an advertisemtn for vans shoes

sc and i hadnt met up since at least a few months ago, and maybe longer than that. he lives near the 板橋 ledge, so we met up by there. it's a winter wonderland of flashing christmas tree lights and all sorts of amusement park nonsense right now, and the spot is pretty much unskateable due to human terrain until well after 10pm. maybe that's why it was empty when I got there. well, i mean, it was overflowing with people standing around holding clear balloons with blinking christmas tree lights on them (trend of the year) but no one was skating. and no one else did. it was just me and him the whole time. it was exhausting, never having to wait for other people to skate. it's just one long long beautiful pink marble stripper of a ledge (with higher stairs for those who pop). some might say, it's the best ledge in the world. 

we played skate and i lost. we skated the ledge until we couldn't. i kept an eye on the time to make sure i didn't miss the train, and that meant we didn't have time for beers, which sucked, because since we skated so much, we didn't really have time to catch up. i went in the station, and waited on the platform. i got bored. i read some bullshit on my phone, and somewhere around this point is where the story of the night really gets started. a man shouted at me from way down the platform. i ignored him, so we walked all the way down and unnecessarily got in my face, but i guess that's how these shouters are. turns out, he had been shouting that there wasnt another train. i thanked him for shouting, and left the station. i had been waiting for about half an hour. 

normally, this wouldn't be so terrible. I've been caught out after the trains stop running plenty of times. but 板橋 is on the blue line, across the river from home; a jewel of a skatespot in the middle of a barren wasteland called New Taipei City. 

Turns out, that's not entirely true, because I skated past at least a dozen spots on the way back, but I didn't mark them for fear of killing my battery. I know better than to trust my directional sense in taipei. i trusted google to get me to a bridge, and those assholes sent me to one without a pedestrian ladder. so i gambled on going south, because that seemed counterintuitive adn that's how the night had been going.

it worked. sort of. by this time, the city was completely empty, maybe because it was about 12 degrees. terribly cold for scooting, but perfect for pushing across the city. I cruised across the red bridge, which has these yellow and black banks all along it. Then I went down into the cesspit hood on the other side. I had enough change to get a tb, but i couldnt find a seven to save my life. the sidewalks were double parked with scooters, so i had to push down the extra rough road. it was so rough that i gave up. there was no way to take two consecutive pushes. 

eventually, the double parked scooters stopped, and i had a covered tile sidewalk to skate. my battery held out til i got to the 22/8 park, where i decided not to get gay raped, and went around. this put me in the area around the government complex. it looked like jerusalem. concertina wire was everywhere, and weird militant police trucks were cruising up down otherwise completely empty streets. neon clad officers smoked and chatted on every corner. it was eerie. I may have had a beer in hand at this point, but since the twelve lane road was completely empty, like pyongyang, i didnt think i was taking much of a risk by skating with it. 

around this point, i started to be really proud of my kenyan heritage. i just kept going, like a metronome of skating. the whole skate was more than 10 km. i started to get giddy when i passed some spots i know. i started popping ollies over this and that, up and down, across the yellow lines at the middle of the street, finished the beer and had another. i took a photo of the endless concertina wire and neon police thugs. the beer and the photos were mistakes. this is foreshadowing. 

i saw a line of neon thugs up ahead, about two blocks away, and since police routinely murder people in my home country, i thought it would be safest to take a sudden right and be on my merry way. i was being paranoid. about a block later, whistles started blowing, and yellow neon jackets poured out of the alley as i skated by. i kept skating, and didn't look back, but they were close enough that i could hear their bootheels hitting the asphalt. the whistles were very loud, and they kept blowing them.

to paraphrase churchill, there is not more exhilerating sensation than to be chased without result. i kept pretending they weren't there, adn they kept running. 

since i was back in my known world area, i ducked down one alley, and then another, and then another. i zigzagged back towards home, and once confident i had lost them, i ducked into seven and bought a beer (yes, i realized at this point taht i had probably had enough change to get most of the way home via taxi. but fuck those guys, i refuse to even offer them my change). 

in known waters, i found home easily. actually, i stopped off at the three stair park, and skated it. my legs were cramping up, but i still got a *********. My new vow is to ********* there at least once everyday. or at least the days i skate. while i was skating there, someone in a red and white robe outfit filmed me from behind a tree. it was extremely creepy, but i had my wallet and phone and keys in my pockets already. skaters wear cargo pants for a reason. i landed the trick and looked up and creepo was already vanished. 

i had put on my new shoes because of the 01% possibility of having to push home. it was worth it. i refuse to recommend a product, but if you're buying vans, dont go for the no name shit. these are cabbalerials and they were as good as any shoe i've worn.