Fight for Your Right to Shred

Recently, The Boston Herald featured an article about the supposed ‘crack down’ on skateboarding on city property. The issue became notable because the city had recently spent $4,300 to skate-stop the Copley Fountain, and within three days most-all of them were removed by four-wheeled vigilantes.

 I think this ‘crack-down’ is nothing more than an easy story for the Herald to write, but also is message from the Boston Police Department and the city meant to scare skaters away while not having to actually use recourses to build a spot for us to skate or to up enforcement to kick out skaters.

I was delighted to see that skateboarders are willing to band together and get their hands dirty, in making spots their own, or in this case, keeping them that way. 67 removed skate-stoppers is an impressive number and probably took more than one loyal enthusiast.

Don’t fear shredders of Boston, I have a feeling no actual crack-down is in place. 

Buy Local.

Skate-shops

Cult-like, filthy

Chilling, lurking, conversing

Truth, family, degradation, profit

Stylizing, commercializing, hard-selling

Greedy, shallow

Boutiques

I Used to Skate.

There once was a boy who pushed mongo,

He didn’t skate for that long. No.

With his front foot he pushed.

Oh how his pride was smushed,

So he traded his board for a bongo. 

On Skateboarding

Embody the musings of Gnaroclese

Like the deformed adolescent Tesudines.

Moving paintings on Saturday morning

Stealthily shape the youth. No warning.

We take what we want and break what we need.

No drugs, just ecstasy, trees, and speed.

Mt. Olympus must serve Mtn Dew,

Holy water gallons, and Slim Jims too.

Only through faith may we taste the nectar.

Satan makes a concubine of Sheckler. 

Bummer.

Skateboarding was cool.

Welcome To Hell and Sorry

Now we have X-Games.

Rad Kostumes

With Halloween right around the corner, everybody’s been searching high and low for the perfect costume. Skaters can find this time of year particularly difficult, trying to find a costume that either incorporates a skateboard or can be easily skated in. The planks going to make sure you don’t trip all over your toilet-paper mummy costume. The only ‘it’ you’ll be eating this Halloween should be chocolate or fruit flavored.

Bart Simpson

Bart Simpson has become a literally ageless skate-icon. All you need for this costume is blue shorts, a red shirt, hair gel, and a skateboard. Put up your hair in some spikes and hike your shorts up. Wallah! You’re Bart Simpson. Also, Orchard now carries The Simpsons brand skateboards. A replica of Bart’s animated ride may still be available.

Hey Arnold

The lovable, urban, football-headed cartoon character of our youth is an excellent costume for skateboarders. If you are well versed in the show, you’ll remember that both Arnold and his best friend Jerold, skate. Therefore, your buddy could dress up as Jerold and you can make this a group costume. For this one, you’ll need a tight blue pants, a little hat, blue sweater, and a flannel that’s significantly longer than the sweater.

Marty McFly

The Back to the Future trilogy features Marty McFly, the protagonist, with a skateboard throughout different time periods. In the present (1980’s) Marty is seen with a conventional skateboard riding to school. In the first movie, Marty goes back in time to the fifties and pays homage to the creation of the original skateboard. He builds a skateboard out of roller-skates and a two-by-four. The coolest skateboard that Marty has is in the second movie where Marty goes to the future. In this scenario, Marty takes a flying scooter from a little girl and snaps off the handlebars, making it a skateboard. To make your board look like the hover-board in Back to the Future II, you could paint your grip-tape pink. Also, you could add streamers to the perimeter of your deck to create the illusion that the board is in-fact not on wheels and is hovering. For the rest of the costume all you need is white Nikes, blue jeans, and a red ‘life vest’ style down vest.

Ninja Turtles

Who embodies skateboarding culture better than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Not only do all of the turtles skate, but they also eat a lot of pizza and hang out all hours in the street and underbelly of the city. This makes the Ninja Turtles perhaps the best skateboarding involved costume yet. Another plus is that a group of friends can be all of the different turtles. If you have more friends than there are turtles the rat, Splinter, and the villain Shredder, also make great costumes. 

Plymouth Shreds Halloween

The first annual Halloween Plymouth Skate-Jam was held this Saturday, without any help from Mother Nature. Volunteers began arriving at Plymouth Skatepark around 10:30am to set-up, in 35-degree weather. Although the turn-out started off slow, by three o’clock a large crew of about 25 heads amassed. Led by the legendary Tin “Puppet Master” Tran, top skateboarders from both the North Shore and the South Shore caravanned to beautiful southern Plymouth. Around 12:30 the skies completely opened up, but that didn’t stop us. The Jam, including props and people, was relocated to the famous Plymouth South High School ‘bench spot’, which features a large awning to shelter us from the weather.

Decor crafted by Abe Dubin and Chris Zacher created the essential holiday experience to this make-shift event. Both skaters have recently graduated different Boston Art Schools, Abraham--Mass Art and Christopher--MFA. These two had spend the past month scouring Halloween-store dumpsters, local dumps, and basements attaining miscellaneous material to then be shaped into the scenery for the jam. A baby-doll in a ghost costume who was referred to as “Little Shredder” was a fan favorite. First, his feet were taped to the top of the new quarter-pipe extension at the skatepark, so footage from the day would feature his classic look. Later, at Plymouth South High School “Little Shredder” helped others ‘bust a move’, as he served as the obstacle to trick over. Another notable aspect of the scenery was the electric jack-o-lantern which was powered by a small generator, provided by photography savant, Buddy Beckly. Rubber severed heads, nylon cob-webs, corn-starch blood, and print-out money littered this temporarily unrecognizable skate-spot.  

Life and death was breathed into the Plymouth South High with the introduction of foreign obstacles. One such was an impressive, cylindrical, orange, apparatus which could be ridden on, through, or against. Allston resident and skate-legend, Rob Hall, was the first to push his board through the cylinder while her jogged beside it, and then smoothly hopping back on. Small metal pipes were also a hit as they were used both to grind and to trick over horizontally.

Eventually, our friends from the Plymouth Police Department showed up, only to watch the festivities! It seems everyone in Plymouth was truly captivated by the holiday spirit.