled peace out as i tore on by down the tiles. he is a quick learner.

skating in the morning is unnatural and immoral

I woke up at six oclock for reasons that I can't fathom. I went skating across the empty but sunny city. It was surreal. It's only a couple of hours after I usually finish skating, but it was an alien experience. I went to the crack ledges, under a bridge in Datong, and up to the wharf. It was already unskateably full of people lounging on the ledges, so I went to the flight path circles. It was a sluggish session, but at least teh rain to the east stayed away. I failed to get any new tricks, but lathered up hte ledges with wax. Then I broke my skateboard on a brilliant *******. It was a good board, for my first homemade one. It was still strong enough to push around on, so I skated all the way back home.

strike two for the bridge

pouring rain so i went to the bridge. it was filled to the brim with people skating, and overflowing with asshats dancing and blocking the spot. i lasted about half an hour before i had a temper tantrum. the less said about the evening the better.

volcom comes to taipei

after work, i went to the bridge and it was like close encounters of hte third kind, with the population density of old hong kong. many friends were there. it was kind of an awesome party. i left almost immediately, because i had chugged as many free beers as fit in my stomach, and actual skating was pretty much imossible. zw showed up, but we couldnt find each other because of the crowd, so we both left and went to meet sukkoto at the banciao spot. this was a good ecision. about 1.5 dozen people came there, and it was an ideal session. the ground is marble, the ledge is very, very long and perfectly smooth marble (some immaculate angel filled in the gaps with some sort of super hard cement and now there arent even the slightest little bumps between secitons. thank you, who ever you are).

i tried filming my friend on a new trick but he never got it. then i skated back across the city, about 15km. on the way, my phone died, and i found the most amazing bank to ledges but there is almost no way to ever find them again. it was at least two hours from home. i mostly didnt get lost. i bought ice cream  and one more beer. i crossed the longest bridge ever. i never slammed, all night. i regret that par.t

pouring rain, so you know what that means

bridge arrival 1.5 hours after work. young homies were there, i acted like a dick, sorry i m antisocial. there were wrapping when i got started. third session in these bircas and i'm finally relearning some tricks. 56 *********s tonight, which is my world record. fruitballers fruitballed all over the spot in the back. rmj and i drank beer all over the rainy sidewalk on the way home. it's still pouring.

stag night

lots of space inbetween.




we went back home for a ccr wedding. we got back after midnight on the next to last train and lzyk insisted that i walk her to our door, even though i already had my skateboard with me. she is a cruel mistress. I started off on curbs and stairs in the area, and flatground at the war memorial park. i'm not sure who the memorial is for, and maybe that's why it's the best one i've been to. the night slowly built momentum, and got a *********** (which of course I can already do) on a new spot (which took a lot of effort and looked hideous. fortunately, no one was was with me).

alone, i skated a metal curb I've been eyeing for a hwile. it's tall for a curb, but not quite tall enoguh to be a ledge. anyway, i got six new things on it, just fuck around varieations, but under pressure of hte security guard from the building 10m away, who came out and watched the whole thing, and blocked me from using the sidewalk infront of his domain. the rest of taipai was mine to claim.

i went north with the intention of skating the yellow flatbar at the temple, eventually, and found the old marble mini hubba that the bulgarian skated with me. turns out, this spot is maybe better tha nthe intenteded destiation for learing the trick. i didnt get it, but i did get a better verisin of everything else I know there. its a japanese spot, compact and forcing slow speed. suited to me because i'm a pussy. i got a variety of new lines there. never let someone tell you that if if they cant see the footage it didnt happen. kcik them in the teeth. none of it ever happened. fools.

anyway, as you can tell, i had a couple of beers. i went to the temple, finally (with a ballsy ollie up a *********** stair on the cruise, which honestly scared the living shit out of me) and

completely failed to get what i came for.

nevermind, i got a better verison of my ** ********** and a much, much longer ** ** on the ledge. I got a couple of more beers and waxed teh entire bottom granite stair by rolling backwards and holding the la on the angle. this spot isnt cursed after all. or maybe i grind better buzzed. i cruised back and bought another round. these new shoes are horrible. the rubber is so old that its like trying to skate with regular shoes, if you waxed all your grip tape.

tonight was good though. it was windy and although i sweated my ass off, it was nothign like as bad as the next 8 months are going to be.

Little skate, lots of sweat

crept to the bridge for an hour. Went through 2l of water. Could have kept going but went home woke up not exhausted for work. Regretted it.

go to yuanshan. skate at the ampitheatre. this is misspelled. so was that, probably. rmj came up there but didnt like the roughness of the spot. it's  a lot of circles with ledges on the edges. you throw down, and roll down a little hill, ollie up a curb, and have a long greazy ledge to do what you want with. it's curved.
anyway, we went to the the square spot, by there, it's stone cubes about knee high. they're rounded, really rounded, but surprisingly fun. Then we skate the slappyu curb because it was there, and then blasted across town to the black stone ledge at the temple, because wm was there. it's a long stone 3 stair, like 200m. there is a black stone horinoontal monolith by there, which was bizarrely hard to grind, but it went alright for the slides. then some other things got skated in the night but i dont really have time to disclose all of that, since it's sunrise in the tropics and its 5am.

