MARSHALL PARK by Jon Hanks

here's a little short story thingy that's kind of like part 1 in a weird series that's vaguely inspired by Perkins Playground
-i stole all the photos from various websites 'cause i thought it looked wicked naked

Steve never seemed to tire of telling Craig and Jason to stay off the trails and out of the woods.
“You’ll just stick to hanging at the playground and ball field if you little fuckheads know what‘s good for you,“ he had warned them just the day before, jabbing his brittle finger into Craig‘s small chest as he had done it.
But now on this day with Steve’s warning ringing hot in their eleven-year-old ears, the boys were powerless against the forbidden allure of the woods‘ homemade BMX trails. The trails were originally built and established by the older kids in the neighborhood, mostly by Craig’s brother, Steve. Craig and Jason wanted to ride the trails like Steve and his friends had done before them. Steve used to live for riding bikes, but now that he was older, it seemed to them that he was trying to hog the woods all to himself, and it wasn’t to ride BMX. Steve, like most teenagers in the neighborhood were no longer really interested in riding bikes. They used the woods and the old BMX trails as a place to go make out with girls or smoke pot.
Craig knew none of this when he went by Jason’s house to retrieve his friend for the day‘s activities. Jason quickly clambered down the weathered front steps of the split federal that his father rented for the two of them, the springs of the screen door whining in the early summer sunshine.
“Whatup sucka!” Craig greeted his friend. “You ready to rip up these jumps or what?”
“You ready to keep up?” Jason responded as he pulled his bike from his father’s storage shed.
They pedaled hard off the sidewalk, across the street and through the small playground where they had both grown up--in the sandbox as toddlers, in summer at day caps and pick-up games on the cracked basketball court--and now as a jump-off point for their daily boyish mischief.
Craig led the race out across the ragged infield and depleted pitcher’s mound and onto the unkempt grasses that were the outfield, toward the chain link fence that separated the ball field from the overgrown woods and their BMX trails. As they pushed their bikes through the chain link fence and out toward the clearing Jason nearly smashed into his friend’s back. Craig was stopped dead in his tracks and petrified to see Steve and one of his buddies laughing and smoking some weed on a log very close to the clearing.
The younger boys froze, thus far unseen by Steve and his cackling stoned friend.
“Let’s get out of here,” Craig whispered. Jason was already creeping his bike backwards through the fence.
“Damn dude, that was close,” Jason exclaimed when the boys were back out on the ball field.
“No shit huh,” Craig blurted. “My brother would’ve rung my frickin’ neck if he knew I saw him smoking pot!”
“I guess we’re not gonna get to ride those trails today after all,” Jason said as he squinted into the sunshine.
“Yeah, we’ll have to try another day,“ Craig responded pragmatically. “ Let’s ride downtown and check out the flea market or something.”
Jason was truly crestfallen. It had been about a week ago when he and Craig had first tried to ride the trails. They had spent a few afternoons since covertly stomping out a new hole in the fence while ducking Steve and his friends coming in and out of the old one. The younger boys lived their lives in fear of Steve and his buddies, but they resented them more. Even though most of them were now getting their licenses and were able to leave the neighborhood, and even the town, they still hung out in the woods all the time, and didn‘t even ride the trails. Jason truly loved freestyle BMX and he hated the fact that the older kids had quit doing it, yet still monopolized the trails.
The next day the boys met up around noon under the oak tree in front of Craig’s house, its branches allowing as much sunlight to hit the sidewalk below as they would all day. The plan was to get out on the trails while Steve was still at his part-time job at the grocery store, and to be back by the time he was out. Barring one of Steve’s buddies showing up for an early afternoon toke or date, the boys were free and clear to ride the trails for a good chunk of time.
Riding over narrow muddy passages, spring-loaded with jumps and bumps that Steve and his friends had fashioned out of the forest’s gargantuan root systems and fluctuating ground levels, Jason and Craig were both ecstatic. Smiles were permanently plastered on their faces as their small legs whirled them through the gullies and gulches and overgrown mossy jumps and hits.
Hours passed and the sunlight waned.
“Man it’s getting kinda dark,” Craig realized aloud. “I bet my dad’s almost home. Steve too. I should head home for supper.”
“You think I could come over?” Jason asked his friend, expecting the same “sure” that he usually got.
Jason ate at Craig’s house quite often, a fact that was not lost on Craig’s parents who at best had strained relations with Jason’s drunken father.
“I don’t think so man, my mom says that she can’t feed the whole neighborhood all the time. She says your dad should do something for you guys for a change”, Craig blurted through the unfiltered cruelty of a child.
“Oh, okay man. That‘s cool,” Jason reeled. “Well I guess I’m gonna stay back here and ride the trails for awhile more then. I don’t really have to be home at a certain time like you do. My dad’s probably asleep on the couch and he might take me up to Wendy’s later anyway. I’d rather have that than your mom’s food.”
“Whatever dude,” Craig sneered. “I’ll see ya tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Jason agreed.
And then Craig was gone, headed back the way the boys had come, to have dinner with his family.
Jason was content to have the trails to himself in what was left of the fading daylight. He found a certain confidence in being alone. He allowed himself to whoop and yell as he worked on his jumps and tricks.
He started watching the pros on the X Games at a very young age and it wasn’t long before his dad had gotten him a BMX of his own. The bike soon engulfed the boy’s entire world. He wanted to one day be a pro BMXer like his hero, Ryan Nyquist.
Pedaling down the decrepit, homegrown BMX trails Jason caught air off a large jump and tried to do a tailwhip like Nyquist.
Something was wrong.
In the dark forest evening Jason felt time slow down and almost stop. He felt the gravitational pull of one of the large oak trees calling him out like a noisy alarm clock, distant and unrelenting.
He pictured his father dozing on the couch with only the TV on and Craig and Steve goofing around at the dinner table in their brightly lit kitchen. He pictured his mother-long-since moved away from he and his father. He pictured Ryan Nyquist doing a backflip at the X Games. He pictured a number five with cheese from Wendy‘s, his favorite.
Mid-air, the eleven-year-old boy heaved his bike away from his flailing body and smashed into the ninety-year-old tree, whiplashing his skull against its thick bark, and knocking all the vibrant life out of him nearly instantly.
Jason’s body slumped across the muddy trail. With his bicycle mangled laying beside him, his brain gave out, and he died.

