002 Who Am I or, Who I Am? Part One: The Seed (1) (page 2) (3)
 So one day at a friend's house, we're really getting into a game & I noticed that I had to get home soon. Not only because it was about to get dark; but because it was also about to rain & I wasn't prepared. My friend looked down at the skateboard on his floor & told me that I could ride it home if I wanted too. Now keep this in mind, I had never in my life at that point ever rode a skateboard, nor had I personally seen one until then, but we both came to the conclusion that it, was better than walking. As I said earlier; I knew of things in California & I had heard or seen a skateboard before, but actually skateboarding had never crossed my mind for a second until at that very moment. I grabbed that skateboard & pushed it as best as I could until I got it home. I don't recall getting wet, but I do recall arriving home with it & being glad that I had used it, instead of walking, or running home. I rode bikes plenty, but I thought skateboarding is way cooler & my love affair for it from that incident was born. When I went to return the skateboard back to my friend he told me that, "Keep it, I don't really use it." Ever since then I guess I've kept skateboarding to the heart. Writing this & reflecting on all of these beginnings, I also realize how the skateboard alone, helped me greatly expand my friendship circle here. It really isn't that simple to tell a span of decades in as few pages as possible. While my introduction to skateboarding was around 10 years old. My full comprehension of what skateboarding really was all about wasn't there & wouldn't be there, until years later.  The rules of the house, were that I was allowed to skate in the apartment complex parking lot of where we lived, along with the other neighborhood kids who had skateboards as well. My baby sister would cry all the time & all I wanted out to do was get out of the house & the skateboard was an easy release. I didn't know much about this thing, I just knew I wanted to go fast on it & I knew you could make it "jump," somehow. An older guy that lived in the apartment complex named Johnny Mitchell, was more aware of what real skateboarding was. So he would come out & talk to us & show us some things he could do. So that's where the whole ideology of tricks came into my perception. Even the kickflip was "technical" to him & he wasn't too consistent with pulling it, he still however, showed us that it was possible. We would zip around the parking lot, trying to grind the curbs, or do 180's & pivots, power slides, varials, the 80's street skating basics; basically. We eventually evolved into nailing the pvc pipe to the 4 foot block of lumber, emulating the boardslides we saw in the skate videos. We built launch ramps & took photos of us going off of them with disposable cameras. I met other skaters from other sides of town from school & from out of town. Lance, was the only guy I knew back then who skated vert & lived on the Southside of town, ( & who also showed me what "green" weed was, remember it was the 90's). I also met guys selling gear out of their cars. (1) (page 2) (3)

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