The City That Always Sleeps

Well, haven't "blogged" in a while. I've been writing some scrambled fiction, not really much of a narrative, just jotting down prose and not really caring if it's true or autobiographical or whatever. They say (whoever They are) that you're not really supposed to necessarily know what you're writing about at first when you're writing fiction, (which until recently I haven't really attempted that much) that you're just sort of scraping notes from your brain and you'll be lucky if you get something to eventually work with. Well I tried writing some fiction and ended up getting all autobiographical...
So here's a rant on some of my opinions on the geographical and environmental factors at play in one lazy skateboarder's life:

"There’s a possibility it might not rain today. A POSSIBILITY it might not rain--There are no guarantees. There is a guarantee that in Seattle it will rain 90% of the time during the “winter” (which seems to last from October to April) but there will be some sunny days here and there, and I’m determined to skate whenever I can during these tiny windows of opportunity.

Today the sky looks promising. The streets are soaked and it’s almost noon but there is a light in the sky that suggests that today we might elude actual rainfall.

When I moved here from New York City I took a lot for granted. In the city that never sleeps it can be pretty easy to let the world pass by. There’s always a later show to catch, the trains run 24 hours and the constant hustle and bustle and sense of urgency can become a complacency. In New York I would sleep ‘til 2 or 3, smoke some weed and then go skate SOMETIME before it got dark. Plus in New York, I could step out my sidewalk and be skating some of the best street spots in the world. Sure, there were parks that I would take long train rides to get to, but there was also a whole world of skateboarding that was vastly untouched, and due to the sprawling, all-encompassing nature of the City, there was this feeling that these spots weren’t going anywhere.

Seattle is a much smaller city, obviously, and therefore options in all things, including skateboarding become limited. On the West Coast it’s all about driving to the skatepark, stopping at Starbucks on the way, getting there, bullshitting with the other bullshitters, padding up and taking a few runs in between sips of your grande latte. So when I moved here I was used to the skateboarding style of New York and the East Coast which, while skating is often put off, demands that once you’re in it, you’re in it. People don’t have cars in New York. There’s no Starbucks on subway platforms. When you hit the streets or get to the skatepark, you’re fucking skating.

In Seattle I find I have become complacent and at the same time unused to the very small windows of skate opportunities that are available. I have squandered many a sunny day smoking weed in the house and looking at porn on the internet. I did the same in NYC, but there I somehow felt I could afford to do it. It was just as relevant to leave the house at 10pm as it was at 10am. In Seattle, you better be up with the sun, push your way through the lurkers and old man bullshitters at the skatepark and get your fucking runs in, because, you really don’t know when the next time you’ll skate will be, at least in the wintertime anyway. The summers out here are gorgeous and perfect golden days filled with exceptional weather and epic skateboarding. But in the wintertime this is the city that always sleeps, so when it is awake, you’d better be awake with it."

P.S. I really should've posted this immediately after writing it, when it was still winter around here, because the weather in Seattle is getting wicked nice and there's really no excuse not to be out there.

Photographs: Seattle Skyline by Lucie Anderson, NYC at Nite by Jon Hanks, and Me Skating at Owl's Head Skatepark in Brooklyn, NY by Mike Jourdanais