Walking

On the way to work today
I saw some skateboarders
They were hippie-jumping a bench

On the sidewalk in front of me
Here comes an old lady
In a mobilized wheelchair

And here I am
Walking
In Between

GROUNDED

Hello, blogosphere. I wanted to check in with you and let you know that I'm doing okay. I'm not all up in the mix as much these days. I was a vibrant participant. Now I'm just a lurker and observer, where I should be at this time. You see, I recently quit my band and it was part of my perceived duties in that band to always be on the computer and the telephone talking about that band and how wonderful it is. And I did and do believe that. What a great band. But I started to feel like an actor and a whore when I began to operate with friends and people I met in the real world with the same bloggy douchiness that I littered the walls of the internet with. I think the lines were beginning to blur for me in a way that part of myself was really uncomfortable with. I didn't feel like myself anymore and the people I should've felt close to I felt like I was drifting farther and farther apart from as the band became more about the music and less about the friendship. I felt like we were all lying to each other and ourselves and especially to others in the rock n roll community of which I am so grateful to have been a part. I wanted to keep it honest. I wanted to keep it hardcore which for me meant a certain goofiness and good natured self depreciation and honesty that I felt others in the band were almost knowingly try to shed in favor of an edgier, more ruthless, more "punk" way of being. And I'm not referring to the music. The music and the shows were excellent and only getting better in my opinion but the atmosphere and vibe of the band to me (and more importantly my perception of myself) became a contrived and stale misrepresentation of reality. I don't want to talk shit and I want things to work out for the band. I want them to continue to play our songs and sing my words and reconfigure or find another singer that works and makes sense. I just don't want to lie to them and to myself and that's what I felt had been happening and so I stopped it. I'm not proud that I lost mind and maybe I do need help but I finally realized that if the band itself was not making me crazy then touring and performing was certainly a catalyst and either way I had to stop. Thank you for listening internet. It was fun being all up in yer guts. I'll be watching you, but you won't be watching me.

Eight Great Skates

I have had the pleasure of putting my wheels on alot of different concrete in my lifetime. Any time I've left the house to get on a plane a train or bus I brought my skateboard with me and managed to get some decent sessions out of nearly all the trips I've taken. Here are a few really creatively designed concrete skateboard parks across the USA that I've been to that I really think take the cake as far as line selection and overall flow. Don't drive past these ones...

