A hesitant but happy return

I had to say goodbye to some people I really care about today, not in the death way, just in teh parting ways way, and it sucked. After work, I went home and skated for the first time in maybe two weeks or so. I definitely know how I hurt my neck. **-**s on curbs that arent sliding yet. I tried it once tonight and it hurt like blazes.

RMJ and special guest JA met up with me at linsen park, which is mostly flatground but has a few tall but short stone benches. We skated those until the heat was unbearable and I downed 2.5l of water in half an hour. Since we were in the area and JA had never been there, we crossed teh street to regent plaza. It's got a waist high drop and some ledges, including miraculously black and invicible ones that no matter hard they get skated, they never so much as dent, much less chip. This must be the hardest stone in the world. Someone made a giant monopoly board out of hte middle of the plaza, and twice I could have sworn that I heard someone shouting at me from nearby. Maybe I hallucinated it, maybe not, but security came out with flashlights to tell us please not to skate on the monopoly board. It's probably the best interaction I've ever had with security. We complied and stuck to skating the ledges. It suddenly dropped about ten degrees to 27 C and I smelled rain on the way. We went north to the teeny marble atm hubba, where rmj ****ed it, among other stunts. I was pleased to get my longest ** ******** there, and on my first day back from injury. There are some stone steps there, and attempting to grind them is how I know how I fucked up my neck .... We went around the corner to the temple spot, more curbs and a stone box, and cruised back with beers and chats til we got to my house.

We sampled several stoops around the area nad absorbed the soulful nutrition that Taipei has to offer after midnight. There were a lot of cockroaches out tonight.

Deft scam avoidance

I can't skate from neck pain, and I'm fat, so I've been running. Not much, but I ran yesterday, and at the end of it, a skinhead chigwai laowai with blood on his face crossed the sidewalk and gave me a bad feeling. He explained he had just been mugged on the MRT and needed $100. It's maybe the second or third time anyone's ever tried to scam since I came here. I suggested that he visit the police, since any mugging in broad daylight on the MRT would almost certainly make national news here. He made a weird face and went off to find other victims. Foreigners are weird.

A strange and creepy place

North of Taipei is a place where the devil comes out of the ground. RMJ and I walked up there and found a valley of boulders, cemented together, with a big metal gate of words that I could kind of read but not make heads or tails of. It was a hairpin turn road, going up to the top of a mountain, with ponds and staircases giong into the mountain's heart here and there. There were little fish ponds and artificial islands, on the sort of steep slope farmers were tending rice terraces nearby. This was a big place, and took a lot of effort to make. It had fake cement rails everywhere, sculpted to look a little bit like logs. There were spots of ripped and torn rebar and concrete, like at one time it had been a massive bunker for a mad scientist, high high up on the hillside. As we walked up, we noticed more and more staircases into the mountain, and suddenly rmj pointed out the weirdest part of all; if we turned around, we could see the expanse of filthy majestic Taipei below us, all the way out to mitsukoshi and more, and the cicadas were deafening, and this place was peaceful, but it was totally empty. Emptiness is creepy when you can look at a valley filled to the brim with millions of people. 

We looked around for a minute and a man scooted down some of the hairpins from out of nowhere, cigarette in mouth, awkwardly sized pants tucked into big black rubber boots, and weird purple shirt tucked into the pants. He gave the universal sign for "stop" and pointed down the hill, with a plastic grin. We curteously accepted his invitation to leave. Later, we noticed his overlords looking down on us for various terraces hundreds of feet above. Even that far away, I could feel their eyes stare into me.

We took a picture of the metal gate, as evidence to try and solve this mystery, and the scooter man rode over and closed the gate. 

