skate journal: northGLENn park with a good crew and a million not so good dudes (July 26, 2012)
This was a reminder why I normally avoid skateparks in the summer. It was packed. But it wasn’t that packed with actual skaters. There was at least a dozen kids on scooters, bikers, ICP worshippers, gang bangers, dogs, lurkers, people trying to bum cancer sticks, drunk dudes calling me newby and saying nothing in this world is better than beer except for pussy, and the list goes on. Well, with that said on to the skating. The crew was pretty awesome. Carleigh, Jack, Connor, Fuzz and John. Carleigh and I skated the bowl for a little bit and got the legs going. After that I kind of just tried to hide out in corners and dork around doing dumb stuff. I think I killed about an hour doing that. The ledge area up to cleared out and I joined Jack for a flat bar/ledge session. It’s kind of weird northGLENn is the park I associate most with my arthritis pain as I tried to skate there when I shouldn’t have been skating at all. So there are so many things I haven’t even tried there and have to overcome my silly mental blocks. Basically I’m just making excuses for sucking. Jack was trying back bluntslide 270 out on the flat bar at the top (seen here in picture 15 look at Derek in picture 15 yes!) and I’ve wanted to boardslide it forever. It took us both several tries but we got them. Jack’s trick being ridiculous of course. I boardslid it a few times and was hyped. It’s not a big rail by any means, but it’s the biggest I’ve done since the arthritis ordeal. Jack also did boardslide 270 shove and crooks on the following ledge. He told me to do boardslide the rail, crooks the ledge so I did it first try. Although the crooks was about 1 inch long. I blame the big trucks. I messed around for awhile again, not sure what was happening. I ollied the little part of the step up poorly, but first try. Bailed the kicker flat gap. Lost horribly in a game of SKATE with Connor and Jack then ended up back at the bowl with John and Fuzz. Both were ripping it. John had feeble grinds. Fuzz had a run with a ton of tricks including a fakie rock in the deep end that impressed me quite a bit. I didn’t bail axle stalls and I got tile in the deep end. I might have even scratched a little frontside slash in the shallow. Pretty fun. Some weirdness happened after that and I ended up soloing it trying noseslide 270 shoves (not close), b/s flips on a mellow bank and treflips on flat. I got about 5 treflips before the lights shut off. Happy to have landed tres on the big board and they felt fine. Kind of a weird skatepark night, but it was fun.