Stamford CT

Stamford is Grindline's Northeast masterpiece. Located about an hour north of New York City on the commuter rail, (the park is within a hardy skate distance from the train station) Stamford is ideal for a day trip for the Big Apple skater who's craving some tranny action that the streets can't always provide, or for anyone who finds themselves anywhere near this burly gem, like Tim Cowie did when he ripped this powerfisted backside 50/50 in the polar bear/combi thingy. Me and Tim skated here for hours on end, then got some cold Foster's and headed back to the City for a night of who knows what. By the way, you have to be twenty-one to browse the Foster's website. Weird world run by lawyers and beer barons, right? Thank God for skateboarding...

Louisville KY

Duh. The 24-Hour, public, free, padless, basically lawless "fracture factory" is where the fuck it is at. Go there. Now. Stop reading my goofy blog and get the fuck on it. This is probably about as close as you can get to skating something like the SMP park without leaving the country. (And again, I can only blog about the parks that I've personally skated, but I'm tellin' ya, Louisville is one of the best on the planet.) Yella is free.








Nashville TN

Skated Nashville in passing while driving across country. One of the most unique parks I've ever skated with so much space and obstacles to try out different lines. This place is right up the hill from Dukes of Hazzard Cooter Museum. I forget if it was before or after I skated, but I got my picture taken with the General Lee. I hope it was after.







San Francisco, CA

Potrero Del Sol! The Roy Brothers took me here one night while I was half in the bag after a Shakin' Michael J show. We had to hop the fence which I guess is pretty illegal but when Ben Roy's leading me on a skate mission (no matter how rag-tag and brief) I'm not trying to fuck around. To skate the "street" section of this park (which is basically a converging pit of various transitions) you have to bomb into the area from a large incline above. The park was basically built on a hill which they incorporated into the design. There are also some of the burliest pools outside of a backyard that I've ever skated. I wouldn't go there drunk (like me) and think yer gonna be all casual and shit. If I ever go back I'm bringing knee pads and I'll be sober!



Battle Ground, WA

Moving to the Northwest afforded me ample opportunity to skate Grindline and Dreamland
parks and Battle Ground is Dreamland's crown jewel. It doesn't even seem real. I showed up here at 9AM on a Sunday morning thinking the place would be deserted but it was actually pretty crowded. The word is it's always crowded, and rightly so. Not that I'd want to live in Battle Ground but it is ideally placed in the midst of the 1-5 Pacific Northwest Shred Corridor, being about 45 minutes from Portland and two hours from Seattle, with fabulous skate destinations sprawling in both directions. (Portland probably needs a separate blog)

Seattle WA

Seattle has its good share of skateparks but I think the most creatively designed with the best line selection is the Lower Woodland park at Green Lake.The first time I took Andrew Nelson there some kid was getting lifted out of the combi pool in a stretcher. I was proud to tell my fiend that Green Lake was now my home park.




Whitefish MT

This park is pretty well known and with good reason. I was astounded at the possibilities that exist within this skatepark. Lines for years. They built the shit right into the mountain that it's on, using elements of the original rock pilings in some of the park design. On some Lord of The Rings Shit, I thought Gandalf the Grey was gonna drop in and shred the bowl the whole time I was there. This skatepark filled me with mystical wonderment.


Ft. Pierce FL

This place is fucking sick dawg. This is the reason why I decided to write this blog entry. I just got off the phone with Tim Cowie and I was telling him (you can't really see from the photo) that in the snakerun it bowls at the end and when you hit the coping there is another steeper transition that goes up to another coping which is the actual lip of the pool. Confusing and weird to talk about but this place brought out the best in my skating. It felt GREAT to be there. You can flow the whole thing and if you go in the morning (when you should because it's hot as fuck by 11am or so) you'll have the place to yourself. I'm pretty sure Animal Chin is lurking somewhere around Ft. Pierce. Go find him. Team Pain!

PHOTOS: I took the photo of Tim Cowie at Stamford. I also took the shot of Whitefish from the parking lot. Lucie Anderson took the one of me at Louisville and the rest I stole from the Internet. I spend all my time at skateparks skating and not taking photos. Shit...

Bringing It All Back Home (a semi-epic photographic journey to northeast roots and full-on trees)

Look, when I'm doing stuff, I forget to take pictures, but then sometimes I randomly do:



Me and Jeff.
Been all up and down the East Coast with this kid over the years, and no trip to NYC would ever be complete without a Wizard Juice sighting. Somehow me and Mike talked him into one more beer. I was stoked to kick it with the kid, Deejay Kinetic. Homeboy's been killing it on the turntables since long before you ever heard of Kanye West, real talk. Dude's all about dedication to the craft, and as an infrequent blogger I can definitely look up to that.






