Skate or Die!

On our family bike rides we pass a backyard swimming pool. The pool looks as if it isn't being taken care of. It is full of murky water. Every time I pass the backyard pool I stare at it, intently.

I didn't even remember why until the other day, when I was reading a New York Times article about skateboarding and foreclosures. It wasn't about what you're thinking. People losing everything, even their cars, and resorting to skateboards for transportation, like I did in high school when I lost my driver's license.

No. The article told the story of the skateboarding field day skaters are having skating pools of foreclosed homes. One skater in particular felt he was doing the community a service of finding abandoned houses with stagnant pool water then draining and cleaning the pools. He even traveled with a pump to drain the pool.

Skaters for Mosquito Abatement. That would be all skaters.

Oh, and the article mentions the skaters even have rules: never go inside the house, pack your trash and no graffiti. Hmmmmm? I wonder how the pool tile is holding up to the skaters grinding trucks? Oh well, no one is perfect.

Anyways, after reading that article I remembered why I was so fixated on the pool every time I passed it. It was the skater in me.

Though I don't skate very much, anymore, I will forever look at a pool with skater vision. How are the transitions? Is the pool empty? Will the pool be empty soon?

Back in the days when I skated daily, I was always on the hunt for empty pools, incessantly scanning visible roadside swimming pools for emptiness. I can only recall ever finding one, though.

The empty pool was located at a hotel behind a Denny's. We skated that pool for months. It was far enough from both establishments that two skaters, if quiet enough, and we were, never attracted any attention.

It was very uncommon for skaters to go unnoticed, twenty years ago. Skaters are loud and tend to destroy property, inadvertently, but destruction is destruction. As a result, people were in the habit of not liking skaters.

This abject societal rejection tended to cause skaters to band together as a group of "rebellious social misfits,", with the motto being "skate or die." Yes, in those days skaters were core.

And I fit right in. Well, maybe not the "core" part.

Skaters were a band of rebels always searching for places to skate legally and back in those days there were few skate parks. Therefore, there were few places to skate legally.

But that didn't stop skaters from having contests. Or jam sessions. Weekends often meant empty business parks and empty parking lots which fell host to contests organized by the skaters themselves.

There weren't any legal skate parks in my hometown, but I was lucky enough to skate Del Mar Skate Ranch in the summer of 1986. The Del Mar skate park was located in Northern San Diego, WAS being the keyword here.

I had my first experience with skating transitions (pools and banks) at Del Mar, basically learning to carve pools there. Del Mar was also the home of many pro skaters including Mr. Tony Hawk. Although I did watch the Birdman skate a bit, I was more obsessed with figuring out the bowls, which were mostly empty.

All the good skaters were busy skating the main bowl known as the "keyhole," leaving nearly all of the enormous lonely skate park, to me.

Sadly, they buried Del Mar Skate Ranch in 1987. Basically, the year after I skated it. A lot of skate parks were buried alive due to the decline in popularity of skateboarding in the late 80s and liability. And even if there were skaters it wasn't like they had money falling out of their pockets.

The lack of skate parks lead to the rise of today's dominant street skating, skateboarding tricks performed on street terrain.

Although today skate parks have made a resurgence. I live a few short minutes from from one skate park. But it's no Del Mar. Not even close. And the pool's transitions are tight and fast. There is a banked section that is kind of fun and carvable and gives one the feeling of riding a wave.

And there is the reason why I have mostly let the skater in me die. Riding waves. Standing up, riding on water. Being in the ocean with the dolphins, sea otters, sea birds and harbor seals. Versus being chased out of a concrete parking garage by some angry business owner.

Falling on water, versus slamming on concrete, scarring my tender skin.

Paddling around in salt water, versus skating with a concoction of sweat, dirt, and blood stuck to my skin.

Many great surfers are great skaters, but I was never very good at skating. And in over 20 years plenty has changed with skating. Regular kids on the street, some of them anyways, are as good as the professional street skaters 20 years ago.

I learned to ollie, thanks to the patience of Christian Hosoi during a skate session at Venice Beach, CA, but it took me months and months to learn. One of the great things about skating back then is it was common to session with the pros of that day, particularly in Southern California.

It would be like golfing with Tiger Woods or playing ball with Derek Jeter. It was cool, even if skating with them highlighted my horribleness at skateboarding. They were really good and I was really bad.

The problem with my skating was I was never willing to take much risk with skateboarding. In skateboarding, the stakes are high; broken arms, sprained ankles and brain damage.

I didn't quit skateboarding straightaway. It just sort of petered away like a friend you lose touch with over the years, but love forever.

And I credit my surfing ability to skating. Though I wasn't flying through the air on my skateboard I spent hours on my mini half pipe slashing, rock and rolling, board sliding and grinding the coping which are similar to off the lips and floaters in surfing.

And I only enjoy riding surfboards that have that skatey feeling. Loose and fast. So maybe the skater in me is alive, but she's carving on water instead of concrete.