Couch Tour II: die away from me

Thrasher Magazine, April, 2003 by Patrick O'Dell

HOLA, AMIGOS. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at you, but I've been all over the road like horseshit lately. Plus, I feel weird about this whole Couch Tour thing. Like it's a self-serving, self-aggrandizing, self-deprecating, self-fellating, wildly-pontificating pile of BS. I can't even read the last one. It's all so embarrassing. "Oh, I'm so broke Oh, I'm so drunk!" I imagine saying to the writer (in mall accent), "Oh, My God! Like, get over yourself." In fact, I'm trying to make a resolution to keep drinking out of this. I mean, what does that have to do with anything? (Everything). But before I abdicate booze talk, I'd like to give thanks to all the people that bought me beer when I was broke: Ben Cho; Andy Kessler; Brian Degraw; Jason Dill; Anthony Pappalardo; Jim. Murphy; Leo Fitzpatrick Jerry Hsu; Switch Backside Ted; Tino, Marc, and Andre Razo; Matt Avedon... I know there's more, but I can't remember. Thanks!

Anyway...Couch Tour. I went to Ohio for the holidays. Skated the epic whole-pipe and double-flight, and then went to San Jose to visit Jerry Hsu. Jerry lives in the Fink House; it's a pink house in San Jose. A bunch of dudes live there--Jessie Erickson, Chris Black, Sterkin. Oatmeal, and sometimes Marc Johnson. For a mildly wealthy pro skater, Jerry lives in absolute squalor. His room is a mess of dirty clothes and photographic materials. The couch I slept on has the word "fuck" spray painted on it. Everywhere on the floor is trash and bottles. It's really cold in there. Almost freezing.

THE FIRST DAY IN SAN JOSE IT RAINED, like almost all the days I was in San Jose, so we went to the Vans park. Can I go on the record right now as saying fuck kids, I hate them. They are all that's wrong and evil in skateboarding and they need to go and die away from me. That's my message to the children of skateboarding: Die away from me.

It is the duty of every older skater to be mean to dumb kids. If they ask a stupid question, don't be afraid to lie to them, snake them, spit on them--just do whatever you can to get them to quit skating and go back to baseball card collecting, or Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever it is that Mamma's boys do with their time. I hope they die. Seriously.

The first night in San Jose the Pink House had a party. The highlight was Marc Johnson spraying Jerry's car with a fire extinguisher. In the morning it look like it had snowed. So what else happened in San Jose? Nothing. It was a rainy, boring waste of my life. Hanging out with Jerry is always epic, but every morning began and ended with: "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know, what do you want to do?" And so forth. At night we'd go to this bar called the Caravan. It's a total NorCal Barney bar. Every girl in San Jose has the same steez--Betty Page bangs cut straight, as if done with a ruler, and tattoos of all sorts, usually a star or a swallow, Flames. Actually, the dudes are the same way, except replace bangs with a flat-brimmed mesh hat. Yeah, so, in that setting Jerry and I looked faggier than normal, We made day trips to San Francisco and visited Phelps for some good quotes. I admire anyone that's quotable. I'd put some of them here, but I think they're almost guarded company secrets, like who's banned from Thrasher. I was gonna make a board with tons of magnets and on each magnet write a skater's name, and the board will go from "Favored" to "Acceptable" to "Banned." That way, depending on the mood of the day, we could have a quick reference.

But my dream article consisted of photos of these dudes: Ocean Howell, Barker Barrett, and Simon Evans. Three dream skaters that I had the pleasure of rolling with during my stay in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the demands of cutting edge skate trickery has ruined everything. I wanted to shoot photos of these legends doing frontside boardslides on the double-sided curbs, but I'm sure the dumb kids would be like, "This is weak." Screw them. I'll get some photos. Ocean is still one of the best skaters in the work He could still be pro if he cared. Try playing him at skate. It's impossible.

So what the shit? I'm back in New York and preparing to embark on "Later'd II," aka "The Search for Carrie," aka "The Search For Duff McKagen" aka "Hot Crew Vs the Luke Warms." See you then, bitches!