Wild in the streets

Thrasher Magazine, Feb, 2003 by Shelby Woods

IT WAS TWO IN THE MORNING and while most were sleeping or staggering out of the bars, I was running for my life towards a fence. All I could hear was my heart beating a mile a minute, so loud that it drowned out the barking dogs that were in hot pursuit as I raced for the fence, hoping that zipper on my camera bag wouldn't come undone, spilling my life savings all over the dark lot. I don't even remember grabbing the fence--just landing on the other side belly first. The others were already there waiting with horrified looks frozen on their faces. Just then I heard the dogs slam into the fence barking and snarling, trying to rip and squeeze through the chain-link to lunch and munch on the intruders who dared violate their domain. We all stood there for a second in shock then just burst into laughter, "Yo, you should have seen the look on your face coming over that fence!" Even though we got into altercations with baseheads and security guards and were almost dog food to a pack of wild ghetto dogs, I'd do it a ll again.

Earlier that day we had checked out some spots in the valley then broke out to go look for a spot I had seen the day before while getting new tires for the bucket The problem was that I couldn't remember where it was. I'm still new to LA so all this shit looks alike to me, but I do know that the spot was kinda 'hoodish. After searching around for a couple of hours I gave up and headed towards home. While at a stop light I saw some skaters that I knew two cars away. "What up?' they shouted over the traffic I waved them over and pulled into a parking lot. They were on a filming mish and told me about some rail they were going to check out, I decided to tag along.

WE GET TO THE SPOT AND EVERYTHING WAS COOL until some drunken Derel showed up and decided to make our jobs just a little harder-he walked up and sat on the steps blocking the runway. We tried talking to him but he wasn't having it, and we didn't want to go through bum fights 'cause he smelled like shit. We pretty much thought the sesh was over until one of the young bucks came up with a pretty funny idea to get rid of our little smelly friend. He got a stick and tied a five dollar bill to a string and made a ghetto fishing pole. Like a cat chasing a moth, the bum went off swatting and staggering for the five. As flicked up as it sounds, I thought I was going to die laughing. We had fun with this for a while and completely forgot about what we went there to do. Then, with all said and done the kids killed the spot. The rail was knobbed so they skated over it until we were over it. As for our smelly friend, he captured the flag and bought a 4Ooz. He was quite happy.

After a quick bite we resumed our mission, search and destroy. After an hour we came across a bump, and not the kind you would find on a key. We peeped it and after skating for awhile a security truck rolled up and out jumped this dude. He had that not-these-fuckin'-guys-again look on his face. Now these situations are always a crap shoot cause you never know what to expect: "What's up guys? Who's the oldest here?" he said, looking at me the whole time. No one said anything. "OK," he said. "I'm not a bad guy. Shit, skaters come down here all the time and I don't care. Now how much you guys got?" We all started laughing. The dude was cool; he opened the gate and took us to another bank in back. He told us he wouldn't get in trouble if we skated the one in back. He let us skate even though we didn't have any bribe money. Even if I did have bribe money I'd save it for the skaters; you don't know what could be done first or second try for the right price. With the dude gone, we checked out of the area and saw a h uge sidewalk gap, but the landing was littered with broken glass, razor blades, and all sorts of nasty things. No one cared. Someone started to go to work on the gap when a homeless guy walked up and offered to help out by sweeping the landing. Cool. We had a whole shanty town village watching and going crazy--but I think they were going crazy way before we showed up.

AFTER THAT SPOT we went cruisin' the 'hood. You know that eeling you get when you see a new spot? It's like when you get a new board or when the UPS guy shows up at your house with a box of goodies. I think everybody in the car said "Oh shit!" at the same time. It was a hubba, not the one people smoke, but the one people skate. As we scrambled to find parking the dudes jumped out of the car while it was still running, scurrying to the obstacle like flies to shit and calling out tricks as they hucked their boards over the fence. When I got there they were already sizing it up, but there was hardly any runway and a rail right next to the curb that seemed to disturb everyone. No problem with the help of the filmer. I grabbed a screw driver and some WD-40 from out the bucket and went to work. We were unaware of the video cameras and janitors who were walking around the campus. Afterwards, we ditched the rail in some nearby bushes. With all that done they just decided to skate over the damn thing.