Belonging

Stayed up late on Friday night on account of our pal George Cutright had a photo show. A lovely occasion! It was a warm night, and everyone rode bikes. There was much wine and beer drunk, and thus plenty of drunk talk. Also? A basketball kept bouncing perilously inside through the open roll-up door, finding unsuspecting heads to hit and beer cups to tip over.

Now, George's show: a collection of half-frame pictures of "people and the skateboards they belong too." What he did was he took out his camera (read: not phone) and pressed down on the shutter button once while pointing at a person, and then again while pointing at their skateboard. He then went into the dark room (remember those?!) and created each print using an ages-old method called film developing.

Skateboarding might not be what regular 30 (and 40!!) somethings choose to do on a daily basis. But here in our circle, it is. It's how we maintain fun in our lives and give meaning to our days. It's how we keep the angst at bay. It's how we find our place and our people. It's how we keep our bodies healthy and remember that sometimes, strangely, falling down feels good.

Getting hurt can suck it of course.

Pic by Brooke Geery.

A Skatepark Is Born

This one time I stopped everything in my life and built an indoor skatepark. This was way back in 2011, when I was young and starry eyed. If you know me, then you already know this happened—it's not like it's some breaking news. Still, time marches on, and you forget.

But! I paddled back into memory lane this week—looking through old photos and recollecting all about what a fun, tough, weird time that was.

(The above clip constitutes one of the only videos I've ever made in my life—disclaimers, and whatnot.)

Now, the reason for my remembrances: My dearest friend Tricia asked me to tell a few stories for Steller, this new, Instagram-y style iPhone app she works for.

For peeps of the creative disposition, Steller is hecka cool. Like Instagram, you can post photos and follow people and, importantly, you can "like" shit. But unlike Instagram, it's all about story telling—not just snapshots. It's like crafting a little zine each time you post. So fun!

Anyhoo, see below for my Commonwealth post. You can turn the pages by swiping, just like with those newfangled magazine apps.

My (Short) Life As A Skate Coach

As mentioned elsewhere, I helped coach a session of Commonwealth skate camp. This was the week after the 4th of July, AKA last week, AKA the "hot week." I was on the fence about doing it. I'm no skate coach—never claimed to be! But this was special, an all-girls camp week, and those little ladies needed me.

Young girls are mysterious. Fun and funny. Their theories on the world, what they deem to be cool, and the strange hierarchies they develop within hours of meeting each other. I hope I hyped some of them up. Made some sort of impact—even if miniscule. Probs not, but one can hope.

Anyway, I was ruggedly sore and tired by the end of the week—leathered, if you will. But it felt great to come home dead tired at the end of the night, to have been out sweating and doing in the deepness of summer, rather than peering into my computer in the midst of air conditioning.

Plus, it made me fall in love with skating all-damn day again, a love affair that can get you into trouble when you're a freelancer with a procrastination streak but one that nevertheless shouldn't be neglected.

Birthday Bingen-ing

June days are very long. The longest! Here in the north country, you can have two complete days in one if you want—if you have the energy. Which you def don't sometimes. But the reality is that it's very possible to navigate an entire workday, and then meet up with your friends after to drive 60 highway miles to a skatepark, where you can skate for several hours as evening sunbeams stab through purple cloud banks over rolling Tuscan-like hills in the background. Then, after final dusk, there's STILL time to head into town for late-night feasting, after which you can drive home under tiny, pale stars—pulling into town at a very respectable midnight. Tired as dogs. But accomplished-feeling, you know?

Again, you don't always have what it takes to make this kind of thing happen. But sometimes, it's the healthy thing to do. It's okay if it takes a special occasion to get there. Like, say, a special guy's birthday?

Chill Life Memories

When you are juggling self-employed computer-based hustling and house-is-a-construction-zone manual labor all week, you forget that there was once a Saturday not so long ago that you did nothing but hang around an empty elementary school with a bunch of other 30 (and 40!) year olds (and their dogs).