linsen bei traditional pain therapy

I couldnt skate for a week because my neck is rurnt. I took a nap this evening and woke up wired, so I went to linsen bei. The pig parts were fresh. I had stomach (spicy), heart (always eat the heart of any animal, can't go wrong) and liver (like meat pudding, because this dude gets liver pudding so fresh it's like liver milkshake. I will never eat pig liver anywhere else. Crunchy liver sucks).
I have a couple of tbs adn crossed teh flooding waters of taxis, black/white german shit cars, and whores. I wobbled up to the not-exactly-best yakitori on the stip, but definitely the friendliest, and ordered more calories.
before i left, i told lzyk 'im giong to eat ocra,' which is apparently almost exactly the same as saying 'i'm going to go have an affair.' mandarin is a tricky language.
anyway, the homie at the yakitori remembered me and made a big scene on my arrival; we shouted and clanked beers and i explained to him im drinking a japanese beer and he explained to me something i couldnt understand, and his little brother served the metal tables with plastic stools and blasted not half bad house music from his cell phone via some speakers (the music paused evertime he got a line message). The Dude was wearing a cutoff shirt with a drug reference about kenting, and super traditional psychedelic taiwanese baggy silk pants, with the ubiquitous blue taike flip flops. Also, he has a long on top, short everwhere else haircut, with sweatband, and elbow length gangster tattoos. I hope to look just like him, one day.
WHile I ate the grilled food and chatted with the king of linsen bei (he spent a lot of time going from folding table to folding table, toasting us and shouting and laughing and making sure everyone was happy), I watch the popos frisk somebody, and go through his everything but crotch, then let him go. so word on the street is, if you have contraband, hide it in the groin area, because taipei five doesnt check there.
earlier this week, i went to accupuncture for my neck ,adn it was like getting hit on the hand with a hammer, full force. my neck doesnt hurt so bad now though. i m not sure about the correlation.
i lied to the king of linen bei and said my wife was insisting that i go home, and i went home. i have to work in a few hours. i have no regrets.

I'm not divorced from the bridge, but seeing other spots has been going well

I wasn't going to skate, but ss invited me to 板橋. I dragged myself out to the train and rode over. It had been storming all day. The spot was still half wet on arrival, and two dozen people were trying ot skate it. It's got to be one of the most heavily skated spots in Taiwan. For the time I was there, there wasn't a split second that someone wasn't rolling up to it. Under the bridge, this kind of crowding would mean hurt feelings and wadded panties, because someone frequently has to wait their turn to avoid collision. but this crew is devoid of douches, so there was only encouragement from the skaters as they abandoned their own run, turning to look over their shoulders to see what their friends could make, because of their own small sacrifice. it was also hot and humid as balls. zw was there, and some others i sort of know by sight. so were two snails, the size of children's fists. they wandered across the marble, doing snail things. my favorite moment of the chaos was when one of the homies climbed up high to film the session; session footage is what i want to watch, from skatespots around teh world. when i want to watch skatevideos now, it's mostly 'session from sofia, 7/4/2013' kind of things. i went home early, and regretted it, so i got off of the train a few stations away and skated the rest of the way.

A lesser session

A typhoon is nearby. near enough to make it storm everyday. because i had old man syndrome, i couldn't ollie, but i wanted to skate, and it was wet everywhere, so i went up to the dog piss curbs on zhongshan. they are low granite curbs that i've been slowly waxing for a bit. they are about 2.4 % waxed. they grind the right spots, if you know where to look (directly under the lights). rmj was good enough to meet me there, and we went for a couple of hours. he won the Medal for Creativity in Spot Modification Award, by finding and then stacking a tall tall cement curbing peice on the edge of the granite curb, and proceeded to skate its rain-slime off with a variety of curb tango style variations. I didn't do a single trick worth mentioning but at least I skated.

Banking on the Value of Street Art in Taipei

The day started off with a positive. RMJ had been walking around the city last night, and found a sketch of a dog on the sidewalk. It looked awesome in the pic, but even cooler in person. More on that later.

I met up with MW at the telecom ledges. They were sticky because of the humidity, and because they aren't really broken in yet, and have some sort of noneuclidean geometry, where the edge of the ledge is somehow sharper than 90 degrees and slices up wood and metal. Hvnsdmn soon arrived and sliced up his trucks and deck with what were undoubtedly the longest ******s ever done there. MW *********** them, a few times, and I eventually got some weaker things but inbetween, RMJ skated up and  ********** them. It's a cool spot because the bricks are so well laid that although you get the sound of riding over bricks, you really get almost no vibration. Taiwanese craftsmanship at its best. The worst you can say is they could have put in a little bit better lighting - since the ledges are black, one of the pair is hard to see in the shadows. After a couple of hours, we headed up to the MRT so MW could get home. Someone had walked through a shin-deep fountain and aparrently into the bushes or up a wall. It wasn't creepy, because it wasn't ghost month.

There are some topnotch banks there on the way to the MRT, but security was already in the process of shutting us down before everyone had even done a kickturn. He sulked about it with crossed arms for a bit, and the remaining trio decided to head over to main station.

We hadn't factored in the time in between trains that late at night, so when we finally showed up, the spot had become a hobo hotel, and there was no vacancy left for the night. We crossed the street to a classic bank spot; rough grey and red tile floor with waist high pink marble bank. A couple of weeks ago, the city thoughtfully put in two marble benches on the way up to the bank. They were at once too close together and too far apart for any of us to do anything on both, but it's not a bad line to hit the bench, then the bank, then roll back down for the bench again. Hvnsdmn certainly would have, had he not been 8 hours into the session at that point (he had already had a full day by the time he came over to the telecom ledges to meet us. The dude is skate crazy). We talked for a while after the skating ended. He entertained RMJ and I with Taipei skate stories, mostly just of the main station spots. Legend. Hope to skate together again soon.

