The Slow Grind

I was a skater ¹ once, but let me be clear: I was not very good. When I say I was not very good I mean I never really mastered airs, I could not ollie ² a foot in the air, and I never did get very good at rail slides and grinds on ramps. This is not to say I did not try nor that I did not enjoy skating immensely. I first started skating in the mid-70s on a cheap plastic board that kept me happily slaloming down the hill in front of my parent's house. Skating really took hold of me around 1983 when a high school friend introduced me to the skating subculture inside the American hardcore music scene. For the next three years, few days passed that I did not skate in Atlanta or Athens, Georgia, on my homemade quarter pipe, at the innumerable office parks and strip malls, or on the half pipes in the area. I also haunted skate shops, hung with skaters, and went to hardcore shows where we skated before and after the bands played. In other words, I was a diehard skater.