One of my favorite shots for my L.A. story.
Walking into the Arbor store right before the Venice Pier as a skatehead is tantamount to plopping a six year old kid in a candy store. My predilection is for a bamboo deck and Swiss Bones bearings. Longboard naturally. I argue in “The Grit and Glam of Dogtown” that the invention of the urethane wheel changed the course and fortunes of Venice Beach. Every year in Ottawa I await the street sweepers to pick up the last of winter’s gravel to hit my neighborhood roads.
My daughter’s favorite morning moment used to be sitting in front of my Sector 9 while we skated to the school bus stop. My sons are particularly good at boarding as it’s their only mode of transportation in LA, so when they were here for over a year they used my beauty to get to and fro ..the trucks were loosened to their taste and rusted with rain. I stopped using her and this picture gives me a pang.
This is the first summer I didn’t hop on to go somewhere, anywhere. Makes me feel old and sad. It’s autumn now and the moist leaves are dangerously slippery. Excuses excuses. Sounds manageable with a little excursion and targeted retail therapy to our very own Skate shop in O-Town: Top of The World? I hear you whispering my name.