RMJ and I beered up on the short walk home. As we got near his place, he mentioned that we were near the place where he had found the dog sketch, and suggested we walk by. Alleys in Taipei are always awesome for me, because they are intensely foreign, if for no other reason. This one was pretty unremarkable, just another friendly single lane of birdcage windows and grey concrete and clothes hanging from the birdcage windows. I had never been down it before, even though it's right beside the house, but that's not really surprising, because residential areas in Taiwan are denser than anthills, and it's hard find all the nooks and crannies.

During a pause in the conversation, we walked into a psychedelic experience. It's really hard to say what it was that first seemed "off," but something was definitely wrong. I think we both could feel it. I can't remember if anyone said anything or not, but at the very least, I though, these black and white security cam photos look out of place. There were some crappy paintings and prints stacked against the wall by the trash, so I kind of thought that it was an advert for an art show. There were seven of them, mostly black, with a lot of colored and randomly capitalized writing. We stared for a bit (only one beer in, I swear) and for some reason, my mind just couldn't understand what I was looking at.

It was a man, looking like a mix of a werewolf and a vampire and a art thief, on the same corner that we were standing on at that moment. I keep thinking, this looks like a wanted poster. And I kept thinking, that art thief looks like my friend. Finally, after an amount of time could have seconds or could have been minutes, I realized it was him. At last, I had achieved one of my greatest goals in life: I had become friends with a real art thief. Albeit, one who "stole" the art from a pile of trash in a back alley, where it had been rained on for god knows how long (after we returned it, he told me he had spent 90 minutes cleaning the mold off of it).

Now that RMJ hasn't "[had] the police kicked in he door (sic)" and has "returned the valuable peice of art by **/**/*****," I feel more confused and entertained than afraid of police retribution.  The weirdness of this event cannot be overstated. Maybe I will return with a mask on and steal it a second time. Maybe I will cut out a giant cardboard dick and leave it on their pile of garbage. Maybe I will make a sketch of my own and leave it there. I feel so inspired.

accidentally awesome night

i bought some nightmarket counterfeit thrasher shirts, and delivered one to zw in banciao tonight. we all went at the ledge with a little more effort than I usually put into life, and I was rewarded with a couple of longer, better versions of tricks ik now, and those dudes landing new things I didnt know they could do. a couple of bridge trolls left that spot to meet up and skate at b'ciao, (they are the opposite of bridge trolls, it's why I mentino it, as a hoke, ahah yes ) anwyya; my 2 hour planned sesison became four, adn then six, and then i went linsen bei and had pig parts and grilled things and lots of beers and turned down many cigarettes. it's hard to not smoek here. then I home felt like a cool down session at the three stair park, which went well, so i felt like grabbing a couple of beers and hit the bridge in the dark alone. this wasn't really productive, and I've betrayed this deck by skatoing there, but at least no one saw it.

Don't check your phone til you get home

Pushed alone north. All the way to the river. Then all the way to the granite benches. People were sitting all up on them, but not on the best one. However, its' light was off. I skated it in the dark. It seemed lower than ever, like it had shrunk over the winter. The heat was at maximum sweat, but even when the city proper is stewing without a breeze, this spot has a puff of wind. It got me through. I brought a 2L of frozen water. It melted in 90 minutes. The spot was hard to get used to again. It's on a slight downhill slope, so one direction is noticably more difficult than the other. It's hard to skate alone for long. There are no breaks, so you get tired quickly, and in this case, your pants rip apart on the ass seem.

I was out of water anyway, so I rolled home. I foudn linsen bei by instinct and found the pig parts dude. His stall is the best roadside food in Taiwan. It's every part of a pig that you can't buy in America. Actual freedom is awesome. However, he wasn't open yet, even though it was almost midnight, so I drank a beer and watched a fistfight. Then I watched the cops enforce. Finally, homeboy turned on the lights of his stall, and I ate pig heart with ginger, and pig liver, also with ginger.

Linsen bei is like an outdoor strip club with a road of frantic traffic going down the middle of it. Also, on the sidewalks, you can buy cheap beer and the best pig parts ever. Also also, as I waded into the maelstorm of sluts and drunk dudes and fried foods, some japanese guys shouted at me about "sukeito." I doubled back upstream, and they gave me some shrimp and some beers.