Me and Mike.
G-E-T-L-I-V-E! Hanging out with Mike is cool because somehow we always manage to turn the mundane into the epic. Unfuckwithable. Been knowin' Mike in MA, loosely in VT, and then I moved to New York City (years after him) and eventually we were neighbors (like, around the corner neighbors, I'm not talking about different boroughs).



Mike and Jeff.
When we were all hanging out at a bar in Park Slope swapping stories and stuff, my friend Lindsey goes, "Funbags, do you just collect crazies?"
Yep.







The (New) Old Highway.
I've skated Newburyport and the surrounding area for years. I remember March's Hill Park. I remember the Rupert Knock halfpipe. I skated the Blue Ramp at Cashman, Hampton, Salisbury and of course the Old Highway. But you know what? I never took the initiative to build my own spot like the younger skaters are doing nowadays. And I never ripped like them...


Brad and Porter.
Known the dude for around twenty years. Known the dog for around four (his whole life). Did this one portrait style on the last night of my trip. Porter knows his name. Brad knows his game.




My Parents.
They are one in a million. I think I kind of caught 'em off guard when I busted out my camera and took this photo, but I like it. Probably caught them off guard in much more distressing scenarios in the past, too.

Screeching Seattle

Last Friday (a week ago) I went to see Screeching Weasel (Screeching Weasel Myspace) in my hometown? of Seattle Washington. It was awesome. Over the years this band's music and aesthetic has influenced me musically, philosophically and lyrically. I really like Ben Weasel's tongue-in-cheek snotty yet highly intelligent take on punk rock and that's basically why they're still one of my favorite bands. I had never seen them play before and apparently they hadn't played in Seattle (or much of anywhere really) since '91, so this show was kind of a big deal.

My friend Evan had to jet back East for family reasons so he couldn't make it to the show so he had to bail on his ticket. I tried to sell it for him, but nobody wanted it. I couldn't even give the thing away on the bus, it was fucked up dude. My friend Taylor the wino came over and drank beers and red wine with me but he didn't want to go to the show because he had fucked himself up at Slayer like a week before. C-Lo had to work, Buzz was broke, etc. So I went it alone.
When I arrived on the scene I bumped into some old associates of mine from my days as a media minion. We hit the show, the pit and the bar in various rotations for the entirety of the Weasels' set, which began promptly.

They were great, they played alot of stuff from Boogadaboogadaboogada, and My Brain Hurts and Anthem For A New Tomorrow. The bouncer told me not to do windmills and shits during the breakdowns. He wasn't a dick about it and I think he actually respected the New York style but it was an all ages show and he was like, "dude, yer gonna kill someone." I didn't get in any fights or arguments like sometimes happens to me at shows, especially in Seattle, but the band did cut their encore short because there were some idiots in the front row apparently going at it in the second row or whatever.

Here's a link to a video of "Slogans" from that show that I stole from some kid on youtube (I didn't film it, I'm a rocker, not a blogger): Screeching Weasel at The Showbox in Seattle, Washington on Sept. 17th, 2010.
Two side notes that are kinda funny: When I was taking a piss right before the band started playing I saw my friend Rob in the bathroom. What's interesting about this is that as far as I know, Rob's not into punk and I don't really know how or why he was there at that show, but there he was. When we first met I half-jokingly told Rob that "I Hate Led Zeppelin" in tribute to the Weasel song mostly. It's not like I really do, but if you asked me if I liked them or Screeching Weasel better I wouldn't say Led Zeppelin, and I just think it's a funny thing to say to people because everyone expects you to love them, and I don't. Anyhow, Rob got kind of pissed and got all up in my face, it was pretty intense actually. We worked it out and became homies but I was shocked to see him there at the show of the "I Hate Led Zeppelin" band.

Also, I was drunk and it was raining and I got really soaked walking all the way to Belltown to 1st ave by myself high on adrenaline and booze and weed. When I finally got home it was real late and I had work at 7 in the morning at a shitty job at a convenience store that I had just given my two weeks notice to. I guess I woke up and just turned my phone off and never went back to that shitty job. I didn't care. It was awesome.

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