Chapter 5- Ripper

If you're gonna be dumb you, gotta be tough - Roger Alan Wade

For the many ass-kickings I’ve delivered, I have taken plenty. Fists, boots, pipes, the butt end of guns, broken bones, concussions, gunshot wounds, there was even that bad experience with my toes and that ball peen hammer. I’ve healed up. I got back in shape. It’s never gonna be my first time taking a beating. Sometimes you take the hits and you play through injury. What’s that saying? Pain is just weakness leaving the body? Maybe it's stupidity too. These days, any extra protection or advantage I can get is for the better, and that means a complete line of custom equipment. Leather jacket with built-in heating, private band communications systems, carbon fiber reinforced forearms, and a Kevlar tri-weave liner. Titanium-reinforced biker boots. Urban climbing equipment. Oxyacetylene torches and surveillance kits. Scuba gear. Shark repellent. Smoke bombs. Tactical helmets. Full body armor. And usually, all that stuff is great, but today it’s summer and it’s hot.

The wheels of the skateboard purr across the hot smooth concrete as I come up on Cork Drive, a heavy industrial vein that cuts across the Eastern part of the City connecting the North and South Ports. Eighteen-wheelers and city traffic fill the busy street as I come up on a light. I steady my left leg while I reach down with my right, tapping at the street with the ball of my foot, bringing the board to a stop at the crossing light. I smack the button a few times and then start stretching out my legs which are adorned in black knee pads. It’s been a while since I’ve done any skateboarding and who the hell knows what I’m gonna find, so I’ve thrown on a matte black brain bucket as well. I'm not getting any younger. I’m wearing a fatigued green hard-body backpack that hugs my body like a turtle shell. In the bag is a red and white striped racing windbreaker made of ripstop vinyl designed to deploy like a wingsuit in the armpits, acting as a sail or air break depending on the situation. There’s also a pair of deerskin downhill gloves with optional slide discs—hard plastic cylinders used to assist in drifting the skateboard around turns when lowering the center of gravity while riding. Then there's the pouches for my vape and a small bottle of water. The backpack also features a handy hook like the talons of a bird that turns on a gyroscopic axis, so I can drop my skateboard into it, leaving it hanging next to me, swinging in tandem with my steps. The shoulder straps on the bag have mounts for both a front-facing flashlight and my phone. There’s a built-in digital microphone and storage system that can record up to 25 meters away at 360 degrees. The same anchors for lights, camera, and action are set into almost every piece of torso gear that we use. To appease the powers that be, Don and I had agreed that in many cases the use of a body camera could save everyone a lot of work when it came to ratifying our claims of self-defense in situations where there was a necessity to act first and ask questions later. We don’t always wear them but in any situation where we thought that fisticuffs or an exchange of bullets would make gathering evidence difficult, we employed the modern documentation methods. The light finally turns and I give the board a little nudge before I jump on, propelling myself forward with the right leg while the left anchors on the green grip tape adorned deck. I’m rolling down Abernathy Street, a main route for non-motorized city traffic.

I grew up in a small town made of mostly dirt roads and wasn’t afforded any opportunity to learn how to skateboard until later in life. All I knew about it was through old Bones Brigade VHS tapes someone’s older brother had kicking around. Once I got to the city it was one of the first things I knocked off my to-do list. I knew I was never going to be a professional skater, but that had never been my goal. I wanted the ability to traverse the urban landscape at an incredible pace, with barriers and changes in environment only momentarily impeding my progress if I couldn’t climb over them. Sure, I could ollie a curb and had the fundamental grasp of a few old-school skateboard maneuvers, but what I liked more than any of that was ripping through the city—all my senses attenuated to the nakedness of my situation. It’s as close to flying as I’ve felt outside of jumping out of airplanes, which I hate doing. To blast through traffic was to feel the presence of everything around me in every direction, through every style of sensory input. Maybe it was a remembrance of this feeling that had drawn me to my gear at the back of that storage room, maybe it was just boredom and spite.