I rolled home across the little middle of the city, and got a couple of park beers. Then I checked my phone. Then I saw a stranger had asked me question about John, who died about a decade ago. It's why I quite skating for good, back then, or so I thought. Suddenly, I was sober, and still am. I haven't gotten past that. I wish he could see this city.

my new favorite curb

My cough of death is back and I have to work early in the morning, so I nearly cancelled the skate session. Ultimately, sitting around teh house watching videos while lzyk plays her balloon game on her phone sounded boring enough that I risked my health and met up with rmj at the little three stair park. Within 20 tricks, or at least attempts at tricks, I was pouring sweat. The air was as still as a tomb, and the humidity was turned up to maximum. Last I checked, it wasn't really that hot though, but the combination made it almost unbearable. It's a hard spot to skate; the stairs aren't waxed enough to grind well yet (for a year, I was worried about making enemies with my neighbors, but now I don't care) and there are big 3ft by 3ft slabs of granite, set unevenly. Some are flush, others have big gaps. It takes a little local knowledge to keep from eating shit just pushing around. Also, the ground is engraved in some places with things I haven't taken the time to read (my reading is less accurate than google translate if you have to write the characters yourself). It's the new warm up spot, because it's outside the front door. It leaves a few things to be desired.

We cruised a couple of blocks east to a micro spot. It had a long, curb high manny pad, which I spend the most time on, with a kicker going the other way. It also had the ubiquitous marble curbs, but the kind we would usually ignore, since the bottom surface is grey square clackity tile. This time we got mesmerized by the spot and kept going about 45 minutes.

Somewhere nearby, we ducked in a sidealley and rmj found a pair of curbed pink marble ledges, which he *********** in short order. Unbelievable, no one kicked us out, or even turned on their lights.

We pushed further east and made it to what might be my favorite stairs/curb spot. Each stair is capped with super strong bronze and slide like no tomorrow. The challenging bit is there is a brick wall on either end, so you don't have much time to fuck around in the middle. The metal cap doesn't dent, even though it's a sharp angle, so it's easy to lock in and offers so little friction that a **-** feels like just rolling on top of the ledge. The crowning glory was the accessibility of lots of empty bicycle holding racks on the sidewalk, which can be **** ******, and rmj did it both up and down. While we were skating the spot, a lot of scooters stopped at teh red light right beside us. They starred silently, mostly, but one of them cheered and clapped when I failed to land a ************ and rmj tried and missed a **** ***. At least he eventually got his. I want to find out where to buy that bronze stair coping, it's the best grind I've ever felt.

I was about to insist we turn around because I could feel myself getting sicker but we were already right across from the arena. It's a super modern spot with lots of ground lights and various species of stone and black marble ledges taht go from the ground to about waist height. The last time I was there, they were sliding pretty good, but this time, they wouldn't grind at all. I think some vandals cleaned the wax off of them. Normally, I would repair the damage, but I was so tired I insisted we turn back. Sorry rmj.

On the back side of the arena is the only hill in taipei. He bombed it.

On the way back, some drunks at one of the late night restaurants stopped us to let us know how good looking and cool we are. I had already gone by, and I mistakenly thought they were giving rmj shit for skating by their store entrance (which means through their customers' tables) but it turned out they just really wanted to let us know we are foreigners. I think they were pretty drunk. Much love.

We ended the night with our own beers at the three stair park. I came home and threw another day's filthy skate clothes in the washing machine, on top of the last ones. The smell was so bad that I decided it all had to be washed. This was a mistake. Lzyk was downstairs screaming at me for waking her up faster than hornets attacking when you throw rocks at their nest. Sorry Lzyk, I honestly thought you'd rather have to listen to clothes being washed than smell clothes being dirty. It smells like wild animals are bivouacing in my living room.

Tech conference

Dog piss curbs. More like taxi piss. Hard and fast 120 min. Every 180 to grind I can think if. Rmj and too many beers. Hangover from hell. Work, then linsenbei for yakitori with gangsters. 

Woke up, Lzyk was put off, went to dig piss curbs nd they're fucking wet . Grey granite, hard to get started, grinds long and loud once they're broken in. 

Elementary school unlike curbs. Only dry spot in Taipei. Rivers up 6m. This curb only grinds two boards. Hectic traffic, especially with the rain. Soaked to asshole. 

Tropical storm gonna rain for 4 more more days. City is flooded. 

Tech week. Every trick is a curb trick

Edit : skated home on the shinty wet streets I. Some murder taxi traffic. I'm glad I'm getting a new set up shortly. It saved some time on the way home.