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[Rio Ohki]

Scott Learns to Skateboard: Day 3 (May. 10th, 2008)

See big companies, they are the enemy. I’m talking about The Gas Companies, the Electricity Companies, The Water companies, the Cable TV Companies. Your local Council too, yeah, fuck them, right in their shiny holes!

Has skating turned me into a vehement anarchist overnight? Not likely. As I like to remind you, I am 23 years old, I have a beard, and I skateboard to work now, listening to Paramore for it’s musical merit (a side note, I actually do not find lead singer, Miss Williams, attractive in the slightest. Shirley Manson is and will always be the one woman for me).

But these companies, they’re the enemy alright, for one shared and simple reason. They keep digging up the bloody pavement!

They take away the nice smooth concrete, the stuff with the wee white stones inside it that you can see, but you can’t feel through the deck of your board. It’s the really nice stuff that doesn’t hurt your feet. They take that away and replace it with some crap that has giant black stones sticking out, the ones that waggle their arse at you and laugh at your aching legs whilst stealing all your momentum. Bastards, the lot of them.

You may have guessed, today’s entry revolves around ‘Street Skating’, and in particular, the following streets:

Argyle Street (West End, past PC World)
Buchanan Street.
St George’s Road.
The bottom of Gardner Street.

I count myself pretty lucky that I was forced back to work just as the nice weather went away, especially as I work in what can only be described as a giant sized greenhouse. Sadly, this did curtail my skating somewhat, but in other ways, allowed me to expand my horizons, and explore the skateboard as a legitimate mode of transport.

To this end, I used my increasingly chipped and scuffed board to sail to work. I say sail, imagine the horrific offspring of a Luxury Ocean Liner on a gloriously sunny yet breezy day, and a new learner driver to whom the clutch is a strange and malevolent device. It went a little like that. Sail along like a plastic bag in an Oscar winning film, stop sharply and flail like a fat kid with a pole, a fixation with star wars, and a rented video camera. That said, I did manage to get to work slightly quicker than if I had walked, so I call this a success.

I also had intentions of heading back to Kelvingrove on my lunch break, however my Father phoned looking for advice on laptops, being that I work next to PC World in Finnieston, and so I had to be contented with skating to ‘Subway’ and back.

The second journey was from Finnieston to Gardner Street in Partick, and was moderately more successful than the first, with the exception of a busload of American tourists, who I would have thought would have been in a better position to avoid a skater with L plates, seeing as they only went and invented the sport. I also found that it was getting easier to keep my balance, and raise the nose (front) of my board slightly in order to traverse that crucial ‘road to pavement’ kerb bump, although I am eternally grateful to whoever has made half of them flat at the bottom, and then ramp-like, presumably for the benefit of wheelchair users. I would have said disabled, but I fear that my flailings on a board are covered by that term. Seeing as my journey ended halfway up Gardner Street in Partick (Famous for its steepness), I decided to walk the last part of it.

The third journey was made down Buchanan Street around 11pm, which was pleasantly quiet, and warm, plus the paving slabs not only provided a nice smooth surface, but made a wonderful ‘clacking’ sound as I surfed along it.

Also, I now have enough in the way of co-ordination to skateboard down a public street, and hold a conversation on the phone. I did worry that the nice police officers on their bikes would stop me for operating a moving vehicle whilst using a phone without the aid of a handsfree kit, but I seem to have beat the ban this time around.

Happy Skating

Scott.