New Beginnings

Check it out. Everyone just thinks of mini ramps as things to screw around on—jungle gyms for adults or something. But what a mini ramp really is, or can be anyway, is a community.

I got my ass handed to me a couple years ago by circumstance. I was engaged, did y'all know that? And I owned a business together with my man. Both things went away, right around the same time. Reality bent, disorientation unfolded ... but the show must go on.

Circumstantially, I started skating this one backyard mini ramp a lot. Here, slowly, I collected all of these shining people who are now my shining family. To all who wander or are lost, see, there's always a new somewhere to turn.

This is all just a long-winded way of telling you that that ramp's gone now. Wet Northwest winters had done a number on its bones. We tore the thing out and took the last wood to the dump yesterday. Sure, it was a little sad. Like with an old, sick dog, though, we knew it was time to put it down.

But! A new ramp's coming! Different dimensions, fresh strong wood all smelling of sap. Maybe see ya there this spring?

Me, back then. Fun = good for mind and body. 

Benjamin H. Graham in that nice afternoon light.

Unscrewing. The opposite of getting screwed. 

Bye bye, baby.

A cozy Sunday at the dump with my bests. 

Three Things

Houndstooth: A nice band from Portland I've been listening to lately. Saw them play at Sloan's a few weeks ago. Her voice is cool—it haunts. And his guitar—it sounds so damn good, really warm, dazzling even. Notes drip out like honey. Is it the guy? Is it the guitar? I'm a little bit in love with both.

Free Coffee: I did some writing for a rad indie coffee roaster and in return I'm getting two-pound monthly deliveries for the next few. Work trades are where it's at! Future you forgets all about the work past you did and so whatever you get in return feels totally free, a gift, faerie magic.

Curb Cut: The skateboard journal I'm helping run is throwing a flash-mob-style high ollie contest tonight down by the Southwest waterfront. Cuz it's summer in March. Cuz it's light out till 7 and it'll be like 70 degrees so don't you wanna come hang with your friends and stunt skate for cash before we all get kicked out by security guards?

Last Week's Report

Last week was a bust—I got sick and did only half the work I was trying to do. Sweat and shivered all of Monday night. Stayed home Tuesday and let my hair turn into nest for small animals. Didn’t care.

In the case that you're concerned, I'm better now, ’cept for a lingering cough. The phlegm—it abides.

In other news, the cherry trees have popped and the sunlight's streaming down all the time and you're always finding yourself in these situations where you're hanging out in your shirt sleeves doing summertime-style shit with cumulonimbus clouds of pale-pink flower petals floating in the trees above you.

The Heart Turned Sideways Is An Arrow

For Valentine's Day, a pair of lovely visitors from the Bay Area. A clutch distraction from such things as heart-shaped balloons.

Like Leonard says, "Let's not talk of love and chains and things we can't untie."

And so Tricia and Cairo swooped in just as I was devising an escapist's strategy to the Feb 14 holiday. They bought me flowers. They drank morning tea at my kitchen table, making the whole scene look decidedly cute. They surveyed waterfalls and caught sweeping wilderness views with me. They joined me for tacos. They drove when I'd drank too much.

The sun was out the entire time and the dog was happier than he'd been in weeks. Truth: Spring is coming, and rad functional couples like T and C really do exist. Ain't life grand?!

  

Tippy tops.

On Prince, et Cetera

Dancing isn't a super-coveted activity for me, and I don't worship at the altar of Prince like some. But, if I must dance, it shall be to Prince. This is how I really feel.

So naturally, when I get invited to a birthday party where a Prince cover band is playing (not just any Prince cover band—the best Prince cover band in the WORLD) I always go. And I dance.

Such was the occasion on Saturday night. A crowded dance floor. Neon spotlights reflecting our neon hearts. A lot of touching. Prince, as you know, is very sexual. Now, try to imagine my surprise when the band played "Nothing Compares 2 U." A Prince cover band covering a Sinead O'Connor song? Fucking meta! Thought I. But as a fellow to my left told me , Prince wrote that song. It's a Prince song! I apologize for my tardiness on this matter. The world is, was, and always will be a baffling place to me.