People with opinions should shut the fuck up

My favorite concert was a free show. It was Mother's Day and Jw got on stage and started ranting about mothers and how people talk to them, and he insisted that the first thing we do when we got home was call our mother and tell her you love her. Then there was a lot of feedback and they made some noise. It was good. 

We got back highbei city and I couldn't skate, but I went out for a walk anyway. I called my mother but she didn't answer. I called my grandfather but he didn't answer either. I called my sister and she msgd back "board game." 

I went for a beer walk, first for a month, and found a trio of skateboard players under the bridge learning how to Ollie. The moon hangs dirty and yellow in the sky, which is thick with filth. I can see one star, that I think is Jupiter. I played kalabash criminel and wandered down the road until I got lazy and stopped at a bus stop bench. Traffic is going by so fast that the whole shelter shivers with the change in air pressure, mostly from taxis. There are no laws whatsoever about speeding in Taiwan. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there is no word for going too fast. I'm waiting on the Ferrari / lambo pair that race through my neighborhood at 2am so I can pelt them with my empty. 

The flash of hate passes with the brutality of a taxi and now I'm pretty sure I would even pebble their windshield as they went by. Maybe it's because I changed over to burial. A song called fostercare. 

Watched some internet video clips of skating. Fuck, there is a reason we don't do this sober. It's fucking garbage. Skating happens when it happens. If you film that shit, you're a creep, even if you make money off it. But if you don't, you're a fucking pervert. Scumbags are all around. When you skate, let it happen. If you see someone filming, go up and focus their camera. Unless it's a still film camera. Still photos, of frozen time, don't warrant violent drunken smashing because they are so primitive that they're cool. They aren't some digital cumswap that tries to make you feel like you were part of the session. Real film is a statement of aggression to the viewer, that they weren't there, and they missed it, and they need to skate better, or else. I'm not sure about how this makes me feel about film video (looking at you polar) but I'll have another tb and let you know.

Ok film video is less worse than digital. The truth is, very few things deserve to be filmed in skating. Fewer things than ever before. But more and more footage is dribbling onto the Internet. I could take my own advice, which is, if something on the internet pisses you off, the. Ignore it, but complaining is more self aggrandising. Also, there is an honest, troll-less thing to say here: stop fucking filming too much. Film the street, not the skatepark where someone did the same trick 20 years ago. If it isn't unique, don't film it, you dickhead. 

I wish it cost $1 to film every attempt. 

I traveled 300 km to skate curbs all day and it was awesome

This was my first 33 degree skate day, without much shade. Last night we dashed to 彰化 for the weekend to hang out with the family andfor her to do some shopping. I woke up late and had an elaborate lunch. The forecast said 80% thunderstorms all afternoon, so I just went to the round curbs, because it's right outside the front door. I learned a few new slappy things and eventually made the trek up the hill, since the sky stayed clear of rain. It didn't stay clear of pm2.5, but that's Taiwan. Noone was skating at the DIY spot, so all the ramps and rails and so on were chained up. So I went to the grey curbs and kept skating curbs. The spot is a 300m long pair of painted curbs with plastic coping on the corner. I've been progressively waxing the length of them for years. Today was a good day for waxing, and this activity drew a crowd. Nothing attracts people in Taiwan like other people, so pretty soon I had families semi-hostile faces glaring at me. It was a chorus of hocking and spitting (I'm guessing the pollution encourages that here, since I'm pretty sure they weren't chinese tourists). They liked ** *********, and ** **s, and especially *********s, and broke their angry blank expressions to cheer when I landed any of those, but they didn't seem to care about me landing my first ***** ******* ** **********. Oh well. Then I bombed the hill back home, but I left early, so traffic was a lot heavier than anticipated, and at one moment, I tried to run it out, like a coward. This isn't usually advisable. Now my knee hurts. Fuck it. Time for yakitori.

another day, another day session at the bridge

Because of the rainy forecast, I went to the bridge. The rain never showed up. The dayshift crew did. One has a baby in a stroller that watches ** ******s, and another has a very outgoing three year old who is now my closest friend at the bridge. He can't understand that I can't understand what he is saying, which makes for hilarious situations, but when I can understand, we talk about the names of skateboard parts, colors, numbers, and loud cars. He's a pretty awesome teacher. I've had worse.

His dad and friends set up the flatbars in a sketchy kink. I was happy that someone was doing something a little bit creative under the bridge. I didn't try it. Those shits slide out unexpectedly. The day got dark, the lights came on, the rain never came, and I cruised home to tacotaco and brought back burritos and quesidillas, like a good hunter-gatherer.

rainy season

It's the rainy season so every session has to be within five minutes of a bridge or you risk getting torrentially soaked and not skating at all. It's claustrophobic.

I forgot every trick I learned in the last two years

Sukkottosan invited me to try again a couple of days later, and the results were only marginally better. One of the guys my age brought his three year old son, so I practiced my chinese with him. He's way better at colors than me, but I'm pretty good at counting. I stacked up some water bottles and practiced ** *****s and was doing about as well as regular ones.  I went out cruising on my own afterwards, but without much confidence in any tricks.

iron legs

I got invited to meet up at teh bridge for a street skate but after an hour of skating around trying to warm, I just gave up. to make things worse, every trick vanished when I put on new shoes. I thought I had outgrown that.