I pass into the Stacetoma neighborhood, made up of cottage-style housing and fatigued apartment buildings of late seventies bohemia. The neighborhood rests on the line between the slums of Downtown East Side and the industrial sector connected to the train lines that divide the East and West sides of the City. Up ahead of me is a S-curve meant to slow cyclists down, although those cocky bastards tend to speed up for the fast weave. As if to prove that point, two guys in full neon spandex pass me at the last second cutting me off before the S. Cyclists man, like serious cyclists, the most arrogant of all traffic. I know I’m exposed, but they ride like they’re just waiting to cash in on a lawsuit. I see a thick black rubber hose hanging across the road, a census counter so’s the City can know just how many folks are using this Abernathy route. I snap back on the tail of the skateboard with my right foot and then drag the raised nose forward with my left, ollying overtop of the hose, which would have got caught up on my trucks sending me for a face-plant. Once I started skateboarding I began to see the city differently. I was forced to read the street in front of me, any stray pebble or deep crack in the sidewalk was my potential undoing. Floating inches above the street with nothing holding me back, I learned how modern cities are constructed to make life hard for skateboarders. Cobblestone streets and patterned concrete might look beautiful and they’re easy enough for a bike to ride over but they’re hell to pay when vibrating you to pieces on a skateboard. The harder the wheels you’ve got the worse off you are.

I hoof it up a small hill, making it over the crest to a slow listing decline that pulls me through the edge of Chinatown and then to a fork in the road that leaves me to choose if I want to go into the inner City or ride the seawall around to either the North or South bays. I shoulder check for traffic and then begin a nice slow carving motion, swaying back and forth across the street. Sun shining down, the smell of hot asphalt wafting from under my feet, and a grin on my face. This feels good. I take a deep breath and then give the board a few heavy kicks putting some stank on as the hill begins to steepen a bit just before the end. There’s another light coming up but it looks like it’s going to turn green for me just in time to blow through the next intersection. Then I hear it—

“Woah Woah Woah,” about twenty feet out in front of me, a Cop has jumped into the street and is waving his arms.

I’m coming in hot but shift my weight onto my back foot and then crank my feet to face forward, the wheels sliding and the board turning so I’m a full ninety degrees and am now power sliding to a stop in front of the Cop. He’s a middle-aged guy with greying hair and a pair of Oakley sunglasses on. He’s placed his hands on his hips and juts his chin out at me while I pull my sunglasses off.

“Can I help you?” I ask.

“It’s illegal to skateboard in this City.”

“What?”

“City bylaw says that skateboards are not allowed except for designated areas. You’re going to have to carry that to a skatepark, son.”

I narrow my vision at him like I’m checking his face for something, “Excuse me?”

“That thing isn’t permitted on-”

“Oh ok, yeah I guess I heard you right. I’m just going for a ride—hell right now I’m on a designated bike path.”

“Well the fact remains-”

“I’m even wearing a helmet. What do you give a shit man?”

“Hey, watch the attitude.”

“What if I am just going to work? You’re wasting my time with this? Don’t you have something better to do?” I say to him, pointing down at the Wolfmen Investigations on my tank top, shaking my head. What with the helmet, sunglasses and apparently a youthful enough vigor to call me son this dumbasses didn’t realize who the fuck I am until just now. He freezes. You don’t like me, I don’t like you, but you can’t touch me. He groans and shakes his head. This dipshit decided to give me trouble ‘cause from about 30 feet out I look like some kid riding his skate. Except I’m not just some kid, I’m me.

“You could have hit someone going that fast.” He manages

“The only person I was gonna hit was you when you jumped out in front of me all of a sudden.”

“I said watch that attitude,” he snorts, having taken a dislike to my disdain for his authority.

There’s a bank of stylish boutiques, cafes, and restaurants up the next block, and a small group of people have stopped to watch me argue with the Cop. He’s aware of it too and decides to back down while the pedestrians scowl at him.

“Whatever man, get a fuckin’ clue and find something useful to do.” I say, throwing my sunglasses back on and dropping onto my board as I catch the next light and continue on my path past the Plaza Skate Park and six sets of soccer fields into the City center.

People look at you differently when you skateboard. They expect you’re gonna make some mess or hit someone, or worse, get hit by someone. You appear as a social liability- like no matter who you are or what you’re doing, you’re somehow associated with a punk sentiment about society when it’s just a piece of wood with some wheels on it. It’s ok, I don’t mind rubbing the right people the wrong way. I am a punk. I love to thumb my nose at authority and deflate self-important gas bags. Mistaken identity? What a wonderful defense. Giving off the impression you’re one thing, as with this cop, throws off their perception and how they are gonna come at you. Let them think what they’re gonna think. I’ve learned that there is always an advantage to have someone underestimating you, no matter how rude or pride punching it feels. Let people think you’re stupid and they’ll tell you everything. Even though it’s been more than a couple of years since I set foot over a board I’m starting to remember how good it feels to be labeled a waste of space and menace to society. It helps me blend in, it helps me get even closer to the street.